EducationWorld January 15

œThey say the world is spinning around; I say the world is upside down, sang the legendary Jimmy Cliff almost half century ago. The latest (December 26) issue of Forbes India features its third  ranking of 100 ˜celebrities™ dominated by Bollywood stars and the mind-boggling sums they have earned for provision of lowbrow services. Among them Salman Khan who earned Rs.244.5 crore in the period October 2013-September 2014 despite his producers and himself being unaware that assault, battery and grievous bodily harm are criminal offences; Amitabh Bachchan (Rs.196.75 crore); Shah Rukh Khan (Rs.202.4 crore); and Akshay Kumar (172 crore). These top earners apart, the Forbes Top 100 list is replete with Bollywood producers, directors, singers and sundry others associated with Indian cinema. Yet the plain truth which should be self-evident to the editors of Forbes, if not to the lay public, is that because of their absurd storylines, logical inconsistences, and excessive histrionics, 90 percent of the estimated 1,300 movies produced annually by Indian cinema crash at the box office. The industry is kept alive only by the continuous flow of unaccounted money ” often from underworld sources ” and fantasy skin-show song-n-dance numbers lapped up by the sexually repressed middle and working classes. Business editors are surely also aware that for individuals of modestly above average intelligence, Bollywood films are a major embarrassment as they are for judges of international film festivals. In the circumstances instead of the unquestioning adulation showered upon the stars of this stuck-in-a-time-warp industry, the editors of Forbes would have rendered a valuable public service and educated the badshahs of Bollywood by suggesting ways and means to upgrade their movies, management processes and perspectives to capture a meaningful slice of the global entertainment market. The world is indeed, upside down. Grinch redux While the great leader traverses the country mouthing the mantra of development, he seems unaware of the activities of his allies in the sangh parivar, cutting the ground from beneath his feet. Moreover they seem hell-bent upon taking all the joy out of life ” and in the style of latter-day Grinches ” out of Christmas in particular. This perhaps explains why Union HRD minister Smriti Irani felt it incumbent upon herself to issue a decree to the principals of all 15,000 schools affiliated with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) ” the country™s largest pan-India school-leaving examinations board ” to transform Xmas day (December 25) into Good Governance Day, to be ˜celebrated™ by forcing children to write eulogies of  BJP leader A.B. Vajpayee, the party™s first ever prime minister (1999-2004). Quite clearly the intent of this latter-day Grinch was to steal the joy out of Xmas. But to her dismay, the birth anniversary of Jesus Christ was celebrated by all Indians with great gusto and merriment. Likewise in garbage ” sorry, the garden ” city, for the first time in its history, the Bangalore Club (estb. 1868) was prohibited from serving a glass of good spirits to its upscale members for…

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At The Helm: A Memoir by V. Krishnamurthy; Collins Business; Price: Rs.599; Pages 305 Although Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) — free India’s iconic first prime minister — dug deep foundations for the nation, which emerged from the crude vivisection of the country in the last year (1947) of almost three centuries of rampant loot and beggarisation, he made an egregious error in ignoring the region’s free enterprise tradition and entrepreneurial capability proven over several millennia, and taking the country down the socialist path. Therefore despite newly independent India being endowed with several large and prospering private sector companies such as Tata Iron & Steel, Tata Airlines, Hindustan Motors and Hindustan Aviation, Scindia Shipping, Birla Jute, and DCM, which had grown in the teeth of often unfair competition during the British Raj, their development was suppressed by an elaborate web of licence-permit-quota regulations. The people’s savings were canalised into heavy industry public sector enterprises (PSEs) manufacturing steel, power equipment, fertilisers, and machine tools in a foolish quest for “self-reliance”, which completely ignored pioneer economist Adam Smith’s theory of international trade. Yet if post-independence India’s PSEs haven’t collapsed in a heap, it’s because of a clutch of high-performing chief executives who in spite of having to manage huge, unwieldy corporations usually sited in backward areas because of political considerations, rose to the occasion and managed to pull them out of shallows and misery. Among the leading lights were V. Krishnamurthy, S.M. Patil (HMT), Air Marshal P.C. Lal (Indian Airlines), K. Appuswamy (Air India), and R.C. Bhargava (Maruti Udyog). But the greatest of them all is undoubtedly V. Krishnamurthy, who laid the foundation for three hugely important PSEs which have not only survived in the post-1991 era of economic liberalisation and deregulation, but continue to make valuable contributions to the Indian economy viz Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd, SAIL (formerly Steel Authority of India), and Maruti Udyog (now Maruti Suzuki Ltd).  Fortunately even if belatedly, the nonagenarian VK has penned his memoirs which present an insightful ringside view of how he succeeded against all odds in promoting and/or establishing these navratna PSEs. Born into a prosperous Brahmin family in rural Tamil Nadu which lost its wealth during the Great Depression of the 1930s and was forced to migrate to Madras (now Chennai), Krishnamurthy didn’t get a great education, graduating with a diploma in electrical engineering from the city’s CNT Technical Institute in 1943. VK began his career as a temporary technician in charge of electrical installations at two airfields during the Second World War and after the war, landed a job in the electrical department of the Madras Presidency. From these modest beginnings, how he rose to engineer the growth and development of India’s most respected public sector companies, serve as secretary to the government of India and later revolutionise India’s sputtering automobile industry, is well chronicled in this engaging autobiography.   VK’s first break came in 1960, when after a two year stint with the Planning Commission, he was posted to Bhopal as officer on special duty…

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Memories of the attempts of the first BJP-led NDA government at the Centre (1999-2004) to ‘saffronise’ school education are still green. Now with the BJP back in power — this time with an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha — there’s pervasive fear this interrupted agenda will be resumed. Summiya Yasmeen reports Indisputably the defining event of 2014 was the utter rout of the Congress Party in the General Election of April-May, and the unprecedented victory of the BJP led by its barnstorming former Gujarat chief minister and prime ministerial candidate Narendra Modi. The grand old party, which led the beleaguered UPA-II coalition government at the Centre, was reduced to its lowest ever tally in the Lok Sabha — 44 seats — while the resurgent BJP bagged 282 seats, a majority in its own right. The landslide victory of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) was a decisive mandate against the thoroughly disgraced UPA-II government which passively presided over a series of multi-crore scams, unremitting inflation and legislation logjam in Parliament during its five year term (2009-2014) of office in New Delhi. Typically, in the general election campaigns of all political parties, the pressing issue of reforming India’s moribund education system — notwithstanding the reality that the nation grudgingly hosts the world’s largest child population — was marginalised. Quite clearly, provision of quality contemporary education to India’s 450 million children below 18 years of age, is not a high priority of any of India’s major political parties. In particular the past five years were uneventful for Indian education with former HRD (human resource development) minister Kapil Sibal failing to push any education legislation barring the Right to Education Act, 2009, through Parliament. And even this belated Act is mired in interpretive confusion and has proved to be beyond the implementation capabilities of state governments. The massive victory of the BJP, which promised to raise education spending to 6 percent of GDP in its election manifesto, was warily welcomed by Indian academia given the party’s symbiotic relationship with its cultural parent, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), which has a record of interference in school and education curriculums. Memories of the attempts of the first BJP-led NDA government at the Centre to ‘saffronise’ school education during its term in office (1999-2004) are still green. During those years, Union HRD minister and RSS elder Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi commissioned an extensive revision of NCERT social science textbooks to accommodate RSS interpretations of history and Hindu mythology, provoking vigorous protest from academics and opposition parties. Now ten years on, with the BJP back in power — and this time with an absolute majority in the Lok Sabha — there’s pervasive fear this interrupted agenda will be resumed. As if to confirm these apprehensions, the change of guard at the Centre began on an ominous note for Indian education with the appointment of popular BJP spokesperson and former television soaps star, Smriti Irani as Union HRD minister. Women’s rights activist Madhu Kishwar, a staunch Modi supporter,…

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Maharashtra, 2010. In a village 130 km (80 miles) from Mumbai, the head of a nursery is weighing a child. Four years old, she is just 10 kg (22lb), two-thirds of what she should be. More than half the nursery™s charges are below their proper weight (œwasted in the jargon) or short for their age (œstunted, a result of years of undernourishment). The children out in the fields are even worse off, the teacher says. And most of their mothers are anaemic. Yet this Indian state is not especially poor. India has done a miserable job of improving nutrition of its people ” but so has most of the world. In 1974, Henry Kissinger, America™s secretary of state, told the first world food summit that within ten years no child would go to bed hungry. He was miles off. Figures calculated for a follow-up conference, held on November 19 in Rome, show that 162 million children under five worldwide are stunted. The rate of child wasting has not budged in the past couple of years. The number of undernourished people in the world has fallen since 1990, but only by a fifth, and now stands at about 800 million. That is despite real global GDP growth of 3.6 percent per year over the same period and a fall by half in the share of the population of developing countries living on $1.25 a day or less. As the world™s economy has grown, the prevalence of undernourishment ” eating too few calories to sustain an active life ” has fallen only half as fast as poverty. But at least it has fallen. Micronutrient deficiency is not falling at all. To be healthy, people need not just calories but nutrients such as vitamins and minerals. Lack of vitamin A can cause blindness; lack of iron causes anaemia. Two billion people are thought to suffer from some micronutrient deficiency. Obesity, meanwhile, is getting worse ” and not only in the rich world. Between 2000-2013, the number of overweight children rose from 32 million to 42 million, more than two-thirds of them in low and middle-income countries. It used to be thought that when poor countries cut hunger, they would have some respite before obesity took off. Not so. As undernourishment has fallen, the number of people eating too many calories has risen correspondingly, meaning that many developing countries suffer all three manifestations of malnutrition ” undernourishment, micronutrient deficiency and obesity ” simultaneously. According to the first Global Nutrition Report, published in early November by the International Food Policy Research Institute, a Washington think-tank, every country except China and South Korea has at least one of three public-health problems ” child stunting, anaemia among women of reproductive age, or excessive weight among adults. More fundamentally, better nutrition is a byproduct of half a dozen policies, many of which are not about diet at all, but each of which is essential. Dirty drinking water and poor sanitation cause gastrointestinal illnesses which prevent the body from…

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China has cemented its dominance of the Times Higher Education BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings 2015, with more than a quarter of its institutions in the 2015 Top 100. In the second annual table which recognises higher education institutions in Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and 17 other œemerging economies, China has 27 representatives ” up from 23 last year. These include Peking and Tsinghua universities which take first and second place respectively. The next most represented region, Taiwan, has 19 institutions in the Top 100 ” two fewer than last year. Conversely, India has increased its representatives from 10 to 11, while Russia has seen dramatic improvement with seven universities in the Top 100, up from just two last year. These include Lomonosov Moscow State University which rises five places to fifth. Elsewhere in the Top five, Turkey™s Middle East Technical University takes third place (it was ninth last year) while South Africa, with five representatives in the table, sees the University of Cape Town in fourth. It™s been a strong year for Turkey with three of the Top 10 places and eight universities in the Top 100 (up from seven last year), mirroring gains made in the annual World University Rankings results. Phil Baty, THE rankings editor, says this improvement is partly due to the country™s activities with the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern). œTurkey has put a lot of effort into this particle physics project, and its universities have gained fantastically from being part of it, he says. œBeyond specific papers around Cern, we™ve seen significantly increased spending on research in Turkey¦ (a country that) should be celebrated as an improving nation in higher education. According to Baty, the BRICS rankings provide a clear case study of what can be achieved with a comprehensive, coherent policy to develop world-class universities. œThe rankings also provide a stark warning of how far some developing economies must still travel before their universities can compete on the world stage, he adds. (Excerpted and adatped from Times Higher Education)

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Universities in developing countries are ignoring potential areas of strength because they™re too focused on imitating successful Anglo-US institutions, a vice chancellor has claimed. Speaking at the Times Higher Education BRICS & Emerging Economies Universities Summit, held in Moscow on December 3-4, Malegapuru Makgoba, vice chancellor of the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said universities in his country must become œmore African. œThere™s a major debate in South Africa about whether we have any African universities or just universities located in South Africa. Universities must derive their inspiration from the context they find themselves in and reflect the challenges they face in society, said Prof. Makgoba, an immunology expert. Prof. Makgoba, who is retiring at the end of 2014 after 10 years in charge of KwaZulu-Natal, says universities in Africa often try to please their former œcolonial masters by producing research and teaching that is relevant mainly in an Anglo-Saxon context. œWe want to have the same curriculum, research and laboratories as European universities, but our problems are very different. For instance, we have poverty, crime and corruption in South Africa, but there are no professors of corruption found in our universities ” it™s not seen as an area for academic study, he says. Prof. Makgoba, who took his D Phil at the University of Oxford, says that academics in Britain have managed to produce world-class research by analysing their own environment and it™s time now for scholars in Africa to do the same. œWhen Sir Isaac Newton saw that apple fall from the tree, it inspired him ” without apple trees, he wouldn™t have discovered gravity, he explained. (Excerpted and adatped from Times Higher Education)

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Sparkly, spotted or Hello Kitty: every colour, theme, shape and size of frame is available at Eyeglass City in Beijing, a four-storey mall crammed only with spectacle shops. Within half an hour, a pair of prescription eyeglasses is ready. That is impressive, but then the number of Chinese wearing glasses is rising. Most new adoptees are children. In 1970, fewer than a third of 16-18-year-olds were deemed to be short-sighted (meaning that distant objects are blurred). Now nearly four-fifths are, and even more in some urban areas. A fifth of these have ˜high myopia™, that is, anything beyond 16 cm (just over six inches) is unclear. The fastest increase is among primary school children, over 40 percent of whom are short-sighted, double the rate in 2000. That compares with less than 10 percent of this age group in America or Germany. The incidence of myopia is high across East Asia, afflicting 80-90 percent of urban 18-year-olds in Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan. The problem is social rather than genetic. A 2012 study of 15,000 children in the Beijing area found poor sight is significantly associated with more time spent studying, reading or using electronic devices ” along with less time spent outdoors. The biggest cause of short-sightedness is a lack of time spent outdoors. Exposure to daylight helps the retina release a chemical that slows down an increase in the eye™s axial length, which is what most often causes myopia. A combination of not being outdoors and doing lots of intensive work like focusing up close (writing characters or reading) worsens the problem. But if a child has enough time in the open, she can study all she likes and her eyesight won™t suffer, says Ian Morgan of Australian National University. Yet China and many other East Asian countries do not prize time outdoors. At the age of six, children in China and Australia have similar rates of myopia. Once they start school, Chinese children spend about an hour a day outside, compared with three or four hours for Australian children. School students in China are often made to take a nap after lunch rather than play outside; then they go home to do far more homework than anywhere outside East Asia. The older children in China are, the more they stay indoors ” and not because of the country™s notorious pollution. Since poor sight is associated with higher incomes and more schooling, it™s less prevalent in rural areas of China. In the countryside, a third of primary-school students are myopic, compared with nearly half of urban children, according to the health ministry. But rural eyesight problems are somewhat different. Stanford University™s Rural Education Action Programme found one in six rural children with poor sight don™t wear glasses ” thanks to a combination of cost, poor eye care in schools, and a mistaken belief that wearing glasses weakens eyes further. When Stanford gifted glasses to thousands of students free of charge, it found being able to see clearly had a…

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The uproar about sexual assaults on American college campuses is growing louder. Barack Obama has called them œan affront to our basic humanity. Several universities ” including Johns Hopkins, San Diego State, Emory, MIT, Clemson and the University of Virginia ” have shut down or suspended parties at fraternities (undergrad students™ societies) in recent months. In early December, Wesleyan University in Connecticut banned a fraternity from holding social events for a year following two allegations of assaults at booze-fuelled revels. Meanwhile, 90 colleges/universities in 35 states are under investigation by the federal department of education for mishandling cases of sexual violence. In 2011, the department of education sent colleges a letter warning that if they did not take steps to curtail sexual violence, they could be in violation of Title IX, a federal anti-discrimination law. It urged them to set up committees to adjudicate complaints of sexual wrongdoing, even of heinous crimes such as rape. But these committees often consist of untrained professors, administrators and students. The director of a campus bookstore served on a judgement panel for one college last year. Students on both sides of the fence have complained that these amateur tribunals are inept. A lawsuit this year alleged that Columbia University unfairly allowed perpetrators to remain on campus. Meanwhile, male students at Vassar, Duke, and the University of Michigan have sued their schools, claiming that campus committees found them guilty of sexual misconduct when they were innocent. At Harvard, 28 law professors recently criticised the university™s new sexual-assault procedures as lacking œthe most basic elements of fairness and due process. Critics of the system argue that crimes should be dealt with by the police and the courts. In colleges as in the wider world, most rape victims never report attacks to police. Studies suggest that the vast majority of campus assaults are committed by a small fraction of college men who tend to rape over and over again. So campuses would be safer if these habitual offenders were swiftly identified and arrested, rather than just expelled ” leaving them free to go to another college and repeat the crime. Other critics think that colleges ” and the government ” should regulate alcohol more realistically. Binge-drinking is common on campuses, and cited in many complaints of sexual transgressions. But because students under 21 have no legal way to obtain alcohol, they tend to party in places where there™s no adult supervision nearby, such as in fraternity houses, which are not technically part of the university. The head of the University of Virginia notes that students at frat parties often have no idea how strong their drinks are. (At some parties, the hosts mix everything up in a trash can.) The lack of adult supervision has had dire consequences: men in fraternities are three times more likely to rape than other men on campus, according to John Foubert of Oklahoma State University. If the drinking age were lowered, parties could be held on campus and colleges could supervise…

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At The Helm: A Memoir by V. Krishnamurthy; Collins Business; Price: Rs.599; Pages 305 Although Jawaharlal Nehru (1889-1964) ” free India™s iconic first prime minister ” dug deep foundations for the nation, which emerged from the crude vivisection of the country in the last year (1947) of almost three centuries of rampant loot and beggarisation, he made an egregious error in ignoring the region™s free enterprise tradition and entrepreneurial capability proven over several millennia, and taking the country down the socialist path. Therefore despite newly independent India being endowed with several large and prospering private sector companies such as Tata Iron & Steel, Tata Airlines, Hindustan Motors and Hindustan Aviation, Scindia Shipping, Birla Jute, and DCM, which had grown in the teeth of often unfair competition during the British Raj, their development was suppressed by an elaborate web of licence-permit-quota regulations. The people™s savings were canalised into heavy industry public sector enterprises (PSEs) manufacturing steel, power equipment, fertilisers, and machine tools in a foolish quest for œself-reliance, which completely ignored pioneer economist Adam Smith™s theory of international trade. Yet if post-independence India™s PSEs haven™t collapsed in a heap, it™s because of a clutch of high-performing chief executives who in spite of having to manage huge, unwieldy corporations usually sited in backward areas because of political considerations, rose to the occasion and managed to pull them out of shallows and misery. Among the leading lights were V. Krishnamurthy, S.M. Patil (HMT), Air Marshal P.C. Lal (Indian Airlines), K. Appuswamy (Air India), and R.C. Bhargava (Maruti Udyog). But the greatest of them all is undoubtedly V. Krishnamurthy, who laid the foundation for three hugely important PSEs which have not only survived in the post-1991 era of economic liberalisation and deregulation, but continue to make valuable contributions to the Indian economy viz Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd, SAIL (formerly Steel Authority of India), and Maruti Udyog (now Maruti Suzuki Ltd).  Fortunately even if belatedly, the nonagenarian VK has penned his memoirs which present an insightful ringside view of how he succeeded against all odds in promoting and/or establishing these navratna PSEs. Born into a prosperous Brahmin family in rural Tamil Nadu which lost its wealth during the Great Depression of the 1930s and was forced to migrate to Madras (now Chennai), Krishnamurthy didn™t get a great education, graduating with a diploma in electrical engineering from the city™s CNT Technical Institute in 1943. VK began his career as a temporary technician in charge of electrical installations at two airfields during the Second World War and after the war, landed a job in the electrical department of the Madras Presidency. From these modest beginnings, how he rose to engineer the growth and development of India™s most respected public sector companies, serve as secretary to the government of India and later revolutionise India™s sputtering automobile industry, is well chronicled in this engaging autobiography. VK™s first break came in 1960, when after a two year stint with the Planning Commission, he was posted to Bhopal as officer on…

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An internationally respected education system is a crucial prerequisite for India Inc to compete on the world stage. Indeed, perceptions of integrity in educational assessments are vital for India™s education system, national economy, and international image. For without credibility, education qualifications are of little value, and the respect accorded by other countries to the certification issued by a nation™s education system can plunge sharply. Over 2,000 years ago, China introduced public examinations to select the brightest and best for the civil services. Since then, tests have become normative for university admissions and to recruit employees. High-stakes exams for university admissions or professional qualifications have significant consequences for those who write them and organisations that conduct them. But in the new digital and globalised age, conducting high-stakes exams has become an altogether different proposition. Test providers must design and deliver valid, reliable, fair, and above all credible exams. Validity means the inferences made from test scores are meaningful, reflecting true absorption of knowledge and skills. For example, doing well in a university admissions test should mean the candidate is likely to do well at university. Reliability refers to consistency and reproducibility, and a fair exam is one which is equitable for all test takers regardless of their background or social status. Exam scores awarded should inspire confidence in those who use them as a basis for action or judgement. Contemporary test-sponsors have several tools at their disposal to develop and conduct valid, reliable, and fair examinations, the crucial ones being modern-day measurement sciences and computer-based testing (CBT). When developing computer-based tests, for example, Pearson VUE™s Ph D-level psychometricians collaborate with test sponsors™ subject matter experts to design and build tests aligned with best institutional and industry practices. Psychometricians are measurement experts who analyse candidates™ examination performance data. Question difficulty is measured by the proportion of test takers who are able to provide the correct answer. Question discrimination gauges how well the question distinguishes between more and less able test takers. Psychometricians also perform a process called test equating which enables test results to be comparable across time and different versions of an examination. This is an important process for ensuring reliability and fairness. For example in a medical exam, a candidate should not be able to excel simply because the version of the exam she took was easier than other versions. Psychometricians also work with test sponsors to establish a pass standard reflecting the minimum competence necessary to meet the exam™s purpose. Many universities and organisations which sponsor high-stakes exams around the world have shifted from pencil-and-paper testing to CBT. Since exam papers don™t have to be physically shipped to and from testing locations, CBT eases the administrative burden of test sponsors, making it much easier for them to conduct global exams. And examinees who cannot afford the time or money to write a test at a specified centre on a particular day, have the opportunity to visit a local CBT centre at their convenience, as exams can be conducted on-demand…

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After completing my engineering degree, I want to sign up for a Master of computer science programme abroad. Please recommend a safe and affordable country for Indian students. Shekhar Rao, Bangalore The US offers the widest range of higher ed institutions where you are most likely to find a college to suit your budget. Universities in the states of Florida, Texas and North Carolina are known to be cost effective in terms of tuition fees and living expenses. If you graduate with good grades and fare well in GRE (Graduate Record Examination), there™s high probability of your securing a scholarship. MS programmes in the US are of two years duration, with approximate annual tuition fees and living expenses ranging from Rs.12-20 lakh per year. I™m a Plus Two (science) student interested in a career in the Indian Navy. What is the admission process of the Naval College of Engineering, Lonavala? Siddharth Bhatia, Mumbai The Naval College of Engineering (NCE) prepares officers for careers in the marine/electrical/electronics/aeronautical engineering and naval architecture cadres of the Indian Navy. Unmarried Indian male citizens between 16.5-19 years of age are eligible to apply for admission into NCE. Candidates should have averaged 75 percent in physics, chemistry and mathematics in Plus Two (class XII) and at least 50 percent in English in class X or XII. Minimum height should be 157 cm with correlated weight while uncorrected vision without glasses should be 6/12, 6/12, corrected vision with glasses should be 6/6, 6/6. Keep track of advertisements published in leading newspapers twice a year. Applicants shortlisted on the basis of their results in the Plus Two exam are called for interview with the Services Selection Board. On successful completion of training, candidates are inducted into the Indian Navy as permanent commissioned technical officers. The entire cost of training, including books and reading material is borne by the Navy. How good is the CIMA (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants) qualification? Can I pursue a CIMA programme together with a bachelor of management studies degree? Or should I enroll in CIMA after completing an MBA in finance? Seema Iyengar, Bangalore CIMA is a prestigious body, recognised globally. You cannot pursue its courses together with a bachelor™s degree as you need to be a graduate to be eligible for CIMA. After completing an MBA in finance, you will become eligible for exemption in a few subjects when writing CIMA exams. I™m a third year engineering student planning to write CAT. Does an MBA qualification with an engineering degree have an advantage over an MBA with a non-technical degree? Ravi Natarajan, Chennai The right time to start preparing for CAT ” Common Admission Test ” of the IIMs is in the fourth year of your engineering programme. To get a head start you should make time to prepare for CAT on a regular basis over a period of one year. An engineer with an MBA qualification definitely has advantages over non-engineers because of her technical knowledge in mechanics, chemical systems, electronics,…

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The demand for professionally qualified geologists with a sense of adventure has increased almost tenfold during the past decade For outdoor types who like to explore the environment and hike through the wilderness, professional qualifications in geology could open up a world of opportunities. Geology is the science of earth studies. Geologists study geographical data and material collected through seismic prospecting, examine surface and underground rocks, minerals and fossils in search of oil, natural gas and minerals. A number of universities and institutes offer bachelor, Masters and doctoral degree qualifications in geology. For admission into undergrad study programmes, Plus Two with science and at least 50 percent average is mandatory. Study programmes Almost all major state universities host geology departments and many top institutes offer graduate and postgraduate studies in geology. The most reputed are the IITs (Mumbai, Kharagpur, Roorkee, Bhubaneswar); Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad (now IIT-Dhanbad); St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai; Institute of Science, Mumbai; Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai; Indian Institute of Geo-Magnetism, Mumbai; Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad; National Geophysical Research Institute, Hyderabad; National Institute of Oceanography, Goa; and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) — Space Applications Centre (SAC) in Ahmedabad and Delhi. Professionally qualified geologists are usually employed in mining, oil, petroleum and ground water exploration; environmental planning and site remediation; geotechnical investigations; ISRO; defence terrain research; academia, and often in banks (as domain specialists for resource evaluation). Pay & perks Remuneration packages of geologists are attractive. In academia, an assistant professor with a Ph D can expect an annual pay package of Rs.6 lakh; in the oil industry, a postgraduate averages Rs.12 lakh; in mining around Rs.5 lakh and in the public sector ONGC, a junior geologist starts at Rs.10 lakh per year. With a few years of experience, professional geologists could take home Rs.20-24 lakh annually. “The demand for well-qualified geologists has increased almost tenfold in the past decade. That’s mainly due to the opening up of the Indian economy and the new natural resources management and utilisation policies enacted by the Central government,” says Dr. Hrishikesh Samant, head of the department of geology at St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. The department/faculty was established over 90 years ago as an independent school affiliated with Bombay University, and recognised by the varsity as a independent research centre in 1954, offering undergraduate and postgrad degree programmes in geology. After acquiring Masters degrees in applied geology and geo-exploration from IIT-Bombay, Samant began his career as a geologist with the public sector Mineral Exploration Corporation Ltd (1990-92). After working for the government and acquiring adequate field experience, he re-entered IIT-Bombay, working as a tutor in the faculty of earth sciences, and simultaneously conducting research in the remote sensing photogeology and geomorphology laboratory, for which he was awarded a Ph D in 1997. Meanwhile in 1996, he began lecturing in the geology department of St. Xavier’s College. Professional profile “Teaching this subject is challenging and exciting and St. Xavier’s trained geologists are working around the world. With the support…

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Suddenly almost out of the blue, a clutch of private edupreneurs have negotiated forbidding and grudging licensing processes to establish several globally benchmarked liberal arts universities across the country. Dilip Thakore reports AFTER MANY YEARS IN exile on the periphery of national consciousness, a liberal arts education renaissance is sweeping the country. This is manifested not only in the large crowds thronging the multiplying number of literary festivals featuring promising new writers in all languages, especially English, but also in the promotion of a number of new genre American-style private universities with strong, and even predominant, liberal arts schools/faculties nationwide.    Since independence the number of colleges and universities countrywide has increased from 500 and 20 in 1947 to 35,000 and 700 in 2013 with an impressive aggregate enrolment of 20 million undergrad and postgraduate students. Moreover the number of private universities has increased to 140, despite the government-run higher education supervisory and regulatory authorities being hostile to private initiatives in tertiary education. But in the first flush of freedom when massive heavy industry and nation-building projects were initiated to make good stagnation of free India’s economy which had averaged a growth rate of 1 percent per annum during almost 200 years of foreign rule, the national focus was on science and technology education. Ambitious and capital-intensive institutions such as the Indian Institute of Science, Indian Institutes of Technology, National Institutes of Technology and Indian Institutes of Management basked in the limelight of national attention while liberal arts education — mainly provided by Central and state government aided missionary colleges and universities — received short shrift. In the circumstances, it’s hardly surprising that the overwhelming majority of private colleges and universities such as Manipal, Vellore Institute of Technology, Hindustan University, PSG Group among others, concentrated on providing utilitarian professional education (engineering, medicine, hotel and business management) programmes. Liberal arts education, especially the study of subjects such as English and Indian literature, history, geography and the social sciences, were relatively neglected. Until very recently liberal arts classes in higher education tended to be crowded with youth who had failed to pass the more rigorous and demanding entrance exams of engineering and medical colleges. “There hasn’t been neglect of liberal arts education in terms of recognition of degrees or establishment of programmes — the largest proportion of undergraduates are in the arts. The neglect has been in terms of failure to sustain the quality of liberal arts study programmes. In the 1950s and 60s, several internationally renowned scholars were enrolled in Indian universities for doctorates in Sanskrit, philosophy and history. However, over the years, these programmes lost their stature substantially. The sorry state of the universities of Allahabad, Mysore, Madras, and Baroda are good examples. Great scholars and scholarship had emanated from these universities which have suffered steep decline,” says Dr. A.R. Vasavi, senior fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, Delhi, who was awarded the Infosys Prize for social sciences — sociology and anthropology — in 2013. According to Dr. Vasavi,…

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Changes in technology are happening at a hitherto unprecedented and unimaginable scale and will cause disruption in industry after industry. This has really begun to worry me because we are not ready for this change and most of our leading companies won™t exist 15-20 years from now. Here are five sectors to monitor closely. Manufacturing. Robotics and 3-D printing have made it cheaper to manufacture in the US and Europe than in China. Robots such as Baxter from Rethink Robotics, and UR10 from Universal Robots, have arms and screens which show you their emotions, and sensors that detect what™s happening around them. The cost of operating them is less than the cost of human labour. We can now have robots working 24—7 and doing some of the work of humans. Over time, these robots will become ever more multifaceted, and able to do most human jobs. The manufacturing industry is certain to be disrupted in a very big way. This is good news for America, Europe, and parts of Asia experiencing labour shortages. But it will adversely affect the Chinese economy hugely dependent on manufacturing jobs. In the next decade, robots will most likely go on strike, because we won™t need them anymore. They will be replaced by 3D printers. Within 15-20 years, we will even be able to do away with 3D print electronics. Imagine being able to design your own iPhone and print it at home. This will become possible. Reinvention of finance. We are already witnessing a controversy over Bitcoin ” the new software-based online payment system. Many technology and retail companies are supporting it. Crowdfunding is shaking up the venture-capital industry and making it less relevant because it provides start-ups with an alternative for raising seed capital. We will soon be able to crowdfund loans for houses, cars, and other goods. Moreover, with cardless transactions for purchasing goods, we won™t need the type of physical banks and financial institutions we have presently. Healthcare. Apple recently announced Healthkit, its new platform for health information. It will store data from the wearable sensors which will soon be monitoring our blood pressure, blood oxygenation, heart rhythms, temperature, activity levels, and other symptoms. Google, Microsoft, and Samsung will surely not be left behind and will compete to provide their health-data platforms. With this data, they will be able to warn us when we are about to fall sick even as artificial intelligence-driven computers will advise us on what we need to do to become healthy. Indeed we won™t need doctors for day-to-day medical advice. Robotic surgeons will also perform the most sophisticated surgeries. A massive disruption of the entire healthcare system is on the cards. Energy industry. Five years ago, Americans were worried about running out of oil; today we™re talking about Saudi America ” thanks to the fracking revolution. Admittedly, fracking is a harmful technology; nevertheless it has enabled America to become energy independent and will soon transform the US into an energy exporter. Then there is solar energy…

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Section 19 and the Schedule of the Right to Free & Compulsory Education (aka RTE) Act, 2009 mandates that all schools had to comply with several infrastructure provision norms, teacher-pupil ratios and other requirements by March 31, 2013 ” three years after the RTE Act came into force. Since then, according to one estimate, government authorities have served notice on, and/or have closed down unaided private schools in 17 states for not complying with the stipulated norms. The latest case in point is a show cause notice issued by local education authorities to 35 private schools, which have been declared illegal for non-compliance with the mandated RTE parameters, in a major city of Maharashtra. Attempts by education authorities to close down non-compliant private schools can be defended if all, or at least most government schools within their jurisdiction had become compliant with the mandated norms by March 31, 2013. Yet according to official statistics reported in the DISE School Report Cards for 2012-13, a mere 7 percent of state and local government schools provided just seven of the ten stipulated infrastructure facilities ” school building, drinking water, separate toilet for girls, boundary wall, etc ” and the mandated teacher-pupil ratios. The only good news is that there™s been some progress in improving infrastructure and recruitment of teachers last year. In Maharashtra for example, 9 percent of state and local government schools made provision for all ten infrastructure facilities in 2012-13. The number has appreciably increased to 29 percent in 2013-14. It needs to be noted that this improvement in provision pertains only to the physical infrastructure mandated for every school. In addition to the ten infrastructure facilities, the Schedule of the RTE Act stipulates that every school should maintain certain teacher-pupil ratios, have at least one teacher for science and mathematics, social studies and languages, and part-time instructors for art education, health and physical education. Shockingly, despite full support and funding from the Central, State and local governments, the great majority of government schools in almost every state are not even partially RTE-compliant. Indeed, it can safely be asserted that only a fraction of the government schools in the country are at present fully RTE-compliant, and aspirations of reaching this goal even by 2030 are fanciful. Against this dismal condition of government schools, it™s ironical that state and local governments are threatening to close, or have already closed down non-compliant private schools. Although there™s no reliable evidence of how widespread school closures are, one report indicates that 2,500 schools have been closed down and that an additional 4,500-15,000 schools face threat of closure. Since non-compliant, private unaided schools enroll millions of poor and rich students, the Centre and state governments need to issue official guidelines to clarify this issue. Meanwhile the situation is going from bad to worse as the RTE Act specifies that after March 2013, appropriate authorities can de-recognise all non-compliant private schools, and impose heavy fines if they continue to operate after de-recognition. Without a Central and/or…

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The Doon School, Dehradun (TDS) has signed an agreement with the MCC Cricket Academy, London, under which school boys from across India can receive MCC cricket coaching at a camp in TDS on January 25-29. œThe MCC Academy will provide pupils with the very best coaching and technical analysis while developing team building and leadership skills. School coaches will also be provided with training and the drill. This training academy is part of the ongoing training relationship that TDS has with MCC, says Dr. Peter McLaughlin, headmaster of TDS. œWe are delighted to be returning to The Doon School with the MCC Lord™s Club India Cricket Academy in January 2015. We hope this lays the foundation for regular camps during the course of the year, says Simon Reid of the MCC Lord™s Club India. For further registration and details, visit www.doonschool.com/mcc2015 Resonance STaRT-2015 The final stage (Stage-II) of the talent search exam STaRT-2015 conducted by Resonance Eduventures Pvt. Ltd (estb.2001), the well-known Kota-based test prep company (IIT-JEE, AIPMT, AIEEE) which has 13 learning centres countrywide, was successfully completed on December 14. STaRT (Scholarship, Talent and Reward Test) is an aptitude-cum-benchmarking test for class V-XII students countrywide. Toppers are awarded rewards, recognition and scholarships. Over 23,000 students who were selected in stage-II appeared for final stage evaluation in 60 Resonance centres across the country. This pan-India annual event is conducted in two stages and more than 1.85 lakh students were evaluated in stage-I, of whom 23,000 were selected for stage-II. Abid Husain, chief coordinator of STaRT-2015, says the Top 100 students in each class V-XII will be invited for the Champions™ Camp to be conducted on January 15-16 in Kota, during which the expert faculty team of Resonance will brief them about preparing for competitive exams. The two-day event will be followed by a felicitation function on January 18, at which prizes valued at Rs.1 crore will be awarded to winning students. Students securing #1 All India Rank (AIR) in each class will be conferred a gold medal and nine-day trip to NASA, USA. AIR #2 students will be awarded silver medals and a seven-day Europe (CERN) trip and AIR #3 students will be awarded bronze medals and a six-day Singapore excursion. AIR #4 & 5 students will win branded laptops while AIR #6-10 hi-end tablet PCs. A total of 2,400 prizes valued at Rs.1 crore will be distributed and around 6,000 deserving students will be given awards/scholarships valued at Rs.5 crore. Global cooperation appeal Following a terrorist attack on the Army Public School, Peshawar (Pakistan) in which Taliban terrorists gunned down 132 children and nine staff members, 11 students of City Montessori School, Gomti Nagar, Campus I, representing 50,000 students of CMS schools in Lucknow, called a press conference in Lucknow on December 17. œThe time has come to form a World Government, a World Parliament and a World Court of Justice, they said. Addressing the press conference, Dr. Jagdish Gandhi, founder-chairman of CMS ” the largest single city primary-secondary…

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Assam Education progress report In an initiative to record teachers™ attendance in government schools statewide scientifically, and streamline the administration of the state™s education ministry, education minister Pradyut Bordoloi announced a pilot project to provide teachers with mobile phones equipped with biometric GPS registration. The minister was addressing the state™s legislative assembly on December 17 in reply to a debate on a supplementary demand for grants to his ministry. œTeachers will be paid their monthly salaries based on recorded data, he said. According to Bordoloi, the state government™s education budget has increased substantially since the Tarun Gogoi-led Congress government took office in March 2001 when it was a mere Rs.1,800 crore. With 7.5 million students in the state, the government spends Rs.10,000 per child per year in elementary education; Rs.21,687 in middle school and Rs.20,000 in higher education, the minister informed the house. Punjab Online tutorials programme The state government is all set to introduce online tutorials in government senior secondary schools in an initiative to prepare Plus Two students for the entrance exams of professional colleges/universities, said Punjab™s education minister Daljit Singh Cheema, speaking to media in Ludhiana on December 15. According to the minister, to begin with 100 schools from the state will be chosen for the programme. œOnline lectures will be provided to students preparing for competitive exams, said Cheema, adding that interactive sessions for students will also be arranged to clarify doubts in any subject. The tutorials will be offered after school hours and the service will be free of charge, the minister said. The online tutorials will be particularly useful for Plus Two students in rural areas, the minister said. œThe tutorials idea has been adopted bearing in mind that sufficient coaching for competitive exams is lacking in villages, he added. Puducherry Heritage building row Puducherry education minister T. Thiagarajan was gheraoed by parents of a government-run French language school for girls on December 1. The parents were demanding speedy renovation of the 19th century school building. Agitated over delays in completing renovation work, some parents closed the main gate when the minister and officials began their inspection, said a government spokesman addressing the media in Puducherry on December 2. Later, security personnel accompanying the minister forced the gate open to enable the minister and his aides to exit the school premises. Earlier, heated arguments had erupted between the parents and ministerial delegation over renovation delays and the government™s plan to shift classes to other premises. The minister responded by announcing that experts from IIT-Madras and the Archaeological Survey of India will inspect the school building and based on their recommendations, the government will take appropriate action. Until then, classes will be held in the premises of neighbouring buildings, he said. Haryana Medical education initiative Presiding over a review meeting of medical education and research officials in Chandigarh on December 5, Haryana™s chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar said his government will constitute a high-level committee of reputed medical practitioners and educationists to suggest ways to…

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œI am disappointed. Because, I think that Mr. Modi™s vision of taking the country forward is not possible without the right human capital. I don™t see any fundamental change in a view ” common to our Left and the Right ” that somehow, higher education is something to be controlled, centralised. Dr. Devesh Kapur, director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania, on his disappointment with the Modi government™s education policy (The Hindu, December 20) œOur problems are not those of government but of society. I think Swacch Bharat is a very fine thing. But it is not the government™s job to effect behavioural change. Aakar Patel, journalist and columnist (The Mint, December 20) œThere is a difference between freedom and independence because an illiterate or unemployable Indian is not free. India™s new tryst with destiny needs innovation and boldness in education. Manish Sabharwal, chairman Teamlease Services (India Today, December 22) œ… there were the inexplicable choices, none more so than the drafting in of Uma Bharti and Smriti Irani with full Cabinet rank. The former is at best, ineffective, while the latter has become the single-most disruptive factor in government with every week bringing in the most unpleasant of surprises. Anil Dharker, columnist, on the many government wrong-turns in 2014 which have diminished prime minister Narendra Modi™s lustre (Deccan Chronicle, December 28) œOne would have thought that a government supposedly committed to modernising India would be concerned about tackling illiteracy and improving educational standards… Instead, the entire education agenda of this government has descended into a series of cultural wars. Hasan Suroor, author and columnist, on how public discourse and debate has drowned in saffron diatribes (Outlook, December 29)

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WITH THREE PROMINENT Trinamool Congress (TMC) leaders behind bars for their alleged involvement in the Saradha scam ” in which an estimated Rs.20,000 crore was misappropriated by the Saradha Group, a consortium of over 200 private companies managed by financier Sudipto Sen ” and increasing lawlessness arising out of frequent inter-party conflicts over political turf, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee is losing friends and influence rapidly. Amidst growing public anger and disenchantment with the ruling party, Banerjee is trying to steady the ship of state and steer the TMC through stormy and turbulent waters. In the circumstances, the announcement on December 3 of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd, one of the largest integrated healthcare corporates in India, that it intends to construct a new 1,000-bed teaching hospital in Kolkata with an investment of Rs.400 crore, has come as a morale booster, particularly since the company has already established a 600-bed multi-specialty tertiary care hospital named Apollo Gleneagles in the city. The announcement came two days after the Union railway ministry dropped a proposal made by Banerjee way back in 2009, when she was the Union railway minister in the Congress-led UPA I government, to promote medical colleges with government (railway) hospitals and private partners. A 14-acre plot in Hiland Riverside in Batanagar (South 24 Parganas district) has been provided free of charge by the state government for the Apollo Institute of Medical Sciences and Research, scheduled to be up and running by 2020. œThe state government is very supportive and enthusiastic about this initiative. Initially, it offered us four acres to build a hospital in a new township being built in that area. But when we presented a proposal to build a medical college as well, and requested a larger land grant for the purpose, the state government immediately agreed, as there is a need for more medical colleges in the state, Rupali Basu, chief executive (eastern region) of Apollo Hospitals informed a media conference held in Kolkata on December 3. According to Basu, the first phase of the institute with 500 beds for patients and 100 seats for medical students, is scheduled to be operational by 2017 and the super specialty hospital with 1,000 beds and 150 medical seats by 2020. This will be Apollo Hospital™s second medical college after the one already operational in Hyderabad (estb. 2012). Besides the regular MBBS degree programme, it will offer 18 other undergraduate and postgraduate courses in nursing, pathology, hospital management plus a health resource skill centre. When fully completed, the Apollo Institute of Medical Sciences, Kolkata will create employment for 5,000 people including doctors, nurses and supplementary staff. œCurrently the great majority of medical students who leave West Bengal to study medicine in other states or abroad, never return. Lack of capacity, pathetic infrastructure and poor quality of medical education have contributed to this continuous brain drain. With hi-tech corporates such as Apollo getting into healthcare, students will now get the opportunity to study medicine under the guidance of experienced doctors…

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AN INTERSTATE MEDICAL admissions scandal with Lucknow™s King George™s Medical University (KGMU) at its centre, is generating tremors in India™s most populous (200 million) ” and arguably most lawless ” state. While this is by no means the first scam in KGMU, it is of such massive proportions that the state™s Special Task Force (STF) has called for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to probe it. Last October an aspiring Noida-based medical student filed a complaint with the Lucknow police that he had been duped by two faculty members, an employee and student of KGMU, who had assured him of admission into this prestigious medical college in consideration of a sum of Rs.31 lakh. Since then the complaint has snowballed into a huge racket with more than 100 KGMU students under investigation for having been admitted into the college through fraud and bribery. Preliminary investigations indicate that Dr. K.P. Singh ” one of two accused faculty members of KGMU ” had established networks in other states and had similarly duped students in Rajasthan, Bihar, and Jammu & Kashmir in addition to Uttar Pradesh. An alum of KGMU himself, Singh reportedly took 14 years to complete the university™s five-year MBBS programme. Yet KGMU authorities are at a loss to explain how despite being such a poor student, Singh landed a job as faculty member in the department of microbiology, indicating a mafia network within the university (estb.1911). Singh™s modus operandi was to approach test prep and coaching schools preparing higher secondary school leavers for medical entrance exams (AIIMS, CET, COMED-K, etc) through a Noida-based consulting firm, and offer them assured seats for negotiated consideration to be paid in the office of Dr. D.K. Katiyar (the other faculty named in the first information report). How this is connected to the larger racket of cheating and impersonator examination writers of the medical entrance and term exams, are questions which the STF is investigating. One of the STF™s achievements is that it has linked nine impersonators from KGMU with the Madhya Pradesh pre-medical test conducted by the state™s Professional Examinations Board. Certainly over the past 12 years since the King George™s Medical College was accorded university status by the state government, KGMU faculty, students and alumni have become nationally infamous for cheating ” rather than teaching ” expertise. In 2004, a scam of teachers being bribed and threatened to award pass marks to students was discovered; in 2006 four students writing the varsity™s entrance exam were found to be wearing specially tailored shirts fitted with earphones and mobiles through which answers were dictated from beyond the campus perimeter; in 2008, lookalike impersonators were discovered to be writing the entrance exam; and in 2012 an impersonator with a high definition micro camera which scanned the question paper and sent it to a coaching centre from where the answers were relayed to him, was outed. More recently in January 2013, three students managed to stump the biometrics identification system by wearing microfilm on their thumbs.…

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It speaks volumes about the supervisory dedication and competence of the Karnataka state government™s education ministry that on December 23, 1,266 primary-secondary schools in Bangalore, some of them over a century old, were declared œillegal by the department of public instruction (DPI). A list published by the DPI declares the pre-primary sections of over 50 of the city™s top-ranked CBSE and CISCE affiliated schools including Bishop Cotton Boys (estb. 1865), Bishop Cotton Girls and St. Joseph™s Boys schools unauthorised and illegal. According to a DPI task force constituted by the education ministry following the rape of a three-year-old girl child of Orchids International School, Jalahalli, last October, the 1,266 transgressor schools with an aggregate enrollment of 300,000 students, are guilty of several violations: running pre-primary/upper primary classes without permission, violation of the state™s language policy, and falsely claiming affiliations with the pan-India CBSE/CISCE examination boards. Mohammad Mohsin, commissioner of public instruction, says notices will shortly be issued to the accused schools. Private unaided school managements listed for running pre-primary sections ˜illegally™ contend that pre-primary schools are not subject to government approvals and regulation. However DPI spokespersons make a distinction between composite K-12 schools and independent unitary preschools with the former obliged to obtain government permission. Moreover, the confusion is confounded by the list including schools indicted for starting primaries in English-medium which allegedly violates the state™s language policy mandating Kannada or mother tongue as the compulsory medium of instruction. According to DPI sources, as per a 1994 ordinance of the state government, all primaries promoted after that year were obliged to use Kannada or the mother tongue as the medium of instruction. Therefore, these schools are also illegal, despite a judgement of the Karnataka high court in 2008 having quashed the 1994 ordinance as being violative of parents™ fundamental right to choose the medium of instruction of their children, and the Supreme Court upholding this verdict in May 2014. œAlthough the Supreme Court has quashed the 1994 language policy ordinance, the  education department obstinately refuses to accord post-1994 English-medium private unaided schools ” most of which are affiliated with the Karnataka state education board ” formal recognition. This is contempt of court. Instead of defaming school managements and causing anxiety among parents, it™s time the state government accepts the court™s verdict, and sets up a transparent and fair process of recognition. Otherwise schools will have no option but to knock on the court™s doors again, warns D. Shashi Kumar, general secretary, Associated Management of English Medium Schools in Karnataka (KAMS), which has a membership of 600 private schools statewide. œThe private schools associations™ triumph on the medium of instruction issue has substantially diluted the power of the educracy and the state™s politicians to extract rents and sell vernacular language textbooks to private unaided schools through front companies. Insistence that composite unaided schools apply separately for registration of their pre-primaries even as garage preschools don™t have to register themselves, is nothing but an excuse to harass, extort and punish. The state™s…

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AS IF TAMIL NADU’S 52,303 government and aided primary-secondary schools suffering the weight of crumbling buildings, teacher shortages, depleting classrooms and poor learning outcomes didn™t have enough problems, of late they have been afflicted with the additional problem of spreading indiscipline and violence. On December 1, a class XII student of the Government Higher Secondary School, Maduravoyal, Chennai, struck his computer science teacher for criticising his work ” a widely publicised incident which has outraged school managements, parents and teachers™ associations, reviving a statewide debate on issues of parenting, teaching, and student indiscipline within the school system which places a high premium on examination success. Public outrage over school indiscipline is on the boil because this is only the latest example of violent attacks on teachers by their students. In February 2012, a class IX student of the government-aided St. Mary™s Anglo Indian Higher Secondary School, Chennai, brutally murdered his science/Hindi teacher for reprimanding him for poor performance in class tests. In October that year, a class IX student of a private school in Virudhunagar district, stabbed his mathematics teacher for scolding him for latecoming, and on November 20 this year, a rented mob beat up a physical education teacher of the Loyola Matriculation Higher Secondary School, Chennai, for allegedly striking a businessman™s son. School teachers who are at the receiving end of a rising tide of student violence, are particularly indignant. On December 21, several teachers associations staged a joint protest in Coimbatore and urged the government to take steps to protect them. They also warned the state™s department of school education against taking punitive action against teachers on the basis of unproven charges. Educationists in Chennai list rapid social change, over-indulgent parenting, rising disrespect for teachers and poor standards of teaching for the increasingly hostile behaviour of school children. œStudent behaviour is a reflection of society. Parents are no longer role models for their children. Overworked and stressed, they vent their frustrations at home and often in public spaces giving the impression that it is alright to express emotions aggressively. On the other hand, teachers are concerned about covering the prescribed syllabus before exams rather than listening to every voice in the class. Moreover rising parental and school pressure to excel in academics and total absence of values-based education in most schools, blur students™ ability to distinguish right from wrong. The teacher-student relationship will improve greatly if teachers act as facilitators of learning and work in harmony with students, instead of overloading them with obsolete textbook knowledge, says Magdalene Jeyarathnam, founder, East West Centre for Counselling, Chennai. Against this backdrop of intensifying teacher-student hostility, informed academics advise that teacher training programmes need to be improved with teachers receiving lessons in managing a new generation of impatient children with low pain and tolerance thresholds. œAlmost all teacher training programmes advise sympathy for first generation students and advocate extra attention for those who require it. However, this is practiced more in the breach and teachers tend to publicly criticise and…

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ONE OF THE FIRST THREE modern universities established in India to commemorate the takeover of the administration of India by imperial Great Britain from the East India Company, right until the mid-1960s, Bombay University (estb.1857) enjoyed a good reputation for scholarship and research. But since then, it has experienced a steady decline, particularly after the parochial Shiv Sena and a host of small-town/rural politicians of the Congress, Nationalist Congress, rose to positions of power in Maharashtra and began to appoint kith and kin to top level positions in the university. Since the turn of the century, the renamed Mumbai University (MU) has experienced the misfortune of being governed by a series of vice chancellors and pro vice chancellors selected on considerations other than merit. A case in point is Dr. Rajan Welukar whose appointment as vice chancellor of the university has been shrouded in controversy ab initio. An obscure Nagpur-based statistician with a Masters degree and Ph D in statistics from Nagpur University who never attained the rank of professor or college principal ” prerequisites of a vice chancellor under the Maharashtra Universities Act, 1994 ” Welukar was appointed vice chancellor of MU in 2010 despite not being shortlisted by a government-constituted search committee, chaired by well-known Delhi-based sociologist Andre Beteille. In January 2010, when the search committee shortlisted five eminent academicians, Welukar™s name was not in the list. January 20 and 21 were fixed as dates for the final interview by then governor of Maharashtra and ex officio chancellor of MU, S.C. Jamir. But on January 16, Jamir was replaced as governor by the Congress-led UPA II government in Delhi. His successor to the governor™s post K. Sankaranarayanan appointed a new committee, chaired by Dr. A. Kolaskar (a former associate of Welukar), which duly recommended him for the post, and Welukar was officially appointed VC of Mumbai University on July 6, 2010. Welukar™s politically manipulated appointment as VC of this vintage university aroused anger and indignation within the MU faculty. In the months following his appointment, faculty members jointly and severally addressed protest petitions to governor K. Sankaranarayanan as well as chief minister Prithviraj Chavan to initiate an official enquiry into the VC™s academic credentials. Moreover in September 2010, former MU pro vice chancellor Dr. A.D. Sawant filed a writ petition in the Bombay high court challenging Welukar™s appointment. On August 10, 2011, a two-judge bench of the high court delivered a split verdict following which the case was referred to a new bench. On December 11, seven months before Welukar™s undistinguished term as vice chancellor is scheduled to end on July 30, 2015, a new two-judge bench of Justices P.V. Hardas and Anjana Prabhudesai slammed the three-member committee constituted by former Maharashtra governor Sankaranarayan for shortlisting Welukar for the vice chancellor™s office on the basis of research publications presented by the latter as proof of his qualification for the job. Referring the matter back to the three-member committee, the court directed it to œapply its mind to the…

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GIVEN HER BLOOMERS AND BLOOPERS, former Miss India contestant and television soaps star Smriti Irani, the surprise choice as Union human resource development (HRD) ” aka education ” minister of the BJP-led government at the Centre which was sworn in on May 26, is proving less inspired by the day. Morale in the shady groves of Indian academia, particularly Delhi™s academy, is hitting new lows as the aggressive minister commits one gaffe after another and makes media headlines with monotonous regularity, for all the wrong reasons. The latest embarrassment caused by the HRD ministry to the seven-month-old Narendra Modi government in Delhi, is the abrupt resignation of IIT-Delhi director Prof. R.K. Shevgaonkar two years before the end of his term. According to the buzzing academic grapevine, Shevgaonkar was under pressure from the HRD ministry to permit the establishment of a Sachin Tendulkar cricket academy on the sprawling IIT-D campus, and also agree to an out-of-court settlement to pay BJP spokesperson Dr. Subramaniam  Swamy a lump-sum of Rs.90 lakh. A former lecturer at IIT-D (1969-72), Swamy has a suit pending against the institute for firing him from his job for being critical of Indira Gandhi some 35 years ago. As is normative in the snail-paced Indian justice system, the case is still pending hearing. According to informed sources, Irani is in favour of an out-of-court settlement of the pending suit. However ministry spokespersons deny these œrumours. Instead an elaborate story detailing how Shevgaonkar had unauthorisedly helped the Mauritius government to establish an IIT-D-style technology institute has been leaked to the press, implying that the IIT-D director had committed a grave offence in lending a helping hand to a friendly government in Mauritius which has an Indian majority population. Just a few days earlier on December 10, the HRD ministry issued a circular to all Central government-funded schools and colleges to celebrate Christmas day, a national holiday traditionally celebrated as the birthday of Jesus Christ countrywide and internationally, as Good Governance Day to honour BJP stalwart and former prime minister (1999-2004) Atal Behari Vajpayee, also born on Christmas day. This brazen bid of the minister to devalue Xmas aroused national indignation and was widely interpreted as an insult to the country™s 24-million Christian community and to the large number of missionary-run schools and colleges across the nation.  Confronted with a huge media and academia outcry, Irani was forced to issue a statement that the ministry had not intended to force children to attend school on Christmas day but had invited voluntary online essays on the subject of good governance. These are only the latest of Irani™s ill-considered initiatives which have aroused widespread suspicion that the new HRD minister is a closet sevak (disciple) of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the cultural parent of the BJP and a motley group of hindutva organisations which aspire to transform constitutionally secular India into a Hindu rashtra (nation). Although government spokespersons ridicule this allegation, it might perhaps explain Irani™s October 22 circular to all 1,000 Central…

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I am surprised and shocked the EW Mumbai Preschool Rankings 2014 (EW December) has omitted to include EuroKids, Lokhandwala. I hope you™re aware that in all your previous preschool rankings, EuroKids, Lokhandwala has consistently featured in the league table of the Top 10 preschools in Mumbai. Few months ago, Rajesh Gupta of C fore, the agency which conducts the EW Preschool Rankings, visited us and opined that our infrastructure and teaching staff were one of the best in Mumbai. Thereafter, he requested us to send a detailed write-up on the school, which we readily obliged through email. We are at a loss to understand why our school has not been included in the EW Mumbai Preschool Rankings 2014 league table. We would appreciate if you let us know of our shortcomings if any, so we can take corrective action if required. Priya Mittal Principal, EuroKids, Lokhandwala Mumbai C fore™s CEO Premchand Palety writes: œThis year EuroKids, Lokhandwala was not ranked among the Top 20 by the sample respondents. Moreover, the rankings are not based on perceptions of C fore representatives, but on the perceptions of sample respondents. Factual error I am a subscriber of EducationWorld. The magazine is very informative and interesting. I must congratulate you on this outstanding magazine with excellent production values. It feels good that our preschool Montessori Bal Nilaya, Lake Gardens, is ranked #4 in the EW Kolkata Preschool Rankings 2014 (EW December). However, I™d like to bring to your notice that on page 64, there™s a factual error. I was not œpersonally trained by Dr. Maria Montessori as reported by your Kolkata correspondent. I received training from Albert Joosten, who was Dr. Maria Montessori™s representative and head of the Indian 2Montessori Training Centre from 1949-1980. In 1963, Mario Montessori, Dr. Maria Montessori™s son who was in charge of AMI (Association Montessori Internationale), visited Bal Nilaya. Unfortunately, I never met Dr. Maria Montessori as she died in 1952, a year before I was born. I would appreciate your publishing a corrigendum. Kusum Bhandari Principal Montessori Bal Nilaya, Kolkata Spotlight govt schools I have been reading EducationWorld for about ten years and appreciate your efforts towards improving education in the country. Although your EW India School Rankings are a great idea, I think it™s time to focus on government schools. We need to bring their infirmities to light and expose the laxity of various government agencies in managing and operating them. When I visit government schools in Bihar, I feel miserable. Crores of rupees have been wasted on ICT in schools. Computers are installed in schools where there are no teachers! I am told model government schools are being built, but where are the students? Most of them are attending private schools. EducationWorld needs to address these issues and suggest ways to resolve them. Col. Prem Prakash Patna Unconvincing ranking We were surprised to see that in your EW India School Rankings 2014 (September), there was no mention of South Point High School in any category. Against…

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Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda

An alarming social phenomenon is becoming ubiquitous in the sovereign, socialist, secular and holier-than-thou Republic of India. When women are assaulted and sexually molested in plain sight by anti-social perverts and deviants, post-independence India™s socialist man, shaped by the heirs of the Mahatma and founding fathers of the Constitution, rarely steps forward to protest and protect them. This was most recently evidenced by the case of the Rohtak sisters who fought back against some youth who molested them in a crowded public bus. Curiously, not a single co-passenger spoke up or intervened on their behalf. Likewise, millions of women citizens are subjected to the bad touch, groping, lewd remarks and worse in public transport and on the ill-planned streets and public spaces of the country™s crowded towns and cities on a daily basis, without protest from the citizenry. The most charitable explanation of this disturbing phenomenon is that apathetic citizens, shaped by the country™s shabby education system which doesn™t teach students the rights and duties of citizens, don™t wish to become involved with the nation™s notoriously corrupt and callous police and the tardy justice system which might be the outcome of intervention. Yet the plain, insufficiently publicised truth is that it™s the duty of citizens who witness sex crimes and violation of the rights of women and child citizens to voice their protest and if necessary make a citizen™s arrest with no more force than reasonably necessary in the circumstances, and frogmarch the offender(s) to the nearest police station. In India, a cowardly populace shaped by the education system and society in general, rarely discharges this duty. An insulting observation made by several British administrators and chroniclers who witnessed the partition and other communal riots, was that homo indicus is a cowardly and cunning creature exhibiting bravery and courage only in mobs, seldom singularly. The rising incidence of gender crimes and the unwillingness of citizens to protect women and children from public harassment on a daily basis, seems to confirm the validity of this contemptuous observation. In this context, it™s important to note that it™s not only the obligation of self-respecting ” especially male ” citizens to stand and speak up against anti-socials to reclaim India™s streets and public spaces for law-abiding people of both sexes going about their daily business. It™s also the duty and obligation of the teachers™ community in the country™s classrooms to focus children™s minds on issues related to the equal rights of women under law, and drill norms of civil behaviour and good manners into male students from a young age so they mature into responsible adults respectful of the rights of women citizens. Fudged issue of learning outcomes A recent recommendation of a committee constituted by the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) to the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry to review s.16 of the Right to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, which stipulates automatic promotion for all in-school children until class VIII, is a positive development for Indian education. According…

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AS THE COUNTRY’S MOST committed ” even if not most successful ” champion of high-quality early childhood and primary-secondary education for all, I am often obliged to explain the criticality of the connection between universal elementary education and national development to individuals and larger audiences. It is often necessary for business development reasons ” to ensure the financial viability and longevity of this advocacy publication ” to solicit the support and cooperation of captains of industry by explaining to them that corporate and national prosperity is dependent upon the education, well-being, productivity, and purchasing power of the general population. Yet I am perpetually surprised and often amazed at how difficult it is for my usually impatient audiences to grasp this self-evident proposition. The fault that the great majority of the population and even well-educated individuals cannot arrive at the simplest conclusions through the process of deductive logic is not of the people, but of the country™s education system, which doesn™t sufficiently promote the liberal arts. If all children and youth are given basic grounding in economics and the social sciences in school and college, they will inevitably develop critical thinking and deductive logic capabilities, appreciate the value and worth of universal primary-secondary (and skills) education, and exert pressure on politicians to invest a greater proportion of public spending on education and developing the country™s vital human resource. Unfortunately, this hasn™t happened in the history of post-independence India. Too-early streaming in school education and societal overemphasis on science and technology, and professional (medicine, law, business management, etc) education, has resulted in neglect of the liberal arts, even in institutions of higher learning. The socio-economic consequence of the continuous devaluation of liberal arts, as narrowly educated and/or ill-educated techies take on each other in public forums, is vulgarisation and coarsening of the public discourse, most notably evident in Parliament where civil debate has become the exception rather than rule. In the circumstances, reports of promotion of institutions of higher education with strong focus on the liberal arts, is excellent news. Quite obviously, a rising number of discerning individuals are making the connection between the neglect of arts and humanities education and post-independence India™s painfully slow national development effort. The most prominent of the new genre universities racing to rectify this national blindspot are featured in this first issue of 2015, which also presents a round-up of the education milestones of the politically momentous year gone by. Wishing you an easier and prosperous 2015!

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