Congratulations on completing 19 years of uninterrupted publishing and producing a splendid 19th anniversary issue. I fully agree with your analysis that the Narendra Modi-led BJP/NDA government has failed to fulfill its education promises. Your critique of the government’s demonetisation initiative is also accurate. Demonetisation failed to achieve its primary objective of unearthing black money. It was merely a ploy to divest opposition political parties of their cash holdings, and has slowed down economic growth, destroyed several small and medium scale businesses and created greater unemployment. M. Kumar on e-mail Rare vice chancellor I read with special interest your 19th anniversary issue. Autar Nehru’s special report ‘Can Allahabad University bloom again in U.P. desert?’ was an eye opener. It’s very rarely that we read about selfless, dutiful and scrupulous vice chancellors such as Prof. Rattan Lal Hangloo who is determined to set right the brazen corruption and criminalisation of academic campuses. I salute him for his courage and wish him the best in his efforts to restore the academic reputation of this 131-year-old university which has produced three prime ministers. Babita Sachdev Chennai Content-rich issue Congratulations to EducationWorld on your 19th anniversary. I wish you many more years in the service of Indian education! I am convinced that your sustained coverage of education issues has helped bring this neglected subject to the attention of the establishment and public. My compliments to the EW team for compiling a content-rich 19th anniversary issue. The special essays were excellent, especially Li Liang’s despatch from Beijing, China. I hope to read more insights on China’s spectacular advances in educating its masses. Nandini Deshmukh Bangalore Revive reading habit Kudos to EW on its impressive 19th anniversary issue. I especially appreciated Dr. Krishna Kumar’s essay ‘Dangerous consequences of dying reading habit’. The healthy reading habit is indeed dying in the 21st century with children obsessed with smart phones, tablets and laptops among other digital devices. Heads of education institutions must heed the findings of a considerable body of evidence that suggests that when children read deeply, they develop the critical capabilities of reflection, analogical understanding, inquiry and empathy. Anjali M. Kochi Dispassionate appraisal Your appraisal of the BJP/NDA government’s performance in education (EW November) is objective, unbiased and forthright. While you have perceptively weighed the government’s record on various programmes and found lags in performance, you have avoided drawing odious comparisons with earlier dispensations. You have rightly given due credit to Union HRD minister Prakash Javadekar for undertaking reformist initiatives to ensure autonomy of the IIMs, and revise the no-detention provision of the RTE Act. However, these positives are overshadowed by lack of progress on education reform and — not least — the undercurrent of social tensions and gross missteps on the economic front that threaten social harmony and development. Shibu Nath mumbai Generous compliments I was very pleased to read that Dilip Thakore, editor of EducationWorld, was conferred an award for ‘sustained advocacy of human capital development’ at the India-UAE Partnership Summit held in Dubai…
