Word: bihar
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...report released Dec. 9 by Human Rights Watch found that at least 39 schools in the Eastern states of Jharkhand and Bihar have been attacked by Naxals in the last year. That doesn't include schools that are occupied by state security forces, of which the total number is still unknown. "When we wanted to know of the exact number of schools that were being occupied by the security forces, the government refused to provide us the details," says Subrata Bhattacharjee, president of the Jharkhand chapter of the People's Union For Civil Liberties (PUCL), an advocacy group based...
...troops. "We cannot go to the toilets, as they are used by camp people," she said in an interview with TIME. Other students complain of harassment - the girls feeling leered at, and the boys grilled for information about suspected insurgents in the village. At the Tankuppa High School in Bihar's Gaya district, a 16-year-old student told HRW that the police "bring culprits back to the school and beat them." (See the top 10 underreported stories...
...government school systems in Bihar and Jharkhand were already abysmal well before Naxal activity picked up this year. Average class sizes in the two states are 75 and 65, respectively, for a single teacher, compared to the national average of 40. Literacy rates, too, are well below the national average of 65%. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has made development in Naxal-affected areas - including education - a priority, but the attacks and occupation threaten to undo what limited progress his government had made. In the Aurangabad district of Bihar, for example, the government approved about $28,600 to build...
Although flooding has recently become commonplace in India - in 2008, over 3 million people were displaced when the Kosi river in Bihar burst its banks - but this year's deluge came as a shock because if followed a protracted drought, and a monsoon season branded a dud by the authorities. To experts who've tracked the effects of climate change, however, the flooding came as no surprise. In its fourth assessment report in 2007, the Inter- Government Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted that more extreme droughts, floods, and storms, would become commonplace in the future, and that these intense...
...drastically in India's cities. Handloom-weaving is a small-scale business, so there are no comprehensive statistics to track it, but weavers say they've noticed a marked decline in the past decade. V.P. Sharma, 48, has been employed as a weaver in the handloom sari industry in Bihar since 1988. He blames the slowdown on women's changing tastes. It is particularly bad for handloom saris - the simple cotton saris that many Indian women used to wear every day. Their plain designs and muted colors have no appeal for women like Rashmi Raniwal, a 22-year-old sales...