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Originally reported and written in February 2023, this story has been republished as part of our archival content. For Dr Brij Kothari, the ‘eureka!’ moment came while watching a Spanish film back in 1996. The 58-year-old academic social entrepreneur wondered how beneficial it would be for reading literacy in India if Bollywood films, too, had subtitles in Hindi.    That’s how BIRD, or the Billion Readers initiative, was conceived.    Dr Brij Kothari   Soon after this incident, Dr […]

In Marsavalli village in Maharashtra’s Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar district, an 86-year-old woman recently sat on a wooden bench in a classroom, holding a pencil with careful attention, as she attempted a literacy test under the ULLAS Nav Bharat Saaksharta Karyakram. Her name is Anusuya Bai Wadekar, and her presence in that room carried the weight of an unfinished beginning that dates back nearly a century. She was born in a time when schooling for girls in rural India was often treated as […]

Naresh Purohit (12) is like any other child when it comes to going to school. Some days he just doesn’t feel like it. Except that Naresh has an incentive waiting for him at school — music class. For the last three years, The Sound Space, an initiative by two sisters, Kamakshi (38) and Vishala Khurana (36), to offer music and allied learning to children from underprivileged communities in Mumbai, has been holding music lessons at Naresh’s school. Started in 2010, the premise of the […]

“Despite receiving my admission letter, I did not know how I could make it happen. My parents’ savings were limited, and the banks kept giving confusing answers. I feared my dream might slip away entirely.” These words belong to Ankit Kumar, a 24-year-old from Rajasthan preparing to pursue an MS in biomedical engineering at the University of Florida. For many students, particularly those from smaller towns, the challenge does not end with securing admission. Tackling the opaque world of […]