Library

Madhya Pradesh teacher Gopal Bhalwala spent Rs 3 lakh from his savings to transform a government school, equipping it with water facilities, a library, and a garden.

Kajal Jawla, an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer who bagged the All India Rank (AIR) of 28 and Ankit Kumar, an Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer with an AIR of 31, share tips to study for the UPSC CSE during the pandemic.

Old Rajinder Nagar in West Delhi is a hub of UPSC aspirants. The neighbourhood offers an array of top coaching institutes, 24x7 libraries, study materials of every subject. Thousands of aspirants stay here but only a handful crack the UPSC.

ThinkBox, a lending library in Bengaluru, came into being because Bhakti Shah wanted to encourage her son. Here's how she set it up.

Would you believe that the library, until the COVID-19 lockdown, had never been closed even for a day since it was established in the 1800s?

"I may not be a professor or an expert, but I am happy I can make people invest time in reading," says Ponmariappan. Pretty cool, right?

“The books are then brought to our warehouse in West Delhi, which also doubles up as a library. We, along with the help of about 40 volunteers and interns, sort through every book, the ones that are torn, or not in good condition are sent for recycling while the good ones are stacked up for circulation.”

“I got teary when my son told me he wants to join IIT to become a software engineer. Never in my wildest imagination had I thought that he would get to study in an English-medium school,” says Mahadev, a vegetable vendor in Noida.

“My parents were both primary school teachers and a large part of my fascination with books began because of them,” she begins.

Kamjong, a town bordering Myanmar, has been ravaged by years of insurgency. What followed is an intervention that could change the face of this town.