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Not another brick in the wall…
We are back, after a hiatus! When the British left the country, India had a literacy rate of about 12%. Though much progress has been made since and, as per the National Survey, the literacy rate has climbed to about 65% by 2001, India is still way below the world average of 85%. It accounts [...]
A Social Trek
May 30, 2010. Prema Vasana, a home for differently-abled and abandoned children in Chennai, was awake early with many young eyes waiting for some friends to visit. The children here are well-cared-for by the home, but seldom get an opportunity to go out and enjoy nature. That is exactly what our group of 60+ volunteers [...]
How your favourite gadget is changing the world: Part 2 of 2
a continuation of How your favourite gadget is changing the world: Part 1 of 2 Closer home In India too, the mobile technology is being explored in various social fields. Though the penetration of mobile phones is not very high across India, the mobile still reaches interior rural villages and tribal areas in some states. [...]
How your favourite gadget is changing the world: Part 1 of 2
If you are a regular urbanite like me, to you the mobile phone means just what Priyanka Chopra seems to convey with her idiosyncratic little nod in the Nokia commercial – ‘it’s not just a phone, it’s me’. The ubiquitous device has now been a part of your lifestyle for years. You need it to [...]
Tuberculosis detection with a chip…
Ralph Weissleder, from Harvard Medical College, has developed magnetic nano particles that can identify tuberculosis-causing bacteria in sputum. This has made it possible to diagnose tuberculosis in half an hour. The traditional method for diagnosis takes about two weeks, as the bacteria is first spotted in sputum under the microscope, and then the suspect samples [...]
Make husk while the sun shines
The concept of the village, or ‘gram’ forms the core of India. Over seventy percent of her population is rural. There are more than half a million villages across the country, as opposed to five thousand or so urban settlements. And still many of us, such as me, have no direct experience of life in [...]
Goonj
Posting on behalf of Divya Varadarajan. GOONJ, formed a decade ago, is an initiative to provide basic amenities to far flung villages by turning one’s wastage to another’s resource. The “goonj” of this organization is spread over twenty states in India. As of today, it has a lot of good will work to its name [...]