Expert Comment

Golden keys of national development

– Rahul Singh is a former editor of Reader’s Digest and Indian Express and consultant to the United Nations

AT THE START OF A NEW YEAR, commentators often put forward their priorities for accelerated national development. Mine is centred on two sectors of the economy that have been foolishly neglected for the past 66 years since […]

Expert Comment

New NEP urgently required

– JS Rajput is former director of National Council of Educational Research & Training and National Council for Teacher Education

Ex facie, India’s education system has grown impressively in the post-independence period in terms of expansion in the number of schools, colleges and universities, teachers, enrollments, budget allocations, literacy etc. Add to this India’s contributions and […]

14th Anniversary Essays

Schools by other names

– Rahul Singh is the former editor of Reader’s Digest, Indian Express and Khaleej Times

In the latest THE (Times Higher Education) World University Rankings 2013-14 published in October, none of India’s 33,000 colleges and 659 universities are ranked among the Top 200. As usual, the THE league tables are headed by American and British universities — California […]

Expert Comment

IIMs should offer open classware

Dr. V. Raghunathan is a former professor of IIM-Ahmedabad, author and corporate executive

The steep fall in India’s annual rate of GDP growth from 8 percent-plus in 2007 to less than 5 percent this year, and almost total collapse of industrial growth has created a major problem for the estimated 400,000-500,000 business management graduates/MBAs streaming out […]

Expert Comment

B-school profs need industry experience

Vasudev Murthy is visiting faculty at IIM-B and managing partner, Focal Concepts, Bangalore

It’s the time of the year when an estimated 500,000 college and university graduates and/or early and mid-career business managers are getting ready to enter India’s 4,500 B-schools. They have been pumped up by parents, teachers and the media that an MBA (Master […]

(Prof. J.S. Rajput is a well-known educationist and former director of NCERT and NCTE)

Expert Comment

Political will missing link

Despite universal awareness that education — especially quality primary-secondary education — is the foundation block of national development, the tragedy of post-independence India’s national development effort is that in the actual allocation of resources, education never got the priority it deserves. The official mantra has always been that more pressing problems — widespread hunger, poverty […]

Expert Comment

Political will missing link

Expert Comment

Case for testing learning outcomes

Dr. Geeta Gandhi Kingdon is professor of education at the University of London

In a dramatic about-turn on the issue of testing learning outcomes of children in all primary and upper primary classes, the historic Right to Free & Compulsory Education (aka RTE) Act, 2009 has abolished examinations. S.16 of the RTE Act prohibits detention or […]

Expert Comment

Towards real quality education

JS Rajput is former director of NCERT and National Council for Teacher Education

Under s. 19 of the historic right to free and Compulsory Education (aka RTE) Act, 2009, all schools imparting elementary (classes I-VIII) education countrywide were obliged to fulfill certain infrastructure and other norms as specified in a special Schedule of the Act, within […]

Expert Comment

Social engineering lesson from America

Rahul Singh is the former editor of Reader’s Digest, Indian Express and Khaleej Times

Considerable attention in both the print and electronic media has lately been focused on the poor and vulnerable status of Indian girls and women, following the gang rape and subsequent death of a 23-year-old physiotherapy intern in Delhi on December 29. Understandable outrage has been […]

Expert Comment

Brewing crime tsunami

Ashish Puntambekar is a Mumbai-based corporate planner and project designer of the Indian Education Megaproject

The national outrage over the vicious gang rape of a 23-year-old paramedic student in a bus coursing through the national capital, and her subsequent death in a Singapore hospital on December 29, will serve no purpose unless the root causes of […]

Expert Comment

A new age of unreason

– Rajiv Desai is president of Comma Consulting, Delhi

On a television talk show recently in which I was a participant, the question posed was “Have opposition politicians misunderstood the nature of lobbying?” The moderator went straight for the jugular, asking the BJP spokesman to defend the assertion of a senior leader of his party, who […]

Expert Comment

Strong case for school vouchers

Sandeep Banerjee is the Delhi-based managing director and CEO of Edenred India

After decades of neglect of a directive principle (erstwhile Article 45) of the Constitution of India to provide free and compulsory education to all children until the age of 14 years “within ten years of the commencement of this Constitution”, Parliament passed the Right […]

Expert Comment

Remembering Gandhian education

JS Rajput is former director of NCERT and National Council for Teacher Education

On October 2 every year, the nation ritually observes the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, the extraordinary sage, savant and visionary who piloted India’s freedom movement, humbling the mighty rulers of the globe-girdling British Empire on which it was proudly claimed, the sun […]

Expert Comment

Vocational education imperative

Dr Lalit Kanodia is the IIT-Bombay and MIT, USA-educated founder-chairman of the Datamatics Group

As India’s economy develops, there will be mass migration from rural to urban India and by 2050, a mere 10 percent of the population will be rural. This implies that nearly 40 percent of our existing population, i.e. about 500 million citizens […]

Expert Comment

Tradition of righteous reaction

Rajiv Desai is president of Comma Consulting, Delhi

Through my pre-teen and teenage years, I spent a lot of time with my grandfather. He was a medical practitioner, theosophist, Congress party activist and a compassionate human being — my ideal.

One summer when my siblings and I were visiting his home in Surat, someone told him I […]

Expert Comment

RTE judgement: the day after

John Kurrien is director emeritus, Centre For Learning Resources, Pune

The Supreme Court’s verdict in society for Unaided Schools of Rajasthan vs. Union of India delivered on April 12, has affirmed reservation of 25 percent capacity in class I in all government and private schools with a few exceptions, for children from disadvantaged and economically weaker sections. Amid […]

Expert Comment

Time for new strategies and ideas

JS Rajput is former director NCERT and National Council for Teacher Education
The outcome of the anomalies and aberrations in implementation of education policies over the past six decades in post-independence India presents the most intriguing contrast in human development worldwide. Despite the constitutional mandate of 1950 to provide free and compulsory education to all children until they […]

Expert Comment

Towards world-class IITs and IIMs

Dr. Lalit Kanodia is the IIT-Bombay and MIT, USA-educated founder-chairman of the Datamatics Group

It is the dream of most students in India to get admission into the country’s seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) with nine in the offing, and 11 Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) with two in the pipeline. Every year, over 750,000 […]

Expert Comment

QES 2011 reflections

Dr. Shekhar P. Seshadri, professor, NIMHANS, Bangalore with Prof. Anitha Kurup & R. Maithreyi, National Institute of Advanced Studies, Bangalore

“…But a failure to equip minds with the skills for understanding and feeling and acting in the cultural world is not simply underscoring a pedagogical zero. It risks creating alienation, defiance, and practical incompetence. And all […]

10th Anniversary Special Essays

Rajiv Desai: Quiet revolution in Indian education

– Rajiv Desai is president of Comma Consulting and a well-known Delhi-based columnist.

One often reads bits and pieces about the revolutionary education policy of the Congress-led UPA-2 government which was returned to power in the general election held last summer. But the media has yet to cotton on that fundamental reforms that could change the […]

Teacher-to-Teacher

Education beyond textbooks

Someone once memorably remarked that the two people every individual remains indebted to through life are the family doctor and a school teacher. How true! Even in the contemporary world of healthcare specialists, the universal favourite is the ‘family doctor or a GP we trust.If you have been a teacher for many years and often […]

Life Skills Education

Life Skills Education

Dilip P Patel

Recently as I awaited my turn to address nearly 500 parents and teachers in a well known school in Bangalore, a thought flashed across my mind and I quickly converted it into the lead-in of my address.”Dear Parents, I have three questions to put to you. If your answer is in the affirmative, […]

Page 3 of 3«1 23