Latest news with #Sarvodaya
Time of India
a day ago
- General
- Time of India
New academic session at Sarvodaya Schools begins
Lucknow: The new academic session at Jai Prakash Narayan Sarvodaya Schools started from Tuesday. These schools were established to provide free education to meritorious students from underprivileged, rural, and backwards communities across Uttar Pradesh . A department official said that special arrangements had been made to welcome students back to school. These included cultural programmes and motivational sessions. "Schools have prioritised cleanliness, availability of safe drinking water, functional toilets, electricity, and comfortable seating arrangements for the students. For hostel residents, a robust system for providing timely breakfasts, nutritious meals, and regular health check-ups has also been established," the official said. He added that this year, equal emphasis will be placed on extracurricular activities, including sports, music, art, and cultural programmes, to foster all-around development of students. At present, the social welfare department operates 100 Sarvodaya schools, which offer education and free residential facilities to students from Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, and other marginalized sections. This year, nine new Sarvodaya schools are set to begin classes, and residential capacity is being expanded in 45 existing schools to accommodate more students. Get the latest lifestyle updates on Times of India, along with Doctor's Day 2025 , messages and quotes!
Hans India
3 days ago
- General
- Hans India
AP's natural farming model expands to Lanka
Vijayawada: The Andhra Pradesh Community-managed Natural Farming (APCNF) programme, implemented under the Rythu Sadhikara Samstha (RySS), continues to chart new milestones in transforming agriculture towards sustainability and resilience. With over 1.13 million farmers enrolled and more than 4,000 villages engaged, the APCNF has emerged as a globally recognised model for community-led, women-driven, and agroecologically sound farming. Building on this momentum and responding to growing international interest serving pilot projects in progress in Indonesia and Zambia, the RySS has facilitated a new pilot initiative in Sri Lanka starting June 26. This effort aims at supporting Sri Lanka in building trust and capacity in agroecological agriculture systems. The Sri Lanka pilot project is being implemented in collaboration with Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement, Sri Lanka's largest and most broadly embedded non-governmental community development organisation and NOW Partners, an international organisation which helps promoting natural farming, and a longstanding global ally of APCNF. The collaboration was catalysed by an exploratory visit by Sarvodaya's leadership to Andhra Pradesh in July 2023 and a subsequent farmer exposure visit in early 2025, which established a strong alignment between the APCNF approach and the aspirations of Sri Lankan farming communities. Following a feasibility assessment by the RySS technical team, a formal partnership has evolved into an operational collaboration. Sarvodaya will serve as the local implementation partner, while Luxembourg-based NOW Partners will extend global outreach and visibility for the initiative. A dedicated six-member RySS team comprising experienced technical anchors and champion farmers has been deployed in Sri Lanka, people involved in the initiative said. The team is strategically positioned in two agro-ecological zones to work intensively with five farmers in each location during the Yala (May–August) agricultural season. These farmers will be trained as local champions of natural farming. In the subsequent Maha (September–March) season, the trained farmers will mentor an additional ten farmers each, initiating a cascading, community-led model of scale and knowledge transfer. The pilot will continue through both Yala and Maha seasons until December 2026, ensuring sustained technical, logistical, and institutional support from Sarvodaya and other key organisations.
Hindustan Times
20-06-2025
- Health
- Hindustan Times
International Yoga Day today: Madrasas, Sarvodaya Schools across UP to mark day
The International Yoga Day will be marked across the state with participation from all the Madrasa Board affiliated Madrasas across the state on Saturday. Sarvodaya schools run by the Social Welfare Department from Class 6 to 12 will also hold Yoga Day celebrations on the theme of 'Yoga for One Earth, One Health'. For representation only (HT File Photo) On this occasion, group yoga sessions will be organised in all the schools with the participation of students, teachers and staff, in which pranayama and various yogasanas will be done under the guidance of yoga teachers. Along with this, awareness will also be created on the benefits of yoga and its importance in life, which will help the students a lot in reducing stress and increasing concentration. Uttar Pradesh MoS minority welfare, Muslim waqf and haj, Danish Azad Ansari will be participating in Yoga Day Celebrations at Warsia Madrasa in Gomti Nagar. The UP BJP minority morcha chief Kunwar Basit Ali will also participate in Yoga Day celebrations at Warsia Madrasa. Ansari said, 'Yoga is performed with the aim to keep the mind and body fit and healthy. Yoga Day will be celebrated across all the Madrasa Board-affiliated madrasas across the state in an attempt to spread the message of physical and mental fitness.' Ali said, 'We are going to organise Yoga Day celebrations across the state. Yoga is meant for all and we all know that our PM Narendra Modi got international recognition for Yoga, and today the entire world knows the importance of Yoga.' On the other hand, special programmes will be organised on Saturday in Jai Prakash Narayan Sarvodaya schools run by the social welfare department. This year's theme is 'Yoga for One Earth, One Health', which reflects the global spirit of keeping oneself and the whole society healthy. The UP social welfare department is running 100 Sarvodaya schools with residential facilities from Class 6 to 12 for the students of economically weaker families across the state. Along with quality education in these schools, the facility of free coaching for competitive exams like JEE and NEET is also being provided.
Hindustan Times
20-06-2025
- Politics
- Hindustan Times
50 years on, Emergency lingers as memory and metaphor in Mumbai
June 25, 1975. Bombay woke up to an announcement on All India Radio that Emergency had been clamped across India in view of 'internal disturbances.' Heavy rains darkened the city's bleak mood. 'There was a blanket of fear over Bombay in the first few weeks. No authentic information was available thanks to press censorship. I was 23 and scared as the future suddenly seemed grim and uncertain,' said music critic and writer Amarendra Nandu Dhaneshwar, who would go on to spend two years in prison as a class 'A' detainee as political prisoners were then termed. But initially, there were also some people, especially among the city's middle class, who were happy to see government officials with their noses to the desk and suburban trains arriving on time, said Gujarati writer Ramesh Oza. But very soon the reality of the Emergency started to bite and the protest movement began, he added. Oza recalls sneaking into the ward at Jaslok Hospital where Jayaprakash Narayan, helmsman of the anti-Emergency stir, was undergoing treatment for kidney ailment. 'I was 21 and hugely nervous. I told JP-ji that I was keen on doing my bit to restore democracy. From his hospital bed he put me on to a senior Sarvodaya functionary, and got me inducted into the Bombay Sarvoday Mandal, a hub of civil rights activists.' Over the next two years, it was the city's socialists and Gandhians who kept the embers of the anti-Emergency crusade burning. Several of them were arrested under the draconian Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA), while many others went underground. 'The Gandhian-Socialist brigade dubbed it doosri aazadi ki ladai [second war of independence],' said Dhaneshwar. But every act of resistance was met by greater repression. Young men were randomly picked up from their homes for vasectomy. 'Aapression' (operation) became a dirty word across Maharashtra's rural heartland. On October 14, 1975, popular Sarvodaya leader Prabhakar Sharma's death by self-immolation at Wardha stunned the city. But it also fired up a whole new generation of protestors, most remarkably a slew of fiery women leaders. They included the writer-scholar Durga Bhagwat, Gandhian academics Usha Mehta and Aloo Dastoor, Socialist firebrand leader Mrinal Gore, Pushpa Bhave, Rohini Gavankar, Sudha Warde, and Jana Sangh leader Jayawantiben Mehta. Under Bhave's leadership, a small group of volunteers would plaster anti-Emergency posters in railway compartments after the last train had chugged out of Churchgate station. The police were constantly on Bhave's trail, but she always managed to give them a slip. As did Mrinal Gore, who dodged the cops for a year by changing homes and hair styles, said her friend and poet Usha Mehta. Gore once tip-toed into Usha Mehta's Shivaji Park residence at mid-night, unrecognisable because of her closely cropped hair and'modern' look. 'Mrinaltai would help us in household chores, even as she kept an eye on the window to check if a CID official was hovering around,' recalled Mehta, who memorialised the Emergency in a book titled 'Aanibaani Aani Aapan' (Emergency And We). Their comrade-in-arms Durga Bhagwat was arrested in June, 1976. The police entered the Royal (now Mumbai) Asiatic Society, her second home, even as she was sitting down to lunch. The cops were embarrassed when Bhagwat offered them food, said noted writer-translator Ashok Shahane. There were others such as Minoo Masani, the editor of 'Freedom First' who contested censorship orders while publisher-writer Ramdas Bhatkal of Popular Prakashan which would go on to publish JP's Emergency memoirs, and Usha Mehta and academic DV Deshpande floated the 'Group of 1977' to provide financial relief and legal aid to Emergency victims. When the state department for publicity objected to the publication of a coruscating translated essay by Sunil Gangopadhyay in the literary magazine 'Satyakatha', the editor Ram Patwardhan chose to keep the page blank rather than lop off of a few paragraphs from Gangopadhyay's piece, said Sunil Karnik, who was then a sub-editor on the magazine. Long incarceration brought some sections of the Socialists and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh closer. RSS members Wamanrao Parab and Swaroopchand Goel, among others, were Dhaneshwar's cell-mates at the Arthur Road prison. Sudhir Joglekar, a senior Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad member, shared the Yerawada prison cell in Pune with Sadanand Varde and Jagannath Jadhav (both Socialists), and Datta Patil and Prabhakar Patil (both Peasants' and Workers' Party). However, the camaraderie forged in jail did not quite dissolve ideological differences, which eventually brought down the Morarji Desai -led Janata government in 1979. Fifty years on, Emergency continues to flicker on Mumbai's grey horizon both as memory and metaphor.
Time of India
18-06-2025
- Health
- Time of India
Stethoscopes over stereotypes: 12 out of 25 girls from one UP sarkari school cut through NEET odds
Live Events (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel In a remarkable achievement, 12 girls from Sarvodaya Vidyalaya in Marihan, Mirzapur district, Uttar Pradesh, have successfully cleared this year's NEET exam—the country's toughest medical entrance test . These girls, all from SC/ST and OBC communities, were part of a group of 25 students from the school who appeared for the exam, reported whose father works as a farm labourer, once feared her dream of becoming a doctor would remain out of reach due to financial constraints. Pooja Ranjan, daughter of a farmer from Sonbhadra, never thought she could afford medical coaching. Shweta from Kaushambi, who grew up in a small shop selling bicycle seat covers, had limited ambitions beyond government school all three are now on the path to becoming doctors. "I never imagined that this would be possible. I am still surprised," Pooja told to the report, the girls benefited from free residential coaching provided by the Sarvodaya school in Marihan. Along with regular classes from grades 6 to 12, the school offers hostel facilities for students from economically weaker families."Sarvodayas are residential schools, and these girls were staying in Marihan. In addition to regular school, they also attended coaching specifically for NEET, which was completely free," social welfare minister Asim Arun told NEET coaching program, launched in 2024, provides focused training to prepare students for competitive exams."The coaching provided to us was top class. We had regular tests to help us prepare. I never thought that coaching here would be so good that I would be able to clear this exam," said Pooja. "But with my hard work and assistance from govt, my dream has come true."Social Welfare Minister Asim Arun said the program targets girls from neighboring districts, and those selected were brought to Marihan with the consent of their families. Princy, Pooja, and Shweta all moved to Marihan for this specialized coaching after clearing entrance success of this batch has raised hopes for the future of Sarvodaya Vidyalayas across UP. Kumar Prashant, Social Welfare Director, called the Marihan school a 'center of excellence' and said this model would be expanded to other Sarvodaya schools, which number about 100 in the initiative, supported by Tata AIG and the Ex-Navodayan Foundation, is an encouraging example of how targeted government programs can help talented students from disadvantaged backgrounds reach their potential.
