By Athar Parvaiz and Animesh Roul / In Asia Pacific, Society & Education / October 5, 2010
Since the Taliban's return to power in August 2021, Afghanistan has faced a sharp decline in human rights, with women and minorities bearing the brunt of repression. The Taliban’s enforcement of moral policing, public floggings, and the systematic dismantling of girls' education reflects their rigid interpretation of Sharia law despite global condemnation.
Where Coal is gold, children’s education can be dumped! As the name suggests, the mining-savvy Orissa government has followed this in a small Matulu Camp village, a resettled habitation in the Rengali block of Sambalpur district in Orissa. There was a ‘school’, up to class 5th, in this village just three years ago. But, the school is now reminding a World War II concentration camp, where about 100 children of ten classes are being forced inside a dingy 20/15 ft room community centre building.
Recently during Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh’s maiden visit to Orissa, once again it was re-established that the most powerful word that drives the politicians and bureaucrats in contemporary Orissa is the infamous three-letter word KBK (Kalahandi–Bolangir–Koraput). It has been more than a decade that KBK area has been showered with specially designed programmes, grants, and so many high profile visits. Unfortunately, the benefits of all these assistances are yet to reach the people of the region.
‘Education for all’ still remains a distant dream, and for the disabled, it is even more remote in India. A recent survey of the National Center for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People (NCPEDP), revealed that only 1.2 per cent of the disabled in India has had any form of education. In its effort to conduct an all-India school-level survey, NCPEDP found that out of the 89 schools, 34 did not have a single disabled student, and unfortunately, 18 of them had a policy against giving admission.