The accelerated ICT (information and communication technologies) revolution, which began in the 1990s with the invention of the Internet aka worldwide web, has connected the entire world. Currently people — especially youth — are connected in real time with peers around the world through social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin. But within […]
Almost a year after the first Covid-19 case was reported in Kerala last February, the pandemic is on the wane in India. The caseload has fallen from a high of 97,860 infections and 1,173 fatalities per day (September 30) to 9,100 and 96 (February 10); industry and businesses have reopened; domestic air and rail travel […]
As 2020 faded away, the hashtag #2020worstyear was trending on social media. People the world over were happy to see the back of a pandemic year that wreaked havoc and misery upon humanity in every nook and corner of the world.
The Coronavirus aka Covid-19 pandemic, which originated in Wuhan, China in November 2019, has exacted […]
A new academic phenomenon which is becoming incrementally popular with school-college leavers, is to take a gap year to explore career options, travel, perfect a new skill or sports intelligence, sign up with a community service NGO and/or contemplate future directions. A decade ago, this option would have been considered a waste of time and […]
For three quarters of known economic history, i.e, until 1750 AD, the Indian subcontinent accounted for one third or 33 percent of global GDP because of its free markets and private enterprise-driven economy. The subcontinent’s manufacturers, traders and businessmen freely established business enterprises and marketed their goods across the country and around the world. This […]
The death by suicide of Bollywood Hindi cinema star Sushant Singh Rajput on June 14 has focused an overdue spotlight on contemporary India’s illicit subterranean narcotics trade and growing substance (including tobacco and alcohol) abuse within the world’s largest adolescent and teenage population. According to a survey conducted by the Union ministry of social justice […]
The prime objective of British historian-educationist Thomas Babington Macaulay aka Lord Macaulay’s famous Minute on Indian Education (1835) was to produce note-taking clerks for perpetuation of British raj over India. In this document, which initiated the process of wiping out traditional Indian education that included vocational education and training (VET), Lord Macaulay famously asserted, “all […]
Pressure cooker home environments created by Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns, are bringing out the worst in people. During the past five months since the deadly epidemic began to spread worldwide, incidents of domestic violence, child abuse, murder and suicide are beginning to dominate media headlines. The loss of personal freedoms, mobility, financial and health anxieties plus […]
The Covid-19 pandemic has severely disrupted education of 1.6 billion children around the world. Never before have so many children been out of school at the same time. In India since early March education institutions from Kg-Ph D including the country’s 1.5 million schools, have been closed to arrest the spread of the invisible virus […]
First, apologies to our subscribers and readers for cancellation of the April and May issues of ParentsWorld. The magazine was all set to go to press, but the national lockdown announced on March 24 by prime minister Narendra Modi following the Covid-19 pandemic and closure of courier and postal services threw a massive spanner in […]
Even as the spreading coronavirus aka Covid-19 is grabbing media headlines and setting off sirens around the world, a covert insidious parenting stress virus — even if it hasn’t attained pandemic proportions — is taking a heavy toll, especially of women, across India.
Breakdown of the joint family, explosion in the number of double income nuclear […]
In the first two decades of the new millennium, the family unit/household has experienced more mutations than perhaps in the entire past century. The traditional joint family unit of parents, children and grandparents has all but disintegrated and two-parents and children nuclear family is becoming normative in urban India. However a new millennium phenomenon is […]
With campus unrest and police malingering and excesses countrywide and a general labour strike, the first year of the second decade of the new millennium has got off to an inauspicious start. Against the backdrop of a sombre and darkening external environment, the obligation of parents to create cheerful and purposive home environments has become […]
The authoritative Oxford English Dictionary (OED, estb.1884) has proclaimed ‘climate emergency’ as the 2019 word of the year. It defines climate emergency as “a situation in which urgent action is required to reduce or halt climate change and avoid potentially irreversible environmental damage resulting from it”. Subsequently, on November 29, European Union (EU) became the […]
Some of the world’s most famous, charismatic and powerful orators and leaders such as former British prime minister Winston Churchill, former US presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton cut their teeth in school and university debating societies, learning and perfecting the art of presenting persuasive arguments. In Western countries, the ancient Socratic art of debate […]
Once dismissed as an innocuous leisure pastime of children during summer holidays, mind games particularly scrabble and chess are making a huge comeback within upwardly mobile middle class households. Repackaged as mind sports in the new millennium, scrabble, chess, contract bridge, backgammon among others, which test the mental strength and mettle of participants, are becoming […]
In 2013, the New York-based best-selling TIME magazine featured a cover story titled ‘The Me, Me, Me Generation’ signaling the arrival of the millennial generation, i.e, individuals born after 1980. It described them as “lazy, entitled narcissists, who still live with their parents”. The story cited “cold data” to argue that the millennials were more […]
The abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution of India, which conferred special status upon the state of Jammu & Kashmir, by the BJP/NDA 2.0 government, is the latest in a series of events which have deeply divided the country’s citizenry. Since the BJP swept to power with a huge majority in General Election 2014, […]
There are two widely divergent opinions on the quantum of sleep required by productive and successful individuals of the 21st century. The consensus opinion of the rich and famous is ‘don’t sleep your life away’. Most of the world’s richest and most successful people sleep for less than five hours. They include US President Donald […]
Thanks for your very relevant cover story ‘Help your children to love science’ (PW May).
As a college physics teacher and father of two teenage daughters, I am deeply aware of the perfunctory science education being taught in schools. Many of my undergraduate students lack basic understanding of scientific concepts and their application skills are very […]
There’s a quiet parenting revolution brewing in urban middle class households in metropolitan India, even if its ripple effect has not reached small town India. The once distant alpha male parent who restricted himself to discharging the role of provider and patriarch, is beginning to actively participate in child care duties and household chores. The […]
As a school student in the 1980s, two subjects which me and many of my peers dreaded were maths and science. Three decades later despite the dawn of the hi-tech Google age, student sentiments towards these subjects haven’t changed much. The overwhelming majority of India’s 250 million school-going children continue to be afraid of science […]
Once upon a time, the six-eight weeks summer holidays were a time of rest and relaxed recreation for parents and children with both taking a well-deserved break from stressful school routines. It was usual to pack the children off to grandparents’ homes where children spent their time in unstructured play with cousins and friends in […]
Although India’s 248 million households place education of their children #1 on their priority lists, successive governments at the Centre and in the states have cruelly neglected development of the country’s abundant human resource. During the past six decades since independence, the national spending on education — Centre plus states — has never exceeded 3.5 […]
For India’s 200 million-plus households with school-going children, the onset of spring is usually a season of discontent. In February-March, 30 million students will write the do-or-die class X and XII board exams of 31 examination boards including the national CBSE and CISCE boards. This is followed by agonising four-six weeks’ waiting period until results […]
A jet-setting action-packed life is no longer a status symbol. The need-to-be-busy and too-much-to-do culture is fading out of fashion. Worldwide people are becoming aware that fast-paced hectic living is robbing them of peace, family time and most important, health and emotional stability. Therefore, there is a nascent but growing shift towards slow lifestyles. Known […]
On July 5, the globally respected London-based weekly The Economist (estb.1843) featured a cover story titled ‘How India is failing its women’. The feature detailed that women’s participation in contemporary India’s workforce is lower than in any G20 country except Saudi Arabia, and contributes only one-sixth of GDP. A week earlier on June 28, a […]
To some extent, everyone who owns a smartphone or Internet-enabled device suffers some degree of tech addiction. It’s normative for people who forget their smartphones at home or in the office to suffer anxiety and angst. Designed to be utilitarian, most digital gizmos and gadgets have become connectivity and entertainment media, often absorbing people to […]
Disciplining children is a controversial subject in 21st century households. Though one would assume that there’s a global consensus that corporal punishment is history, in the majority of India’s 1.50 million schools and most of the country’s 260 million households — including middle class homes — spanking, hitting, and slapping children is the preferred method […]
Less than two decades ago, access to and viewing of pornography was restricted to sleazy neighbourhood video parlours which surreptitiously loaned and/or displayed pornographic material. But in the new millennium with the Internet becoming ubiquitous and advent of cheap Internet data and smartphones, online pornography has become instantly accessible, affordable and anonymous for the masses. […]
Summer vacations are over, the monsoon is here and the new academic year is all set to commence. For 30 million middle class households across the country, June is a time of hectic activity as the world’s largest school-going population of 250 million children gets ready to begin the new academic year. It’s the time […]
In the new millennium, with the popular media, cinema and social media constantly celebrating perfect physical perfection — size zero, flat abs, thin waists, toned arms, flawless complexions, etc — there’s tremendous social and peer pressure on youth and adolescents in particular, to aspire to super bod ideals. Little wonder that the cosmetics industry is […]
In the recently released Environmental Performance Index (EPI) 2017 of the World Economic Forum, India is ranked a dismal #177 of 180 countries worldwide, just above Congo, Bangladesh and Burundi. The EPI report, produced bi-annually by researchers of the top-ranked Yale and Columbia universities in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, Davos, evaluated the environment […]
Food 4 Thought Foundation collaborated with Cyient Foundation, the CSR arm of Cyient Ltd. (a global Intelligent Engineering services company), Monocept Consulting and Emesco Books .....Read More
In a significant move aimed at improving the educational system, the Odisha government has announced that the minimum age for enrolling in Class-1 will be .....Read More
