NCERT is an Indian government body which makes textbooks for schools in India. NCERT has released PDF copies of all its textbooks from class I to class XII on its website.
The textbooks are available in English and Hindi media, English being the primary medium of instruction in many schools in India. There is no mention of any licenses, but the release is public (linked off the front page of their website) and this may be the first time any such repository of textbooks has been available publicly on the internet. There are other textbook projects under construction such as the FHSST, but none compare to the breadth of NCERT’s release.
Having these textbooks available on the internet for download is a big deal. I hope that these books can eventually be licensed under a free documentation license. Developing countries can benefit greatly from such a move, especially countries where there isn’t a good system of basic education. Imagine of the benefits if countries unite to adopt a common
education system. Of course, they will still be divided on subjects like history and geography, but this can work for science, mathematics and english. Having received excellent basic education from these textbooks, Indians have gone on
to do great things around the world.
The books are split into chapter PDFs and the links are a bit messy, but the content is all there. They can surely use some DocBook / TeX help 
. Do others also feel NCERT should be contacted about free documentation licensing?