The imposition of a nationwide ban on the screening of the BBC-commissioned documentary film India’s Daughter on March 4 by the Union government, supplemented by its futile efforts to persuade foreign governments to follow suit, is proof of a serious critical thinking skills deficit and reactionary mindset in the top echelons of the BJP/NDA coalition […]
THE UNSEEMLY AND HIGHLY politicised war of words which has broken between the opposition Congress and the ruling BJP on the occasion of the 125th birth anniversary (November 14) of Jawaharlal Nehru, does little justice to independent India’s first prime minister. Whatever his other acts of commission and omission, it’s incontrovertible that Nehru dug deep […]
EVEN AFTER CONCEDING that the Union Budget 2014-15 presented to Parliament and the nation on July 10 by new finance minister Arun Jaitley, is a truncated statement of accounts for the next seven months of the current financial year of the 60-days-old BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, it’s a great disappointment. There’s hardly any […]
BY THE TIME YOU READ this despairing editorial, polling in General Election 2014 will have commenced with the world’s largest electorate of 814 million citizens having begun the month-long process of voting away their future. For discerning observers of the political landscape despair is inevitable, because in mid-May a coalition government defined either by kleptocracy, […]
The spectacular electoral debut of the Aam Aadmi Party in the Delhi state assembly elections two months ago, culminating in AAP forming the state government, had aroused great expectations of a new political sunrise covering the entire country. But since then, its oleaginous populism and maladroit initiatives in governance has raised ghosts of the post-Emergency […]
A Drowsy Numbness perhaps rooted in Oriental Fatalism seems to have afflicted youth of the nation. According to news reports based on census data and the electoral rolls of Delhi state (national capital region) which will have elected a new government by the time this issue of EducationWorld reaches newsstands, a mere 56 percent of […]
On October 7, the first shot of what promises to be a protracted war for the hearts and minds of the Indian people was fired at a sparingly attended media conference at the Press Club, Bangalore. The Children First Party of India (CFPI), registered by the Election Commission of India […]
The anointment of Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi as prime minister-designate should the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party win the looming general election of May 2014, is a denouement filled with dreadful implications which neither the reckless middle class which has rallied to his banner, nor the nation’s under-educated majority have adequately grasped. The belated misgivings […]
Too many of contemporary Indias politicians seem to believe the practice of democracy is about enforcing majority opinion when actually its about protecting minority rights and sensibilities. Such erroneous thinking is behind the rise of right-wing Hindu fundamentalism propagated by the powerful cultural organisation Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and its political wing, the Bharatiya Janata […]
The grim spectre of mass unemployment is beginning to haunt the Indian economy. Belatedly, mainstream media and the political establishment have woken up to the reality that the prime purpose of encouraging investment — foreign and domestic — in the Indian economy, is to create jobs for the huge army of youth entering the jobs […]
The election of a new government in Pakistan and the recent visit of newly elected Chinese prime minister Li Keqiang to India — the first country he has visited since his appointment — offers the scams-tainted Congress-led UPA-II government an opportunity to redeem itself in its last year in office, by resolving India’s long-pending territorial […]
Although in the excitement generated by the mminent assembly elections in several states and the general election scheduled for next summer, it has gone off the headlines, government corruption is — or should be — a live issue at the hustings in the states and at the Centre. Two recent incidents in Maharashtra — India’s […]
In mid-March, several dailies in Bangalore headlined the poignant story of little Lakshmi Naikode (9), who fled her home and Kannada-medium government primary school last November to realise her dream of studying in an English-medium ‘convent’ school. Three days after she had unsuccessfully knocked on the doors of several private schools for admission, Lakhsmi was […]
The republic is in deep crisis. on every norm of good governance and practice, the Congress-led UPA-II government which was returned to power in New Delhi in the summer of 2009 with high hopes and great expectations, has failed. The economy is in serious trouble with the current account deficit ballooning to a record 5.4 […]
A thin silver lining to the dark cloud of shame that hangs over the republic following the gangrape incident in Delhi on December 16, is that it has brought the full weight of public opinion to bear upon the long-pending issue of police reforms. It’s shocking but true that reports of several high-powered commissions and […]
The brutal gang rape of a 23-year-old paramedic student in a moving bus in the heart of Delhi on December 16, has not only triggered unprecedented student and middle class angst against the incident per se, it has also focussed a powerful searchlight on an important civilisational issue ignored for too long in post-independence India: […]
The rising garbage mountains of the once green and pleasant city that is Bangalore aka Bengaluru (pop. 8 million), which are all set to collapse in a deluge of plague and pestilence upon this city — paradoxically the country’s premier science and technology hub — is a grim precursor of things to come for 21st […]
The recent rash of sexual assaults and atrocities against women and teenage girl children in the state of Haryana (pop. 25.3 million) which has shocked the nation, is a severe indictment of the education system in this north Indian state. The outcome of decades of neglect of civic, gender and liberal arts education in K-12 […]
The recently concluded 19-day monsoon session of Parliament which ended on September 7 without any orderly debate or passage of legislation, is a blot on India’s experiment in democracy. Although media pundits excoriated all political parties for the daily disruption of both houses of Parliament during the entire monsoon session of the country’s apex legislative […]
Despite being proven beyond all reasonable doubt that India’s 18-million strong neta-babu (politician-bureaucrat) kleptocracy is engaged in open, continuous and uninterrupted loot of the public exchequer and actual and potential revenue of governments at the Centre and in the states, there’s a curious reluctance among media pundits and the nation’s intelligentsia to encourage the entry […]
A common factor connects the several separate incidents of mob molestation of a teenage girl in Guwahati graphically captured by video footage, the brazen diktat issued by a khap panchayat (village council) forbidding women to venture out of their homes without a male escort or use mobile phones, and incidents involving celebratory gunfire in Uttar […]
An early June report of Standard & Poor’s — the well-known sovereign bonds and country risks rating agency which speculates that India may be the first country among Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) nations to lose its S&P investment grade BBB- status labelling it a high-risk country for foreign investment — has shaken the […]
The commemoration of the 60th year of independent India’s Parliament by all members of both houses of the legislature cutting across party lines on May 13, should have been a gala occasion nationwide. Instead, the festivities were muted and confined to Parliament while the rest of the country introspected upon the reality that contemporary India is a […]
The enactment of the Right to Free and Compulsory (RTE) Education Act, 2009 and the Supreme Court’s substantial validation of its provisions by its judgement delivered on April 12, has belatedly focused national attention upon vitally important primary and upper primary education — the foundation block of national development worldwide. Despite newly independent India having adopted Soviet-style […]
The citizenry of India is too patient and undemanding of its leaders. True, when they commit egregious crimes and brazen acts of impropriety, the public is not averse to voting them out of office. Yet everyday acts of omission and commission and particularly dereliction of the duty of accountability for revenue mobilised through taxation, and […]
The utter rout of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) and the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (DMK) in the recently concluded legislative assembly elections in West Bengal and Tamil Nadu respectively, is clear proof that contrary to popular punditry, abatement, if not elimination, of corruption in government is a live and important issue in Indian politics. […]
Media reports emanating from New Delhi, suggesting that a committee of the University
Grants Commission (UGC) is finalising the provisions of a Bill to regulate the admissions and fees of privately promoted deemed universities, indicate that the licence-permit-quota culture is alive and well in the Union human resource development ministry and UGC. A UGC (Admission […]
The landmark election of senator Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States of America on November 4, highlights the stark differences in the practice and precepts of democratic governance between the US and India, the most vibrant and most populous democracies respectively of the contemporary world. The overwhelming popular mandate in favour […]
The great fall of Wall Street, usa and the meltdown of stock markets the world over including India’s bellwether Sensex of the Bombay Stock Exchange, which has fallen from the high of 21,000 points it attained in January this year to 8,701 currently, imparts some valuable lessons that need to be debated and discussed within […]
- Reshma Ravishanker The central government’s recent announcement on scrapping ‘no-detention policy’ for classes V and VIII in schools under its jurisdiction has yet again .....Read More
The Calcutta High Court on Tuesday rejected the bail petitions of former West Bengal education minister Partha Chatterjee and four other ex-public servants in a .....Read More
