Frequent disruption of the business of Parliament is giving India a bad image abroad and perhaps worse, domestically. For instance at the time of writing this editorial, in the Budget session of Parliament during which the Union Budget 2023-24 was presented the expenditure priorities of the Rs.45 lakh crore budget of the Central government in […]
The resignation of bhushan Patwardhan, executive committee chairperson of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC, estb.1994), on March 5 has opened up a can of worms and aroused fears relating to smooth implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020. In his resignation letter to University Grants Commission chairman M. Jagadesh Kumar, Patwardhan alleged […]
The disruption of parliamentary business for two whole days (February 2-3) by the Congress and opposition parties demanding a JPC (joint parliamentary committee) probe into allegations of fraud and stock price manipulation made by an obscure US-based securities firm is a telling example of how public money is wasted by politicians. According to a study […]
Except to left ideologues and academics who the global rejection of communism/socialism notwithstanding, continue to dominate the academy and public discourse, the data is alarming, if not horrifying. According to a front-page banner headline in The Hindu (February 10), 225,000 skilled professionals and/or HNIs (high net worth individuals) renounced Indian passports, migrating abroad last year.
Contrary to alarmist headlines in mainstream media proclaiming steep learning loss experienced by children in elementary (class I-VIII) education in rural India, careful reading of the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2022 suggests the opposite. Although because schools in India were ill-advisedly shuttered for 82 weeks to check the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic […]
The clarion call of vice President Jagdeep Dhankar and Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, for review of the Supreme Court’s judgement in the landmark Kesavananda Bharati Case (1973) in which (accepting the argument of eminent jurist Nani Palkhivala (1920-2002)), the Supreme Court held that legislation enacted by Parliament which violates the “basic structure” of the […]
The resurgence of the covid pandemic in the neighbour People’s Republic of China (PRC) has quite rightly triggered alarm bells in New Delhi and several state admin capitals. Although the PRC government of a communist dictatorship has stopped publishing data on the number of Covid infections and fatalities, by all indications the deadly virus and […]
In an official statement made in Parliament on December 13, Union defence minister Rajnath Singh made light of a December 9 scuffle between Chinese and Indian soldiers on the McMahon line which marks the border in the north-east between the world’s two most populous countries.
However, the clash which prompted banner headlines in the media, is […]
In 1957 Jawaharlal Nehru, independent India’s first prime minister, designated November 14 — his birthday — as Children’s Day, because he wanted to “create an atmosphere in the country where the attention is constantly focused on children and their welfare”. Yet in this editorial written on Children’s Day 55 years later, it is the lamentable […]
A recent (November 7) judgment of the Supreme Court upheld the 103rd Amendment to the Constitution. By a three-two majority the learned justices validated a patently politically motivated additional 10 percent reserved quota in higher education institutions and government jobs for economically weaker sections (EWS) from the general category. This apex court verdict requires reconsideration […]
Even as the print media and television channels are flooded with advertising inviting the middle class to purchase luxury goods and services ranging from smart TVs, consumer durables, SUVs and foreign holidays during Diwali/Deepavali, the latest Global Hunger Index (GHI) 2022 report published by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe (Germany) ranks India #107 among 122 countries […]
The enthusiastic response of school promoters, trustees, principals and teachers to the 12th EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) 2022-23 Awards conclave which concluded in Gurgaon (Delhi NCR) on October 12, is proof that the tectonic plates of the country’s moribund K-12 education system are shifting. Over 1,400 leaders of the country’s most reputed schools listed […]
Road traffic mismanagement and chaos witnessed 24×7 on the roads of Bengaluru, the administrative capital of the southern state of Karnataka (pop.64 million), is pervading the state’s politics and all sectors of government. A few decades ago, Karnataka had the deserved reputation of being ranked among the country’s most well-governed states offering a business and […]
Heavy rain, flooding and waterlogging of Bengaluru (in 2014 foolish parochial politicians mindlessly surrendered its global brand identity as Bangalore, the IT capital of India) in early September caused substantial damage to business and industry variously estimated at Rs.500-700 crore by way of loss of material, stock-in-trade and production. The tragedy is that such water-logging […]
The alacrity with which the BJP government of Gujarat state accepted a report of the Sentences Review Board (SRB) packed with state government officials including two BJP MLAs (members of legislative assembly), to release 11 convicted criminals serving life sentences for gang-rape of survivor Bilkis Bano, and the daylight murder of her three-yearold daughter and […]
The prime minister’s 75th Independence Day address to the nation from the ramparts of Delhi’s historic Red Fort on August 15, was a departure from usual speeches delivered on this day to mark the end of almost two centuries of British rule over India. Unlike earlier speeches that boasted the tremendous progress the country has […]
“All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely,” wrote 19th century English historian Lord Acton (1834-1902). Quite clearly, neighbouring Sri Lanka’s recently ousted president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, swept to highest office in 2019 with a massive majority, became power drunk. Three of his brothers were brazenly appointed prime minister, irrigation and finance minister; his […]
For sentient citizens with memory and/or knowledge of India’s unique freedom struggle led by Mahatma Gandhi, Nehru, Sardar Patel, Dr. Ambedkar and a galaxy of leaders invested with genuine idealism and integrity, the nation’s 75th Independence Day (August 15) is likely to be an occasion for sober introspection. To be sure, commemoration of the day […]
The violent protests that erupted last month countrywide against the Central government’s Agnipath armed forces short-term recruitment scheme have further destabilised the post-pandemic economic recovery process already slowed by communal violence, rising unemployment and inflation.
The Agnipath schema reduces the tenure of new recruits into the defence services — army, navy and air force — from […]
The sights and sounds of bulldozers razing homes of citizens who had allegedly encroached on government land, which played out on 210 million television screens across the country last month, have severely damaged India’s image as nation of orderly governance and rule of law. Outrage over dispensation of executive justice has provoked six former Supreme […]
The spate of lawsuits being filed in courts countrywide by Hindu zealots and sangh parivar outfits questioning the titles of Muslim wakf properties on which religious mosques — some of them several centuries old — have been built, has the potential of inflaming religious passions and igniting rioting and mayhem which will destabilise the social […]
From Left: Dilip Thakore, editor, EducationWorld; Dr Ravindra Dattatraya Kulkarni, pro-VC, University of Mumbai; Prof Rajesh Khanna, president, NIIT University, Neemrana; Dr Madhu Chitkara, pro-chancellor, Chitkara University; Professor C. Raj Kumar, VC, OP Jindal Global University; Dr Parth J Shah, founder president, Centre for Civil Society at the panel discussion on “NEP 2020: […]
Evidently, union home minister Amit Shah is not a student of history. If he was, he wouldn’t have advised chief ministers of India’s 28 states and eight union territories to adopt Hindi as the medium of inter-state communication, as he did while addressing the 37th meeting of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee on April 7. […]
It’s surprising that the prime minister and top BJP leadership seem unaware that the rising tide of hate speeches and demonitisation of the country’s 220 million-strong Muslim minority by BJP’s affiliated sangh parivar and hindutva fringe groups could derail the economy limping back to normalcy after two years of serious pandemic disruption. They need to […]
Russia’s invasion of the independent Republic of Ukraine on February 24 and the substantial damage to lives and property that the inconclusive 30-day war has caused in the heavily outgunned and outnumbered latter country, have been universally condemned. Quite rightly, because Russia and particularly its autocratic President Vladimir Putin mounted the largest land offensive since […]
The BJP’s 4-1 sweep of the five state legislative assembly elections held in February-March has attracted detailed reportage and analysis by respected media pundits and prophets. However, few, if any, have provided a satisfactory explanation for the triumph of BJP in four of the five states which went to the hustings, especially the comprehensive re-election […]
Karnataka’s hijab controversy which broke out in early January when six girl students of a government pre-university college were denied entry into their classrooms for wearing hijabs (headscarves) is spreading in ever widening circles across the country, and has even drawn the attention of the Jeddah (Saudi Arabia)-based Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which has […]
The union budget 2022-23 presented to Parliament and the public last month has generated considerable confusion and anxiety within the small minority of educationists and educators who look at the big picture. Although India’s education sector is emerging from the pandemic crisis of the longest lockdown of education institutions (82 weeks) worldwide, and a huge […]
In the rarefied environment of Lutyen’s Delhi about to experience a landscape makeover with the hindutva-inspired Central Vista new Parliament building and in business-as-usual state capitals, there seems to be no awareness that in the vast hinterland, the country is experiencing an Education Emergency.
In early January, primary-secondaries, which had cautiously reopened last October, following an […]
As the tempo of electioneering in five states including the bellwether Uttar Pradesh (pop.215 million), which will be electing their legislative assembly representatives before March 10, gathers momentum, there’s rising responsibility for leaders of all political parties — especially the ruling BJP at the Centre with a massive majority in Parliament — to come down […]
The inevitable arrival in india of the new highly transmissible Omicron variant of the novel Coronavirus, aka Covid-19, which since it mysteriously originated in Wuhan, China back in November 2019 and surfaced in the subcontinent in early 2020 forcing an unprecedented sealing of industry, business and commerce for over six months, has set alarm bells […]
With the highly contagious Omicron variant of the novel Coronavirus which made its India debut last month forecast to peak in early February, Republic Day celebrations are again likely to be subdued this year.
Although initial indications are that Omicron is less lethal than the Delta variant which peaked last summer, its high transmissibility may require […]
There’s undoubtedly something rotten in the state of India. The recent appointment of Parag Agrawal, an alumnus of IIT-Bombay as the US-based chief executive of Twitter Inc, USA and successor of Jack Dorsey, the promoter-chairman of this multi-billion dollar hi-tech social network corporation, is being hailed as a great triumph of India and IIT-B in […]
The dramatic repeal of three contentious agriculture reform Acts of Parliament, viz, Farmers Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020; Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020; Essential Commodities Amendment Act, 2020, by way of prime minister Modi’s national television broadcast on November 19, has evoked mixed […]
A dismaying national character flaw that has manifested itself with painful impact during the crushing Covid-19 pandemic is that post-independence India — a country of free men and women expected to hold the moral high ground envisioned by Mahatma Gandhi and leaders of the freedom movement — has degenerated into a nation of price gougers. […]
The total priivatisation on October 8 of Air India, the public sector national airline, which during the past 68 years since it was nationalised in 1953 has recorded a cumulative loss of Rs.70,000 crore, is a milestone in the half-hearted national development history of post-independent India. That this perpetually bleeding airline has been re-purchased by […]
The national asset monetisation Pipeline (NMP) programme announced in the Union Budget 2021-22 is detailed in a document released to the public on August 23 by NITI Aayog, the Union government’s think tank (established in 2014 by the BJP/NDA government to replace the Soviet-style Planning Commission). Under this initiative, leases of several public sector ‘brownfield’, […]
In a landmark verdict passed on September 16, the Karnataka high court reaffirmed an earlier judgement of the Supreme Court in Indian School, Jodhpur vs. State of Rajasthan (Civil Appeal 1724 of 2021) upholding the right of private school managements to determine the tuition fees chargeable by them. A writ petition was filed by several […]
The central government’s greenlight to 14 engineering colleges in eight states to offer engineering degree programmes in five regional languages (Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Marathi and Bengali) from the new academic year 2021-22 is further proof of myopic politicians rushing in where they should fear to tread.
On July 29 —the first anniversary of the release of […]
In the 75th year of political freedom from almost two centuries of exploitative British rule, the world’s most populous democracy is running out of steam. Institutions established as the republic’s pillars of democratic governance are crumbling because of political irresponsibility and public indifference. Neither the executive, Parliament, police-judicial system nor the media — the so-called […]
Anant National University, Ahmedabad has announced that the Anant Design Entrance and Proficiency Test (ADEPT), India’s first and only multilingual design entrance test, will be .....Read More
Mahika Shishodia, Head of Education, Lodha Foundation As India aims to become a developed economy by 2047, it must address multiple facets, including women’s development, .....Read More
