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 […]
The road from Gandhinagar capital of the western seaboard state of Gujarat (pop. 60 million) — which chief minister Narendra Modi dominates like a colossus — to Delhi is through numerous global capitals. To counter popular domestic resistance to his emergence as the BJP front-runner in the 2014 prime ministerial sweepstakes, Modi has taken to […]
At an inconvenient time when the incumbent BJP government of Karnataka is confronted with a split in its ranks following the exit of former chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, and the state scheduled to go to the hustings in May, it is taking heat for infiltrating hindutva propaganda (“saffronisation”) into textbooks of primary and secondary children […]
The rash of scandals including charging prohibited capitation fees, faking the number of minimum faculty members, and other forms of malpractices rampant in several of Tamil Nadu’s 19 government and 23 private medical colleges and one government and 26 private dental colleges, which have been hitting newspaper headlines in Chennai for the past year, have […]
The ruling Trinamool Congress government of West Bengal, after ousting the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM) led-Left Front government which ruled this eastern seaboard state uninterruptedly for 34 years in the historic state legislative election of 2011, is set to celebrate the second anniversary of that famous victory in May. One of its major pre-election promises […]
“The president takes the salute on the Raj Path from a parade that is spectacular for the most part but rather reminiscent, with its tanks and missiles of Soviet-style hubris that is unbecoming of a democratic republic.” Gautam Adhikari, well-known journalist, on India’s Republic Day celebrations (Times of India, January 26)
With most of India’s cities — especially metros — under-served in terms of privately-promoted primary-secondary schools (middle class households won’t touch government schools with a barge pole), admission of tiny tots into nurseries of Delhi’s most highly-ranked K-12 private schools is a top priority of every aspirational middle class family as it ensures smooth progression […]
Even as the school admission season has already commenced in India’s crowded (20.5 million) commercial capital, unaided minority schools exempted by the Supreme Court in its landmark judgement in Society for Unaided Private Schools vs. Union of India & Anr delivered last April from having to compulsorily reserve a 25 percent quota in class I […]
Eight months after the Karnataka state government notified the state Rules for the implementation of the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 (aka RTE Act), it is still floundering in troubled waters. The state’s 13,527 primary/higher primary private schools, which as per s.12 (1) (c) of the Act are obliged to admit 25 […]
After a hat-trick victory at the hustings, and sworn-in as chief minister of the western seaboard state of Gujarat (pop. 60 million) for a record fourth time in a row on December 26, Narendra Modi’s retention of stewardship of the state — widely trumpeted as the fastest (economically) growing in the country — has been cautiously welcomed […]
Agitational including street politics popularised by Trinamool Congress Party leader and West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who famously ended 34 years of uninterrupted rule in the state of the CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist)-led Left Front government in the summer of 2011, seems to have struck a resonant chord within the state’s student communities. […]
Despite the southern seaboard state of Tamil Nadu (pop.72.1 million), which is rapidly emerging as a manufacturing hub, experiencing an acute shortage — and rising wages — of skilled technicians in its automobile, construction and service sectors, there are not many takers for vocational education and training (VET) in the state. In spite of the […]
“An education programme, is by definition, a societal programme. Work should be done in schools rather than at home.”
French President Francois Hollande on why his government wants to ban homework in schools (Times of India, December 16)
“What I advocate is that during classroom time — when you get human beings together — we should be interactive […]
That public education is a low priority of the Congress party is hardly a national secret. Although the global average outlay for education is 5 percent of GDP and the Kothari Commission recommended 6 percent way back in 1966, post-independence India’s (Centre plus states) annual allocation for education has never exceeded 4 percent of GDP […]
Five months after a devastating fire in Mantralaya — headquarters of the Maharashtra state government — which destroyed the offices of the chief minister and the deputy chief minister on June 21, and took a toll of two dead and 16 injured, a survey made public on October 29, reveals that an estimated 1.64 million […]
A century ago the eastern seaboard state of West Bengal (pop. 91 million) was the epicentre of India’s intellectual and cultural renaissance under great scholars such as Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Dwarkanath and Rabindranath Tagore. But since then, the state’s intellectual tradition has been reduced to a sorry condition following the 34 years (1977-2011) rule […]
A spate of media reports highlighting that the 83-year-old unitary Annamalai University (AU, estb. 1929) sited in Chidambaram, is reeling under a severe financial crisis has taken the academic community in the southern seaboard state of Tamil Nadu — and Chennai in particular — by shock and surprise. There is bewilderment within academia and […]
Right until the late 1970s, one of India’s most respected universities — especially for graduating highly skilled and industry-ready engineers — Bangalore University (BU, estb. 1964), which has 600 colleges with an aggregate enrolment of 700,000 students affiliated with it, has suffered a precipitous decline in norms and standards during the past quarter century. Industry […]
“Arvind Kejriwal has no answer for how they’ll find honest candidates.”
Social activist Anna Hazare (India Today, November 5)
“The success of the 16th President teaches that hard times are precisely when political dexterity is needed most. Politics is the machinery by which we meet tough challenges. Lincoln drilled this idea into his closest aides…” David Von Drehle on […]
Child rights champions and activists in the national capital are up in arms against Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s Mehta Vidyalaya, a private school which has reportedly been levying above normative tuition fees upon students with disabilities. In a public interest litigation (PIL) writ petition filed against the school by well-known NGO Social Jurist, a division bench […]
Sixteen years ago, Maharashtra (pop. 112 million) — India’s most industrialized state accounting for 25 percent of the country’s industrial production — became the first state of the Indian Union to declare special education for challenged children a major priority and announced sweeping changes (Maharashtra has 600 special schools exclusively for children with various types […]
The tumultuous reign of Dr. N. Prabhu Dev as vice chancellor of Bangalore University (BU, estb.1964), which has 600 colleges in Karnataka with an aggregate enrolment of 700,000 students affiliated with it, ended four months prematurely on October 13 when he submitted his resignation to Karnataka governor and ex officio BU chancellor H.R. Bhardwaj. Prabhu […]
Nine students of Gujarat National Law University (GNLU, estb. 2003), who filed a writ petition in the high court against GNLU challenging a varsity order detaining them in the third year of their five-year degree course, have won a major victory.
In a judgement delivered on October 17, Justice K.S. Jhaveri upheld the petition which challenged the […]
Estranged from the Congress-led UPA-II government in New Delhi, the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool government passed the West Bengal University Laws (Amendment) Act, 2012 on September 27. Following approval of the Act by the state legislative assembly, a state government representative will replace the UGC member on the search panel to select vice chancellors of the […]
[embed]https://youtu.be/T8zpdfot4w4[/embed] Dr. Anunaya Chaubey, Provost of Anant National University, is a distinguished academician, artist, and thought leader in education. His artworks explore the mystery of .....Read More
Mita Mukherjee Bringing a big setback to the Mamata Banerjee government in Bengal, the Supreme Court on Thursday upheld the Calcutta High Court’s decision to .....Read More
