The house sparrow is Bihar’s State Bird, and what are we doing to protect them? Make your office or home Sparrow friendly Put bird boxes and bird feeders on your office windows and terraces. Plant hedges in and around your office to convert it into a mini bird sanctuary. [We have to remember that this […]
Government schools in Bihar would have to deliver better education. This is obvious as the majority of students who appeared for a retest flunked their Board exams yet again. The results of the second attempt of the Bihar School Examination Board (BSEB) have revealed a sad state of affairs in education in the state. Only […]
The Chief Minister of Bihar did the Puja Rounds by visiting the two iconic Patan Devi temples (from where it is believed Patna derives its name). The festival sees thousands of people throng the streets to look at the spectacular Puja pandals and to worship at their favourite Durga Temples. A government press release said […]
The Tharu tribe inhabits areas along the right from Uttarkhand, to Uttar Pradesh and arts of Nepal, and about 3.5 lakh Tharus live in the Champaran District of Bihar, in the areas bordering Nepal. Some people would want us to believe that the Tharu tribe originated from the Thar desert region of Rajasthan. Anthropologically, it’s evident […]
I got to know that June 21 has been celebrated as World Music Day, so while everybody else was twisting themselves into knots, because of the new ‘Yoga Day’ political tamasha (started from last year), I busied myself , along with other Newsnet One interns, concentrating on World Music Day instead. Honestly, most Biharis are […]
The political climate of India is fast becoming critically polarised. The nature of discourse is being vitiated by divisive, shallow diatribe. Parliament, supposedly the platform for enlightened, purposeful discussion and farsighted legislation has been all but reduced to a ridiculous circus of shallow, shouting, sloganeering, and slanderous attention seekers. Where the political leadership in the […]
While the flavour of the month is climate change and the environment, let’s consider a new World Bank study on ‘Leveraging Urbanization in South Asia: Managing Spatial Transformation for Prosperity and Livability’. Quite a mouthful, that title! Making cities “inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable” is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted by […]
Bihar ranks first among the states in terms of rural housing shortage (42.10 lakhs), says census data. Back in 1947, Bihar was probably the first state in the country to enact a separate law, namely the Bihar Privileged Persons Homestead Tenancy Act, for providing security of tenure to landless rural households. Since then the Bihar […]
At six thirty on Saturday morning, the quiet of the Church Road in New Patliputra Colony was broken by a chorus that went, “Gai hamari maata hai, yeh hamari dharma ka mamla hai”. (The cow is our mother, this is our religious issue: note the stress on ‘hamari’) A motely group of a dozen men […]
It’s interesting how the journalists colour stories and how local media houses cater to sensationalism. First some ‘students’ of Patna Women’s College start a WhatsApp vilification campaign against a male teacher and the college principal. Then came the hounding of Patna Women’s College faculty member Sanjay Dutta (he has since resigned), by politically affiliated student groups and the local […]
In a fast changing narrative, what was first a complaint of inappropriate classroom behaviour by a Patna Women’s College teacher, has now been changed to ‘sexual assault’. But why is it that political fish seem to be swimming around in troubled waters? On Friday, even after the accused resigned, and the police and college authorities promised action […]
Over the weekend one attended a ‘Hijra Habba’ at Patna, organized by an organization working on the HIV/AIDS platform providing technical assistance to for the MTH interventions of Bihar state AIDS Control Society. Commendable job, talking about mainstreaming, and getting a government minister to pitch in, bolstered by a reps from few government and non-government […]
