Dr. C.N. Kamalarathnam is professor and head of the department of neonatology, Institute of Child Health, Egmore, Chennai My eight-year-old son has lost his appetite. He often complains of stomach aches and nausea. Help! — Harika Reddy, Hyderabad If your son is of healthy weight and height, this particular problem might be transient. Changing his daily diet might help. But if it doesn’t, a medical examination may identify underlying problems such as anaemia, sore throat or dental issues. Abdominal pain can be caused by various factors such as giardiasis which is an intestinal infection. Symptoms include abdominal pain, diarrhoea and fatigue. If this is the case, metronidazole can treat the infection. If a diagnosis rules out intestinal infection, iron deficiency could be the reason. Administering oral iron supplements and de-worming him will improve his appetite in a week. Other morbidities such as glossitis which is inflammation of the tongue can also prevent him from consuming food normally. Underlying symptoms such as fever or loss of weight may presage tuberculosis. Medical diagnosis is needed to rule out every possible cause. On the other hand, it could also be selective eating leading the child to feign abdominal pain. Consult a doctor. Don’t ignore these symptoms. A few months ago, my nine-year-old daughter attained puberty. Back in our days, a girl would begin menstruation when she was 14-15. As a mother, I think it is too early for her to begin menstruating. Should I be worried? — Jeevana N., Mangalore Almost 80 percent of girl children living in cities are attaining puberty around age 11, which is two years earlier than in the past. Puberty attained before the age of eight is called precocious puberty though this is not the case here. Attainment of puberty at a young age always has a secondary cause. One of them is the trend of daughter following in the mother’s steps in relation to attaining puberty. Another is the nutrition given to the child. Dietary changes can accelerate onset of puberty and adolescent development. For example, children in the 1970s and ’80s had an average height of 5’4 at age 16 but nowadays, children grow much taller than that. Such changes happen over a few decades due to dietary and gene changes. Moreover sedentary lifestyles of children could also impact menarche. Medically, we treat children with menarche cases before eight years to postpone puberty for a few years. With proper evaluation, this therapy can be considered for girl children with early puberty. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic outbreak, I was afraid to take my one-year-old daughter for vaccination. Should I continue the immunisation schedule from the vaccine we stopped or should I consult a doctor? — Meenakshi Vinayak, Coimbatore Vaccines train our immune system to fight infections by injecting an inactivated germ into the body. During the lockdown months, most medical clinics were closed and it was difficult to access health facilities. But it’s very important to follow the child immunization schedule. You can continue from the…
The exoneration on February 17 of columnist Priya Ramani by a Delhi sessions court in a criminal defamation case filed against her by once much-celebrated author and hitherto cabinet minister in the BJP/NDA government at the Centre, has further damaged the already tattered reputation of M.J. Akbar, who over four decades had built a reputation for trenchant political and socio-economic insights and felicity with the English language. At the height of the women’s global Me Too movement (2018), several women journalists went public and accused Akbar of sexual harassment. One among them was Priya Ramani, who writes a weekly column for the business daily Mint. Instead of offering the defence that the dangerous liaisons he had perhaps initiated were consensual, Akbar — who in his long career had acquired quite a reputation as a Don Juan of the newsroom — ill-advisedly went into denial mode. Worse, he filed a criminal defamation case under s.500 of the archaic Indian Penal Code, 1860, against Ramani for loss of “stellar reputation”. A big mistake because Akbar’s stellar reputation was as a man of letters, not for personal propriety. Also a big mistake because it’s widely accepted that the laws of criminal defamation are obsolete and abolished worldwide. Therefore, judges are reluctant to jail accused in defamation cases, especially women. If at all, he should have filed a civil action for damages. Even so he would most likely have been awarded contemptuous damages, i.e, the lowest coin of the realm. Moral of the story: people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Or become legally trigger happy.
The BJP/NDA government’s transformation of the puerile tweets of two girls hardly out of their teens into a vast international conspiracy to topple the government of India with a defence establishment comprising over 1,100,000 personnel and a nuclear arsenal at its command, exposes the small-town patriarchal mind-set of its leadership. In the almost one million small towns and villages of India’s vast rural hinterlands aptly described by Dr. B.R Ambedkar, prime author of the Constitution of India, as sink holes of ignorance, superstition and iniquity, the authority and diktat of the local political don and family patriarchs can be questioned only on pain of death or worse. The entire rule book has been thrown at teenage climate activist Greta Thurnberg, pop singer Rihanna and our own environment idealist Disha Ravi by the neta-babu establishment, not because they pose a threat to the sovereignty, stability and unity of India, but because they dared to make common cause and speak up for the thousands of farmers who have been agitating against three laws rushed through Parliament without sufficient deliberation and debate. Even if the girls/women had aided and abetted in the design of a “tool kit” in collaboration with a motley band of Punjabi émigrés plotting to embarrass the BJP/NDA government on the farmers’ agitation issue, it would have amounted to a fleabite to an elephant and should have been ignored. By interpreting youth activism as international conspiracy to destabilise the country and government, the BJP leadership has exposed its small-mindedness. Ditto on the farm legislation issue. Repeal of the already hollowed out legislation which the government has suo motu put off for 18 months, and re-enacting it after consultation with farm leaders, rather than patriarchal bullying, would have been the politically correct response.
A computer science and business management alumnus of Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bengaluru and IIM-Bangalore, Sridhar Pabbisetty is founding director of the Kautilya School of Public Policy, Hyderabad (estb.2020). Its mission is to “empower leaders who solve 21st century problems through rigorous public policy education”. Earlier, Prof. Pabbisetty was chief operating officer of the Centre for Public Policy, IIM-Bangalore and also served as the chief programs officer at the Bangalore Political Action Committee. Prior to that, he worked with several hi-tech companies including Zyme Solutions, Aditi Technologies and iCOPE Technologies. Excerpts from a 40-minute video interview (www.educationworld.in) What are the aims and objectives of the Kautilya School of Public Policy (KSPP)? Kautilya’s vision is to “rebalance the role of society, government and business towards an equitable and regenerative India and world”. Our mission is “empowering leaders who solve 21st century problems, through rigorous public policy education”. We offer passionate young minds a robust training ground that nurtures grassroots aspirations with rigorous academic programmes. Most of India’s think tanks are sited in Delhi. How accurate would it be to say that a major factor behind the location of KSPP in Hyderabad is that inputs from southern states and peninsular intellectuals are also required to shape public policy? At Kautilya, we strongly believe in cooperative federalism. While it’s true, and possibly appropriate, that Delhi-based think tanks heavily inform national policy decisions, we believe attention needs to be paid to perspectives from other parts of the country. Our location in Hyderabad gives us that opportunity to maintain a healthy distance from Delhi, while remaining in touch with the rest of India. Another advantage of our location in Hyderabad is the opportunity it provides to leverage the uniqueness of this city as the gateway to the South. For the past four decades, the southern states have pioneered new-age industries — IT, ITES and biotechnology. The entrepreneurial buzz of Hyderabad not only offers freshness of perspective, but also opportunity to leverage policy innovations from the fastest growing hubs of India — Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai. The popular belief is that India’s think tanks and the academy have had little success in shaping public policy. What’s your comment? The impact of think tanks and academia in policy formulation is not easily visible. Yet the truth is that think tanks and academic institutions have been continuously influencing and shaping public policy formulation. Indeed think tanks have fleshed out major policy decisions such as OBC quotas in government and education institutions and creation of Telangana state. During my stint at IIM-Bangalore at the Centre for Public Policy, we worked closely with state government ministries to launch impactful projects. For instance, the Karnataka government’s Right to Public Service Delivery programme was enriched with periodic and timely inputs from IIM-B. Currently, this nationally unique programme provides over 1,000 services with clear documentation, targets and process details from 95 government departments. The public needs to be made aware of such interventions made by academia and think tanks. We also need to…
Lokesh Ohri (The Book Review) The Chipko movement: A people’s history; Shekhar Pathak Orient Blackswan; Rs.895; Pages 390 In the year 1974, when the womenfolk and children of village Reni, under the leadership of the gutsy Gaura Devi, were chasing away labour contractors and their crony forest officials bent upon felling trees for commercial exploitation, writing perhaps the most glorious chapter in the history of the Chipko Movement, a young scholar named Shekhar Pathak was undertaking with a few others, a foot march from the easternmost fringe of Uttarakhand to its westernmost point. This, without a penny in the pocket, the group’s survival during the arduous trek entirely dependent on the charity of village folk. Having undertaken this difficult journey four more times at an interval of a decade each, and his other numerous travels across the Himalayas coupled with a brief incarceration during the movement, have given him an unrivalled understanding of the mountains and their indigenous settlements and tribes. No other ecological movement from India has perhaps evoked more global empathy and admiration than the Chipko Movement. Journalistic and anthropological literature on the movement is vast, but barring a few exceptions, limits itself either to discrediting the environmental commitment of the movement as mere mythmaking, or indulges in raking up ego clashes between its leaders. Needless to say, this has undermined the efforts of Chipko’s foot soldiers, the peasants, students, women and children, who had to contend with poverty, scarcity and precarious circumstances to protect the fragile balance of their forests, relying completely on indigenous wisdom and resources, quite oblivious of the emerging global discourse on ecology. Despite the movement having provided endless grist to academic and journalistic mills, there has been no detailed history of Chipko until now. By giving us a blow-by-blow account, a ringside view of the movement as it transformed from an effort to seize forest resources from exploiters from the plains into a widespread agitation for a separate State and identity, the author has done a great service not only to scholarship on environmentalism but also to the hitherto unknown subalterns who carried forward the movement in the remote forest patches of the Himalayas, in the face of extreme risk to life and limb. Described as a “definitive history” by respected historian Ramchandra Guha, who has written the foreword of this book, the author has brought to light several activists whose names, even during the time of Chipko, had been relegated to footnotes and pages of vernacular media or minutes of protest meetings. While acknowledging their role in protecting valuable community resources, which later came to be recognised as natural wealth critical to humanity, he also narrates their often-impoverished circumstances and their familial struggles. Grassroots movements exist and proliferate in multiple layers of reality. As they progress, they acquire divergent meanings for different people. Chipko also reflected these multiplicities of thought and action. While for the marginalised, especially the valiant women of Uttarakhand, it was an effort to regain the commons and stand…
Dilip Thakore My good school: Where passion meets education; Sandeep Dutt Rupa publications; Rs.295; Pages 169 The objective of this first edition of My Good School authored by Dehradun-based Sandeep Dutt, described as a school coach, bookseller, runner, mountaineer and social entrepreneur with the mission “to help schools deliver better”, is to advise parents to choose quality schools, promoters to build great schools and school leaders/principals to nurture admirable institutions. According to Dutt, a My Good School is an institution that enables “young people to follow their passions in Service, Skill, Sport and Study”. Quite rightly Dutt recognises that there’s more to K-12 education than mere academics and advocates holistic, all-round education, a pedagogy on which a global consensus has emerged. In the introduction the author recounts that he often meets people who own a tract of land which prompts them to contemplate promotion of a school. “The challenge is not in owning or setting up a school, but operating it well and delivering quality education. We need to understand the purpose of the school before we set out to build it with brick and mortar,” writes Dutt. The purpose of a school is to provide children the opportunity to do community service, learn a skill, play sports and study, as indicated above. Then follow several chapters on how children learn best (through a learning needs analysis) for teachers; choice of curriculum (the relative merits of CBSE, CISCE and state boards presumably for promoters/parents) with the author expressing his preference for CISCE; building schools with quality (ensure you have a teacher development programme, practice diversity, inclusion and belonging) for promoters/ principals; making sure that learning is enjoyable for children (“fun is an essential element of any learning process”) for principals/teachers; the importance of education and emotional support at home (“parents must find time and be intrinsically involved and grow up with the children”) for parents; the importance of classroom enthusiasm (“if the teacher is enjoying their (sic) work certainly the students will love the process of learning”) for teachers, and why teachers are averse to change (lack of appreciation, loss of self-esteem, out-dated syllabuses and tools of delivery). All this and other advice on the importance of cultivating children’s reading habit; innovation and design; the importance of teaching handwriting; every school staging its annual day; value of liberal arts education and openness to new pedagogies and ‘learning approaches’ is useful. But the problem is that the prescriptions are old hat and have been reiterated time and again. Obviously without much effect because comprehension, reading and numeracy skills in the overwhelming majority of India’s 1.5 million schools — including 450,000 private schools — are poor. This is repeatedly underlined by the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) of the highly respected Pratham Education Foundation. Therefore clearly the problem is not the quality of school improvement prescriptions, but how to implement them. In this regard, this book is very reluctant to give any credit to schools that have successfully implemented these well-worn…
Australian universities’ new recruits are taking advantage of online education by ‘sampling’ degrees before committing to them, in a trend that complicates planning and pressures universities to deliver good experiences from the outset. Charles Sturt University’s acting vice chancellor, John Germov, says incoming students are becoming “a bit more savvy” by trying out multiple courses before the “census date cut-off” when tuition fee debts start accruing. Prof. Germov says that the Covid-induced shift to online education was “tailor-made” for this practice that has emerged in recent years but accelerated during the pandemic, with students now able to sample courses interstate as well as in nearby campuses. “We’re starting to see an increase in that sort of mobility (where) students accept an offer but don’t necessarily commit to it until they’ve dipped their toe in the water,” he says. “(They let) their initial experiences sway them one way or the other. It’s an interesting change of behaviour.” According to Germov, students deserve credit for their selectivity. “You don’t want people committing to something that they’re not happy with, and you don’t want high rates of attrition. So we’re just going to have to find better ways to give people an inkling of the experience they’re likely to have,” he adds. Limited available data on applications for undergraduate study this year reflect modest increases spurred by recession-fuelled demand for tertiary education. Sydney’s Universities Admissions Centre recorded roughly 77,000 applicants for 2021 courses by December — 7 percent more than the previous December — with people applying for up to five courses each. By mid-January, the Victorian Tertiary Admissions Centre had fielded 3 percent more applications for university undergraduate courses than at the same point last year. Germov says such figures understate the true situation, because most universities accept enrolments directly from students as well as through admissions centres. In total, Charles Sturt has attracted about 20 percent more applications than for last year’s cycle. “It’s a positive thing that applications are up, but it’s not a guarantee that you’re going to get some sort of students bonanza,” says Germov. Outgoing Australian Catholic University vice chancellor Greg Craven reports a “massive increase in applications”, with increases of 20 percent not uncommon across universities and demand for some degrees doubling. “A course that ordinarily has 100 applications (may) have 200 applications… from students (with) applications to five other institutions,” he says. “It looks like three-dimensional chess. When we look at our applications, the question we’re asking at the back of our minds is, who else have you applied to?” Former University of Adelaide vice chancellor Warren Bebbington says that the issue is bedevilling admissions staff as they juggle course offerings for the new academic year. A difficult task at the best of times, it is further complicated this year by federal funding changes, increased domestic demand and complete uncertainty around international enrolments. Prof. Bebbington says some faculty budgets normally finalised in December aren’t expected to be confirmed until late February. “I’m pleased that I’m…
Russian academics have expressed alarm about sweeping legal amendments that propose government regulation over “educational activities”, fearing that the change could hit international collaboration, stop scholars making public lectures and podcasts and place the humanities under “ideological control”. The country has grand plans to rebuild its university system after decades of stagnation and to launch five institutions into the world Top 100. But latest amendments to the country’s education law threaten to stamp out what a group of lawmakers claims is “negative foreign interference” in Russia by banning “false information” about the nation’s history and its cultural and religious traditions. The amendments give government power to regulate and monitor “educational activities” — defined very broadly as “disseminating knowledge” outside of formal programmes. Exactly how the government would regulate educational activities is so far unclear. Critics say this vagueness is deliberate, giving the state arbitrary power, and the amendments could change before they come into force. They are currently awaiting a second reading in Russia’s parliament. But the legislators behind the amendments, who come largely from the ruling United Russia party, have made it no secret that they are seeking tighter state control. “Anti-Russian forces” are fomenting a “wide range of propaganda activities” among pupils and students, they write in an explanatory note to the amendments. The aim of those activities, they continue, is “discrediting state policy pursued in the Russian Federation” as well as “revising history” and “undermining the constitutional order”. Their proposed changes would empower the government to “coordinate” international educational cooperation, and realise the “potential” of educational organisations to disseminate “the achievements of national science and culture”. “This law is attacking not only independent educational projects and all NGO education activities, but the universities as well,” says Dmitry Dubrovsky, a researcher on academic freedom in Russia at the St. Petersburg-based Centre for Independent Social Research. “All international cooperation and exchange programmes, following this law, have to be approved by (a) special body of the government.” Academic groups in Russia have reacted with horror to the proposals. The July 1 Club, an association of scholars, has warned that the changes would put academia, and the humanities in particular, under “strict ideological control” of the government. Members of another group of academics and science communicators have already declared that they will not comply with the law, and will refuse to apply for licences to speak publicly about academic work. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education and The Economist) Also read: Canada: Intellectual property conundrum
A university has apologised for its handling of an online course that was based on lectures by a professor who had died, in a case which highlights the risk of encroachments on intellectual property, made more likely in the Coronavirus era. The art history class at Montreal’s Concordia University surprised and distressed second-year student Aaron Ansuini when he tried to reach the instructor, François-Marc Gagnon, and found that the renowned French-Canadian scholar had died in 2019. “Given that Dr. Gagnon is the name and face all over the course platform itself, it naturally seemed like he would be the one communicating with us,” says Ansuini. “So it’s just jarring to learn that he’s dead.” The complaint at Concordia drew especially heavy attention because Ansuini is a prolific YouTube vlogger with tens of thousands of subscribers, and he emotionally described his experience over Twitter. Concordia University responded by noting that the course outline properly attributes “video lectures” to Prof. Gagnon while listing Marco Deyasi, an assistant professor of art history, as the ‘instructor’. However, it expressed regret over the episode and updated Prof. Gagnon’s biography in the course information provided to students. Sam Trosow, law professor at Western University and an adviser to the Canadian Association of University Teachers (CAUT), says academics in the country usually own the rights to their own classroom presentations. But faculty everywhere might want to be more vigilant as the pandemic puts them into online environments where their work is recorded and the legalities aren’t clear. “Maybe what was just an exception before, is something that’s going to happen a lot right now, and people need to worry about this,” he says. Even before the Concordia case arose, Prof. Trosow says he was working with CAUT to alert faculty about the possibility of their online work being reused without their permission during the pandemic lockdown. “I’m very worried about cost-conscious institutions cutting corners with recorded content,” he says. Aaron Nisenson, senior counsel at the American Association of University Professors, says most American institutions had “reaffirmed their policies regarding faculty ownership of traditional academic works” during Covid. But the case as described at Concordia did seem unusual, admits Nisenson. “Generally we would view that as unacceptable under our policies,” he says. Prof. Gagnon’s family told a Canadian news agency that they see no ill intent and are pleased to hear that students are still learning from him. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education and The Economist) Also read: Australia: Confusing admissions scenario
The number of international students applying to US universities for the coming academic year has jumped by 11 percent, according to initial estimates, raising hopes of a quick rebound under the Biden administration. The data from Common App, a non-profit provider of college admission services, bolster a growing sense in academia that President Biden will bring substantial positive change in US treatment of people born abroad. A preliminary report from Common App, which serves some 900 institutions, “makes us cautiously optimistic that foreign students are more hopeful about studying in the US”, says Sarah Spreitzer, director of government relations at the American Council on Education. US colleges got a big related boost in mid-January as Biden administration officials made clear that they are planning an immediate and comprehensive push on immigration policy. “We are extremely heartened by the approach the new administration has been explaining,” says Miriam Feldblum, executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, a grouping of US college leaders. The Biden plan, while focused on needs far wider than of higher education, would be successful if Congress resolves the status of more than 450,000 college students in the country without legal status. It also would exempt doctoral graduates in the sciences from visa limits. It’s pertinent to note that the growth in international applicants as tallied by the Common App came despite a 13 percent drop from China, the single largest source of foreign students at US universities. Countries producing major single-year increases in foreign applications to US institutions for the coming autumn, in order of their existing shares, include India (up 33 percent), Canada (20 percent), Brazil (53 percent), the UK (20 percent) and Pakistan (51 percent). The size of such jumps, say experts, reflects factors such as progress against the Coronavirus and pent-up demand for US higher education that accumulated during the Trump administration, when overseas enrolments sagged. “Despite the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, international students understand the value of a US education,” says Stephen Yale-Loehr, professor of immigration law practice at Cornell University. However, actual gains in autumn enrolment might prove more modest than the initial Common App data suggest, says Gerardo Blanco, associate professor of higher education at Boston College. Nevertheless, adds Dr. Blanco, the Common App numbers “are an early sign that international mobility will have a strong recovery”. Important questions to be answered before autumn, according to academics, include success of the battle against the Coronavirus and the direction of social unrest reflected in the mob attack on the US Capitol. China has long been the leading supplier of international students in the US, and antagonisms between the US and Chinese governments have been especially pronounced during the Trump administration. But tensions are expected to persist into the Biden administration. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education and The Economist) Also read: Europe: Schools closure pains
In exam-obsessed China, educators have long struggled with the problem of overworked schoolchildren. Attempts to do away with some test-oriented teaching often face resistance from parents, who worry their offspring could lose out in the race to get admitted into a good university. Some enlightened officials are taking a new tack. In the south-western province of Yunnan, they have not only revamped the physical education (PE) test in the zhongkao, an examination for entrance to senior secondary school. They have also given it the same weightage in the exam as all-important subjects like maths and Chinese. Eight provinces have joined Yunnan in including art and music tests in zhongkao. These reforms are in response to demands by the central government for a more well-rounded approach to education. In 2017, primary and secondary schools were ordered to hire only specialists to teach PE and art. In October, they were directed to organise daily gym classes; to include PE and art in the zhongkao; and to make pupils’ graduation conditional on their fitness (it did not say how to assess this). The government says it wants to foster a “lifelong habit of exercise” and, through art, “noble sentiments”. The government worries about how many youngsters are in poor shape. In 2017, officials in the southern city of Guangzhou found only 2.6 percent of local children were in “excellent” health. Half of pupils surveyed there had myopia. Today one in five Chinese children is overweight, up from just one in 20 in 1995. Such statistics fan another fear: that today’s youngsters, and boys in particular, are over-indulged wimps. The state news agency, Xinhua, grimly summed it up with a headline: ‘Why Good Times Produce Weak Children’. In 2018, many parents were upset that a children’s show — co-produced by the education ministry, ironically — featured male pop stars who, with their perfect coifs and eyeliner, were not deemed manly enough role models for their sons. In January, the ministry pledged to “pay more attention to cultivating pupils’ masculinity” and endorsed a politician’s proposal to hire more male PE teachers to prevent the “feminisation” of teen boys. Zhu Weiqiang of East China Normal University, who advises the government on PE reforms, says teaching a non-aggressive form of kung fu was once commonly proposed. Now officials want children to learn wrestling. But parents do not want children to be distracted from their books. They are used to pupils getting full marks in PE with next-to-no-effort, partly because examiners tended to grade generously to avoid “unfairly” penalising hard-working students, says Zhu. Schools often cancel PE and art classes in favour of extra revision-sessions for other subjects. This will change with the new reforms. But parents are already griping that PE will be just one more source of stress. They fret about how art will be appraised. Some point out that schools in big cities will be able to fork out for boxing gear and trips to calligraphy museums, giving their pupils yet another edge in the…
No one is ever truly ready for lockdown. But when the Netherlands closed its schools last December, the Herman Wesselink College, a government high school in a well-off suburb of Amsterdam, was readier than most. About half its students have parents who completed higher education. Nearly all have their own bedroom to study in. The school has given its pupils laptops for years, and during the first lockdown last spring switched smoothly to remote learning. The director says students have not fallen behind a whit in terms of content, though their study skills have languished. The Mundus College, a trade (vocational) school in a poorer Amsterdam neighbourhood, has had it rougher. About a third of its students are new immigrants or refugees. Vocational education is hard to do remotely. Classes have stayed open at half-size under an exception for vulnerable students, but it is impossible to follow social-distancing rules for subjects like nursing, says Diana Brummelhuis, the director. “You can’t teach someone to handle a wheelchair by lecturing.” She estimates that her pupils are lagging at least a quarter behind their normal pace. Such contrasts are playing out all over Europe. On a continent famous for its welfare systems, school closures threaten to widen divisions of education, ethnicity and class. Compared with the rest of the world, Europe hasn’t done badly during the pandemic. Most of its schools reopened last autumn (September), while in South America and South Asia they are largely shut. But Covid-19’s second wave has forced many European schools to close again. This hurts all pupils, but hits the poor and vulnerable ones harder. France’s education ministry says that last spring’s lockdown increased the gap in exam scores between normal (government) schools and ones in hard-up areas by several points. In Germany, that first lockdown cut studying time from 7.4 hours per day to 3.6. An analysis of last year’s national exam results in the Netherlands came up with the depressing finding that during the spring lockdown, the average pupil had learned nothing at all. Those whose parents were poorly educated did even worse: they emerged from their first two months of schooling by Internet knowing less than when they started. France has been the most determined of any European country not to let schools close, arguing that the risks to educational attainment and social cohesion are greater than those to public health. Last spring (April) President Emmanuel Macron overrode advice from epidemiologists and ordered schools to reopen. They have stayed that way, though since November most high schools have worked in shifts. Germany closed its schools from December 16 until at least February 15. Its state governments would like to start reopening them, but Chancellor Angela Merkel wants to wait until Covid-19 caseloads fall by half from current levels. Northern Europe has roughly followed the German pattern (apart from contrarian Sweden, which closed only briefly in January). In southern Europe, closures have been less widespread. Spanish schools have stayed open since autumn, though most high schools…
Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru) Highly articulate educator and serial entrepreneur Kavish Gadia is the founder-CEO of Gurugram (Haryana)-based Stones2Milestones Pvt. Ltd (S2M, estb.2008, headcount: 300). This edtech start-up offers schools, teachers and parents diagnostic, affordable and research-based English reading and literacy solutions for children in the 5-12 age group. Through its globally benchmarked flagship fREADom mobile app — a vertically integrated pedagogy stack for learning English as a second language — launched in 2016, young learners can improve their English reading, writing and conversation skills. S2M also offers live online artificial intelligence-powered and faculty-led fREADom English classes which has signed up 250,000 registered users. Among them are 100 budget private schools and the DPS, DAV, Shri Ram and Jain pan-India school chains. In addition to master-minding the business operations of S2M, Gadia also runs the K-12 Amrit Vidyalaya, Kalol (Vadodara) where he was a volunteer teacher for 15 years before acquiring the school in 2015. Since then apart from translocating this co-ed state board-affiliated English-medium school to a new 5-acre campus which hosts over 400 students and 40 teachers, Gadia has also upgraded the institution by integrating high-quality academic education, community service linked real-life learning and values education to nurture global leaders. Newspeg. In November 2020, S2M celebrated its 12th anniversary by raising equity funding of $2.5 million (Rs.18.25 crore) from New York-based Unreasonable Capital and its lending partner Goldhirsh Foundation. Simultaneously the company acquired Chennai-based MultiStory Learning Pvt. Ltd — a boutique children’s literature content company. History. Born into a traditional Marwari business family in Siliguri (West Bengal) and raised by his grandparents in remote Jhunjhunu (Rajasthan), Gadia is a business administration and finance postgraduate of the Devi Ahilya Bai University, Indore and IIM-Lucknow. At age 18 while he was an undergrad student, Gadia dabbled in equities and commodities trading, import-export financing and promoted a boutique investment bank (Resurgent India Ltd). After his postgrad studies at IIM-Lucknow, he acquired three years working experience at KPMG before deciding to quit corporate life in 2008 and “follow his heart” by promoting Stones2Milestones, focusing on making a “profitable impact” in society. In 2015, he sold Resurgent India and bought Amrit Vidyalaya with the sales proceeds. Direct talk. “Empowering children has been the goal of my life. When I was at IIM-Lucknow, I realised that access to opportunity differentiates the rich from poor. Stones2Milestones was born out of a deep-rooted desire to create opportunities for children. For eight years, S2M served as a research lab where my team collaborated with Ivy League Stanford and Carnegie Mellon Universities to develop our full-stack fREADom app which empowers children to learn English language skills early in life. Currently, users can subscribe to the app free-of-charge with only live classes chargeable at Rs.200 per class,” says Gadia. Future plans. “Recently, we started pilot projects in South Korea. We have also drawn up a blueprint to extend our English language learning services to students and youth in the 12-20 age group. Also on the agenda is replication of the…
Autar Nehru (Delhi) Delhi-based Shikha Agnihotri is state president of the Delhi Public Safety & Security Council (DPSSC) of the Women’s Indian Chamber of Commerce & Industry (WICCI), a representative organisation of women entrepreneurs and business leaders countrywide. A seasoned travel professional, she is also promoter of Young Edsplorer Pvt. Ltd (YEPL, estb.2015), an education consultancy which works in partnership with schools to provide experiential learning programmes to their students. Over the past five years, the firm has signed up 200 schools and provided experiential learning to class III-XII children in the areas of STEM, arts and adventure. In 2019, Agnihotri launched The Right Side Story, an initiative to educate women and children about the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act, 2012. Newspeg. At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic last September, DPSSC started a legal literacy campaign in schools in Delhi NCR to educate students, teachers, parents and administrators about the protective and grievance redressal provisions of the Pocso Act. Direct talk. “Child safety and security is one of the biggest challenges of our times. From sexual abuse to physical violence and cyber bullying, crimes against children are on the rise worldwide. In 2012, the Union government took an important step forward to curb child abuse by enacting the Pocso Act. However, despite the Act being in force for over eight years, awareness about its provisions is very limited. The objective of The Right Side Story and legacy literacy campaigns is to spread awareness about the Act’s provisions and processes,” says Agnihotri. According to her, DPSSC has specially designed online training modules to educate children, parents, teachers and care-givers on Pocso provisions. “While for adults, the training modules provide information on ways and means to report crimes against children, for children we focus on sensitising them to good and bad touch, cyber bullying, social media and online sexual abuse,” she explains. Future plans. While currently this initiative is focused on schools in Delhi NCR, there are plans to take the campaign nationwide. “WICCI is collaborating with Unicef, WHO, NCPCR, NGOs, municipal corporations, and local government bodies to reach out to education institutions countrywide and help create safer environments for children,” she says. Way to go, Sis! Also read: Child rights bodies express concern over India’s GHI ranking
Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru) Amit Agrawal is founder-CEO of Gurugram (Haryana)-based Whiz Kidz Media Pvt. Ltd (estb.2015). Whiz Kidz is an edtech company that offers preschools, primary schools and parents of tier-II-III cities and towns, digital English learning lessons in seven vernacular languages. Through its flagship product OckyPocky, an English self-learning application launched in 2017 that can be downloaded free-of-charge on Android and Windows hand-held devices, the company delivers age-appropriate content embedded with 20,000 activity-based interactive videos for learning English. Its videos provide instruction in Hindi, Marathi and English. Whiz Kidz also offers online live English classes conducted by faculty fluent in English, Hindi, Bengali, Punjabi, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu. Thus far, the company has impacted 200,000 preschool and primary school children in over 100 tier II-III habitations countrywide. Newspeg. Last September (2020), Whiz Kidz Media received a huge boost when it was awarded angel funding of $400,000 (Rs.2.9 crore) from Mumbai-based Lead Angels. History. A maths and business management alum of Delhi University’s St. Stephen’s College and the blue-chip IIM-Bangalore, Agrawal began his career in 2000 and acquired 15 years of work experience with top-ranked corporates (Asian Paints, Marico Industries, Infosys, Google and YouTube), rising to leadership positions prior to quitting corporate life and going solo. In 2015, he invested his savings of Rs.1 crore to promote Whiz Kidz with the mission to teach English to socio-economically disadvantaged children. Direct talk. “I am a first generation learner and found English language very difficult to learn during my formative years. Over time, I realised that working professionals from small towns suffered similar experiences. Whiz Kidz Media was promoted to gamify school learning and provide regional preschool and primary school children in small towns joyous English language learning using their mother tongues,” says Agrawal. Business model. Subscription fee for the OckyPocky platform — Rs.4,000 per student per year. Subscribers are charged in the range of Rs.1,000-4,000 for access to the company’s language-specific live online classes. Future plans. Encouraged by the positive response of schools and individual subscribers to OckyPocky, Agrawal has ambitious expansion plans. “By 2022, we want our online English learning classes to be supported by 12 vernacular languages. Over the next two years, OckyPocky will impact 10 million pre-primary and primary school children countrywide,” predicts Agrawal. Wind beneath your wings! Also read: Potential of edtech in rural India to provide new employment opportunities
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) Kolkata-based entrepreneur Kamal Prakash is co-founder of Dakshini Prayash (DP, estb.1994), an NGO which runs the free-of-charge Madurdaha Satyavritti Vidyalaya (MSV), a primary school in South 24 Parganas district. Founded in 1994 with four students learning under trees cover, MSV is now housed in two buildings in which 400 pre-primary to class VIII students are mentored by 32 teachers, eight non-teaching staff and 20 volunteers. After completion of class VIII, children transfer to neighbouring government/private secondary schools with the MSV management continuing to support them by way of tutorials, financial aid and vocational and higher education career guidance. Moreover, MSV also conducts adult literacy classes for the local community. Newspeg. With the West Bengal government allowing reopening of schools on February 12, MSV has opened with staggered timings for students. History. The late Nalini Mukherjee (1929-2010), a resident of Tagore Park, used to visit her neighbourhood village of Madurdaha during her morning walk. On being invited by local parents to teach their children, she started non-formal classes. Later, she teamed up with friend Kamal Prakash to formalise her informal efforts by registering the Dakshini Prayash Trust, a quarter century ago. Direct talk. “Registration of the Dakshini Prayash Trust 27 years ago was the first step towards establishing and developing MSV. Since then, this primary school not only provides all-round education but also healthy nutritious meals to our children. This combination of wholesome nutrition and engaging teaching-learning has resulted in students’ improved health and learning outcomes,” says Prakash, a director of the Kolkata-based 120-year-old Jiwanram Sheoduttrai Group of Companies with diversified business interests in metallurgy and engineering. To motivate and make the education process engaging for children, co-curricular — yoga, music, dance, art and craft — as also sports education, are integrated into the curriculum. In 2018, a multipurpose indoor sports arena offering facilities for athletics, football and rugby, sponsored by HDFC Life, was inaugurated. The trust also conducts vocational training programmes to improve the livelihoods of the local population. The annual budget of Rs.75 lakh is funded by patrons including Jiwanram Sheoduttrai Group, Rashi Peripherals, Bank of Baroda, HDFC Life, Urbana and Inner Wheel Club, among others. Future plans. A third building is being constructed on the MSV campus. “Our objective is to develop a model institution for community development through holistic education, healthcare and self-reliance. Once the new building is ready, we will expand the school to class X,” says Prakash. Wind in your sails!
The major understated casualty of the massive damage caused by the globally rampaging Coronavirus pandemic are India’s 500 million youngest citizens in 0-24 age group. But the recently presented Budget 2021-22 has provided no relief for the world’s largest and most high-potential child and youth population – Dilip Thakore Unsurprisingly, the prime objective and focus of the Union Budget 2021-22 presented to Parliament and the nation on February 1 by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman — the first pandemic year budget of the BJP/NDA government — was to get the economy back on track and re-fire the engines of industry and commerce. Although it seems so long ago, only 11 months have elapsed since a national emergency was declared to prevent the rapid spread of the Coronavirus, aka Covid-19 pandemic that originated in Wuhan (China) in November 2019. On March 25, 2020 a total lockdown of industry, business, public transport services and all education institutions nationwide was declared by the Central government in New Delhi. “Honourable Speaker, preparation of this Budget was undertaken in circumstances like never before. We knew of calamities that have affected a country or region within a country, but what we have endured with Covid-19 through 2020 is sui generis. When I presented Budget 2020-21, we could not have imagined that the global economy, already in the throes of a slowdown, would be pushed into an unprecedented contraction,” said Sitharaman presenting her third budget after she was unexpectedly transferred from the Union defence to the finance ministry in 2019. Unquestionably, the damage caused by the highly contagious pandemic has been enormous. Thus far (February 25), this rampaging virus has infected 111 million people worldwide and caused 2.4 million fatalities. In India, it has infected 11 million and prompted an estimated 157,000 fatalities. Following detection of the first cases in India last February, in an urgent national broadcast at 8 p.m on March 24, prime minister Narendra Modi declared a national lockdown from the midnight of March 24, reportedly the most stringent pandemic-induced lockdown of any democracy worldwide. The short four hours notice given to the public provoked the largest exodus of suddenly unemployed rural migrants — their number variously estimated at 20-25 million — on foot and private transport (because all public transportation was discontinued from the midnight of March 24) since the partition of British-ruled India into the independent nations of India and Pakistan in 1947. Against this backdrop of national turmoil, a major under-stated casualty are 21st century India’s 500 million youngest citizens in the 0-24 age group — the world’s largest national cohort of children and youth. The total outlay of the Central government for public education budgeted at Rs.93,224 crore for 2021-22 is 6.13 percent less than the Rs.99,312 crore budgeted for 2020-21. And the consensus within the academic community is that Budget 2021-22 has comprehensively ignored the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, the outcome of hard slog of two high-powered committees — T.S.R. Subramanian (2016) and Dr. K. Kasturirangan (2018) — which…
Amrita Ghosh (Bengaluru) Although he is only 12 years of age, Arnay Agarwal, a class VII student of Bengaluru’s top-ranked Greenwood High International School, has authored two e-books — Most Amazing Dussehra Vacations Ever on Kindle in 2019 and Adventure of Juno and Ira for Juggernaut Books in 2018 — with his first paperback Happy Holiday Medley (Amazon) released last October. A slim volume of 40 pages, Happy Holiday Medley recounts the young author’s experiences in the garden city of Bengaluru during a 2018 Dussehra vacation — ranging from a Halloween party to a chance encounter with the great grandson of the Dewan of Mysore in the court of the erstwhile Mysore Maharajah. The only child of Eva Agarwal, a software professional, reading caught Arnay’s fancy at age four. “Unlike my mother who was restricted to read only academic textbooks, I am fortunate to be blessed with a parent who has built a mini-library full of my favourite books over the years,” says this gifted child author. Inspired by Elisabetta Dami and Clive Cussler, his favourite authors, Arnay started writing short stories when he was seven, many of which were published in the children’s section of The Hindu and some prominent children’s magazines. Arnay acknowledges the great contribution of Greenwood High’s English teacher Zara Kunders for arousing his love for the written word. Right after release of his first paperback, this pre-teen author has begun work on his second, Mrs Clark. “My books written for young kids are action-packed with a mix of suspense and adventure,” he says. To develop his writing skills, Arnay does two hours of extra-curricular reading every day after completing his homework, followed by an hour of writing and introspecting about his next thriller. Driven by a mission to spread the joy of reading, in 2018 Arnay launched Reading Rhino, a digital platform to share book summaries, short stories and reviews to inspire young readers. “I hope one day to start a non-profit society for underprivileged children while continuing to write stories to encourage children to enjoy and develop the reading habit,” says Arnay. Way to Go!
Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru) Gopalchetty Brahma (21) is the latest to join India’s exclusive club of outer space celebrities. An aerospace engineering undergrad at the Jalandhar-based Lovely Professional University, Punjab — ranked Punjab’s #2 private varsity in the latest EW India Higher Education Rankings 2020-21 — he was among the Top 100 of 6,500 participants from 98 countries conferred the Silver Honour award in the youth (18-plus) category of the world’s largest and toughest International Astronomy and Astrophysics Competition (IAAC). The event was held online in May-July 2020 by the Heidelburg (Germany)-based company Edu.Harbour. The elder of two children of Rayagada (Odisha)-based G. Harishankar, senior pharmacist at JK Paper Mills, and homemaker G. Swarnalata, Brahma is thankful for the institutional and parental support he has received. “I attribute my achievement to hard work combined with the invaluable support of my parents and mentor Dr. Amit Kumar Thakur, associate professor of aerospace engineering at LPU. However, I’m disappointed that I fell short of winning the gold medal. Given limited resources at home during the pandemic, I relied majorly on the Internet and science magazines,” he recalls. Brahma’s interest in astronomy was ignited when as a five year old, he witnessed a shooting star streak across the Rayagada night sky. “Stargazing and moongazing has become a habit since then. Both my parents patiently answer all my questions to the best of their knowledge. My father even gifted me a pair of binoculars and books on astronomy when I turned ten. Over the years, I have tried to gather knowledge about our universe and have participated in science competitions from school until university to help me understand the vast range of advanced astronomy and astrophysics,” says Brahma, winner of the Young Scientist India 2017-18 award among other encomiums. Setting the stage for the future, Brahma aspires to qualify as an outer space scientist after completing his bachelor’s degree. “I intend to sign up for an integrated MS-Ph D degree in cosmology and astrophysics from a reputed university in the US or Germany and continue post-doctoral research in dark energy and dark matter. My ultimate dream is to join the Indian Space Research Organisation and continue to unravel the mysteries of the cosmos,” he enthuses. God speed!
With an academic tradition stretching back in time to over 400 years, Scotland’s pride hosts 13,000 international scholars from 160 countries among its 44,510 students – Summiya Yasmeen Once upon a time, best quality higher education in Britain, and indeed the Commonwealth, was synonymous with Oxford, Cambridge and London universities. But in the millennium, Scotland’s University of Edinburgh (UoE, estb.1583) has emerged as a formidable academic competitor to Sassenach higher education institutions of the south. According to the QS World University Rankings 2020, UoE, which is ranked #20 worldwide, is one of Europe’s most preferred universities. With an academic tradition stretching back in time over 400 years, Scotland’s pride hosts a massive contingent of 13,000 international scholars from 160 countries — among its 44,510 students. Over the past four centuries, the faculty and alumni of this venerated varsity have played a major role in shaping world history. Among its most illustrious alumni are philosopher David Hume; Charles Darwin, author of the Origin of Species; physicists Sir Edward Appleton and James Clerk Maxwell; Lord Joseph Lister who introduced antiseptics into surgery; Sir James Young Simpson, inventor of chloroform; surgeon Elsie Inglis; James Hutton, father of modern geology; and novelists Sir Walter Scott, J.M. Barrie, Robert Louis Stevenson, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Like most higher education institutions worldwide, UoE has been under lockdown for the past seven months to check the spread of the raging Covid-19 pandemic. Teaching and assessment is currently being delivered in the digital online mode. Edinburgh. The capital of Scotland, historic Edinburgh (pop.500,000) is one of the greenest and most architecturally splendid cities of the world, attracting over 2 million visitors annually. However, it is renowned not only for its scenic cityscapes but also for its rich social, cultural, learning and sports traditions. Its landmarks include several art galleries and concert halls; the Royal Museum of Scotland; the Royal Botanic Garden; Parliament House; and the spectacularly illuminated Edinburgh Castle. Sports facilities include a variety of golf courses, the Royal Commonwealth Pool and Meadowbank Stadium. And for students who want to get away for the weekend, Edinburgh offers easy access to the coastline, hills and rugged terrain of the scenic Scottish Highlands. Moreover, Edinburgh annually hosts a number of international literary and cultural events and has been rightly christened a ‘Festival City’. The only downside perhaps is its testing windswept climate. Temperatures range from sub-zero in winter to 25°C in summer. Campus facilities. As one of Britain’s oldest universities, UoE is renowned for its classical buildings which are the city’s best-known landmarks and architectural features. The majority of the university’s faculties are grouped in and around the central George Square near the historic Royal Mile in the city centre. Students can also expect to enjoy a vibrant social and cultural life. The students union offers food services and an extensive calendar of events including live bands and clubs. Known as the Edinburgh University Union, this association occupies seven buildings and administers on-campus catering and bars, games rooms, union…
This new-age pre-primary to class V co-ed day school sited in the shadow of Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building, has quickly established an excellent reputation within the emirate’s expatriate parents community – Summiya Yasmeen Sited in the heart of Dubai — the commercial capital of the United Arab Emirates and one of the world’s most diversely cosmopolitan cities with 83 percent (2.6 million) of its residents foreign-born — the new-age Clarion School (CS, estb.2016) has quickly established a reputation within the emirate’s expatriate parents community for providing a rigorous American-style curriculum, experiential and inter-disciplinary pedagogies and excellent sports and co-curricular education. This five-year-old school was adjudged runner-up in the ‘Best American School in the UAE’ competition organised by the Dubai-based schoolscompared.com. Recognised by the Knowledge and Human Development Authority (KHDA), the Dubai government’s education quality assurance and regulatory authority, Clarion is currently a pre-kindergarten to class V co-ed day school with 240 children of 42 nationalities instructed by 35 teachers. New grades are being added each year with the management having applied for accreditation with the US-based New England Association of Colleges and Schools (NEASC). Clarion reopened last August after almost five months of closure because of the Covid-19 disruption with students given the option of in-person, online and hybrid classes. However, 92 percent of students attend in-person classes every day. “Clarion School is UAE’s premier American model school conceptualised as an experiential learning and discovery academy. We believe that a child with a curious mind will become a life-long learner capable of succeeding anywhere in the fast-changing world. Therefore, we have designed a unique curriculum to deeply engage children in purposive and meaningful learning. This curriculum meets the highest tier American K-12 education standards, including the Common Core, which is interdisciplinary, stimulating and taught by highly qualified educators,” says James Pastore, principal of Clarion School. An alumnus of the University of Notre Dame and College of New Jersey, USA, Pastore has over 30 years of international teaching experience having taught in schools in Latin America, Italy, and the US, before being appointed principal of CS last August. This 21st century school is promoted by the Dubai-based Scholars International Group (SIG) founded by Indian-origin entrepreneur Aparna Verma, a graduate of Georgetown University, USA, and Parsons School of Design, New York. SIG also owns and manages the Cambridge International (UK)-affiliated Dubai Scholars Private School (promoted as a nursery by Aparna’s mother in 1976) and the Scholars International Academy, Sharjah, UAE. Together, the three schools have an aggregate 3,346 students. The newest greenfield venture of SIG, Clarion is sited on a modern 4.7 acre campus built in the shadow of Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building. The school’s open free-flowing campus houses 27 Smart Classrooms, a carpeted library with 7,200 print volumes, several Apple computer workstations and a mini ‘amphitheater’ for read-aloud presentations. Moreover, 150 ipads are distributed among the school’s 27 classrooms for use by students. Sports facilities include two swimming pools, a synthetic turf football ground, basketball and tennis/volleyball…
Mumbai, February 9. The Aditya Birla Education Academy (ABEA) has signed a collaboration agreement with the US-based Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY) to offer scholarships in India for CTY’s online programs for advanced learners. Under terms of the agreement, ABEA and CTY will identify and support bright young learners in India through these online programs at reduced fees — a 5 percent reduction on tuition and application fees — until August 2021. This fee reduction is available to the first 50 advanced learners who apply to ABEA. Students in classes II-XI can qualify for the scholarships by participating in the CTY Talent Search test conducted by ABEA. CTY offers more than 200 challenging, engaging and enjoyable digital courses conducted by expert instructors who specialise in teaching advanced concepts to advanced learners. Courses are available in real-time, independent and student-driven, collaborative formats in computer science, critical reading, engineering, history, mathematics, science, social science, world languages. “We are dedicated to offering unique, rigorous and relevant courses to learners in India who are looking to upskill themselves in this fast changing world. We are happy to work with the Johns Hopkins CTY and provide special scholarships to fulfil the learning needs of bright young minds,” said Neerja Birla, founder and chairperson of the Aditya Birla Education Trust, speaking on the occasion. TMY-Shiv Nadar Foundation M&A Delhi, February 4. Shiv Nadar Foundation, the philanthropic venture of IT entrepreneur Shiv Nadar, founder-CEO of HCL, a US $10 billion global IT conglomerate, has acquired The Magic Years (TMY, estb.1978), Delhi’s top-ranked standalone pre-primary which will prepare youngest children for the foundation’s K-12 Shiv Nadar School, Noida. However, Shirley Madhavan Kutty, the founder-principal of TMY and her team of educators will continue to lead the pre-primary renamed ‘The Magic Years, a Shiv Nadar School’. “Over the past four decades, TMY has emerged as the torch-bearer of preschool education, inculcating in children the joy of learning while helping them to develop critical social and emotional skills. The Shiv Nadar School has also emerged as one of the most respected K-12 schools in Delhi NCR in a short time span. I am happy to partner with the Shiv Nadar Foundation to continue to provide an engaging, caring and fun learning environment for pre-schoolers,” said Madhavan Kutty, commenting on the merger. CEDP scholarships Mumbai, February 1. Council of Education and Development Programmes (CEDP, estb.2010), a Mumbai-based skill development institute, is to provide free training for 500 eligible students. The selected students can choose from the 50-plus skill development courses run by the institute. Courses offered include certified training for the hospitality, aviation, automobile and healthcare industries. Commercially, course fees range from Rs.15,000-6 lakh which will be waived for the selected students. To avail scholarships, applicants should register for the online AICST (All India Career and Scholarship Test) Entrance Test. Eligibility for writing the test is class X certification and beyond. Comments Shaheen Khan, founder and CEO of CEDP Skill Institute: “Much has been discussed on the impact of…
Guwahati, February 11. State governor Jagadish Mukhi, ex officio chancellor, suspended Ranjit Tamuli, vice chancellor of Dibrugarh University with immediate effect following allegations of misuse of public funds. Earlier, the Dibrugarh University Teachers’ Association and several employees unions of the university, and MLA Rituparna Baruah had petitioned governor Mukhi to investigate Tamuli’s financial irregularities and misappropriation of university funds. Dissatisfied with the vice chancellor’s response to a show-cause notice, Mukhi constituted a four-member facts-finding committee to ascertain the veracity of the allegations. In its report, the committee found “prima facie a case of grave misconduct, abuse of power and lack of commitment on the part of the vice chancellor”. Kerala KUDSIT inauguration Thiruvananthapuram, February 20. Chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan virtually inaugurated the Kerala University of Digital Sciences, Innovation and Technology (KUDSIT), the country’s first digital university in Technocity Mangalapuram after completion of its first phase of construction. Spread across a ten-acre campus, the digital university — which has the capacity of 12,000 postgrad and research scholars — has been set up by upgrading the two-decades old Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management Kerala (IIITM-K) through an ordinance promulgated in January 2020. Speaking on the occasion, the chief minister said the country’s first digital university will create “enormous opportunities” for scholars. “We urgently need to foster technologically-advanced individuals in accordance with changes in the new world,” he said. Maharashtra Disale to mentor teachers Mumbai, February 10. Ranjitsinh Disale, a primary school teacher of the Zilla Parishad Primary School in Solapur district and winner of the $1 million Global Teacher Prize 2020 of the UK/Dubai-based Varkey Foundation, will mentor government school teachers across the state through online ‘teacher inspiration’ workshops on modern technology in education, said the state’s rural development minister Hasan Mushrif. “Through these workshops, teachers in the state will gain new confidence and work with greater vigour. This initiative will also help change the way communities look at government schools,” said Mushrif, speaking on the occasion. Disale who won the prize last year in recognition of his efforts to educate girl children, has thus far mentored 16,000 teachers and taught children from over 1,400 schools in 143 countries through his novel ‘virtual field trip’ initiative, added the minister. Gujarat IIS co-promotion agreement Ahmedabad, February 4. The Mumbai-based Tata Group of Companies (annual revenue: $113 billion or Rs.8.3 lakh crore) and the state government signed an agreement to establish an Indian Institute of Skills (IIS) for 5,000 students on a 20-acre campus in Nasmed village in Gandhinagar district. Under the terms of the agreement, the state’s labour and employment ministry will begin construction of IIS under the not-for-profit public-private-partnership (PPP) model. This institute will train graduates to work in artificial intelligence, cyber security, additive manufacturing, augmented reality, system integration, cloud-based application, simulation solutions, says a statement issued by the Gujarat government. Sikkim Girls self-defence courses Gangtok, February 15. All girl students of classes VI-X in government-run schools statewide will be trained in self-defence, announced special secretary (education) Bhim Thatal. The…
“There needs to be recognition that socialism is not the only ideology that has copyright on welfare. When the economy does not do well and wealth isn’t generated, then social good suffers and so does the welfare state. So, we have now called the bluff that wealth creation is in conflict with welfare.”— Nirmala Sitharaman, Union finance minister, on the Union Budget 2021-22 (The Hindu, February 22) “The government has no business to be in business. It is the government’s duty to support enterprises and businesses. But it is not essential that it should own and run enterprises.” — Prime minister Narendra Modi on privatisation (indiatoday.in, February 24) “The regime seems afraid of a new generation finding its relevance and articulation around ecology and environmentalism… Suddenly planetary issues, from climate change to the future of farming or the fate of the tribe — each a critical human rights issue — have been defined as anti-national.” — Shiv Visvanathan, well-known sociologist, on the arrest of young environment activists on charges of sedition by the BJP/NDA government (Telegraph, February 24) “By various metrics, China is now 10-15 years ahead of India. It reached India’s current per capita income 15 years ago. Similarly, on the Human Development Index, it is 15 years ahead of India. And on the more complex Union Nations Index for Sustainable Development Goals, India is unlikely to get to China’s current index level in another decade.” — T.N. Ninan on the India-China development gap (Business Standard, February 27) “Our babus have not evolved as fast to fit in with the new economic aspirations of India. In fact, ‘babu’ has now become a mildly derogatory word suggesting someone old-fashioned, who creates red-tape, slows things down and enjoys tormenting others with their power.” — Chetan Bhagat, author and columnist, on reforming the Indian Administrative Service (Times of India, February 28)
Runa Mukherjee Parikh (Ahmedabad) With the number of covid positive cases and fatalities in Gujarat falling from a peak of 97,894 and 1,132 on September 16, 2020 to 16,577 and 120 on February 25, 2021, the state government has permitted schools across the state to reopen in a phased manner. On January 11, class X and XII students who will write their board exams in May 2021 were permitted to attend in-school classes, subject to parental consent. On February 1, class IX and XII students started conventional classes. And on February 18, class VI-VIII children of private and government schools were given the option of returning to school campuses. With schools obliged to follow strict SoPs (standard operating procedures) prescribed by the Central government relating to masking, sanitisation of premises, social distancing and the option of alternate day schooling, this phased schools reopening programme is proceeding smoothly. “With the Covid situation well-managed by the state government, the number of children returning to in-school classes is rising steadily from 35 percent on January 11 to 84 percent in the week ending February 25,” says Dr. Vinod R. Rao, secretary, education (primary and secondary) of the state government. But the risk of children or teachers contracting the Coronavirus is not quite ruled out until the anti-virus vaccine being rolled out has attained critical mass. Therefore, the state government has issued strict guidelines for school managements to follow. Under the guidelines written permission is required from parents for children to resume in-school classes. “Also, schools are constantly being monitored by education inspectors, assistant education inspectors and district-level officials to ensure they adhere to safety protocols,” says Rao. On their part, private school managements, especially those that have reputations to lose, are also pulling out all stops to ensure that the prescribed SoPs are strictly implemented. “The closure of a school due to management negligence could result in withdrawal of NoC (no objection certificate) among other issues. Therefore, we not only ensure that we get consent letters from parents but have discontinued in-school classes of primary children who may not be able to fully understand the importance of masking, social distancing and safety protocols. Their education will be continued in the online mode until the end of the current academic year,” says Nashy Chauhan, director of the Ahmedabad-based Anand Niketan Group of schools in Sughad and Satellite with 3,490 children on their muster rolls. Meanwhile, the silver lining of the pandemic cloud for private school managements is that teachers have acquired valuable online teaching skills during the past ten months. As a result, several private schools completed the syllabus of the current year and are likely to continue with the blended learning model well into the next academic year. “We are determined to make up for learning loss of the past ten months through accelerated remedial education,” says Rao. Meanwhile, the discovery of the anti-Covid vaccine and rollout of the government’s vaccination drive — over 4.8 lakh citizens have taken their first jab —…
Aditi Maheshwari (Bhopal) The issue of fees payable by parents of children in private unaided schools during the pandemic close down which is convulsing the nation, has not bypassed the Hindi heartland state of Madhya Pradesh (pop.73 million), India’s largest state by land area (308,245 sq. km). On February 12, following a public march by agitated parents in Bhopal — the admin capital of the state — Kamal Vishwakarma, president of the city-based Private School Parent Association, presented a petition to Inder Singh Parmar, minister of education of the BJP government of Madhya Pradesh. The association’s petition alleged that despite numerous government notifications and high court orders, a large number of private schools are charging fees under numerous heads of expenditure. “This is unacceptable and in violation of a November 5, 2020 order passed by the Jabalpur bench of the Madhya Pradesh high court to the effect that private schools can levy only the tuition fee. This situation needs to be urgently remedied by the education ministry and state government,” says Vishwakarma. The court’s judgement of last November was based on its interpretation of the Madhya Pradesh Niji Vidyalaya (Private Schools Regulation) Act, 2017 enacted by the previous Congress government of the state which was dramatically ousted by the BJP in a legislative coup in March last year. “In order to strike a balance among stakeholders — who include students, parents, teachers and management — we direct that the students/parents shall pay tuition fee as per order dated September 1, 2020, which shall not be inclusive of library fee, computer fee, practical fee, examination fee (subject to examination not being held) and fee for programmes organised on occasions such as national festivals, sporting events and development fee,” ruled the court on November 5 in response to a writ petition filed by the Association of Unaided CBSE Schools of Madhya Pradesh. Simultaneously, the bench directed private schools to ensure that children are not deprived of online education and that teachers’ salaries are paid fully with arrears, if any, to be cleared by the end of the current academic year. Although the high court ruling has dismayed the vast majority of MP’s budget private schools in particular which are confronted with an unprecedented cash crunch, some private school leaders are sympathetic to the plight of parents whose incomes and businesses have been upended by the national lockdown of industry and business for over six-eight months following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic a year ago. “The Covid-19 pandemic was a surprise disaster and the nation has to stand by the middle and lower middle-class parents community. Private schools should draw on their savings to tide over the crisis and cut their expenditure while deploying tuition fees to meet the salaries expenses of teachers,” says Sandeep Gupta, vice principal of the Little Angels Convent High School, Bhopal. This point of view was accepted by Association of Unaided CBSE Schools which petitioned the government to ensure that the reduced tuition fee is paid immediately. But…
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) The election Commission of India has announced that West Bengal’s legislative assembly election will be conducted in eight phases between March 27 and April 29. Therefore acrimony between the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) and the BJP, which has replaced the CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist) that ruled the state uninterruptedly for 34 years (1977-2011) as the main opposition party in the state (pop.91 million), has become more fierce. Seeking a mandate for a consecutive third term while presenting the state government’s budget on February 5, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced a slew of initiatives in the education sector. Among them: Juvashakti, under which 10,000 students will be inducted as interns in government departments every three years; establishment of training centres for 100 IAS and IPS aspirants, promoting 100 new Nepali, Urdu, Kamtapuri and Kurmali medium schools; Rs.50 crore allotted for 500 new Alchiki or Santhali language schools and recruitment of 1,500 para-teachers for them, and Rs.50 crore for 100 new English medium schools for the SC/ST and economically weaker sections. In sharp contrast to the BJP-led government at the Centre slashing the 2021-22 budget for education by 6.13 percent to Rs.93,224 crore (cf. Rs.99,300 crore budgeted for 2020-21), the state government’s education budget for next year is 12.3 percent higher at Rs.37,059 crore. Moreover, with the full backing of the TMC government, the state government-funded Jadavpur University (estb.1905) has unitedly and unequivocally defied two notifications issued by the Delhi-based University Grants Commission, a subsidiary of the Union education ministry. The first notification issued on January 15 (since rescinded) required all universities and higher education institutions to obtain permission of the Union external affairs ministry prior to any faculty participating in online conferences, seminars and/or training programmes. The second UGC notification of February 16 rejected by JU, pertained to encouraging the university’s students to write a ‘cow science’ test to be conducted nationally by the Rashtriya Kamadhenu Aayog, a subsidiary of the Union ministry of fisheries and animal husbandry. With reference to the January 15 notification, speaking on behalf of JU, Partha Pratim Biswas, professor of construction engineering, commented: “Campuses must allow free thinking and exchange of views worldwide. If debate and discussion is impeded, it can create barriers to the progress of research and innovation. The conditional approach does not work in academics.” Similarly, a statement issued by the ‘Jadavpur Fraternity’ condemned the UGC directive to encourage the study of cow science. “The Jadavpur Fraternity would appeal to other colleges and UGC to rethink the unscientific direction this examination will give to the education system of the country. University research should be conducted in scientific disciplines well-funded by the government, without any scope for diversion aimed at undermining science.” The TMC government’s pro-education budget presented on February 5 at a time when over 200 million children in India have lost a full year of formal schooling due to the pandemic, and teachers have faced heavy job losses and are suffering extreme stress in training themselves…
Bandana Brahmin (Bengaluru) An early year notification to all private schools in Karnataka to collect only 70 percent of tuition fees for the current extended academic year ending May 31, provoked an unprecedented protest shutdown of over 100 private unaided schools statewide on February 23. On the same day, a protest rally led by a newly-formed Karnataka Private Schools Managements, Teaching and Non-Teaching Staff Coordination Committee (KPMTCC) attracted an estimated 50,000 teachers and employees in downtown Bengaluru causing massive traffic jams and snarls. With schools shuttered in Karnataka for close to a year to check the spread of the novel Coronavirus, even though most private school managements quickly and commendably switched to new digital technologies empowered online classes to continue their students’ education, the state’s BJP government has been issuing several fee reduction circulars on grounds that schools have not been providing co-curricular and sports education. Moreover, government ministers and spokespersons have encouraged parents to default and/or defer fees payment while simultaneously directing schools to provide online learning and pay teachers and staff salaries. With the dismally low fees collection depleting their cash flows, private school managements have been compelled to slash teachers’ salaries and in some cases their service. The spate of confusing and contradictory directives of the state government on school fees have hit affordable budget private schools (BPS) that constitute 90 percent of the private schools in the state, especially hard. The contention of private school managements, which are quite clearly backing the teachers and staff agitation, is that they have invested heavily in digital infrastructure and training teachers to conduct online classes while continuing to incur campus, buses and maintenance staff and overheads expenses. Therefore, a January 29 government directive to the state’s private schools to forego 30 percent of the tuition fees and waive all other fees for the academic year 2020-21, is unreasonable and violative of their fundamental right to pursue the vocation of education provision as held by the Supreme Court in the landmark T.M.A. Pai Foundation Case (2002). Private school managements make no secret that they are backing the KPMTCC agitation. “Most private schools have been compelled to reduce or delay teachers’ salaries because our cash flows have been completely disrupted following confusing government directives not to collect fees even if we are conducting online classes and paying teachers and staff salaries. And now the notification to collect 70 percent of tuition fees – and no other fee – has made it impossible for a large number of private schools to pay full teachers’ salaries. I’m not surprised that teachers are protesting unwarranted government interference with private schools,” says Mansoor Ali Khan, general secretary of the Management of Independent CBSE Schools Association of Karnataka. On the other hand, parents with children in private schools maintain that their managements tend to be unmindful and unsympathetic to the reality that a large number of them have suffered salary cuts and loss of income during the lockdown of all industry and business for almost six…
Dipta Joshi (Mumbai) The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) of Mumbai, India’s wealthiest local government with an annual budget of Rs.39,000 crore, is making final preparations to inaugurate ten free-of-charge KG-class XI schools affiliated with the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) examination board. Supervised by the Union education ministry but certified as autonomous, CBSE is the country’s largest pan-India school-leaving examinations (classes X and XII) board with 21,271 primary-secondaries in India and 200 overseas affiliated with it. The board prescribes several stiff affiliation norms relating to curriculum implementation, teacher-pupil ratios, teacher qualifications, campus infrastructure etc. In addition to all Central government schools (Kendriya Vidyalayas, JNVs etc), over 16,000 highly reputed private unaided schools including DPS, R.K. Puram, Heritage Xperiential Learning School, Gurugram and SAI International, Bhubaneswar, routinely top-ranked in the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR), are affiliated with this well-respected exams board. Operational from the start of academic year 2021-22 (July) when preschools and primary classes are likely to commence, these CBSE schools are expected to revive and rejuvenate the image of the maximum city’s 1,200 BMC schools which have experienced a 50 percent drop in enrolment since 2008 because of poor quality education and learning outcomes. Currently, 3.11 lakh children from low-income households are enrolled in BMC’s 1,200 K-X schools affiliated with the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education. They teach in (semi) English besides seven vernacular languages — Marathi, Hindi, Urdu, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu and Gujarati. Children are supplied with 27 essential educational items including books, bags, stationery, uniforms, a mid-day meal and even electronic tablets (for secondary students) free-of-charge. However, despite this shower of freebies, BMC schools have been experiencing a steady exodus of students fleeing to Mumbai’s estimated 200 affordable budget private schools (BPS). Between 2008-18, 229 of BMC’s vernacular language schools were shut down because of zero student enrolment. Lack of teacher accountability, poor learning outcomes as well as growing parental aspiration for English as the medium of instruction, are among the reasons for students even from bottom-of-pyramid households forsaking free-of-charge BMC schools to fees-levying private BPS. BMC officials entertain high hopes that its new CBSE-affiliated English medium schools offering excellent infrastructure, digital and virtual classrooms, tabs and computer labs, science labs, playgrounds and libraries for which the corporation has budgeted capital expenditure of Rs.14 crore in its 2020-21 budget, will stem the exodus and prove attractive to lower, middle and working-class parents. “It is a welcome initiative to provide students from low-income families K-12 education on a par with private schools. It might also attract lower middle-class families, especially those who have suffered business loss and pay cuts during the Covid-19 pandemic. But over the past several decades, the reputation of BMC schools has become so poor that it’s likely even low-income households will prefer to pay for quality education than sign up their children in free-of-charge BMC schools. Therefore, parents who can afford to do so will prefer to wait and watch before enrolling their children in BMC-CBSE…
Autar Nehru (Delhi) In a major step towards internationalisation and upgradation of the country’s higher education system, on February 17, the University Grants Commission (UGC) circulated a draft of the University Grants Commission (Academic Collaboration between Indian and Foreign Higher Education Institutions to offer Joint Degree, Dual Degree and Twinning Programmes) Regulations, 2021 for public comment and suggestions. The time window for comments and recommendations closed on March 5. Circulation of the policy draft is one more step towards contemporising and internationalising India’s higher education institutions including 39,931 undergrad colleges and 967 universities. Although some of these higher education institutions (HEIs) are of more than 150 years vintage, not one of them is ranked in the Top 200 WUR (World University Rankings) league tables published annually by the well-reputed London-based global HEIs rating agencies QS and Times Higher Education. Especially since the dawn of the new millennium, a growing number of educationists and monitors of the education scene (including EW editors) have been advocating greater collaboration between Indian HEIs and universities top-ranked by QS/THE. During the rule of the Congress-led UPA governments at the Centre, a Bill to permit foreign varsities to establish campuses in India was drafted in 2005 but failed to get Cabinet approval. A second Bill drafted by then Union education minister Kapil Sibal — the Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operations) Bill 2010 — was fiercely opposed by the BJP and other opposition parties and lapsed when the UPA alliance was routed in General Election 2014. Since then, the BJP leadership has had a change of heart and mind. In 2019, the HRD (now education) ministry included greater internationalisation of Indian HEIs in its EQUIP (Education Quality Upgradation and Inclusion Programme) for higher education. The UGC draft of February 17 is the natural sequel to EQUIP. The draft regulations provide for two types of collaboration between Indian and foreign HEIs. In the first ‘automatic mode,’ only Indian HEIs accredited by the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) with a minimum score of 3.01 on a 4-point scale (at the time of application) or ranked among India’s Top 100 universities in the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) published annually by the education ministry, or an officially designated ‘Institution of Eminence’ can suo motu initiate joint degree, dual degree and twinning programmes with offshore HEIs. Moreover, foreign HEIs must be ranked among the Top 500 in the latest THE and/or QS global league tables. Other Indian HEIs will be required to obtain the approval of an expert committee of UGC. The draft regulations come with a caveat. “A franchise arrangement, whether overtly or covertly, by whatever nomenclature used, between a foreign higher education institution and an Indian higher education institution shall not be allowed under these Regulations,” says the UGC draft effectively ruling out establishment of foreign HEIs campuses in India’s over-regulated higher education sector. “Although several private universities have signed dual degree and twinning programmes with foreign HEIs, official policy on the permissibility of such…
Congratulations for your detailed cover story ‘Pandemic Thunderbolt Endangers Early Years Education’ (EW February). It sends out a strong message to the Central and state governments to walk the talk — the National Education Policy 2020 accords high importance to early childhood care and education (ECCE) — and provide a pandemic relief package to India’s struggling pre-primary education sector. As you have highlighted, almost 50 percent of private preschools have shut down countrywide and promoters and teachers have suffered huge financial losses. Also, closure of government anganwadis has put millions of under-privileged children at risk of malnutrition. I wholly endorse your demand for reopening preschools and anganwadis with short-duration in-person classes subject to parental consent. Gagandeep Kaur on email Pandemic contrasts Thank you for an eye-opening and hard-hitting cover story on the devastating impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on India’s nascent early childhood care and education (ECCE) sector (EW February). There’s clear danger that the gains and advances made by the country’s early childhood educators to impact the importance of ECCE upon parents and governments have been lost in the pandemic. Across the country, hundreds of preschools have shut down, thousands of teachers have lost their jobs and millions of children have lost critically important foundational early years education. Unfortunately, our politicians and bureaucrats who frame public policies seem unmoved by the financial distress of preschool teachers or the massive learning loss of youngest children. What a contrast to governments in the West including the UK, US and France! Most of them never shut down their preschools even during the height of the pandemic. More pertinently, they pumped millions of dollars into early childhood education during the Corona crisis. The BJP government should learn from the example of these countries. Sumit Agarwal Delhi Urgent action call Your special report ‘Counting the cost of Covid child damage’ (EW February) focuses a timely spotlight on the scope and scale of the damage inflicted by the pandemic on India’s children. As rightly mentioned in the report, socio-economically disadvantaged children are worst affected and unless state governments double their efforts to make up for the nutrition and learning loss suffered by them during almost a full year, their own and the country’s future, is doomed. Anganwadis and schools must reopen without further delay, and intensive remedial learning programmes should be introduced forthwith. While the children of the affluent are continuing to learn through the digital mode, the poor especially in rural India, are deprived of any learning. Moreover the grim forecast that 115 million children are at risk of malnutrition needs to be urgently addressed. Large-scale child malnutrition can severely cripple their cognitive development as well as their future workplace productivity and earnings. Teesta Goswami Kolkata Impressive young achievers I am a regular reader of EducationWorld. I am impressed by the accomplishments of young achievers Kian Godhwani and Nandini Bhattacharya profiled in your February issue. It’s very commendable of them to launch an online peer-counseling start-up HappyInc. The pandemic and closure of education institutions…
Recent intemperate and ill-considered statements of Rahul Gandhi (RG), de facto chief of the Congress party, on the military stand-off on the sensitive India-China border issue, signal that it’s high time RG retires from politics in which he has sporadic interest. Following a statement made in Parliament on February 10 by Union defence minister Rajnath Singh that India and China have reached an agreement on military disengagement in the North and South bank of Pangong lake in eastern Ladakh, RG accused the BJP and prime minister Narendra Modi of ceding Indian territory to China. Addressing a press conference in Delhi, Rahul opined that the prime minister is a “coward who cannot stand up to the Chinese” and that he was guilty of betraying the “sacrifices of our Army”. Anyone with a modicum of commonsense knows that the India-China border dispute requires sensitive handling and multi-party unanimity. The last thing India needs at this juncture when it is limping out of the worst viral pandemic and economic recession of the past century with the economy set to contract by 8 percent in fiscal 2020-21, is for the simmering Sino-Indian border dispute to escalate into a full-fledged war with a belligerent neighbouring country whose GDP of $15 trillion is five multiples larger, and army twice the size of ours. Moreover, RG should be aware that a major share of the blame for failure to negotiate the border dispute with China for over half a century has to be laid at the door of the Congress and Nehru-Indira dynasty which ruled India for almost 60 years after independence in 1947. Even after the crushing defeat of the Indian Army in the Sino-India border war of 1962, neither RG’s grandmother Indira Gandhi who served three terms as prime minister, nor his father Rajiv (one-term) and his mother Sonia as de facto prime minister (2004-14), accorded importance to settling the festering India-China border issue. In the circumstances, Rahul’s reckless outbursts criticising prime minister Modi for not displaying belligerence after the Pangong Lake skirmish last summer in which 20 Indian jawans were clubbed to death and the Indian and Chinese troops are in eye-ball to eye-ball standoff on several points along the 4,800 km border, is the height of immature irresponsibility, and indicates that he needs to abdicate his position as de facto president of the Congress party. Clearly, the national interest demands that the Sino-India border stretching from Aksai Chin in the North-west to Arunachal in the North-east needs to be patiently and painstakingly demarcated and redrawn in a spirit of give-and-take, and settled once and for all. This is an issue that requires the unanimous support of all political parties, especially the two national parties. Playing electoral politics in this situation which could plunge this under-weight nation into an armed conflict with the world’s second most militarily powerful country, is irresponsibility of the worst sort.
Even if belatedly, the leadership of the BJP has begun to differentiate itself from the Congress Party which ruled free India for over half a century during which it grafted inorganic socialism learned by Jawaharlal Nehru, post-independence India’s first prime minister in fashionable drawing rooms of the idle rich in Bloomsbury Square, London, upon the Indian economy. Replying to the motion of thanks to the President’s address to Parliament on February 10, prime minister Narendra Modi unequivocally spoke up for private enterprise and the country’s private sector industry leaders and entrepreneurs. “The culture of abusing the private sector is not acceptable. We cannot go on abusing our youth (sic) like this,” he said highlighting the role of private pharmaceutical companies which have made worldwide impact, and private telecom companies which provide the world’s cheapest connectivity. On February 24, he went one better. “Government has no business to be in business,” he said. Such unequivocal public declarations in favour of private enterprise and entrepreneurs has never been made by any leader of the Central or state governments during the past half century and is music to your editor’s ears. The assertion that the business of government is governance and not commerce, was continuously reiterated by your correspondent as founding editor of Business India and later Businessworld (1978-87). Presumably to some effect because when P.V. Narasimha Rao was appointed Congress president and prime minister in 1991, post-independence India’s notorious licence-permit-quota raj was substantially dismantled. Industrial licensing and monopolies legislation was rescinded and greater freedom to conduct business was conferred upon private sector industry. The impact of the landmark economic liberalisation and deregulation of 1991 was dramatic and immediate. The annual rate of GDP growth, which had languished at a rock-bottom 3.5 percent for over four decades, more than doubled to 8.5 percent for the next two decades and has levelled off at 5 percent. Therefore when the BJP was swept to power at the Centre in 2014, the general expectation was that it would accelerate liberalisation of the economy because of its pro-business credentials and because it is unencumbered by the socialist legacy baggage of the Congress party. But in its first term it queered its pitch with the ill-advised currency demonetisation experiment which proved a disaster. However even if belatedly, its leadership seems to have seen the light. The plain, unvarnished truth is that post-independence India’s persistence with neta-babu socialism and pervasive licence-permit-quota raj has been an unmitigated disaster which has ruined the modest material aspirations of two generations of free India’s citizens. Foolishly Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi continues to demonise “suit-boot” businessmen. But for their taxes and job creation India’s children won’t have a snowball’s chance in hell. Now it’s time for prime minister Modi and the BJP to walk their belated talk.
Writing an analysis of the Union Budget and its impact on Indian education every year for the past two decades has been an anguishing and frustrating — nevertheless necessary — obligation of your editor. For 20 years, we have been featuring post-Budget cover stories highlighting the low priority given by successive governments and finance ministers to developing the country’s abundant and high-potential human capital. Alas to no avail. When EducationWorld was launched 21 years ago, the Central government’s budgetary allocation for public education was equivalent to 0.5 percent of GDP. And despite continuous pressure exerted by this publication, several distinguished academics and economists and the high-powered T.S.R. Subramanian (2016) and Dr. K. Kasturirangan (2018) committees to increase it substantially so that the annual national (Centre plus states) expenditure on public education could rise to 6 percent of GDP — first recommended by the Kothari Commission way back in 1967 — in 2018-19 it aggregated to 0.43 percent of GDP, in the Covid pandemic disrupted year 2020-21 to 0.44 percent and is budgeted at 0.42 percent of GDP next year (2021-22). The hard reality is that Central government has to take the lead and increase its annual public education outlay 5x for the 6 percent threshold to be crossed. Unfortunately for independent India’s national development effort that began in 1947, no Union finance minister at the Centre has ever allocated more than 1 percent of GDP for public education. Nor has any state government taken up the slack. Therefore national expenditure for public education has averaged a mere 3.25-3.50 percent per year for over seven decades. In the Union budget 2021-22 presented to parliament and the nation last month, the Centre’s allocation for education is Rs.93,224 crore, 6.13 percent lower than the Rs.99,312 crore budgeted for the current year ending March 31, 2021. Admittedly with the economy ravaged by the Covid-19 pandemic, the government’s tax revenue has plummeted and budget expenditure needed to be focused on capital expenditure for infrastructure projects to resuscitate business and industry. Yet as is contended in our cover story of this issue, human capital development also needs to be urgently developed. In the spring issue of EW, we highlight the continuous dog-in-the-manger policy-continuum of the Central and state governments that doesn’t provide adequately for public education and simultaneously discourage private educators from doing so to the detriment of the world’s most high-potential children. Yet despite this disabling environment, not a few well-intentioned educators driven by the spirit of enlightened self-interest are stepping forward to educate, enable and skill the country’s short-changed children. Check out our Eye Witness feature for proof.
Chip on shoulder governance
Rajiv Desai is president of Comma Consulting and a well-known Delhi-based columnist Long years ago, I was at lunch with Michael McGuire, foreign editor of Chicago Tribune, a newspaper that published and syndicated my columns. The venue was Sayat Nova, an Armenian restaurant on Ohio Street in the buzzy Streeterville neighbourhood, a lively luncheon place for those of us fortunate enough to have offices on Michigan Avenue, the glittering street that is Chicago’s answer to New York’s Fifth Avenue. Dotted with fabulous stores, boutiques, restaurants, and buildings including landmarks like the Wrigley Building and the Tribune Tower plus the riverfront One Illinois Center, a slick modern glass structure where my office was, Michigan Avenue was famous. The name was used as a title for an instrumental piece in a Rolling Stones album. To walk up and down the avenue was a distinct privilege; we were an enviable lot. We lunched almost daily on Armenian delicacies at Sayat Nova. For our loyal custom, we were invariably rewarded with an after-lunch cognac by Arsen Demirdjian, the owner. It was truly the best of times. Usually, we just sat at the bar counter and talked about this and that. On that afternoon, though, we sat at a table talking about world affairs, especially India’s dashing new leader Rajiv Gandhi. I had just written a cover story on him for the paper’s Sunday magazine. Unsurprisingly, Mike led with a question: will Rajiv change things? The conversation veered round to the Indian government’s notorious chip on the shoulder foreign policy. Indeed, Mike had often been at the receiving end of complaints from the Indian consul general about critical coverage of the jerry-rigged Janata governments of the late 1970s. And about feature stories on child marriages and bride burning. Through Rajiv Gandhi’s term, however, the external affairs ministry remained admirably quiet and dealt with the world in a mature way. The Sayat Nova interlude came to mind when I witnessed the entire weight of the Modi government and its fanboys and chorus girls lean on Rihanna, the pop singer who tweeted in favour of the ongoing farmers’ protest on the outskirts of Delhi. It’s beyond ridiculous the government, which said nothing about Chinese aggression on the Himalayan borders or the coup in Burma, kicked up a royal fuss about Rihanna. The chip on the shoulder is back big time. It is a sign of the leadership’s deep anxiety about India’s English-speaking sophisticates, who stride the world with consummate ease and breezy confidence. With notable exceptions, this small but influential segment of the population has proved immune to the virus of communal politics. It stands in marked contrast to the sullen resentment of the saffron crowd who see their parochial lifestyles including diet and habits as a handicap in global circles. It’s a cassoulet of political psychology that combines inferiority complex with a search for standing. Search for status seems to drive the current dispensation. A clue can be derived from the changed appearance of the leader:…