Chhavi Rajawat at the United Nations : the first MBA woman sarpanch of India! According to reports in the Indian and international press ministers and ambassadors from diverse nations reacted with disbelief when the chairperson of the 11th Info-Poverty World Conference held at the United Nations introduced the jeans-clad Chhavi Rajawat as head of a village in India. For, from a distance one could easily mistake Rajawat, an articulate, computer-savvy woman, for a frontline model or at least a Bollywood actress. But she is sarpanch of Soda village, 60km from Jaipur, in backward Rajasthan and... 

Bicycles for girls: a latecomer Buddhadeb distributes bicycles in West Bengal: a much delayed inspiration from Bihar! Kolkata: according to a latest TV news report Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, the West Bengal CM has started distributing bicycles among school girls in the state. In this he seems to be inspired by the example of Bihar and Nitish Kumar’s scheme. But there may be a serious difference between the two approaches to bicycle distribution – Nitish distributed started his bicycles distribution process way back during his first term and is now reaping the benefits along with beneficiaries... 

BIHAR’S MAHILA SHIKSHAN KENDRAS When the Mahila Samakhya was introduced into the Bihar Education Project in 1992, there were objections. The MS programme, as it existed in other States such as Haryana and Rajasthan was a feminist oriented empowerment process, commonly understood to be a thrust for socio-political change. Some saw no connection between organising women’s collectives to understand their own social reality and the objective of filling the classrooms with eager six year olds. MS functionaries in other states strongly urged that, given the unsatisfactory condition...