Press snippets

School enrolment and literacy: State priorities towards education under colonial rule and since India’s independence – Gujarat, Jharkhand, Manipur, Rajasthan & West Bengal

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Why does China soar where India continues to struggle? The most basic reason is state priorities towards education. As of 1947, the literacy rate in India was barely 11%. But the Chinese emulated Japan’s earlier policy choices (and were themselves soon copied by the south east Asian “tigers”) by investing very heavily in primary education. … Read more

Marlavai Training Centre – model for present day education of tribal people – Andhra Pradesh

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Marlavai village in Jainoor mandal of Adilabad district was not this sleepy when Austrian anthropologist Christoph von Furer-Haimendorf was at work during the decade of 1940. He had launched his pioneering experiment in education of tribal people at this village. This experiment, christened Gond Education Scheme in Adilabad district, was the first concrete step in tribal … Read more

Sharing valuable rice varieties with farmers: Biodiversity for the sake of “vital nutrients and the ability to withstand flood, drought, salinity or pest infestations” – Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Odisha Maharashtra & West Bengal

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IN BRIEF India originally possessed some 110,000 landraces of rice with diverse and valuable properties. These include enrichment in vital nutrients and the ability to withstand flood, drought, salinity or pest infestations. The Green Revolution covered fields with a few high-yielding varieties, so that roughly 90 percent of the landraces vanished from farmers’ collections. High-yielding … Read more

Treating visitors to Te Puia geothermal park to an exhaustive peek into Maori culture, lore and legend: Women guides of the Te Arawa tribe – New Zealand

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New Zealand smokes, it smells and then stuns you with its geysers, hot springs and boiling mud pools […] Rotorua is New Zealand’s geothermal wonderland. It is located on North Island at the southernmost tip of the Pacific Ring of Fire. Just in case you have forgotten your geography like we had, the Pacific Ring … Read more

Video | “This land is mine. I will get it back: The struggle of women from the Rana Tharu community – Uttarakhand

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Many Adivasis have lost their land in Uttarakhand. But Kamla Devi of Pindari village and Mangola Singh of Nandpur are resisting usury, fraud and gender prejudice to get back their farmland and secure their rights | Read the full story on PARI: People’s Archive of Rural India >> From the earth that Kamla Devi toils … Read more