Since it was voted to power in West Bengal (pop.91 million) with a landslide majority in May 2011 which ended 34 years of uninterrupted rule of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM)-led Left Front govern-ment in the state, a top priority of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) government, especially its fiery chief minister Mamata Banerjee, has […]
“I want education for the sons and daughters of the Taliban and all the terrorists and extremists.” Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani teenage education activist, addressing UN Youth Assembly (July 13)
“Modi says we “hide behind the burqa of secularism”. Preferable, surely, to the khaki shorts of intolerance and hatred that he now tries to hide?” Shashi Tharoor, Union HRD […]
The world over the process of admission into colleges and universities is simple. Students complete admission forms, provide required documentation, submit to interview and/or entrance exams, agree to pay prescribed fees and are admitted or rejected by college/university managements. But under Indian-style socialism distinguished by disrespect for property rights and driven by government need to […]
The tragic death of 23 children of the Dharmasati Gandaman School, Chhapra, in Saran district, Bihar, after consuming the pesticide-contaminated school mid-day meal on July 16 and numerous scary stories of this type, suggest the rot in India’s school mid-day meal scheme — the world’s largest, covering 120 million children — is systemic. Two days […]
Are students in Gujarat losing interest in professional (engineering, business management, etc) education, or is the country’s industrially fastest growing state experiencing a glut of professional education institutions?
State education department officials are keeping their fingers crossed as the admission process for professional courses in Gujarat moves into the final stages amid fears that the vacancies […]
The Delhi state government is set to finalise a historic decision to allow recognised private unaided schools in the national capital to run two shifts. Addressing media personnel on July 5, education minister Prof. Kiran Walia said a government-appointed panel has drawn up rules and regulat-ions for the citys top-ranked private schools to double their […]
Even as passage of the Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations) Bill introduced in 2010, is blocked in Parliament by opposition parties, India-US collaboration in higher education is proceeding on a parallel track. Several important agreements to enhance cooperation in higher education were signed during the second Indo-US Higher Education Dialogue held in […]
Although Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi, now in his third term in office and recently confirmed as the leader of the national poll campaign of the BJP in the general election due next year, is an individual liberals love to hate, there’s no doubting the Gujarat strongman’s propaganda capability. On June 13, the entire Modi […]
Somewhat belatedly the Mumbai police seems to have discovered the technique of using plain-clothes police personnel or undercover agents — an elementary policing technique foreign even to highly-qualified IPS (Indian Police Service) officers. On June 7, officers of the Thane rural police uncovered a huge fake certification racket run by the well-known Mumbai-based Swami Vivekananda […]
When Kiran Kumar Reddy (KKR), a low profile member of the legislative assembly was appointed chief minister of the south-eastern coastal state of Andhra Pradesh (pop. 84 million) following the sudden resignation of then chief minister K. Rosiah, who had taken charge after the death in an air crash of Congress chief minister Y.S.R. Reddy […]
It’s the start of the new academic year in Tamil Nadu (pop. 72 million) and harvest season for touts, agents and representatives of top managers, owners and promoters of government and private colleges and universities, who routinely demand huge sums for exercising their discretionary powers to admit ineligible but wealthy household students into their classrooms. […]
“If the government moves away from development to treat this strictly as a law and order problem, it is not going to be a solution. It will only worsen the problem, as experience so far has shown.”
E.A.S. Sarma, former bureaucrat, on Maoist terror (Outlook, June 10)
“The next election will not be between the Congress […]
The Congress party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA-II) government at the Centre modestly celebrated completion of four years of its second consecutive five-year term in office on May 22. But the shocked citizenry punch drunk by the unprecedented scams and scandals which have marked its second term, has been in no mood to join the celebrations. […]
The education sector — the pride of West Bengal (pop. 91 million) in the 19th and 20th centuries — hit rock bottom during the 34 years of uninterrupted reign (1977-2011) of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM)-led Left Front government in the state when quasi-literate CPM fellow travellers and apparatchiks captured the state’s institutions of […]
The near absolute majority won by the Congress party in the Karnataka state legislative election of May 5 has been cautiously welcomed by the state’s citizens thoroughly disillusioned with its predecessor scams-tainted BJP government which (mis)ruled the state for five years (2009-2013). K. Siddaramaiah, a political veteran known for his ‘clean image’, was sworn in […]
The statehood-for-Telangana movement in Andhra Pradesh — an on-off agitation which has persisted for over four decades — received a fresh boost following a decision of the newly re-constituted Medical Council of India (MCI) to deny three government medical colleges in the Telangana region an intake increase. For the second year in a row, the […]
Vidya sahayaks (teaching assistants) earn less than donkeys, ran a headline in the Ahmedabad edition of the Times of India on May 24.
Three days earlier, on May 21 a Supreme Court bench comprising JJ B.S. Chauhan and Dipak Misra had expressed concern about the quality of primary teachers being recruited by the state government while hearing an appeal of […]
“China’s boom created 130 million net jobs in services and industry between 2002 and 2012. But India is no China. The most recent survey shows no net new jobs were created between 2004-05 and 2009-10, a dramatic slowdown on the previous years when 60 million jobs were created.” The Economist on India’s demographic challenge (May 11)
A new four-year baccalaureate (Hons.) degree programme, introduced by Delhi University from the new academic session beginning July, to replace the existing three-year BA/B.Sc (General/ Hons) course has sparked a major controversy in India’s most respected Central government-funded university (estb. 1922). This reform — the handiwork of the varsity’s high-profile vice chancellor Dinesh Singh — […]
Even as large swathes of India’s most industrialised state — Maharashtra (pop. 112 million) — are suffering the worst drought in four decades and the Congress-NCP government is reeling under a spate of scandals (including a Rs.70,000 crore defalcation in the irrigation ministry), 50,000 college and university teachers across the state have struck work since […]
A great trier like the spider who inspired Robert Bruce, Gujarat’s chief minister Narendra Modi, the frontrunner in the race to the prime minister’s office should the BJP emerge as the largest party in Parliament next summer, never gives up. Take the case of the appointment of a Lok Ayukta (ombudsman), a post kept vacant […]
When the comrades-weary West Bengal electorate ended 34 years of uninterrupted rule in the state by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM)-led Left Front government, and overwhelmingly voted in the Trinamool Congress party led by Didi (sister) Mamata Banerjee in May 2011, it believed it was voting for poribortan (change). Two years later, it’s becoming […]
The Andhra Pradesh government is all set to shut down 880 government primary schools in the state before the next academic year beginning July. Primary education minister S. Shailajanath of the Congress party government held a meeting with officials, educationists and voluntary organisations in early April to explain that the 880 primary schools spread across […]
A decision taken by the J. Jayalalithaa-led All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) party last November to nationalise the crisis-ridden 84-year-old Annamalai University (AU, estb. 1929), Chidambaram (213 km from Chennai) — arguably India’s most famous teacher certification university for liberally dispensing B.Ed degrees under its distance learning programmes — was warmly welcomed by […]
“Industry must have a voice in universities and training institutes since they’re the end-users who eventually hire people graduating from these places.” — Congress leader Rahul Gandhi addressing industry leaders at the CII annual general meeting (April 4)
“Of course we are rooting for India’s economic uptick, but the human side needs deeper examination. In many ways India is […]
The three-year deadline for enforcement of the Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 (notified on April 1, 2010) on two key parameters — establishment of neighbourhood schools and provision of basic school infrastructure including one-classroom-one-teacher, playground, toilets, barrier-free access, establishment of school management committees etc — ended on March 31. Now an […]
In the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Report 2013, India is ranked 132nd in the 185-nation index. Despite this, while presenting the Union Budget 2013-14, the finance minister emphasised that the prerequisite of “restarting India’s growth engine is to attract more investment, both from domestic investors and foreign investors’’. “Doing business in India must […]
To the growing dismay of its electorate, West Bengal’s mercurial chief minister Mamata Banerjee, whose Trinamool Congress Party (TMC) swept the state assembly elections in May 2011 ending 34 years of continuous rule of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM)-led Left Front government in the state, is not cut from a radically different cloth from […]
Enfeebled by poorly designed syllabuses and worse curriculums, and actively discouraged by institutional managements from participating in political activity or even debating larger political issues, the students union movement in India is in a coma, if not dead.
Therefore Tamil Nadu’s largest students’ protest after the anti-Hindi agitation of 1965 over alleged genocide and war crimes […]
Even as the three-year deadline for implementation of the Right to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 ended on March 31, the historic but obviously hastily drafted legislation is still floundering in a sea of troubles.
Over 90 percent of the country’s 1.2 million government schools are yet to meet the infrastructure norms prescribed in […]
“She was just a shop-window mannequin, with no personality of her own, entirely defined by what she wore.” Hillary Mantel, British author, describing Duchess of Windsor Kate Middleton, and sparking an impassioned debate about the royals (Time, March 4)
“The Africa star is shining brightly, and the destiny of Africa is now in our hands.” Uhuru […]
By allowing unaided private schools to frame their own criteria for admission into preschools and nurseries, the Delhi high court has restored some order into the national capital’s chaotic nursery admissions scene. But at the same time the court has provided fresh ammunition to activists demanding inclusion of preschool education within the ambit of the […]
Inclusive education for children with disabilities in Pune (pop. 9 million), the second industrial hub of Maharashtra (after Mumbai), is a distant dream. Under the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, it is incumbent upon the state to provide free and compulsory education to all children between 6-14 years, including children with disabilities. […]
The southern state of Karnataka (pop. 61 million), once famous for high-quality higher — especially professional — education but whose star has dimmed in recent years because of excessive political interference in academia, is set to experience substantial capacity expansion and quality upgradation in tertiary education.
On February 15, the Karnataka legislative assembly passed four Bills […]
Although the southern littoral state of Tamil Nadu (pop: 72.1 million) prides itself on providing easy access to public education with officials claiming 99.4 percent enrolment in government primaries, the quality of education dispensed is a subject they prefer to gloss over.
A sample survey conducted last December by the Sama Kalvi Iyakkam-Tamil Nadu (SKI-TN) — […]
Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi is a practitioner of aggressive adversorial politics. A telling example is his prolonged legal battle to resist the appointment of a Lok Ayukta (ombudsman) in Gujarat. The appointment of a Lok Ayukta with powers to investigate and prosecute corrupt state government officials was politically blocked for almost a decade by […]
One of the major campaign promises of the Trinamool Party before it was voted to power in the summer of 2011, ending 34 years of uninterrupted rule of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM)-led Left Front government in West Bengal, was depoliticisation of academic campuses. But almost two years on, political violence has been escalating […]
“So should we test more and more or devise methods to ensure that children do learn? Some of the reasons for lack of learning are also fairly well-known, and they are not just absent teachers.” Vinod Raina, member of the Central Advisory Board of Education, in a column titled ‘Tests are torture’ (India Today, February 4)
The provisional 8th All India Education Survey (AIES-8) — the census of all recognised schools in the country — released by the Delhi-based National Council of Educational Research & Training (NCERT) on January 23 with a reference date of September 30, 2009, doesn’t spring any surprises. It’s in line with academic estimates relating to growth […]
Notwithstanding tall claims to the contrary by the Congress-led UPA-II government which is now in the final year of its five-year term in office at the Centre, primary education in India is in a tailspin. This is confirmed yet again by the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2012 — a nationwide survey which measures […]
- Mita Mukherjee Nearly 25 lakh persons working as pre-primary facilitators and caregivers in the country will be offered training to equip them with the .....Read More
Businessmen Elon Musk has established a new Montessori preschool ‘Ad Astra’ in Bastrop, Texas, a one-of-its-kind, endorsing his and US President-elect Donald Trump’s views on .....Read More
