EducationWorld March 17

Avantika Agrawal Kolkata-based Avantika Arya Agrawal is one of a small group of women causing ripples in the nascent sport of riverine rowing. This 17-year-old and her youthful team won a silver medal in the women’s coxed fours 1,000 metres race, in a nail biting final against Sri Lanka’s national women’s team at the 75th ARAE (Amateur Rowing Association of the East) 2017 Rowing Regatta held at the vintage Madras Boat Club between January 9-14. This class XI student of Kolkata’s highly-ranked Modern High School for Girls also bagged a bronze in the women’s double sculls (1000 m) event. An annual event instituted by ARAE (estb. 1933) — a rowing enthusiasts’ association affiliated with 17 premier rowing clubs in Asia — the regatta is one of the continent’s most competitive meets and attracted the participation of 200 rowing enthusiasts from 14 clubs in India and Asia.  The only child of Tanmay Agrawal, an aquaculturist, and social worker Anuranjita, Avantika took to the sport in 2014 inspired by Kolkata’s rowing culture. After training for a year with coach and mentor Shashi Kumar Singh, she won her first gold medal in the West Bengal Rowing Association’s Junior State Games in January 2015 in the women’s coxed fours event, and a silver in the women’s double sculls. A year later, she bagged a silver in the Bengal Olympics Association State Games in the open women’s coxed fours event, and dominated all students league and inter-school events.  Rowing is a testing endurance sport which requires peak fitness, says this gritty sportswoman. “I practice before school for two hours every day and three hours on weekends. The fitness regimen involves sprints, aerobics, ergometer, circuits and weights training. I begin my day with sugarcane juice and follow a gluten-free diet supported by egg protein,” she discloses. Looking ahead, Avantika aspires to study sports science after completing her higher secondary education. “The infrastructure and coaching facilities for competitive rowing in India are comparable with the best in the world. My dream is to train intensively and make history by bringing an Olympic medal home,” she enthuses. Power to your oars! Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)

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New data on American universities and their role in economic mobility — culled from 30 million tax returns — published by Raj Chetty, an economist at Stanford University and colleagues, show that some colleges do a better job of boosting poor students up the income ladder than others. Previously, the best data available showed only average earnings by college. For the first time, the entire earnings distribution of a college’s graduates — and how that relates to parental income — is now known. These data show that graduates of elite universities with single-digit admission rates and billion-dollar endowments are still the most likely to join the top 1 percent (though having wealthy parents improves the odds). And despite recent efforts to change, their student bodies are still overwhelmingly wealthy. Princeton University is the best at producing plutocrats — 23 percent of its graduates end up as one-percenters, about the same as the share of its students who hail from equally wealthy households. Following closely are the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard and Stanford where this rich-in, rich-out model works well. But no matter their family income, students at America’s most prestigious universities have a roughly equal chance of reaching the top 20 percent of income distribution. Reaching the top 1 percent is a different story altogether.  In this case, having a trust fund is useful. Even if a student attends an elite university, the chances of eventually reaching the 1 percent economic elite increase greatly with the wealth of parents. A rich student from a household in the top 5 percent, has about a 60 percent greater chance of reaching the income summit than a poor student, whose parents were in the bottom 5 percent, even if they both attended one of America’s most esteemed universities. Elite financial and consulting firms, which often recruit for highly paid positions exclusively at Ivy League-calibre colleges and rely on networking, bear some of the blame. Elite universities justify steep rises in tuition fees by pointing to their generous financial-aid programmes for poor students. Harvard’s most recent fundraising campaign passed the $7 billion mark, partially by focusing on expanding financial aid. Parents with incomes under $65,000 (Rs.43.5 lakh) aren’t expected to pay a cent. But the data show that between 1999-2013, poor students’ access to the university has stayed stubbornly low (more than half of Harvard students came from the richest 10 percent of households), and just 2 percent of Princetonians came from households at the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution.  Legacy admissions, which give preferential treatment to family members of alumni, exacerbate the imbalance. Of Harvard’s most recently admitted class, 27 percent of students had a relative who also attended. There’s evidence this system favours the already wealthy. MIT and the California Institute of Technology, two elite schools with no legacy preferences, have much fewer students who hail from the ranks of the super-rich. “The dirty secret of elite colleges is that for all the positive talk about the importance of racial…

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After completing my BMS (bachelor of management studies) degree programme this year, I want to enroll for an LLB programme and company secretary (CS) course. To better my career prospects, should I also pursue an MBA (finance) degree? — Ashok Rao, Chennai CS and LLB is an excellent combination provided you are able to do justice to both programmes. Career opportunities for company secretaries equipped with a law degree are plentiful. You could also consider working for a few years and then sign up for a part-time or full-time MBA programme. This is good investment of time and money, especially if you are admitted into a reputed B-school with a strong campus placement programme.    I’ll complete my B.Tech degree programme next year and want to pursue higher studies in the US. Would you advise an MS or MBA degree programme? Ravi Narasimhan, Bangalore If your academic goal is to complete a Ph D programme or pursue a career in teaching, research or consulting, an MS programme will provide you with the required in-depth knowledge. On the other hand, a general MBA programme will provide a more rounded education because it will include components of marketing, finance, HR, business accounting and business maths, organisational behaviour, systems, etc. Most MS programmes don’t mandate prior work experience while MBA programmes in the US do. Many Indian MBA graduates with three-five years industry experience take a year off to pursue an MS abroad in a specific discipline.  I’m a class XII commerce student aspiring to enroll in a BMS (bachelor of management studies) degree programme. What are my options? — Neeta D’Souza, Mumbai BMS is an excellent programme for a career in business management. The programme provides an excellent foundation for MBA/MMS studies which will improve/enhance your prospects in the corporate sector. The BMS entrance exams are usually held around May. A Plus Two average of at least 50 percent is the minimum eligibility requirement. I’m a software engineer working in the telecom industry. I want to pursue further studies to improve my prospects. Please advise. — Manish Ahuja, New Delhi You’ll first have to decide if you want to press on for a Masters degree in a technical or managerial discipline. For an M.Tech, you’ll need to clear GATE with a high score to secure admission into premium institutions such as the IITs, BITS-Pilani, and IISc. Alternatively, if you want to sign up for an MBA programme, you’ll need a high CAT or GMAT score to qualify for admission into the IIMs, XLRI and other prominent B-schools. I recommend you apply for admission into an      M.Tech degree right away since you can always sign up for an MBA programme later in your career. I’ll be graduating in science this year. But, I want to sign up for a bachelor’s degree in library and information science (BLISC). What are my prospects in this field? — Nalini Shah, Ahmedabad A BLISC degree will qualify you for several careers. You can work in…

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Students who study abroad have higher levels of belief in their abilities to perform difficult tasks and cope with adversity, according to new research. A study of 221 students at Leuphana University  of Luneburg in Germany, found that students who had been abroad had higher levels of self-efficacy than those who remained on campus. The paper, International Experience Makes a Difference: Effects of Studying Abroad on Students’ Self-efficacy, also found that those who studied abroad tended to meet with more social contacts each week and that these contacts enhanced the development of their self-efficacy.  Students with higher levels of self-efficacy tend to have a more “laid-back” view concerning confrontation with a new culture and were less likely to view it as a “threatening challenge”. This could be because a high sense of self-efficacy supports students to overcome challenges more easily or that individuals with a high sense of self-efficacy might evaluate the challenge of a new culture as less problematic, the paper said. However, the paper found that the effect of sojourning on self-efficacy, “even though significant, is rather small”, suggesting there may be other factors at play. It added that a possible rise in self-efficacy is unlikely to become a “crucial reason” for students studying abroad but is a “potentially useful side effect”. A survey of 1,588 UK-domiciled undergraduates, conducted for the British Council and the UK Higher Education International Unit in 2015, also found that 90 percent of mobile students reported improved personal development, including increased independence, self-confidence and intercultural understanding.

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Academics have spoken out about the risks that Brexit poses to university-business collaboration with the potential loss of research-dependent companies to other countries, reduced access to European funding and falling out of business networks being top concerns. Links between UK universities and European firms received a boost in early February after the announcement that Novo Nordisk, the Danish pharmaceutical giant, was investing £115 million (Rs.966 crore) in a new research centre at Oxford University despite the prospect of Brexit. However, reports have suggested that major companies important to the strength of some sectors of British industry, and others that have strong ties with universities, are reconsidering their presence in the country. According to industry insiders, among firms carefully considering their future is Airbus, which has a base in Filton, near Bristol, in the south-west aerospace cluster. Airbus is reportedly under pressure to move its operations to other European countries because of the UK leaving the European Union. Likewise, Nissan, the car-maker, said in January it will review the case for any future investment in the UK once the terms of departure from the EU become clear, despite private reassurances on trade from the government.  David Docherty, chief executive of the National Centre for Universities and Business, says that it’s “completely uncharted territory” if major companies such as Airbus were to leave the UK but that universities are “thinking through the challenges” this would present. “No one is complacent about this. These are significant challenges and we clearly need this to be a top priority for the government,” says Docherty. Nishan Canagarajah, Bristol’s pro vice chancellor for research and enterprise, told Times Higher Education he got the impression that there isn’t a “real risk” that Airbus will leave the UK. But he adds that it’s not yet clear exactly how their relationship will pan out in the future.“Clearly (Airbus) are concerned and they cannot say for definite what their plans are because that depends on what the government decides to do. So far, the impression we are getting is that they will continue to engage with us, but the level of activity is difficult to predict,” he says. Jonathan Knight, pro vice chancellor for research at the University of Bath, says funding is “extremely important” and without it “research would suffer enormously”. But he says universities are not expecting all this research funding to be lost as they hope they will be able to establish other funding streams that can, at least to a certain extent, replace it. “However, believing that we can replace relationships that we may have in Europe with similar relationships elsewhere in the world is naive,” he adds.

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Everyone knows nurturing brainboxes is good for an economy. In Thailand, school reformers have an extra incentive: to narrow differences between rich people in cities and their poorer rural cousins, which have led to a decade of political tension and occasional eruptions of violence. As in India, for decades teaching has favoured urban children whose parents can afford to send them to cram schools or to study abroad.  The dangerous social divide is all the more reason to worry about Thailand’s poor rating in an educational league table published in December. Thailand limped into the bottom quarter of 70 countries whose pupils participated in the maths, reading and science tests organised under the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Its scores have deteriorated since a previous assessment in 2012, when researchers found that almost one-third of the country’s 15-year-olds were “functionally illiterate”, with half studying in rural schools. Thailand’s dismal performance isn’t dramatically out of step with countries of similar incomes. But it’s strange, given its unusually generous spending on education, which in a few years has hoovered up more than a quarter of the budget. Rote learning is common. There’s a shortage of maths and science teachers, but a surfeit of physical-education instructors. Many head teachers lack the authority to hire or fire their own staff. Classrooms are stern and bullying teachers numerous.  A big problem, argues Dilaka Lathapipat of the World Bank, is that Thailand spends too much money propping up small schools, where teaching is poorest. Almost half of Thai schools have fewer than 120 students, and most of those have less than one teacher per class.  Prayuth Chan-ocha, Thailand’s prime minister and the leader of its military junta, says school reform is urgently needed. But some of his goals are aimed more at boosting his and the monarchy’s prestige than making children smarter. Soon after taking power in a coup in 2014, Prayuth grumbled that few Thai children could cite the achievements of long-dead kings. He ordered schools to display a list he drew up of 12 ‘Thai values’, including obedience to elders, “correctly” understanding democracy and loyalty to the monarch. Insiders say some officials are working on better approaches. Last June, the government restarted a long-stalled plan to merge small schools; authorities say they hope to subsume over 10,000 schools in four years. Analysts worry that the junta’s effort to re-centralise government will deprive good schools of independence. But they also hope it will eventually allow reformers to force an ossified education system to adopt best international practices. There’s talk of education reform in a vague 20-year plan which the junta has promised to bequeath to the nation, and which future elected governments will be constitutionally bound to follow. Better hope that the army sets only its sanest policies in stone.

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More than 250 million children in developing countries are not in school. Those who do attend classes often fail to learn anything. According to a study of seven African countries, primary-school pupils receive less than two-and-a-half hours of teaching each day; teachers are absent from class about half the time. Even when they do show up, theirs is a Potemkin pedagogy, lecturing to nonplussed pupils. Only about a quarter of secondary-school pupils in poor countries would reach the basic level of attainment in standardised international tests. Into this void have stepped low-cost private budget schools. For a few dollars each month, they give parents an alternative to public education. Such schools are common — about one million of them are scattered across developing countries (there are an estimated 300,000 in India) — but until recently this has been a chaotic cottage industry of tiny, unregulated providers. Only now are private chains emerging, offering the promise of innovative education at scale. The prospect of change ought to be embraced. Instead, it’s being challenged. One chain in particular has attracted stiff opposition. Since it opened its first branch in 2009, Bridge International Academies has expanded to 520 schools across Kenya, Uganda, Liberia, Nigeria and India. To keep costs low, the firm uses one of three standard templates to build its schools; it makes its uniforms, textbooks and furniture in-house. To keep standards high, its teachers read from scripted lessons on a tablet computer. Remote teams use data from these devices and pupils’ test scores to monitor the quality of teachers. Investors include Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and the development-finance arms of the British and American governments. Bridge continues to open new schools. But its overall pupil numbers are below their peak. This is a result of roadblocks in its two biggest markets, Kenya and Uganda. Teachers’ unions there criticise Bridge for often hiring unlicensed teachers; they also argue that the chain funnels money away from public education.  Such concerns stretch beyond East Africa. Education International, a global group of teachers’ unions, accuses the firm of “robbing students of a good education”. But worries about private education providers in poor countries are either overblown or solvable. One fear is they could end up replacing a public monopoly over education with a private one. But governments have plenty of ways to foster competition. They could introduce school vouchers or conditional cash transfers for parents to spend on eligible schools. Liberia is running a randomised controlled trial in which eight different private operators run publicly funded schools. Another worry is that companies have an incentive to flout sensible regulations in their desire to gain scale. The answer is for policymakers to strengthen the institutions which monitor educational performance. Better school inspectors and measures that identify which schools are improving academic outcomes would be a boon in any case. Developing countries are estimated to spend 2 percent of GDP a year on education which has no discernible effect in terms of learning outcomes. All the while,…

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With Chinese academics explicitly banned from talking about civil rights and press freedom, university campuses may seem unlikely places for murmurs of political dissent. However, despite efforts to crush any appraisal of China’s human rights record on campus, scholars are still finding ways to foster “creative dissent” among their students and to exert a progressive influence on the Communist party-state, claims a research study. As part of a study by two researchers from the University of Macau, 26 academics and ten students at a “typical” provincial Chinese university were interviewed about teaching and researching in an environment where state surveillance and diktats from Beijing exert considerable pressure on their day-to-day working lives. For instance, academics are officially banned from discussing seven taboo subjects, outlined in a party memo of August 2013, which include civil society, legal independence and the historic wrongdoings of the Communist Party, according to the paper, titled Professors as Intellectuals in China: Political Identities and Roles in a Provincial University, published recently in the China Quarterly journal. Instead, lecturers are encouraged to transmit “positive energy” about China to their students — a phrase popularised by President Xi Jinping, who has cracked down on liberal thought since taking office in 2012. While few of the academics interviewed were able to take an overtly critical stance towards China, many confessed they have made efforts to broach sensitive subjects with students and to encourage them to think for themselves about these issues. “One professor suggested that a way to do this is to put arguments and counter-arguments on the table and ask students to judge for themselves,” says the paper, written by Zhidong Hao, professor of sociology at Macau, and Zhengyang Guo, a Ph D student at Macau who is also a lecturer at Shanxi University in north-west China. “This interviewee believes it’s not necessary to tell students what the professor thinks — students know how to judge (for themselves),” it adds. Another professor explained that if a topic was deemed too sensitive to tackle, he would simply touch on it and ask students to think further. “It is unnecessary to challenge the system — as long as one gets students to think, that is good enough,” says the interviewee, illustrating an approach “typical of a non-establishment/professional attitude” in which academics are “in the establishment, but not agreeing with its ideology; not openly challenging the ideology, but approaching it from a… professional point of view”. Described as a form of “obedient autonomy”, this type of resistance shows that many professors are “doing as much as they can under current conditions”, the paper says.

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The Netherlands’ Eindhoven University of Technology has topped a list of universities which have co-authored maximum papers with the world’s most innovative organisations. The Dutch institution published 1,316 papers with the Top 25 companies that feature in Clarivate Analytics’ list of the Top 100 Global Innovators — almost a quarter more than Harvard University, which is ranked second in the table. But Harvard comes out ahead on the citation impact of these papers, with a score of 3.71 (compared with a world average of 1.0).The US dominates the Clarivate Analytics Table, which features 14 universities. The Netherlands has four universities, Japan has two, and France, England, mainland China, Canada and Belgium have one each in the table. Several of the institutions are located near or have links with companies in the innovations list. For example, the Dutch technology company Philips was founded in Eindhoven in 1891 (Eindhoven University of Technology); Sony and Hitachi are based in Tokyo (University of Tokyo); 3M is headquartered in Minnesota (University of Minnesota); Dow Chemical is based in Michigan (University of Michigan); and Thales Group is situated on the outskirts of Paris (University Paris-Saclay). The ranking is based on the papers featured in Clarivate Analytics’ (formerly Thomson Reuters Intellectual Property & Science) Web of Science database between 1980 and the present day. The citation impact is calculated by dividing the actual number of cited papers by the expected citation rate for documents of the same type, year of publication and subject area. The Top 100 Global Innovators list was produced by analysing patent and citation data in terms of volume, success, globalisation and influence. (Excerpted and adapted from The Economist and Times Higher Education)

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A bad attitude is like a flat tyre, if you don’t change it you’ll never go anywhere — Author Unknown The title of this essay, taken from a coffee mug says it all, “Attitude is Everything”. All coaches have witnessed the ascent of minimally talented athletes and sportspersons who work hard to overcome inherent lack of talent. Conversely, most of us have also witnessed the downfall of sportspersons gifted with an abundance of physical talent, who never achieve any significant success because of what is popularly described as ‘bad attitude’.  What are the causes of bad or non-productive attitudes? Are they rooted in choices made by sportspersons or are they determined by extraneous forces impacting athletes? Jewish psychiatrist and a holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl would surely attribute such attitudes to ‘choice’. During his prolonged detention in Nazi concentration camps, his family was murdered, he was forced to sleep hungry and naked on bare concrete floors and subjected to extreme physical, mental and emotional torture. Yet during this time, he awoke to the realisation that everything could be taken from him except his freedom to choose his response to his captors’ actions. He describes this as the ultimate freedom. Attitudes — positive or negative — are choices. If you are a coach who cannot accept athletes with ‘bad attitude’ into your programme, you need read no further. However, if you are like most school coaches committed to nurturing and developing youth with good and bad attitudes, we need to understand what leads sportspersons to slip into self-destructive behaviour. To understand the factors and circumstances that prompt promising sportspersons to go bad, bear in mind that everyone’s behaviour makes sense to them. So we must try to view things from their perspective.  Most often, athletes slip into bad attitudes because they feel they can’t learn anything from their coach. This may be because the coach lacks knowledge of the game, the athlete himself is ignorant or there’s lack of mutual respect. Sportspeople with bad attitude find it very difficult to admit they have serious flaws in their game which need correcting. And bad attitude is usually a cover for low self-esteem. Therefore, until the athlete’s self-esteem has been raised, self-destructive attitude won’t change. This is how athletes protect their fragile concepts of self. I have witnessed such negative attitudes when coaching basketball players who are good shot makers, but flunk turn-the-over repeatedly. Negative, self-destructive behaviour can also result if athletes play for reasons other than love of the sport — parents want them to play, the thought of a possible scholarship or other financial gain or ambition to acquire status. This is the only group of athletes who may be better off if they quit sports altogether. Full and open communication helps such athletes come to grips with the real reasons for engaging in sports and whether they should continue to play.  The genre of potentially self-destructive sportspersons also includes players who have such deep-rooted fear of failure that they cannot and…

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1962: The War That Wasn’t by Shiv Kunal Verma ; Aleph Book Company, Rs.553, Pages XXI+425 This is a well-written book and charts in considerable detail, all the major battles of the 1962 conflict between India and China in both the north-east and western sectors. The narrative is riveting and supported by maps particularly of battles in the eastern sector, as well as reproductions of photographs of many important personalities and events associated with the conflict culled from multiple sources. They add heft and immediacy to the book that are lacking in most historical texts. To recreate in detail the accounts of battle, Verma certainly had access to personal reminiscences and he communicates the immediacy and tension of battle, as well as the bitterness of defeat with verve and feeling. For these reasons alone, this book must belong to the shelves of any student of India’s wars. The War that Wasn’t is not just an exercise in historical recreation but an attempt to put forward a particular point of view and explanation of events. And this is where it falters. The fact that the author wears his Army connections on his sleeve also means that this is a book that reflects a military mindset and thinking. Verma’s biases are often quite clear and of a piece with what many Army offices across generations since independence have largely thought of their politicians and leaders, in particular Jawaharlal Nehru, prime minister in 1962. And these biases seep through the pages at various points in the portraits that the author draws of Nehru and his supporting cast of incompetent minions on whose shoulders lies the blame for India’s defeat. To be fair, Verma does not spare the Army leadership either. He states while “Nehru, (Krishna) Menon and Bijji (Lt. Gen. B.K) Kaul become the focal points at whose feet India’s defeat was laid… (i)n a way, this acted as a smokescreen and most of the culprits responsible for the debacle got away scot-free. None of the senior officers were censured or brought to book,” and he isn’t afraid to take names throughout the narrative.  The susceptibility of Indian Army officers as they climb the hierarchy to political pressures or to engage in politicking themselves, is well known. However, equally important to note is the reality that right from the beginning of their careers, they accept senior officers’ orders even if they are patently lacking in logic or fairness. This is seen as a matter of “maintaining discipline” — the core consideration that separates the Indian Army from bumbling civilians. Officers might make mistakes but the Army has its own ways of punishing such lapses. In truth, the Indian Army has a massive colonial hangover — it has failed to realise that it is supposed to uphold political values quite different from what obtained when many of India’s regiments or armed units were first raised. What follows is fetishization — of the vardi, the uniform, unit cohesion or esprit de corps — and machismo of following orders.…

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Dr. Kaivan Munshi is professor of economics at Cambridge University (UK) and a winner of the Infosys Prize 2016 for social sciences Networking is a relatively new buzzword increasingly being recognised as a prerequisite of success in business and industry. But your research studies seem to indicate it’s an ancient phenomenon. Please comment. Networks describe economic arrangements in which socially connected individuals interact with each other. This is distinct from the classical model of the market economy in which individuals and firms do not share social ties and do not create long-term relationships. Networks arise when markets function imperfectly. This is true of the traditional pre-market economy, as well as in many sectors of the modern market economy, particularly those undergoing rapid change. Thus, the motivation for networking is always the same, but the circumstances may be different. India’s ancient caste system is almost universally condemned for restricting, indeed blocking, upward mobility for several centuries, if not millennia. Yet your studies seem to suggest that it offers social protection to members in adverse circumstances. Although the discrimination, prejudice and exploitation associated with the hierarchical structure of the caste system are known to restrict mobility, there’s another aspect of this system which has received inadequate attention. It has to do with solidarity and internal cooperation within castes or jatis. There are approximately 4,000 castes in India and recent genetic evidence indicates that Indians have been marrying within their castes, almost without exception, for over 2,000 years. The resulting web of marriage ties has created networks of exceptional strength and scope within castes. These networks have been used for centuries to provide mutual insurance to their members in the face of major contingencies such as health and income shocks, and to support economic mobility. Castes have supported the migration of members from village to cities where they help them find jobs and have supported their transition into business. This role goes back to the colonial era and continues to this day. While caste networks may be very effective in supporting group mobility, it is important to also acknowledge that these networks can restrict the choices of individuals. My work has shown that caste can thus be mobility-enhancing or restricting, depending on the circumstances. You have conducted some research studies in Kenya. To what extent have caste and community networks contributed to the rise from modest occupations to the (under-appreciated) business success of the Indian community in Kenya? My research in Kenya was not on the expatriate Indian community. However, the same caste networks that are active in India have been transported overseas to countries like Kenya. Similarly, it’s arguable that caste and community networks are to a great extent prime factors behind the success of Indian communities in the UK, US and Europe. What’s your comment? Caste and community networks have certainly supported their members in the UK, US, and Europe. However, this support is restricted to particular occupations in which the networks can be effective — the dominance of the Patels from…

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The ugly slugfest between the promoters and professionals of the Bangalore-based blue-chip company Infosys Technologies Ltd (ITL, annual revenue: Rs.67,304 crore; headcount: 190,000) is reminiscent of the recent showdown in Tata Sons Ltd, the holding company of the Mumbai-based Tata Group (Rs.705,000 crore) in which the promoter family’s wily scion Ratan Tata, who found his successor Cyrus Mistry unwilling to suffer backseat driving, sent the latter packing after a four-year stint, in humiliating circumstances. Similarly, N.R. Narayan Murthy, S.D. Shibulal, Kris Gopalakrishnan and other promoters of ITL who succeeded each other as chief executives after Narayan Murthy without conspicuous success, are finding it hard to stomach the high-risk, big-game hunting style of Vishal Sikka, who was appointed managing director and chief executive of Infosys in June 2014.  At the heart of the face-off between the aged promoters and the energetic, reportedly rumbustious Sikka is the attempted transformation of ITL from a company which has cashed in on labour arbitrage, i.e, the huge hourly wage difference in the US and Western nations and India for engineers and IT professionals, into a full service transnational corporation. Although Murthy and the promoters aspired to transform the company into a major business consultancy multinational, ITL remains essentially an “IT coolie” company.  In a new era after the global financial crisis of 2008 and imminent protectionism in the US, Sikka is in a hurry to transform Infosys into a hi-tech business consultancy and solutions multinational. Having set himself the stiff target to boost ITL’s global revenue to $20 billion (Rs.133,276 crore) by 2020, the new CEO isn’t bothered about penny-pinching issues. Operating mainly out of Silicon Valley, USA he has not only convinced the board to pay him a Silicon Valley salary, he has also fired several nuisance value professionals with generous severance packages, which has shocked Murthy and other promoters of the company who pride themselves on their often mean-spirited frugality. For instance, a duly constituted Infosys-EducationWorld Young Achievers Award which involved an annual expenditure of Rs.5-6 lakh was abrogated by Murthy on the ground of “no bang for the buck”.  Sikka is right. It’s time for Infosys to shed its provincialism and start roughing it out with the big boys worldwide.    Proof of maturity As a rule, your over-burdened editor rarely has time for popular Bollywood cinema or its regional clones. With their unreal story lines, faux sets, unchecked violence, melodrama and stereotypical song-n-dance routines, Bollywood movies are an insult to anyone with intellectual pretensions. However, the fantastic box office success of Aamir Khan starrer Dangal, produced by the socially conscious actor, marks the long overdue coming-of-age of popular Indian cinema. The unprecedented (and rising) box office revenue of Rs.731 crore of this 141-minute movie has proved perhaps for the first time that it’s possible for an intelligently scripted film with a credible story line to succeed at the box office. It’s proof also of the growing maturity and sense of discrimination of the Indian public, which has been continuously infantalised by…

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In May 2016, the National Institution for Transforming India (NITI) Aayog, a premier think-tank of the Union government providing “directional and policy inputs”, proposed the establishment of the Atal Innovation Mission to set up 500 ‘tinkering labs’ in schools for classes VI-XII on a pilot basis. This is an excellent proposal which has the potential to transform education by introducing students to hands-on learning enabling deeper understanding of concepts through trial and error and do-it-yourself initiatives. Indeed, there’s growing acknowledgement in academia worldwide that true innovation is the outcome of grasping the fundamentals of science, math and technology. That’s why in 2013, former US President Barack Obama launched the Educate to Innovate programme to move American students from the middle to top rungs of global science and mathematics achievement over the next decade. The similar Atal Innovation Mission will spur prime minister Narendra Modi’s Make in India campaign. Essentially, tinkering labs provide students the opportunity to use tools and equipment, and work with mentors to understand STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) textbook concepts. Inevitably this learning-by-doing combination stimulates creativity. If India is to produce innovators, establishment of tinkering labs nationwide is imperative to promote creativity and scientific temper within the student community. For students trapped in classrooms and rote learning from textbooks, tinkering labs offer an enabling environment for developing design, adaptive learning and computational skills. In a nation and society fearful of damaging equipment and gadgetry, tinkering labs which encourage dis-assembly, redesign and reconstruction of equipment, products and machinery to improve them, are overdue. They create conditions wherein failure is celebrated as part of learning in the process of innovation. Persistence and iterating with prototypes until they succeed are encouraged as an essential rite of passage to innovation. In such enabling environments, students are stimulated to address socio-economic and commercial challenges with empathy, insight, ideation and teamwork.  For example, students of the Cathedral and John Connon School, Mumbai designed and prototyped a sanitary napkin dispenser and profiled the project for other schools/colleges with an invitation to adopt it. In the process, they acquired valuable entrepreneurial, design, manufacturing and marketing experience. Other socially relevant projects such as designing enabling gadgets and services for the physically challenged, and a canteen queues organiser for streamlining food distribution have been designed by students of the S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai. Similarly, students with access to tinkering labs established in progressive schools, have designed and prototyped revolutionary products for road safety, waste management, transportation and energy conservation which if successfully marketed, could save lives besides hundreds of crores of rupees and transform Indian industry. Tinkering labs installed in innovation hubs offer the advantage of accessibility to students of under-equipped government and private budget schools as also the public. They should be set up by India Inc and state governments across the country to enable, encourage and invite the country’s 100 million upper primary, high school and higher secondary students to design, prototype and create products and services on a mass scale…

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Perhaps the only people who aren’t aware that India’s rickety education system is slowly and inexorably sliding towards a deep abyss, are the netas and babus in the education ministries at the Centre and in the states. Year after year, the detailed Annual Status of Education Report of the globally-respected Mumbai-based Pratham Education Foundation laments that real learning outcomes — measured by objective standardised tests — of children in rural primaries, especially government schools, are falling. Ditto in secondary and higher education institutions in which little attention is paid to developing critical thinking, logic, analytical and problem-solving skills of students.  It’s common knowledge that the major pain point of the country’s education system is its 1.20 million government schools. Fortunately, the country is blessed with an estimated 320,000 private schools which dispense superior primary-secondary education to 40 percent of 260 million school-going children, and are the saving grace of the national education system. However, instead of focusing their full attention on raising rock-bottom teaching-learning standards in government schools, government educrats have enacted draconian laws to supervise and regulate private schools and higher education institutions.  The silver lining of this grim scenario is that despite numerous hurdles including extortionate licensing conditions, syllabus imposition, admissions interference, teacher salaries and tuition fees regulation, a growing tribe of young, highly-qualified and confident edupreneurs has entered the education sector with determination to develop the country’s abundant but grossly neglected human capital. The cover story in this spring issue, painstakingly researched and written by managing editor Summiya Yasmeen, highlights the achievements, plans and aspirations of 33 of the country’s most can-do and never-say-die young educationists — the list is illustrative not exhaustive — determined to raise K-12 (and higher education institutions) standards to global norms.  And in the equally researched special report feature, as usual at this time of year, we focus a lens on the Union budget to examine why successive governments at the Centre and in the states refuse to invest in developing the most important resource of all — human capital. Our research indicates that the Union government’s establishment expenditure, which includes the inflated salaries and lavish perquisites of the neta-babu brotherhood, is so high there’s precious little left for social sector — education and health — spending. But unlike other media and/or smug academics in their ivory towers busy with much ado about nothing, we have gone a few steps further and proposed ways and means to rearrange the Centre’s finances and priorities to mobilise resources for human capital development sine qua non. I look forward to expert opinion and responses on the feasibility of our proposals to garner an additional Rs.4.98 lakh crore for human capital development.

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There’s a new awareness among sports organisations and coaches about the importance of balanced nutrition to improve track and field performance – Odeal D’Souza ONCE THE MONOPOLY of the well-heeled amateurs, the increasingly professionalised sports industry is a booming $700 billion (Rs.46 lakh crore) business worldwide. Suddenly, physical fitness and well-being is the mantra of 21st century life, and a new consumer-driven sports culture has captured the popular imagination in post-liberalisation India. With incremental corporate sponsorships of televised new sports tournaments such as the Hockey India League, Pro Kabaddi League, Indian Super League (football), Indian Badminton League, and the Indian Premier League (cricket), the demand for sports professionals is zooming. As a result, a plethora of new career options has emerged in sports tourism, goods and apparel manufacturing and retail, sports management, media, medicine, sponsorships and sports nutrition, among others. Significantly, there’s new awareness within the communities of sports organisations and coaches of the importance of balanced nutrition to improve and enhance track and field performance. Consequently sports nutrition has developed into a full-fledged career option. Sports nutritionists aid and advise athletes to adopt 360-degree dietary regimes to boost fitness levels aligned with high intensity training programmes. They develop long-term food charts for balancing diets with the essential nutrition-friendly minerals, vitamins, carbohydrates, proteins, fluids and fats.  STUDY PROGRAMMES Although a higher secondary school certificate is sufficient qualification for admission into a sports nutrition diploma programme, a bachelor’s degree in nutrition, dietetics, food and biotechnology is advisable to provide a strong theoretical foundation for this vocation. Among the better known higher education institutions which provide specialised study programmes in sports nutrition are the Nirmala Niketan College of Home Science, Mumbai, which offers a Masters in sports nutrition for graduates in dietetics and FSN group (fitness, sports & nutrition) and the Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism, which offers diploma courses in sports nutrition through distance learning. The Institute of Sports Science and Technology, Pune also offers a distance diploma in sports and exercise nutrition for higher secondary students. Other study options include a postgrad diploma in nutrigenomics (scientific study involving nutrition and genetics) of the Sardar Patel University, Anand (Gujarat), and top-up nutrition courses and Ph D programmes of the National Institute of Nutrition, Hyderabad.  PAY AND PROGRESSION  Sports nutritionists are employed by the Central and state governments and local, regional, national and international sports academies, sports organisations, food corporations, fitness clubs, gymnasia, wellness centres, all the way upto physicians engaged in bariatric and cardiac surgery. Start up salaries vary between Rs.15,000-25,000 per month while postgrads can expect Rs.25,000-45,000. For nutritionists employed by leading sports academies and federations, Rs.50,000-100,000 per month is normative. Another lucrative option in the long run is to start an independent practice. PROFESSIONAL PROFILE “Even if somewhat belatedly, sports organisations and institutes in India are becoming well aware of the critical role of nutritionists in enhancing and optimising the performance of sportspersons,” says Ryan Fernando, a well-known Bangalore-based sports nutritionist and co-founder of R.D Nutrition Pvt. Ltd…

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Ahmedabad-based hi-tech innovator Harshwardhan Zala (14) is the latest teen wonder to join the growing tribe of teenage social entrepreneurs countrywide. Founder-CEO of Aerobotics7 Tech Solutions Llp (estb.2016), this young prodigy recently inked a Rs.5 crore memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Gujarat government’s department of science and technology. The MoU was signed at the 8th Vibrant Gujarat Global Summit 2017 staged in the textiles city between January 9-13. Harshwardhan’s Eagle A7 smart drone is designed to detect and defuse landmines in hostile terrain.  A class X student of the state board-affiliated Sarvodaya Vidhyamandir in suburban Ahmedabad, Harshwardhan Zala started frequenting a local cyber cafe to learn English — taught in state-board schools only after class VI — on the Internet. “Once I learned English, it was easy to pick up programming and coding skills by accessing open source technology software,” says Harshwardhan, the only child of Pradyumansinh Zala, an accountant, and homemaker Nishaba. Thus far, this young inventor has designed and built 16 robots and eight drones. According to this budding tech whiz, the Eagle A7 smart drone which attracted huge interest at the summit, is equipped with infrared sensors, a thermal meter, a 21-megapixel camera and a bomb. “It is designed to generate oscillatory waves covering an eight sq. metre area while flying two feet above the ground. The waves help detect landmines, while a controlling base station using exact location data transmitted by the drone, drops the bomb on the landmine, exploding it,” he explains. A television documentary depicting Indian soldiers suffering grave injuries from landmines prompted Harshwardhan to conceptualise the Eagle A7 in August 2015.  Presently focused on preparing for his class X board examinations scheduled for this month, Harshwardhan has received an invitationfrom the globally top-ranked Massachussetts Institute of Technology, Boston, to enroll in its electronics engineering degree and research programmes. “Right now, my top priority is to raise funding for my company to take forward my mission of solving the world’s toughest challenges through smart solutions,” says this inspiring teen and walking-talking advertisement of the power of self-learning. Paromita Sengupta (Bangalore)

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A regressive and misogynist sociology textbook prescribed by the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MBSHSE) for class XII students of its 28,000 affiliated schools statewide, has precipitated a storm of protest from educators and women’s rights activists. “If a girl is ugly and handicapped, then it becomes very difficult for her to get married. To marry such girls, the bridegroom and his family demand additional dowry. Parents of such girls become helpless and pay dowry as per the demands of the bridegroom and his family. It leads to a rise in the practice of dowry system,” says the sociology textbook which purports to condemn the dowry system. Questioned by media in Mumbai on February 2 about this regressive content having been cleared by the MBSHSE, Gangadhar Mamane, chairman of the board, promised to discuss the issue with the board and order a thorough investigation.    Gujarat Corporal punishment row A video clip caught by CCTV camera of a private school showing a teacher in Gujarat’s Amreli district brutally assaulting higher secondary (class XII) students has gone viral statewide, and has resurrected the issue of rampant corporal punishment in K-12 education. Addressing the media in Ahmedabad on February 4, Mansukh Ramani, the school’s principal said he had warned the teacher that corporal punishment is illegal following earlier complaints against him. “We had requested the teacher — Rajesh Chavda — to control unruly students by counselling them. Clearly, he hasn’t heeded the advice. Therefore, we have suspended him,” said Ramani. Taking note of the incident, Bhupendrasinh Chudasama, the state’s education minister assured parents of the assaulted children that stringent and exemplary action would be initiated against the teacher. “We will set a precedent so no teacher ever dares to assault students again,” he said.   West Bengal IIT-Kharagpur’s new school India’s premier Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur (IIT-Kgp, estb.1951), which was the first IIT to also offer business management, medical technology and law education study programmes on its campus, is set to launch a first-of-its-kind Subir Chowdhury School of Quality & Reliability offering quality assessment and testing study programmes. Announcing IIT-Kgp’s new school, named after quality management guru Subir Chowdhury following an endowment of Rs.6.6 crore from the Michigan (USA)-based Subir and Malini Chowdhury Foundation, Dr. P.P. Chakrabarti, director of IIT-Kgp, informed the media on February 10 that the interdisciplinary school will offer students new academic courses, research facilities and mission-mode programmes on quality assessment and reliability which will bring about social transformation.   Rajasthan Imminent early exams row Despite the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, prohibiting examinations (or detention) of children until class VIII, the BJP government of Rajasthan has introduced a compulsory common class V final examination for government schools statewide from the start of the new academic year 2017-18. Rajasthan’s education minister Vasudev Devnani announced this decision to the media in Ajmer on February 13.  As in the case of the class VIII board examination made mandatory last year, if…

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“Despite all the challenges we face, I remain convinced that yes, the future is female.” Hillary Clinton, former US secretary of state, urging women to “step up and speak out” at the MAKERS women’s leadership conference (Time, February 20) “The Budget, along with the finance minister’s speech, indicates yet again that the NDA government has little interest in social policy. More than lack of funds, what is striking is the lack of creative ideas and initiatives in health, education and social security.” Jean Dreze, development economist, on the Union Budget 2017-18 presented to Parliament on February 1 (Outlook, February 13) “Demonetisation is a disastrous and unilateral decision whose deleterious effects will linger till 2018-19 and restrict growth at 6 percent, and the second and the third order issues such as joblessness and economic slowdown would start rearing its head in the coming months.” P. Chidambaram, former finance minister, on the impact of demonetisation on the Indian economy (The Hindu, February 26) “Indians who flock to the US and for whom the Green Card is the brightest dowry and greatest asset, do not go there to help out the US in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. They go purely and simply because employment prospects are so bleak at home.” Sunanda K. Datta-Ray, senior journalist and columnist, on the controversy over issue of H1-B visas to Indians (Deccan Chronicle, February 28) “In India, we need to reverse the pendulum that has swung fully to the science from the art side in medicine. Many medical educationists have argued that art and literature should have a place in the medical curriculum because art helps doctors to understand experiences, illness and human values and that art itself can fulfill a therapeutic role.” Anand Krishnan, AIIMS professor, on ‘Why doctors need humanities’ (Times of India, February 28)

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The political impasse in tamil Nadu following the sudden demise of former chief minister and All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) supremo J. Jayalalithaa on December 5, 2016, came to a dramatic end when former public works and highways minister Edappadi K. Palanisamy was sworn in as the chief minister on February 16. Two days later, Palanisamy won a vote of confidence in the state legislative assembly. Palanisamy was sworn in after a tense ten-day power struggle in the ruling AIADMK between party general secretary V.K. Sasikala and caretaker chief minister O. Paneerselvam. However, Sasikala’s dream of becoming chief minister was rudely shattered on February 14 when she was convicted by the Supreme Court in the well-publicised Rs.66-crore disproportionate assets case, and sentenced to four years imprisonment. Nevertheless, she brilliantly managed to stage the appointment of Palanisamy as her proxy chief minister and her nephew T.T.V. Dinakaran as the all-powerful deputy general secretary of AIADMK.  To counter simmering anger and popular resentment  against Sasikala and her proxy chief minister, the new AIADMK government has accelerated implementation of several of the late Jayalalithaa’s populist schemes. In particular, two Bills passed by the Tamil Nadu assembly on February 1 relating to the Supreme Court-mandated National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) for admission into undergraduate and postgraduate medical and dental colleges, have been sent to President Pranab Mukherjee for approval.  The two Bills — the Tamil Nadu Admission to MBBS and Dental Courses Bill, 2017, and the Tamil Nadu Admission to Postgraduate Courses in Medicine and Dentistry Bill, 2017 — exempt state board school-leavers from writing NEET scheduled for May 7 this year. If approved by Mukherjee, the extant system of admitting students into the state’s 22 government, 13 private and ten deemed medical colleges/universities on the basis of their Plus Two scores will remain intact. In postgraduate programmes, preference will be given to students with a year’s service in rural Tamil Nadu. Buoyed by the success of amending the Central Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act (1960) which exempts the annual jallikattu (bull running) sports jamboree from the ambit of the Act, the Palanisamy-led AIADMK government is determined to permanently exempt aspiring medicos in the state from writing NEET. Ever since the historic Supreme Court judgement of April 11, 2016, mandated NEET as the sole entrance exam for admission into all medical colleges countrywide, the AIADMK government and other political parties in the state have stridently protested it. There’s a political consensus that the apex court’s judgement dilutes the autonomy of the state government as it contradicts the Tamil Nadu Admission in Professional Educational Institutions Act, 2006, which abolished common entrance examinations for all professional undergraduate courses to ensure students from rural areas equal opportunity to enter institutions of professional education, i.e. medical, engineering, business management colleges/universities. Since 2007, Tamil Nadu has been admitting students into undergraduate medical and dental courses based on their class XII marksheets.  According to medical practitioners and educationists in Chennai, the hasty enforcement of NEET has placed…

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In her second consecutive term as chief minister of West Bengal (pop.91 million) after the Trinamool Congress (TMC) party routed the CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist)-led Left Front government which ruled the state for 34 years (1977-2011) uninterruptedly, chief minister Mamata Banerjee has belatedly focused her attention on public health and education, the two most neglected sectors of West Bengal’s economy. Following a stream of reports of children dying of infectious diseases in government hospitals, on February 22 she announced the establishment of a State Health Regulatory Commission to be headed by a retired high court judge, as a watchdog of the state’s languishing healthcare system.  Meanwhile, on February 13 education minister Partha Chatterjee announced that the recruitment of 72,000 teachers for the state’s 92,000 government schools will be completed by March 15. However, this announcement has been greeted — as last year, when it was first made — with a storm of protests. Trained teachers with B.Ed degrees who failed the state’s TET (Teacher Eligibility Test) have challenged the selection of new primary teachers. They contend that some of the newly recruited teachers who have cleared the state government TET are ineligible for appointment under NCTE (National Council for Teacher Education) rules, as they haven’t passed the B.Ed exam. Moreover, they allege that TET papers were selectively leaked to TMC-favoured candidates. Teacher recruitment and deployment in government schools is increasingly becoming a big issue in West Bengal which suffered heavy de-industrialisation during 34 years of Left Front rule, when CPM-affiliated trade unions and extortionist party cadres triggered a flight of capital out of the state. Although by all accounts the Left Front government was able to benefit the state’s agriculture sector, youth unemployment is rampant in urban West Bengal. Therefore, government teachers’ jobs are highly prized by the lower middle and middle middle class, while upper middle class educated youth are fleeing West Bengal in droves, a phenomenon the TMC government, which also scared India Inc with the closure of a Tata Motors factory in Singur in 2008 (it has since moved to Gujarat), hasn’t been able to reverse. Moreover, in 2011, the TMC government denied an application made by the Bangalore-based IT major Infosys Technologies Ltd to establish an SEZ (Special Export Zone) in West Bengal. Nevertheless, the process of recruiting teachers for government primaries has been completed. But the prospect of recruiting 32,000 teachers for the government’s upper primary, secondary and higher secondary schools in the near future is bleak because more than 15 writ petitions alleging examination and testing irregularities including leakage of TET test papers, are pending in the Calcutta high court. According to the state’s School Services Commission, which conducts TET and appoints government teachers, 121,000 candidates were interviewed for 15,000 upper primary vacancies, 143,000 wrote TET for the 10,500 secondary school vacancies and 153,000 wrote the higher secondary TET for 7,000 positions. Results of the secondary and higher secondary TETs are stayed by the courts for alleged testing irregularities, whereas the interview process…

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There’s a growing sense of uneasiness within the fast-expanding middle class population of the hi-tech city of Bangalore aka Bengaluru (pop. 11 million) — for whom sending their children to government schools is unthinkable — about the Congress state government’s casualness in clearing 602 pending applications from private education providers to promote new schools. In a notification dated January 20, 2016 with an October 31 deadline last year (extended to January 31, 2017), the state government had invited applications from private trusts, societies and other education providers to establish greenfield primary-secondary schools in the city whose population has more than doubled from 5 million in 2000. With queues before Bangalore’s 4,717 private schools in the admissions season (December-February) growing longer by the year, and tales of huge under-the-table capitation fees being demanded by managements of the garden city’s famous mid-price convent and missionary schools, the excellent response to the state government’s invitation to private education providers for promoting new schools was good news to the upwardly mobile middle class parents community, ready and willing to pay top dollar for globally benchmarked early childhood and K-12 education. Despite this excellent response the state government seems in no hurry to issue licenses for greenfield schools. “Among the 602 applications that we have received, we will give priority to those seeking permission to expand existing schools by way of playgrounds, nursery sections or expansion of primary to secondary school education and from preschool to higher primary education,” says Ajay Seth, principal secretary (primary and secondary education) of the Karnataka government. According to Tanveer Sait, the primary and secondary education minister, permitting 602 new schools in Bangalore and its suburbs would create traffic chaos in a city already with a national reputation for its appalling road traffic crawl and congestion. “Initially, we will permit expansion of capacity in the city’s 4,717 existing schools to enable them to become complaint with the norms of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009. Thereafter, by examining population density through our geographic information system and pinpointing educationally under-served areas of the city, we will permit new schools in specific locations taking care to maintain a distance of at least 1 km between all schools in Bangalore. We have also received 1,690 applications from private educators to promote new schools in cities and towns other than Bangalore. They will be given priority,” says Sait. However the state government’s casual approach to clearing pending applications for new schools is attracting criticism. “The scramble for admissions into top-ranked schools in the southern, western and now northern corners of the city where the IT industry is booming, is intense. People living in these areas who fall into the high disposable income groups, are well-travelled and demand globally benchmarked schooling for their children. It is the responsibility of the state government to meet the education needs of citizens. It should therefore give permission to set up private schools with minimum infrastructure facilities in these zones at the earliest,”…

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Friends-turned-foes — the shiv Sena and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — are likely to become friends again to rule Mumbai, the country’s commercial capital. In the local election to elect corporators to the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) — the country’s richest municipal government which has an annual budget of Rs.37,052 crore (2016-17) — held on February 21, the Sena won 84 seats closely followed by BJP (82), both short of the magic 114 seats required for an absolute majority. The Congress which has won 31 seats hates the BJP and Shiv Sena with equal vehemence and vice versa. Therefore, a remarriage of the BJP-Shiv Sena which has ruled MCGM since 1997 is very much on the cards.  However, irrespective of the party or alliance that rules MCGM, not much is likely to change for the 383,485 students in municipal schools whose education has never been of much concern to civic governments. Although the pre-election manifestos of the Sena and BJP promised vastly improved infrastructure and quality education for the 1,230 municipal schools, a study of MCGM’s annual education expenditure during the past five years (2012-17) indicates it spent less than 45 percent of the budgeted amounts.  Of the 1,230 schools owned and/or managed by MCGM, 1,082 are primaries (classes I-VIII) and 148 are secondary (class IX-X) institutions. During the election campaign, Shiv Sena candidates highlighted the party’s education initiatives as its great achievement — especially its digital initiative of providing 22,799 computer tablets to class VIII students, establishing 480 virtual classrooms and setting up 200 computer laboratories. However, education activists in the metropolis point out that most of these initiatives are yet to take off due to implementation bottlenecks. For instance, the tablets have been lying unused due to lack of electrical charging points in MCGM schools, while the hardware for computer laboratories announced in the 2015-16 and 2016-17 budgets is still at the tendering stage.  “The Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, clearly requires all schools to meet certain infrastructure, teaching, administrative and supervisory norms within three years of the Act coming into force on April 1, 2010. But in the absence of accountability, none of these norms have been fully met in MCGM schools. Municipal officials are complacent because timely and effectual supervision is rare. When issues are raised, everyone indulges in the blame game,” says Nilendu Kumar, development officer, western region, Child Rights and You, the well-known NGO.  Clearly, lack of money for education isn’t a constraint. The cash-rich MCGM’s budgeted amount per student in 2016-17 was Rs.59,115 — perhaps the highest local government allocation countrywide. However, over the years, utilisation of budgeted funds has been dipping. According to The State of Municipal Education in Mumbai released in December 2016 by the Praja Foundation, a voluntary organisation which provides information on civic issues, of the Rs.2,630 crore budget for 2015-16, only 68 percent (Rs.1,779 crore) was utilised whereas in the previous year 73 percent was utilised. It’s hardly a secret…

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The prolonged see-saw courtroom battles between private schools, NGOs and the state government of Delhi over the issue of the admission process of children into nurseries of composite K-12 schools may well see closure soon.  On February 14 and again on 27, the Delhi high court refused to vacate its stay order on a January 7 state government notification. The notification decreed admission criteria for 298 schools constructed on land provided at concessional rates by the Delhi Development Authority, leaving the other 15,800 composite schools in the national capital to admit nursery children according to their own criteria. The 298 schools were directed to give priority to neighbourhood children residing within a circumference of 1 km. If seats remained vacant, the catchment area could be expanded to 3 and 6 km. The notification also directed the schools to give weightage to siblings of children already admitted.  Even as the appeal of the state government is pending, all eyes are now on a separate petition scheduled to be heard by the apex court where the petitioner — Social Jurist, the well-known NGO — has prayed for inclusion of preschool education under the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009. If the apex court decides in favour of the petitioner, then admissions will be through draw of lots.  Inevitably, the root problem is a supply-demand imbalance of composite schools which also offer nursery/preschool education. According to the Delhi state education ministry, around 150,000 children compete for 125,000 nursery seats every year with top-ranked composite schools such as DPS, Shri Ram and Vasant Valley experiencing heavy demand and a rain of litigation annually from irate parents questioning their admission processes.  Therefore, the January 7 notification of the state government ordering preference for neighbourhood applications was duly challenged by schools, parents and activist Khagesh Jha of the Forum for Promotion of Quality Education for All, contending that the 1 km restriction is unreasonable. Admitting the petition on January 17, the Delhi high court stayed the notification, and on February 14, Justice Manmohan declined to vacate the stay order till final disposal of the petitions. The state government appealed against Justice Manmohan’s ruling before a two-judge bench of the court. On February 27, the bench refused to interfere with the order passed by Justice Manmohan.  While refusing to vacate the stay order of January 17 in his February 14 ruling, Justice Manmohan explained that the power to choose schools for their children vests with parents and not the state government. “The impugned notification dated 7th January completely takes away from private unaided schools the right to admit students and the right to lay down a fair, reasonable, transparent and non-exploitative procedure/criteria for admissions, leaving them with no say in their admissions whatsoever… This court is further of the prima facie view that restricting admissions to immediate neighbourhood of the school may result in restricting the growth and vision of the students. If students from all faiths, communities and different parts of…

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I read your cover story ‘Brewing revolt against control and command CBSE’ with shock and dismay (EW February). The brazenness with which the CBSE is passing circulars abridging the autonomy of affiliated private schools is a telling indicator of the intent of this pan-India examinations board to indirectly take over management control of private schools. I believe there is a hidden agenda of the BJP government in suddenly tightening its grip over private schools. The idea of granting full autonomy to private education institutions is anathema to the RSS, BJP’s ideological mentor, which wants to impose its own Hindu nationalist agenda on all schools including top-ranked private schools. By getting the CBSE to dictate terms of administration and management, it wants to ensure private schools fall in line.  This is very dangerous for the future of Indian school education and is sure to dumb down academic standards. The CBSE top management would do well to introspect on the disastrous consequences of excessive interference in affiliated private schools.  Manohar Shetty Mangalore Beneficient influence Thank you for hosting the excellent EW Early Childhood Education National Conference (EW February). EducationWorld has been, and is, a beneficient influence in the lives of the community of early childhood educators. Not only has it recognised the importance and value of quality early childhood education with passion and vigour, it has also placed this awareness on the national development agenda.  Samina Mahmood Bangalore   Drastic measures needed Read your Editorial ‘Gender crimes need intelligent solutions’ (EW February), I believe the number of gender crimes in India is shockingly high and increasing because there’s no fear of the law or social boycott in India. Our lawmakers should explore the possibility of punishments such as surgical or chemical castration of rape convicts, while heavy fines should be imposed for other sexual offences especially when victims are minors. There’s urgent need to launch a national awareness campaign through the media — print, e-media, internet, posters, advertisements — to educate the public about the vital importance of gender equality and respect for women. In addition, girl children and women should be trained in martial arts and self-defence techniques in all schools and colleges, and gender sensitisation classes should be compulsory for male children and their parents.  Mahesh Kapasi Delhi   Massive depredations I read the latest issue of EducationWorld with great interest. In particular, I enjoyed reading the review of Shashi Tharoor’s new book An Era of Darkness (EW February) which shatters the widely propagated myth of benign British rule in India for almost two centuries. Right through the book, Tharoor details the massive depredations of the Raj.  For instance, 8 percent of India’s GDP was transferred to Britain each year (p.25); only 4 percent of the ICS officers were Indians as late as 1930 (60); the British reneged on their promise to give self-rule to India at the end of World War I (89); Brig. Dyer, the butcher of Jallianwalla Bagh was exonerated by the House of Lords and retired…

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The fantastic series of events shaking Tamil Nadu (pop.78 million) beginning with the mysterious prolonged illness and death on December 5 of J. Jayalalithaa, a popular former film star, AIADMK supremo and three terms chief minister of this southern seaboard state alternatingly ruled by the AIADMK and DMK — political parties with utterly corrupt and incompetent leaders emanating from the make-believe world of Tamil pulp cinema for three decades — has captured the public imagination nationwide. This drama is indicative of the depths to which Indian democracy has plunged because of neglect of public education.  The plots and sub-plots in the scramble for political power in Tamil Nadu, which despite the foolish policy experiments of the AIADMK and DMK, has emerged as a hub of the textiles, automobiles and IT industries, would surely have defied the best efforts of script-writers of popular Indian cinema. Only nine months ago, the AIADMK of which Jayalalithaa has been the undisputed leader since 1991, was — against all expectations — swept to power in the state’s legislative election of 2016. This despite her conviction together with her close friend and adviser V.K. Sasikala and two of the latter’s relatives in a case of corruption — possessing wealth and assets disproportionate to known sources of income (s.13 (1) (c) of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988) — to four years’ imprisonment and fines  by a special Bangalore-based criminal trial court.  This conviction (which was promptly appealed) notwithstanding, the people of Tamil Nadu voted the AIADMK to power with a sweeping majority, perhaps because the dynastic DMK which had ruled from 2006-2011, had also been embroiled in scams and scandals. The long duration for which the patently corrupt and intellectually bankrupt leaders of these two popular pulp cinema-based parties have ruled — and ruined — Tamil Nadu, a state which in the early years after independence was reputed for its great universities and excellent public administration, not only raises doubts about Indian democracy based on universal franchise without any qualification, it also highlights how through reckless interference with the country’s primary, secondary and higher education systems, post-independence India’s wily neta-babu brotherhood has dumbed down the citizenry into an electorate of amoral simpletons unable to distinguish between right and wrong, and lacking reasoning and logical thinking capabilities.  The history of education under almost four decades of AIADMK-DMK rule in Tamil Nadu is a litany of populist interventions which has ruined the academy, in particular K-12 education. The consequence is that the people have lost all judgement and reason as the clamour for Sasikala’s election as AIADMK supremo despite her conviction having been confirmed by the Supreme Court, shows.    Messing with Children’s Minds Alarming reports are emanating from across the country about state education boards inserting propaganda, ‘alternative facts’, mistakes and inaccuracies in shoddily and haphazardly produced textbooks, especially prescribed liberal arts and humanities texts. There seems to be little awareness within society that textbooks invested with hate, lies and malicious religious, caste and ideological propaganda can…

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