Savarkundla: Thirty-two-year-old Komal Ganatra from Gujarat is the only woman from the state to have cracked the UPSC exam this year. After four attempts, the hard work has finally paid off. With a 591 ranking on the national merit list, she is an inspiration.
But what makes Komal's feat even more valuable is her spirit to make a difference. Within a fortnight of her marriage to one Shailesh Popat in 2008, she was thrown out by her in-laws for not paying dowry. When all attempts to get her husband booked failed, Komal decided to set things right for herself.
"The worst was the social boycott. That was difficult. Now this has happened and it's a great pleasure," Komal said.
Her father Pravin Ganatra, a retired school teacher of Savarkundla town in Gujarat's Amreli district, is her inspiration and model. But with a couple of months to go before she gets her first posting, she's eager enough to help her mother in the kitchen as well....
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10:19 AM, May 21, 2013
Thiruvananthapuram: A man in Thiruvananthapuram is on a mission to ensure the poor do not go hungry. Feeding over a 100 people every day for the past 30 years, Suryalayam is known as the messiah of the hungry. Every morning in a small restaurant on the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram, a 100 meals are cooked, packed and then handed over to Suryalayam Raveendran. He then takes off on his bike looking...
02:32 PM, May 17, 2013
Banka: Cracking the UPSC is a difficult proposition, especially for aspirants who live in Naxal-infested areas, with no access to proper coaching facilities. But all that has changed in Bihar's Banka district due to the efforts of District Magistrate Dipak Anand and his deputy Sub-Divisional Magistrate Mithilesh Mishra. Together, they conduct free coaching sessions for students taking the UPSC exam from this region. With no proper guidance, the youth in...
11:02 PM, May 15, 2013
New Delhi: A special chattai therapy is providing some relief to little children suffering from cancer. CanKids initiative at AIIMS Delhi helps children undergo treatment by helping them with motivational and self esteem talks. Chemotherapy sessions, frequent hospital visits, long waiting hours, hair loss - are images associated with cancer. Battling the disease is a painful process for every one. Poonam Bagai was no different. The government officer's life was...
11:28 AM, May 14, 2013
Mumbai: Whoever said that celebrities don't care about what's going on in the real world, Salman Khan will make them rethink that. He has promised to donate 2,500 water tanks to drought-hit districts in Maharashtra, which is facing its worst drought in 40 years. Across Maharashtra, it has been a devastatingly dry summer as more than 11,000 villages grapple with the worst drought in four decades. But there might be...
10:09 AM, May 13, 2013
Banka: Two bureaucrats are paving the way for a better, brighter life for others in Bihar's Naxal-hit Banka region. They are providing UPSC aspirants free education and coaching sessions. Cracking the UPSC is a difficult proposition, especially for aspirants who live in Naxal-infested areas, with no access to proper coaching facilities. But all that has changed in Bihar's Banka district due to the efforts of district magistrate Dipak Anand and...
09:58 AM, Apr 29, 2013
Jorhat: Green warrior Jadab Payeng never forgot the devastating Assam floods of 1979. For three decades, Jadab Payeng has been instrumental in planting trees nurturing a 1,000 hectare forest in a Brahmaputra sand bar. For the past thirty three years of his life, he has been crossing this river, walking along the sand bars and planting trees and even talking to them like there was no tomorrow. Three decades of...
03:12 PM, Apr 12, 2013
Khamhariya Damuan: A 13-year-old is acting as a catalyst of change not just for his home, but for the entire village community in Uttar Pradesh. Omkar Dubey took up the issue of sanitation forcing his village heads to set up public toilets. More than 70 per cent Indian homes have no access to a toilet. India has more cellphones than toilets. More than half a million children in India die...
10:58 AM, Apr 11, 2013
Madhubani: A call centre is proving to be quite a lifeline for farmers in Madhubani in Bihar. It is an initiative by Delhi-based Drishti Foundation and is proving to be central to the economy of agriculture in the region. It is a lifeline for the farmers of the Madhubani district, addressing their queries and problems on farming, seed selection, what fertiliser to use and using new-age techniques. The call centre...
09:56 AM, Apr 10, 2013
New Delhi: An NGO called Navjyoti has given a new ray of hope to underprivileged children. An after-school centre that provides activity based learning, it nurtures their ambitions and dreams. An alcoholic father, a dependent mother and a younger brother who has already quit school is life for 13-year-old Ram Nivas. But in the classroom, he does a 'Taare Zameen Par' with his latest achievement, an electric swing. Helping him...
10:07 AM, Apr 09, 2013
Girls from the desert villages in Rajasthan, which infamous for female foeticide and child marriages, are benefiting, thanks to residential education camps. From would be child brides, they are now looking at financial independence. ...
10:36 AM, Apr 02, 2013
One of the country's biggest medical camps for people with facial deformities is being held at the KS Hegde Medical Academy in Mangalore, after the hospital received over 1,400 responses to its free surgery initiative. After CNN-IBN telecast a report in December 2011 on the free face-changing and life-changing surgeries that Dr Vikram Shetty and his team does, over 1,400 patients have thronged the hospital. ...
10:31 AM, Mar 26, 2013
A band in Kolkata has found inspiration in young Pakistani girl and hero Malala Yousufzai. Not only are they singing for the young Pakistani who survived the Taliban attempt on her life, they're also funding children's education projects. ...
10:12 AM, Mar 07, 2013
The age old 'guru-shishya' tradition is still going strong at the Dhrupad Sansthan in Bhopal. Students come in from around the world, looking to learn classical music and they are handpicked by the Ustads. ...
09:01 AM, Mar 06, 2013
Students from the prestigious Sri Ram College of Commerce aren't just about number-crunching. They use social entrepreneurship to help underprivileged people in the national capital from facilitating micro-credit for autorickshaw drivers to reaching out and arranging vocational training to puppeteers, manual scavengers to helping manual scavengers earn a decent living. ...
09:20 AM, Mar 05, 2013
Amit Chaudhuri, an author, has taken it upon himself to preserve the rich cultural heritage of the 'city of joy' Kolkata. The city of joy and teeming millions has been Amit Chaudhuri's muse for his three novels. His love for the city and its neighbourhoods has made him fight for a new heritage law to preserve its history. ...
01:39 PM, Mar 02, 2013
Dr Krishna Rao in Bangalore is providing free treatment and care to poor terminally ill cancer patients. For almost 14 years, he has been helping them through his Karunashraya foundation. ...
10:28 AM, Mar 01, 2013
Professor RK Sinha of Patna University is popularly known as India's dolphin man. Thanks to him, dolphins have now been declared as the National Aquatic Animal. ...
11:46 AM, Feb 27, 2013
Would you like to contribute to charity by going on a luxury bus ride? A concept initiated by banker-cum-philanthropist Madhabi Puri Buch, the Ashok Leyland Luxura Magical India Bus gives you the comfort of a house on wheels. Buch, who works as a fund raiser for the Founder Toofles Foundation, says, "The idea was actually quite simple that normally Toofles Foundation did events which were one time event to raise...
08:58 AM, Feb 26, 2013
From creating India's first carbon calculator to co-founding India's first green rating system, a green crusader in Mumbai practices what he preaches. Vivek Gilani is an environmental engineer by profession. The 36-year-old is popularly known as the environmental crusader among family and friends, thanks to his passion for environment. ...
10:14 AM, Feb 25, 2013
