The students and teachers of St. Mary’s High School, Kalyan create history as they recreate the concept of Dashavatar in a visually captivating movie with special effects, excellent dramatisation and captivating soundtracks On the auspicious occasion of Akshaya Tritiya and Eid on May 3, 2022, the St. Mary’s High School, Kalyan team launched its in-house production “Dashavatar” to mark its annual day function that will remain etched in our memories forever. Dashavatar signifies the changes in era, the diverse forms of Lord Vishnu and how humankind has evolved through the eras to adapt to change. The theme was selected keeping in mind post-Covid learning environments which reflect the sentiment of accommodation of new thoughts and ideas to cope with change. Conceptualised by AryaGlobal’s Director and well-known educationist Dr. Neelam Malik, the thoughts behind Dashavatar. were carefully executed by an experienced team comprising Directors Pratik Bhosle; Mrs. Divya Borse and Mrs. Debashree Mukherjee for screenplay and Varsha Vishe and Nishad Joshi for dialogue and music. St. Mary’s has set the ball rolling to adapt the National Education Policy. This Annual Day is a skill-building activity, a career development project to help students discover their talents and dabble in hobbies today or for the future and to tread the path of integrating technology with learning proposed in the NEP,” said Dr, Neelam Malik speaking on the occasion. St. Mary’s High School has a well-established teaching pedagogy that focuses on value education. By integrating technology with learning, Dashavatar was a unique effort to introduce children to India’s rich culture and heritage. The final performance was the result of six months of sheer hard work put in by the students, parents and teachers of St. Mary’s High School who underwent rigorous training from renowned theatre artistes in acting, stage tactics, lights, costume, music score and special effects. All students were given a chance to contribute based on their aptitudes and skills. Commented Bharat Malik, Chairman of AryaGlobal: “This experience has helped children understand the importance of teamwork and that to achieve something great, one needs to engage in creative thinking. Children have learnt the importance of patience and the value of research in making a great movie. They have also learnt the nuances of stagecraft and dialogue delivery.” “We always aim to provide a holistic learning experience by integrating life skills. With Dashavatar, our students discovered their love for dramatics and understood the hard work that goes into producing a movie. I thank our parents for giving their whole[1]hearted support and consent for their child’s participation,” said the school Principal Divya Borse. CEO Dr.Vinda Buskute added: “Adapting to change is the essence of growth and happiness and this is evident in our scrip[1]tures. We are witnessing the same in our students as they equip themselves to adapt to vocational skills required today.” St. Mary’s High School, Kalyan is recognised as the No. 1 Budget School in India by Education Today and India’s No.1 State Board School in Digital Advancement. As Dr. Neelam Malik…
Santosh Kumar, Co-founder & CEO and Yeshwanth Raj Parasmal, Co-founder & Director share the aims and objectives of 21K School, India’s #1 online school. Tell us about the launch of your ‘Future of Education’ initiative. Santosh Kumar: The education system is changing, with new teachers and programs that will change the face of teachinglearning forever. Imagine a world where students are enabled to learn at their own pace instead of being conformist members in an assembly line-type environment. Education has always been much more than just the curriculum; it’s also about social interaction between peers with similar interests as well as creative aka free thinking exercises on how we can improve society today through meaningful discussions. The revolution won’t come without hurdles but there have never been better times ahead for those willing and ready! We at 21K School are spearheading this revolution of making transformational education available to children world over. We wanted to give parents an inside out perspective on how we are delivering futuristic education. You can visit our YouTube channel @21KSchool to know everything you ever wanted to know about Online Schooling and didn’t know where to look! As a K12 school that is only online, can you tell us how you are providing education to children through your platform? Yeshwanth Raj Parasmal: Our three co-founders and I came together with one strong belief – that the biggest gift a parent can give their child is to prepare them for a rapidly evolving world and a future far beyond the traditional roles we have grown up seeing. This is our core notion in order to offer high quality online educa[1]tion, global curriculum choices and quality teachers who love teach[1]ing on a universal platform that students have access to anywhere in the world! We started 21K School to change the way education is looked at and taught for. We knew we had to change the factory model of education and bring in transparency and innovation at the core. A child must enjoy learning and only then can she use that learning in her future life. Our digital-only K12 schooling experience helps save time and gives children the flexibility to pur[1]sue what they love. Online School saves as many as 1,050 hours per year, translating to 700 days over 16 years of school education by reducing travel time and tuition time. This flexible learning model at 21K School allows students to pursue their passions across sci[1]ence, maths, art, music, dance, entrepreneurship, and sports. 21K School is designed not just as another mainstream schooling option but as a giant leap into the future of learning experience where parents are assured that their children are being prepared for a happy, healthy and prosper[1]ous global citizenship; Our students are ready for the real world with a growth mindset. What is the market feedback for this digital education format since education in India has always been provided in a physical setting? Yeshwanth Raj Parasmal: The Covid pandemic hit India at a time…
Chitkara University has been established and managed by passionate academicians with the sole mission of nurturing “industry-ready” students. With over 900 faculty members and enrolment of 17,000 students from 28 countries, we are proud to host a diverse student community on our campus. Our goal is to impact future global citizens through life-changing research, state-of art infrastructure, innovative curricula and industry tie-ups. Chitkara University has been awarded A+ rating by the prestigious National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) placing it among 5 percent of higher education institutions (HEIs) for quality education. The university scored a Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA) of 3.26 on a 4-point scale. Chitkara U is consistently high ranked in the coveted National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) under the categories of Engineering, Pharmacy, Management, Overall and Research. Similarly in Atal Ranking of Institutions for Innovation Achievements (ARIIA), the university has been ranked #2 in the private self-financed category of HEIs. Chitkara University is also ranked #4 in India in the Times Higher Education (THE) Impact Ranking – 2022. THE Impact Ranking measures universities’ contribution to United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The university has taken a quantum leap in global rankings and is currently ranked in the 201-300 band among 1,400 universities from over 100 countries across the world. In the QS World University Ranking 2020-21, Asia, Chitkara University featured for the first time ever. It was also the only Indian varsity to be shortlisted for ‘Technological Innovation of the Year’ in Times Higher Education Asia Awards 2020. The university has also made it into the Top 200 in ‘Clarivate Analytics’ leading innovators list 2020. Chitkara University prides itself for its 3,000+ Scopus Indexed publications, 1,500+ patents (filed), 150+ patents (granted), 5,000+ citations and much more. Our alumni are well placed across the globe. Chitkara University and its constituent institutions are duly recognised by University Grants Commission (UGC) and a number of other regulatory bodies including Council of Architecture, Pharmacy Council of India, National Council for Teacher Education, Indian Nursing Council, National Council for Hotel Management and Catering Technology. It is a proud member of the Association of the Universities of Asia and Pacific (AUAP), Association of Indian Universities (AIU), Association of Indian Universities, ASSOCHAM, United Nations Academic Impact (UNAI), among others. The university is recognised by the DSIR-SIRO for its research endeavours besides having government recognition for its Institutional Animal Ethics Committee (IAEC), Institution’s Innovation Cell (IIC), Institutional Human Ethical Committee (IHEC) and many more. The Technology Business Incubator is recognised by the DST and MSME since 2010. The TBI has been awarded grants from NSTDEB[1]NewGen IEDC, NIDHI Prayas, NIDHI-SSP and from the Start-up India Seed Fund. The TBI is a MEITY TIDE 2.0 centre. The Incubator is sector agnostic and supports start-ups across the country. In addition, the university has bagged funding of over Rs. 60 crore (in last three years) from the European Union and DST under various schemes from its SEED, TDT, NCSTC, NSTDEB, SERB divisions, among others. A state-of-the-art curriculum grounded…
-Dr. (Mrs.) Amita Chauhan Chairperson, Amity Group of Schools Until a few decades ago, summer vacations meant a mandatory trip to our grandparent’s house, or the annual family vacation to the closest hill station. Children, who for some reason could do neither, would find their own ways to entertain themselves, whether it was by wandering around chasing squirrels and sparrows, or by climbing mango trees that were omnipresent in the summer months. For the less enterprising, it was about mostly staying indoors, with not much productive work to do. Holidays then were obviously synonymous with leisurely days spent with family and friends. But times have changed now, and so has the idea of fun, with the rising popularity of what we call the summer school! To explain, a summer school offers short-term courses and conducts classes during summer vacations, and these are designed to train children in subjects different from their regular curriculum. They, therefore, provide children with a fine balance between opportunity and thrill, taking their learning to the next level and, above all, giving them novel ways to utilise time! What’s more, this concept has come as a boon for nuclear families where both parents are working, and they are more than happy to see their children indulge in interesting experiences rather than waste time in mindless television binging. In India, several schools offer a plethora of summer programs. For instance, one can learn a foreign language, hone their music, dance and art skills, or take to gardening and cooking. Children can also train in sports like swimming and gymnastics. The creatively inclined can opt for courses in script writing and filmmaking, while for those with a scientific temperament, courses in robotics and astronomy are aplenty. Summer school courses not only provide a new learning, but also add to the credentials on the resume of a student. Many children plan of going to their favorite university for higher studies, whether in India or abroad, and summer schools can make it easier for them to get into their dream colleges. Since a lot of colleges and universities have an application and profile-based admission process, which gives more importance to individual achievement and experience than an academic score, joining a summer school is always a win-win situation. It showcases that a child has made the effort to go beyond the classroom to expand his or her learning. Since a summer school aims to inculcate expertise in a specific stream and knowledge, it adds to the child’s skill set. These creatively designed programmes focus on individual ability and talent and hence prepare a child for college life.
Technology, design, and social sciences. Completely different areas, are they? In 2015, the United Nations declared sustainable transformation as the most critical global agenda till 2030. While developing the 17 Sustainable Development Goals—or SDGs as they are usually referred to—it was acutely felt by the experts that converging technology, design and social sciences was essential to achieve the tasks outlined in the SDGs. While an acute shortage of professionals educated and skilled with these three seemingly disparate sets of knowledge is recognised, what kind of academic programmes can possibly merge these three areas is unclear – particularly in India – where interdisciplinary courses are conspicuously absent at the undergraduate level. Catering to future SDG needs will be impossible with the conventional subjects taught across Indian universities. An examination of the agenda of sustainable transformation reveals that it concerns transforming spaces and places. Studying the built environment becomes critical for such a pursuit. To better understand the questions surrounding the built environment, it is imperative that future professionals study technology, design and social sciences together. To meet this need, O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU) established the Jindal School of Art & Architecture, JSAA, in 2018. JSAA now offers a Bachelor of Architecture degree and two Bachelor of Design degrees, one in Interior Design and another in Community & Urban Development. Across all three programmes, students are trained to tackle real-world challenges from a theoretically robust and pragmatically nuanced pedagogy that equips them to produce effective and equitable solutions. At JSAA, the approach is to define the built environment very differently from its conventional understanding. Education at JSAA starts with the assertion that every environment is ‘built’, whether by humans or nonhumans alone or jointly, facilitated by active geophysical processes. All three are active agents in producing any environment. There is enough evidence with scientists now to recognise that a forest is as much a built environment as an igloo. While the former is ‘built’ through the interactions of humans, nonhumans and the geophysical processes, the latter is ‘built’ by the Inuit community with the help of natural processes. Nothing is ‘pristine,’ everything has been ’built,’ not only insofar as human civilisations go back to, but even before that. Even dinosaurs were active agents in creating and building the environment they lived in. This understanding of the built environment is the central principle and core ideal that JSAA works with, following the latest and best practices from across the world. This necessarily means having faculty members educated at the very best universities around the world with advanced interdisciplinary education and training. JSAA’s accomplished and well-trained faculty includes not only architects, but anthropologists, geographers, historians, lawyers, designers, engineers, and conservationists with academic training and professional experience in the best global universities such as Cornell, Purdue, UCLA, Connecticut, UC Berkeley, Heidelberg, Politecnico de Milano, to name a few. JSAA offers research-based and hands-on education. The spirit of pedagogical engagement at JSAA is not hierarchical but leans towards co-producing knowledge where students are equal stakeholders…
Uttar Pradesh: Facelift for govt schools Lucknow, April 3. To ensure 100 percent enrolment in primary and upper primary schools in Uttar Pradesh, chief minister Yogi Adityanath launched a statewide ‘School Chalo Abhiyan’ (attend school campaign) from Shravasti district, which has UP’s lowest literacy rate. “Government schools must achieve all the goals of Operation Kayakalp which aims at giving schools a facelift. Towards this end, all state-run schools have been directed to offer basic facilities such as toilets, drinking water, furniture and uniforms to students, and also ensure deployment of adequate teachers under the campaign,” said the chief minister, addressing media on the occasion. Delhi: Withdrawn invite indignation New Delhi, April 14. Delhi University’s top-ranked Lady Shri Ram (LSR) College for Women withdrew an invitation to BJP national spokesperson Guru Prakash Paswan, following protests from members of its students’ community. After LSR’s SC-ST (scheduled castes and tribes) community advertised an interview with Paswan to commemorate the birth anniversary of SC-ST leader Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) unit of the college persuaded the SC-ST association to withdraw its invitation on the plea that BJP is “against the interests of marginalised communities”. “I prepared my presentation on the contributions of Babasaheb Ambedkar beyond drafting of the Constitution, his role as an economist, diplomat and an educationist… At a time when the country is celebrating 75 years of its independence, one thing that we ought to learn from the makers of our Constitution is their ability to listen, absorb and respect other viewpoints,” said Paswan in a statement posted on Facebook and Twitter. J&K: Commerce education drive Jammu, April 4. The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) signed a five-year partnership agreement with Directorate of School Education, Kashmir for promoting commerce education among students of the Union territory. Under the agreement, commerce education will be promoted in government and government-aided secondary and higher secondary schools. “Commerce education can play a critical role to promote the growth of industry and the whole economy. Kashmir’s talented youth need to transform into major contributors,” said a joint statement released on the occasion. Earlier, ICAI announced a 75 percent fees waiver for all chartered accountancy courses for students from the Union territories of Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh and North-eastern states. Gujarat: Mission Schools of Excellence Ahmedabad, April 5. The World Bank and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) will provide a loan of Rs.7,500 crore towards the state government’s Mission Schools of Excellence project, to improve the quality of education in Gujarat’s 35,133 government and 5,847 grant-in-aid schools. Under the Mission Schools of Excellence project, the state government has budgeted expenditure of Rs.10,000 crore over the next five years. A World Bank delegation visited Gandhinagar to study the Schools of Excellence project. Led by the bank’s global education director Jaime Saavedra, the delegation also visited the state education ministry’s command and control centre in the state capital. Haryana: Exam malpractice arrests Chandigarh, April 7. A principal, teacher and two staff members of a…
“Our states have been formed on linguistic basis. So, the concerned state language or mother tongue is supreme. Everyone should understand and respect that.” Basavaraj Bommai, Karnataka chief minister on the controversy about making Hindi the national language (April 23, Times of India) “The party line across the secular universe, is, you can’t afford to be seen close to the Muslims or a Muslim cause. It’s suicidal in today’s electoral politics. Hypocrisy and cowardice in the name of discretion is the better part of secular valour.” Shekhar Gupta, editor The Print, on rising Islamophobia in India (Business Standard, April 23) “And even more than Jawaharlal Nehru, Narendra Modi seeks to be “an overwhelming force by himself”, his desire to build a personality cult around himself aided by the sort of propaganda machine not remotely conceivable in the 1950s.” Historian Ramachandra Guha on the dangers of one-party dominance (April 24, Scroll.in) “There is a kind of rush to send children to schools. Parents want to start as soon as their children are two years old. This may not be conducive to their psychological health. Don’t push the child too much. It may impact his ability to grasp and read.” Supreme Court of India, hearing an appeal by parents challenging the minimum age condition of six years for admission into class I of Kendriya Vidyalayas (April 26, Hindustan Times) “For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally.” Elon Musk, billionaire entrepreneur, after purchasing Twitter for $44 billion (April 28, Twitter) “Due to proliferation of breadth requirements, Four Year Undergraduate Programme (FYUP) students will study an extra year and yet emerge with much less knowledge than preceding batches.” Amber Habib, Maths professor at Shiv Nadar University, on UGC’s draft FYUP curriculum (Times of India, May 5)
-Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai) Swept to power in the legislative assembly election held in April 2021 with a comfortable majority of 159 seats in the 234-member assembly, Tamil Nadu’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) government has declared war against the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 approved by the BJP/NDA government at the Centre. The DMK government finds NEP 2020’s three-language formula, common entrance test for undergraduate courses, and the introduction of a four-year degree programme with options of multiple entry and exits, objectionable. On April 5, the state government constituted a 13-member committee chaired by D. Murugesan, a former chief justice of the Delhi high court to formulate a State Education Policy (SEP) exclusively for Tamil Nadu (pop.68 million). “The state government will come out with a state education policy within a year. Though education is on the concurrent list (of the Constitution), in practice it is being treated as if it belongs to the Central list. NEP 2020 was prepared without consulting state governments,” said K. Ponmudi, the state’s higher education minister in a statement issued on April 15. Yet the main reason for Tamil Nadu’s rejection of NEP 2020 is an old issue: the BJP government at the Centre has revived a dormant campaign to impose “Hindi language imperialism” on TN and non-Hindi speaking states of peninsular India. Opposition to Hindi as India’s national language by Tamil Nadu’s entire political class is not new. It dates back to the 1930s when the founder of the Dravidian movement Periyar E.V. Ramasamy (1879-1973) opposed this proposition mooted by the pre-independence Congress party and leaders of India’s freedom movement. Although it also boasted stalwarts such as C.R. Rajagopalachari and K. Kamaraj, India’s freedom movement was dominated by Congress party leaders from the subcontinent’s northern states, and Uttar Pradesh — India’s most populous Hindi speaking state — in particular. Moreover, the leadership of the Congress party tended to be overwhelmingly from the upper castes, a phenomenon which was viewed with suspicion by the iconoclastic Periyar Ramasamy. This revered leader of Tamil Nadu’s Dravidian assertion movement was bitterly opposed to domination and oppression of the lower castes by peninsular India’s powerful Brahmin community. In 1950 when the Constitution of India was approved by Parliament, it contained Article 343 which promulgated Hindi as free India’s national language, although it provided a clause that English would continue to be the lingua franca for all official purposes of the Union for 15 years. In 1965 when this interim period expired and Hindi was declared the national language, riots broke out across south India and the DMK initiated a secessionist movement in Tamil Nadu. As a result, Parliament accepted English as the associate official language of India. In school education a three language learning formula under which children countrywide would learn Hindi and two other languages, including English, was adopted. But the three languages formula has proved a non-starter with north Indians showing little interest in learning Dravidian languages. Therefore, all post-1965 governments in Tamil Nadu have officially mandated…
-Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) Somewhat surprisingly, the sixth edition of the Bengal Global Business Summit (BGBS) 2022, hosted by the state’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) government on April 20-21, attracted participation of 4,300 delegates from 42 countries, including businessmen, politicians and academics from the US, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Netherlands, Finland, Morocco, Bangladesh and Bhutan. During the two-day event staged to attract investment into West Bengal, 137 memoranda of understanding (MoUs) were signed between the state government, foreign and domestic companies which could generate a massive investment inflow into the economy of the state and create millions of jobs in West Bengal (pop.91 million) which has 7.6 million registered unemployed youth. The list of high-profile delegates attending the summit included several big names from India Inc, including billionaire Gautam Adani, who pledged to invest Rs.10,000 crore in the state over the next ten years. However, it’s important to note that the signing of MoUs and investment pledges are ceremonial statements of intent rather than binding contracts. Ground conditions and the investment climate — the preserve of the state government — have to be conducive for MoUs and pledges to translate into on-the-ground projects. In this connection, West Bengal’s history has been tragic. From the mid-1960s onward, two communist parties — the CPI and CPM — dominated West Bengal politics and during the uninterrupted rule of the latter for 34 years (1977-2011), rampant trade unionism backed by the CPM prompted sustained flight of capital, destroyed industry and generated mass unemployment. Unfortunately since then, extortionist youth-wing members of the CPM have switched sides and have continued to create law and order problems as youth wings of TMC. This unchanged ground condition has made domestic and foreign investors wary of investing in West Bengal. Be that as it may, a notable feature of BGBS 2022 was several high-potential initiatives in higher education. Over 15 MoUs were signed between state and foreign universities, including five by Jadavpur University, and three by Calcutta University. Jadavpur U has signed MoUs with University of Warsaw (Poland) and Exeter University (UK) and Calcutta U with UCL London, University of Leeds (UK) and the University of Warsaw. Vidyasagar University, Midnapore signed an MoU with the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Presidency University, Kolkata with Jamshedpur-based Atomic Minerals Directorate. Among private universities, Sister Nivedita University, New Town signed an MoU with Okayama University, Japan. However, academic news that stole the limelight was an announcement by Purnendu Chatterjee, head of The Chatterjee Group (TCG), to establish a greenfield world-class research university in frontier technologies in Kolkata, which intends to attract 200 research scholars every year. Though Chatterjee has declined to cite a figure, it is estimated that TCG will invest Rs.2,500 crore, making it one of the largest investments by a private entrepreneur in West Bengal. But even in the education sector, the investment climate is less than perfect. On February 28, the Calcutta high court ordered a CBI inquiry into the state’s long-standing teacher recruitment scam dating back to 2016.…
-Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) With state legislative assembly elections less than a year away, rank and file activists of the BJP — even if not the top brass of the party — are targeting Muslim and Christian minorities in Karnataka (pop.65 million), widely acknowledged as the BJP’s gateway into peninsular India. Plainly the objective of the BJP is to consolidate the dominant Hindu community vote behind the ruling party. In January, even as children returned to school after the prolonged pandemic lockdown, some hindutva fringe groups created a prickly controversy over Muslim girl children wearing the hijab (headscarves) in classrooms. And most recently, another controversy involving a Christian minority education institution has made headlines in the media. On April 21, Mohan Gowda, a spokesperson of the Hindu Janajagruti Samiti, tweeted that Clarence High School, Bengaluru, a vintage CISCE-affiliated primary secondary school (estb.1914), is “forcing” parents to sign a declaration to the effect that they have no objection to their children “carrying” the Bible and attending scripture classes. Citing an extract from the school’s admission application form, Gowda tweeted: “You affirm that your child will attend classes including morning assembly, scripture classes and clubs for his/her own moral and spiritual welfare and will not object to carrying the Bible and hymn books during his/her stay at Clarence High School.” Soon after, Hindu fringe groups accused the Clarence school management of “attempts to convert students to Christianity” and imposing scripture classes/Bible upon Hindu children. Unsurprisingly, the BJP state government, which according to the opposition has orchestrated this new anti-minorities campaign, issued a show cause notice (April 26) to the school to clarify whether learning the scriptures is mandatory for all students. A day earlier, April 25, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights wrote to the District Commissioner of Bengaluru Urban demanding an enquiry into a “complaint” that Clarence High is imposing Christian religious views on minor children by making it mandatory for them to study the Bible. “This is against the Karnataka Education Act, 1983. Under the Act, no school should have religious books in its academic curriculum. The department has sent a notice to the school and will wait for its response. The DDPI and BEO are already checking the facts and we will take action after receiving their response,” said B.C. Nagesh, education minister of Karnataka, addressing the media. Reacting, Clarence High School principal Jerry George Mathew says the school is being dragged into “petty politics”. According to Mathew, as a Christian minority education institution, the school has a right to draw from the scriptures to teach “moral values” to students. The school’s alumni were also quick to take to social media platforms to support the management, and accused the BJP government of raking up a non-issue and “communalising it”. Since its establishment in 1914 by British missionaries Alfred and Walter Redwood, Bible teaching has been mandatory in the school. “The school is being targeted over a non-issue. Clarence has a tradition of drawing from the Bible to inculcate…
Kasturi Ray (Bhubaneshwar) Among india’s 28 states, the eastern seaboard state of Odisha, formerly Orissa (pop.46.3 million), is an outlier. Unlike other states of the Indian Union in which political action is fast and furious, Odisha has enjoyed political stability and orderly governance under the ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) headed by Doon School and St. Stephen’s College educated chief minister Naveen Patnaik, now in his fifth term in office. As a result, the annual state gross domestic product (SGDP) has grown by an impressive 10.1 percent per year and the state, once infamous for hunger deaths in its hinterland, has made impressive progress in eliminating extreme poverty and raising the living standards of its hitherto neglected large tribal population in particular. In education as well, with the active encouragement of the BJD government, the state has made impressive progress. In the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings 2021-22 — the world’s largest schools rankings survey — Sai International School, Bhubaneswar (estb.2006) is ranked India #1 in the day-cum-boarding school category, and the Sai Group — established by the late Bijaya Sahoo — has also promoted Sai Angan, billed as Asia’s largest pre-primary school. Odisha’s admin capital, the neat and well-governed Bhubaneswar (pop.1.22 million) is also home to KISS (Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences), the world’s largest residential free-of-charge K-12 school for tribal children, and the high ranked Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT) University. Both these path-breaking institutions were promoted decades ago by educationist-philanthropist Dr. Achyuta Samanta. In addition, the state has pioneered another education initiative that could serve as a model to other states — SAMS (Student Academic Management System) — which has proved a conspicuous success in smoothing the complex process of undergraduate admissions for school-leavers. Until SAMS was introduced for junior colleges (classes XI-XII) in 2010, admissions conducted in offline mode were a major headache for school-leaving (class X) students who were required to visit every college of their choice to complete admission forms. SAMS was the response of the higher education department of the BJD government to address this problem. Beginning with 60 junior colleges, the platform initiated a one-window admission system for 169 junior colleges and 53 undergrad colleges in 2010-11. After its glitches and teething problems were resolved in two-three years, it was approved by the state government for admission into junior, higher secondary, secondary schools, Arts, Commerce, and Science undergrad colleges and vocational and Sanskrit education institutions. Since then, it has been expanded to govern admission into correspondence, ITI, diploma, teacher education, and physical education institutions. The platform also maintains the academic and financial records of every student admitted into education institutions. Remarkably for a nation in which government — especially state governments — is notorious for lack of initiative and enterprise, SAMS was conceived and designed by the education & IT ministries of the Odisha government and initially funded by a 12th Finance Commission grant. But since then, it has become financially independent. However, two of the state’s major autonomous varsities —…
-Dipta Joshi (Mumbai) More than 1,200 english-medium schools have closed down in Maharashtra during the past two years due to financial hardship. The majority of them are financially independent budget private schools (BPS) levying tuition fees of Rs.30,000 per year or less. They became unviable during the prolonged government mandated pandemic lockdown of all education institutions countrywide for 82-90 weeks when only online education was permitted. With BPS promoters having suffered massive income loss during the pandemic, the Independent English Schools Association of Maharashtra (IESA), comprising 4,324 private budget schools as member institutions, has demanded the state government constitutes a new department within the education ministry to navigate revival of budget private schools. Maharashtra’s BPS which constitute 83 percent of the state’s 58,000 private schools, educate children of aspirational lower middle and organised sector working class households. Unlike government schools which tend to be English language averse, they offer English-medium education at affordable price. While per-student expenditure in government-run schools is Rs.60,000 per annum, budget private schools provide primary-secondary education with better learning outcomes for as little as Rs.25,000-30,000 per year. With BPS dispensing better quality education, better infrastructure, academic rigour, extra-curricular activities, state board curriculum, digital and IT-enabled campuses — mainly by keeping teachers’ salaries low — state government schools which pay high salaries but are notorious for crumbling infrastructure, and for sub-nationalist reasons prefer to teach in the state’s dominant language, have been experiencing a steady exodus of students, despite providing a free mid-day meal. The steady rise of budget private schools has not gone down well with the state government which seldom dispels populist perception that private schools are run by profiteers and are loaded with ‘donations’ extorted in admission season. The mutually antagonistic relationship between BPS and government worsened during the almost two years of officially mandated closure of schools during the Covid pandemic when the revenue streams of BPS dried up. Although during the lockdown, a substantial number of BPS switched to online education, many parents refused to pay tuition fees on government instigation. During the lockdown, the state government issued circulars directing private schools not to expel any student for non-payment of fees, and directed private school managements to charge only 50 percent of contracted fees if they provided online education. “We are disappointed by the apathy of the education ministry despite our major contribution to the education sector. Private school principals are threatened with police action and first information reports (FIRs) filed against them for asking for fees which is our legal right. The government announces policies that are contrary to law to suit parents and students, and doesn’t let schools demand their fees. This has placed school education and the future of students in danger. As a result of these contradictory policies of the education ministry, 1,200 private budget schools in the state were forced to close leaving the educational future of thousands of students in jeopardy. There is a need to re-think the impact of such vote-bank pleasing policies. The ministry…
-Debasish Roy (Noida) Although students in india experienced the world’s highest learning loss because of the most prolonged shutdown of education institutions from pre-primaries to universities during the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of enrolments and awards for Ph D degrees rose significantly. Even in higher education institutions where the number of Ph D admissions took a minor dip, a high level of engagement and improvement in quality publications was witnessed. “We have seen a spurt in quality publications by Ph D scholars during the pandemic period. Our scholars were able to devote much more time to attend international online conferences and webinars, writing research articles and theses, resulting in an increase in the number of Ph D degrees awarded during 2020 and 2021,” says Dr. K.M. Soni, dean of research at the top-ranked Amity University, Noida. The Regent Education and Research Foundation (RERF), Barrackpore (West Bengal), a late entrant into research which recently admitted its first batch of students writing M.Sc, B.Tech and other degree programmes, has also witnessed a record 63 percent of postgrads signing up for higher research in fields related to biological sciences. This rush of candidates for Ph D studies is unprecedented, says Dr. Pijush Mallick, director of the School of Life Sciences and Allied Health Sciences at Swami Vivekananda University, Barrackpore. “Applications for doctorate studies in biology and related fields have increased manifold. However, engineering students still prefer gainful employment to academic research,” says Mallick. Dr. Mosiur Rahaman, principal scientist at the Hyderabad-based Nuziveedu Seeds Ltd, supports this assessment. “Even private corporates, which are not deeply into product and fundamental research have taken many strides forward to intensify research activities so that when the world becomes normal again, we are ready with innovative products,” says Rahaman. Dr. Rahaman’s team at Nuziveedu Seeds is actively involved in developing 12 new varieties of high-yielding jute seeds, quite a few of which have been endorsed officially by the Union ministry of agriculture. Disappointed by India Inc’s disinterest in research and innovation, Prof. Swapan Kumar Datta, vice chancellor, Biswa Bangla University, Kolkata, stresses that government support for R&D in universities is vital. “Government grants to universities have to increase to build the infrastructure for research, which is essential for stimulating R&D activity,” says Datta, a well-respected pioneer of agricultural research in India, with several years of R&D experience in Germany and Japan. Reassuringly, the privately promoted Amity University (Noida) has stepped up its R&D activity and awarded 284 Ph Ds in 2021. “During the Covid-19 pandemic, nearly 1.2 billion students worldwide were learning from home on digital platforms. Amity was no exception. As per guidelines prescribed by the University Grants Commission, we migrated all activities to e-learning/virtual mode to avoid academic loss to Ph D scholars, and ensured that their research activity was uninterrupted,” says K.M. Soni (quoted earlier). Although the spurt in R&D activity and number of postgrad students opting for doctoral studies is a silver lining to the dark pandemic cloud that has disrupted the education of…
AU-SoME venture Bengaluru, April 28. Ahmedabad University and the School of Meaningful Experiences (SoME, estb. 2018), Bengaluru, signed a collaboration agreement to provide management development programmes (MDPs) to corporate professionals, middle managers, and senior executives countrywide. The content of MDPs will be designed and delivered jointly by SoME and Ahmedabad University faculty. “These courses have been designed after assessing the gaps in MDPs offered by various business schools and online edtech companies. We believe the courses offered by these entities are of very short duration and lack depth and focus for upskilling business professionals because of insufficient attention to development of soft skills. Through the courses offered jointly by SoME and Ahmedabad University, we intend to address deficits in the continuous learning space for senior and middle level managers,” said Dr. Rakesh Godhwani, founder of SoME, corporate coach and communication professional, speaking on the occasion. Structured plumbing courses Delhi, April 14. The All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Indian Plumbing Association (IPA, estb.1993) to introduce plumbing education courses in engineering and architecture higher education institutions. Under terms of the MoU, students enrolled in engineering, architecture and interior design programmes and graduates with majors in civil, environmental, and mechanical engineering, architecture and interior design are eligible to sign up for a four credit course in ‘plumbing (water and sanitation)’. “There is urgent need to include plumbing in engineering and architecture curriculums as good plumbing is a priority health issue. IPA and AICTE have jointly designed a 50-hour study course that is 80 percent theory and 20 percent practice,” said Prof. Anil D. Sahasrabudhe, chairman, AICTE, speaking on the occasion. “This is a tremendous opportunity for plumbing industry stakeholders since the majority of plumbers who learn by doing will become more organised and structured after formal study of the vocation,” added Gurmit Singh Arora, president of IPA. Unacademy Scholarships programme Bengaluru, April 5. The Bengaluru-based Unacademy, which bills itself as India’s largest learning platform, signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Backward Classes Welfare Department (BCWD) of the Telangana state government to identify and empower meritorious students from the state to prepare for competitive exams. During the next three years, Unacademy will conduct a series of aptitude tests in three phases to identify meritorious BCWD students in Telangana to prepare them for UPSC and college entrance exams. Under this MoU, 4,500 selected students will be awarded study scholarships plus exam fees by Unacademy. According to a Unacademy statement, all BCWD students of classes X-XII and in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes are eligible to write these tests and apply for scholarships. Jaro-SRMIST concordat Bengaluru, April 28. The Mumbai-based Jaro Education, which offers executive education programmes, signed a partnership agreement with the Chennai-based SRM Institute of Science and Technology (SRMIST). Under terms of the agreement, the institute’s directorate of online education has empanelled Jaro to provide digital marketing services for SRMIST’s online bachelor’s and Masters degree programmes. Jaro Education will promote SRMIST’s online MBA,…
-Autar Nehru (Delhi) A long-standing demand of serious scholars intent upon acquiring multidisciplinary qualifications and skills has finally been conceded. On April 13, the University Grants Commission (UGC), the apex-level regulator of Indian higher education, issued a circular to universities permitting pursuance of two degrees simultaneously in undergraduate as well as postgraduate education (barring Ph D) by students from this academic year. Simultaneously, the commission released a set of guidelines for universities to follow while implementing this major “technical reform” that has been in the works for several years. Under previous UGC guidelines, a scholar couldn’t sign up for two degree programmes simultaneously. A degree programme could only be supplemented by a ODL (open and distance learning)/online diploma programme delivered by higher education institutions (HEIs) recognised by UGC, and specifically authorised to provide remote learning programmes. According to some educators, too-early streaming of students into arts, science and commerce disciplines in class XI was one of the big mistakes of Indian education. This aberration was corrected by the Kasturirangan Committee (2018), which recommended four-year degree programmes with the first two years dedicated to the study of liberal arts subjects. Greenlighting dual degrees is a further step in that direction. “As announced in the new NEP 2020 and in order to allow students to acquire multiple skills, UGC is allowing a candidate to pursue two-degree programmes in physical mode simultaneously. The idea is to provide as much flexibility as possible to students. These guidelines are part of NEP 2020 and are aimed to customise and personalise education, even allow multidisciplinary education across various domains. It is a great opportunity for students to expand their skills,” Prof. M. Jagadesh Kumar, UGC chairman, told a press conference. Permitting higher ed students to pursue two-degree programmes — quite common in the US — makes sense inasmuch as it provides for a student to drop out of one programme at any stage if she becomes disenchanted with it. Even so, she will acquire credits if she completes one or more years. Acquiring credits — certificates and diplomas — without completion of a full degree programme is endorsed by NEP 2020 which provides for multiple entry and exit options. Self-evidently, a dual degree student will be better rounded and has more time to decide which degree programme is more suitable. And students awarded two degrees have a career fallback option. Hitherto, undergrads signed up for additional part-time or online professional courses to improve their employability. But formal regulatory approval for acquiring dual degree qualifications is a better option even though pursuing two degree programmes simultaneously is certain to test students’ commitment and stamina. Prof. Dr. Rama (only one name), principal of Hansraj College, Delhi, believes that the number of undergrads who will sign up for dual degree programmes is likely to be small. “There won’t be many takers as attending classes, learning and keeping ahead of homework, studying for tests, and getting high grades requires extraordinary will power and stamina,” she says. Although UGC’s green light…
Overdue recognition I was delighted to discover that my alma mater — Government Science College, Bengaluru — has been awarded recognition and ranked India’s #1 government autonomous arts, science and commerce college for two years consecutively in the EW India Higher Education Rankings 2022-23 (EW April). I recall the college has an impressive campus in the heart of the city, state-of-the-art labs and highly qualified lecturers, but is totally ignored by media despite its distinguished alumni including Infosys co-founder K. Dinesh, philanthropist Veerendra Heggade, Justice Venkatachalaiah, Kannada actor Mukhyamantri Chandru, former speaker of the Karnataka legislative assembly Ramesh Kumar, among others. Venkatesh M., Bengaluru Curious welfare Congratulations for publishing the comprehensive EW India Higher Education Rankings 2022-23 (EW April). The country’s best higher education institutions need to be acknowledged and celebrated for the herculean efforts they made to ensure learning continuity of students during the Covid-19 pandemic. Among the parameters under which you have ranked colleges, the faculty welfare and development parameter is most important. It’s a no-brainer that institutions which invest in faculty welfare and development deliver best learning outcomes. However, during the pandemic many private colleges cut the pay of faculty while forcing them to put in extra hours for online classes. Shabana Rizwi on EMAIL Case for deregulation In the Teacher-2-Teacher essay, author Vedant Thadani rightly describes the BJP government’s vision of India becoming a global leader in education as a mere pipe dream (EW April). Liberalisation is urgently required in Indian higher education. A free market will breed excellence with stiff competition compelling sub-standard education institutions to shut down. The stream of medical undergrads returning from war-torn Ukraine and Covid-stricken China is clear indication that India has an inadequate number of medical colleges. Government should urgently deregulate higher, especially medical, education to attract private investment. Dr. Ruchi Saxena on EMAIL Urgent necessity The education news report ‘Political disinterest’ (EW April) stating that 1,400 budget private and government schools in Karnataka recorded zero new enrolments last year is shocking. It is proof that hundreds of children have dropped out of school during the pandemic. With parents suffering job loss, lakhs of children have been forced to join the workforce to supplement family incomes. The state government needs to immediately launch a back-to-school campaign to re-enrol dropped-out children. Teachers should be deployed to conduct door-to-door household surveys to connect with out-of-school children and bring them back to school. This is very urgent as children have already lost two years of school and suffered huge learning loss. Shanti Ramanathan, Bengaluru Stiff price Thanks for your well-argued editorial ‘Ukraine invasion not entirely unprovoked’ (EW April). While most of us are moved to tears by the horrifying pictures of Russian aggression in Ukraine, very few of us have made the time to analyse the situation dispassionately. A constituent of the former Soviet Union, Ukraine has been defying President Putin’s repeated requests against it signing up as a member of NATO, an anti-Soviet coalition of Western countries. Now sadly, it’s paying the…
Alhough some self-styled educators and educationists may be unaware, EducationWorld which has a record of 22 years of uninterrupted publishing, come floods, famine or pandemic, has been ranking education institutions across the spectrum from preschools to universities since 2007, perhaps the only news magazine worldwide with this record. But given the pathetic condition of the country’s education system, it’s hardly surprising that we are anti-establishment. Therefore, it’s rare for ministers and minions to give your editors interviews and access. I wonder why, when our intent is to highlight education excellence and if at all, offer constructive criticism to reform a moribund education system which has clearly failed to develop the abundant human capital of post-independence India. Regrettably, this culture of unaccountability has also spread to private sector education institutions whose cause and contribution EducationWorld has championed ab initio. It’s not unusual for privately promoted schools and colleges to decline information and access out of an unwarranted sentiment of false modesty which abjures publicity and are content to do their bit for the public weal in a tiny corner of the country. To them my advice is to heed the biblical injunction against hiding their lamp under a bushel. The public interest would be served better if they let their light shine and shared best practices and precepts. The subject of non-cooperation surfaced during the course of laborious preparation of this issue which is Part II of the annual EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings (EWIHER) 2022-23. In April we rated and ranked India’s most admired government and private Arts, Science and Commerce colleges of undergrad education. In this issue we present the country’s most detailed ratings (10-14 parameters of higher education excellence) and rankings of the country’s best private and government universities. Please note that unlike the rankings of several publications which are determined by small committees of jurors, all EW ranking surveys from pre-school to university are based on field interviews conducted by over 100 field personnel of our partner market research and opinion polls company, C fore, Delhi for a period of three-four months. For this survey, they interviewed over 4,000 sample respondents comprising higher education faculty, final year students and industry representatives. The sample respondents were persuaded to award scores under each parameter. These scores were totalled to rank public and private universities in 15 categories (multidisciplinary, engineering, liberal arts, agriculture etc). EWIHER 2022-23, painstakingly collated and published over the past two months, is undoubtedly the most detailed higher education institutions evaluation survey nationwide. School-leaving students, parents and career counsellors who neglect to study them are doing themselves injury.
Citation An alumnus of the top-ranked NIT-Warangal, K. Tulasi Vishnu Prasad is President of the Sri Rama Rural Academy (SRRA), a model rural co-ed day-cum-boarding budget private school sited in Chilmuru village (pop.1,200) in Guntur district of Andhra Pradesh. Promoted in 1949 as undivided Andhra Pradesh’s first rural boarding school by his grandfather, the late Sri Kolasani Venkata Subbaiah Chowdary, a visionary educationist committed to providing high-quality education to under-served rural children, Sri Rama Rural Academy has transformed into a progressive CBSE-affiliated K-12 school providing all-round education to 1,000 students mentored by 40 teachers. In 1986, after he was awarded a postgraduate degree in electronics and instrumentation engineering by NIT, Warangal, Prasad rejected several lucrative job offers to return to Chilmuru village and take on the challenge of nurturing SRRA into a full-fledged K-12 school providing quality education at affordable price to rural children. Since then as director and president of SRRA, Prasad has introduced several teaching-learning innovations, education management best practices and spearheaded infrastructure upgradation projects to enable provision of high-quality academics supplemented with sports and co-curricular education. In the EducationWorld India Budget Private School Rankings 2021-22, SRRA is ranked #3 in Andhra Pradesh. Prasad is also a tireless crusader and champion of budget private schools — low-fees primary-secondaries that provide affordable education, including English language learning, to children of low-income households. In 2017, he was appointed general secretary of the Andhra Pradesh Private Unaided School Managements Association (APPUSMA), which has a membership of 8,000 schools statewide. Subsequently, in 2018, he took charge as vice president (quality) of the National Independent Schools Alliance (NISA), which has over 1 lakh BPS member schools countrywide. Over the past decade, Prasad has been in the vanguard of the collective struggle of BPS promoters against the education ministry and in courts of law. “In Sri Rama Rural Academy, we have spared no effort to ensure that children from low-income rural households have access to high quality education at affordable price. Similarly, there are thousands of budget private schools across the country which are providing a valuable public service by offering affordable education options to parents fleeing failing government schools. My mission is to ensure that BPS schools are freed from government control and given full freedom and autonomy to improve, develop and upgrade into benchmark K-12 institutions producing future-ready citizens,” says Prasad, who has visited over 26 foreign countries to study international best education practices. For his sustained commitment to providing low-priced education to under-served children in rural Andhra Pradesh, and determination to improve teaching-learning standards in budget private schools, the Editors and Board of Directors of EducationWorld are proud to present the EW Extraordinary Achievement in Education Leadership Award 2021-22 to K. Tulasi Vishnu Prasad.
Citation Dr. Dilip Modi is promoter-chairman of the Jhunjhunu (Rajasthan)-based JIVEM Education Pvt. Ltd, a K-12 schools management and consultancy company. During the past 39 years since Dr. Modi, a commerce postgraduate of Mumbai University, began his career by promoting a test prep centre under the name and style of GyanKutir in 1983, he has undertaken several path-breaking initiatives which have transformed the backward district of Jhunjhunu (pop. 21 million) into an education hub of Rajasthan. A decade after the GyanKutir Institute had established a statewide reputation for preparing students for examinations of the state board, in 1993 Dr. Modi promoted Jhunjhunu Academy, the first K-10 English-medium day boarding school in the district. In 1999, one of the academy’s students was ranked among the Top 10 in the Board of Secondary Education, Rajasthan exam — a first for any school in the district and placed the Jhunjhunu Academy on the education map of the state. Following pressing demand from citizens, in the millennium year 2000, the K-10 Jhunjhunu Academy was upgraded into a fully-fledged K-12 senior secondary school offering Arts, Science and Commerce streams to higher secondary students. Currently, the state board-affiliated Jhunjhunu Academy has 4,000 students mentored by 300 teachers on its muster rolls. In 2006 with the objective of providing the children of Jhunjhunu the benefit of a national curriculum education, Dr. Modi promoted a second K-12 Jhunjhunu Academy affiliated with the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), the first private day-cum-residential CBSE school of the district. Currently, this school has 2,500 students and 105 teachers on its muster rolls. In 2010, all the education institutions promoted by Dr. Modi were grouped under the umbrella of Jivem Education. Since then, Jivem Education has transformed into the region’s premier education management and consultancy company with a client list of 27 schools which have been transformed into nationally benchmarked pre-primary and secondary schools. In the same year, Jivem Education began to prepare school-leaving students for the IIT-JEE and NEET national entrance exams. In 2011, he was awarded a Ph.D. by Singhania University, Rajasthan. Dr. Modi’s latest initiative is the establishment of a Multi Sports Complex equipped with state-of-the-art indoor and outdoor infrastructure and synthetic courts and grounds. Spread over a 35-acre campus in the CBSE-affiliated Jhunjhunu Academy, the complex will provide high-quality coaching in cricket, lawn tennis, badminton, gymnastics, archery, pistol shooting, table tennis, volleyball, basketball, roller-skating, karate, wrestling, kabaddi, boxing and track and field events. For this initiative, Jhunjhunu Academy has been officially declared a Fit India School by the Union government. “India has the world’s largest and most high-potential population of children and youth. Providing them high-quality academic, co-curricular and fitness-cum-sports education is the prerequisite of national development. In Jivem Education, we are determined to do our best to develop the country’s human capital,” says Dr. Modi. For his sustained commitment to provide high-quality nationally benchmarked K-12 academic and holistic 360 degree education to the children of Jhunjhunu district and Rajasthan, the Editors and Board of Directors…
Keeping in Touch, written by Anjali Joseph, published by Westland piblications is priced at Rs.599. The book is an expertly written novel that transports the reader into myriad cultural scenarios of north-east India and London. Keeping in Touch by award-winning novelist Anjali Joseph is a love story centering around Keteki Sharma and Ved Ved in their 30s living hectic, jet-set lives. Though it’s love at first sight for Ved, when he sees Keteki at London’s Heathrow Airport in casual jeans and shirt, while Keteki revels in the relationship with her new lover, she takes time to make up her mind about settling down with him. Thus begins a whirlwind romance between two individuals entirely unknown to each other. As a freelance designer and curator, Keteki’s work makes travel normative as does Ved’s who is a venture capitalist. Nearing 40 now, Ved has been feeling the absence of familial warmth, love and affection and wants to settle down but Keteki (39) is wary of commitment, almost afraid to commit to a long-term relationship. Spanning across Assam and London, their affair unfolds like a performance across continents, with the author filling in details of their lives. Keeping in Touch is alternately fast-paced and slow moving and transports the reader into the myriad cultural scenarios of North East India and London. There are vivid observations about the topography of riverine Assam, its fertile land and verdant fields alternating with its bustling, noisy, polluted cities teeming with youngsters who party hard and make merry with abandon. Joseph portrays an enigmatic and fascinating picture of the spiritual traditions of Assam — goddess worship and tantricism, Xonkordeb vaishnavism that constitute its complex and sophisticated ethnic and cultural fabric. Keteki’s home-coming just in time for Durga puja celebrations and her reunion with family and friends in Guwahati, become occasions to celebrate these distinctive, age-old traditions, contrasting them with the noisy contemporaneity of the present. The temple of mother goddess Kamakhya endorses the ancient and glorious historical Assamese past and the line of valorous kingdoms and dynasties that worshipped her. Keteki’s travels to various north-eastern cities including Jorhat, Majauli and Aizawl; to the mountains for a yoga retreat; to villages to establish her new business venture are manifold expositions of the culture of the Seven Sister states. Invigorating and keeping up the demand for traditional weaves and fabrics is instrumental in preserving the weavers’ means of livelihood. Ved’s venture capitalism brings him to Assam to finance an erstwhile British-owned company manufacturing Everlasting Lucifer, a light bulb with a filament that can last for decades as the name suggests. Striking workers, an accidental fire and frustrating glitches and superstitious beliefs at the factory exasperate him and reveal how present-day politics, red-tapism and moribund beliefs define the region’s business environment. Later, his taking up residence in Guwahati while he waits for Keteki to make up her mind becomes the reason to foreground aspects of the Assamese way of life, a sharp contrast to the weekend getaways, pub culture and work…
Arzu written by Riva Razdan, published by Hachette India, is priced at Rs.399, addresses complex issues that concern young girls — marriage and relationships, education, family and sex, writes Ilika Trivedi Arzu is essentially a coming-of-age story but the charm of the book is that it beautifully captures the process of growth, change and hard work, which can be very difficult to write about in an interesting way. Arzu’s efforts to develop herself, find fulfillment and her place in the world are especially inspiring for young readers trying to figure themselves out. The book is an unexpected treat, filled with nuggets of wisdom, which are eye opening, both for Arzu and reader. Razdan has brought a strong female protagonist to life in a world that is simultaneously fancy and realistic. The setting of uber rich societies of Mumbai and New York with conversations about travelling in Europe, finishing schools and debutante balls bring an element of fantasy to the book, reminding this reviewer of the phase when she followed Gossip Girl on television. A strong girl, Arzu goes through her fair share of troubles, heartbreaks and confusion, transforming into an even stronger and bolder young woman. The book addresses complex issues that concern young girls — marriage and relationships, friends and beauty standards, education and family, sex and virginity. And all of this is done in a nuanced manner that is serious and entertaining at the same time. The importance of family and friends is at the core of this story. Arzu is pampered and spoiled by a doting father who loves her too much and understands her even more deeply. The fact that Ajit trusts his daughter to be independent, despite the mistakes she might have made in the past, is a lesson that should be absorbed by all Indian parents. Arzu’s love and loyalty for her aunt Parul despite their polar opposite world views is something to cherish. Young girls have enough problems without adding the burden of competition among themselves, and Arzu’s friendship with Sarah and Aparna shows the importance of female bonding. Set in the newly globalising India of 1991, the book sharply addresses India’s political and economic climate. The disparate threads of complicated concepts such as the country’s economic reforms, corrupt licence raj, political personalities of the time, the media and business atmosphere, are woven seamlessly. The pacing of the book is perfect, and chapters flow together naturally, making the book an unputdownable page-turner. The language is moderately difficult in certain passages because some themes necessitate technical explanations. Perhaps the book’s most important feature is Arzu’s decision of marriage. The accepted norm of elite girls marrying boys of similar status and upbringing, and the expectation of early marriage is questioned throughout. How girls underestimate their own potential and choose to deny themselves ambition despite belonging to privileged families is brought up repeatedly. Contemporary girls can derive inspiration from this story. If Arzu can fight the expectations of society in young age, girls can surely stand…
Over the past 75 years since independence, an amoral lumpen bourgeoisie with rural/small-town origins has risen to the very top of the establishment and entrenched itself in the national and state administrative capitals. How else can one explain the conduct of Karnataka’s rural development & panchayat raj minister K.S. Eshwarappa and his heartless reaction to death by suicide of Santhosh Patil, a civil contractor who took the extreme step because the minister refused to clear his Rs.4 crore bill unless paid a commission of 40 percent of the bill amount? In a blatant falsehood, the minister claimed he never met Patil. Yet a tarmac road has sprung up in village Hindalga (Belagavi), constructed by Patil. Why would he do that unless he had a clear directive from the minister? The presumptive evidence is overwhelming and the minister’s plea that there was no “written order” to execute the contract and claiming a frame-up is pathetic. This klepto who in Karnataka’s murky corruption-stewed politics had earlier risen to the position of deputy chief minister, must be prosecuted for abetment to suicide. Yet the deeper explanation behind this latest tragedy is the ingenuity with which Karnataka’s irredeemably corrupt neta-babu brotherhood has succeeded in devising the state’s cast-iron, official corruption system. Every public service has a well-advertised rate card. While academics and media pundits proffer the seven deadly sins as the cause of the graft epidemic in this state, the root cause is deliberate and sustained neglect to reform the education and legal systems. Reflect upon it. Enlightenment will dawn.
Like the French Bourbon dynasty (1589-1793) which forgot nothing and learned nothing, at its 23rd party congress convened in Kannur (Kerala) on April 6-10, leaders and delegates of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) indulged in familiar anti-business and privatisation rhetoric reminiscent of the 1960-70s when the comrades were a force to reckon with in Indian politics. At the recent party congress, the CPM passed ringing resolutions against the BJP government’s National Assets Monetisation Pipeline, i.e, privatisation programme, denounced crony capitalism and expressed solidarity with the Palestinian people. Within the party’s leadership and delegates, there was no evidence of awareness that during the past half century, the Soviet Union has collapsed, communist China has taken the capitalist road, that the CPM itself which ruled West Bengal uninterruptedly for 34 years (1977-2011), was routed in the recent West Bengal legislative assembly election, or that whereas it won 66 seats to the Lok Sabha in 2004, that tally has been reduced to three after General Election 2019. Yet despite being totally marginalised, the party line has hardly changed from the heyday of the CPM when it played a major role in pushing the Congress party ruinously left in the 1960-70s. Just as well the party’s 23rd congress was held in Kerala. Although highly rated on all development indices by left-liberals, Kerala in which the CPM has headed several — including the incumbent — coalition governments, is a hollow shell. Its much lauded K-12 education system is mainly driven by Christian missionary private schools arm-twisted into low-fees ‘aided’ schools. Moreover because of CPM encouraged labour militancy, Kerala (pop.32 million) has for long been blighted by investment famine. Instead under CPM-Left rule, it has transformed into a human trafficker of low-cost labour. For several decades, Kerala has remained heavily dependent upon hard currency remittances of natives of the state forced to emigrate to oil-rich Middle East satrapies, where they suffer continuous humiliation and degradation because there are no opportunities and jobs in their own state owing to unchecked labour militancy. Meanwhile, CPM delegates continue to pass ringing resolutions on esoteric subjects, unmindful that the world has moved on.
The Bridgerton dream of upper-middle class and elite Indians enamoured with this OTT serial broadcast on the streaming platform Netflix, is over. The Peter principle has caught up with Rishi Sunak, the Winchester and Oxford educated son of Indian emigres from East Africa and husband of India-born heiress Akshata Murthy, daughter of Infosys Technologies Ltd prime founder N.R. Narayana Murthy. The principle expounds that everyone reaches the level of his incompetence from which meridian, a downward spiral, begins. For the non-cognoscenti, the forty-something Sunak is currently Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister) of the United Kingdom of Great Britain & Northern Ireland, and lives bang next door to No.10 Downing Street, traditional ex officio address of prime minister of the sceptred isle. No individual of Indian origin has risen to such high office in British history, and there was a good chance that Sunak would replace beleaguered prime minister Boris Johnson at No.10, which would have been the ultimate realisation of the Bridgerton fantasy. But this chance has been blown by greed, the deadly sin to which most Indians are susceptible. The inquisitive British press has discovered that despite being ordinarily resident in the UK for decades, Akshata, endowed a vast fortune by her uber rich parents, hasn’t been paying income tax on her global income in the UK as she is ethically, if not legally, obliged to do. Worse, despite having risen to the second highest position in the British government, Sunak retained his US Green Card — which entitled him to work in the US — for 18 months after he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer. This has raised questions about the Sunaks commitment to the UK their adopted country which has raised them so high. But love of the Green Card is pervasive in India’s political and business class. Three presidents of India, and every second politician, bureaucrat and business tycoon have children parked in the US. A telling commentary of their confidence in policies they devise for the nation.
The annual EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings provide comprehensive league tables ranking the country’s Top 500 arts, science and commerce colleges, Top 100 private engineering colleges, Top 300 government and private universities in 15 discrete categories, and Top 100 private B-schools. However, these are all-inclusive rankings rating the country’s most well-reputed higher ed institutions across several subject study programmes. Last year, in response to public feedback and demand for rankings of education institutions by popular professional undergraduate programmes, EducationWorld introduced rankings of Top 10 higher ed institutions that provide the most popular bachelor’s degree programmes. In EWIHER 2022-23 to rate and rank colleges and universities offering most favoured undergrad study programmes, EducationWorld partnered with the Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting and Research (C fore) to conduct a research study using secondary data sources and published reports to shortlist ten most popular undergrad courses and Top 10 colleges offering them. The most popularly preferred undergraduate programmes are: B.Com (banking and finance); bachelor of management studies (BMS)/bachelor of business administration (BBA); B.Arch (bachelor of architecture); BA-LLB (bachelor of law); B.Sc (nursing); B.Tech/BE (biotechnology); B.Tech (data science); B.Tech/BE (computer science); B.Sc (agriculture); BJMC (bachelor of journalism & mass communication). Please note in the streams of computer science, data science and biotechnology, only private higher institutions are ranked.
Since the vast majority of aspirants for business management education have to choose from among 6,000 B-schools, the majority of them privately promoted, the annual EWIHER solely ranks the country’s Top 100 private B-schools, writes Dilip Thakore Since 2013, the annual EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings designed to facilitate the selection of suitable higher education institutions for further study, have rated and ranked the country’s best government and private B-schools separately. Although initially we also rated and ranked the most well-reputed among the 20 Central government-promoted IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management), after a few years your editors decided to drop them from the EWIHER on the ground that they monotonously topped the annual B-school rankings generating a sense of déjà vu. Moreover despite being awarded huge campuses and premises by the Union government, the IIMs annually admit a mere 2 percent of graduate students who write their joint Common Admission Test (CAT). The vast majority of aspirants for business management education have to choose one or other of 6,000 B-schools the majority of them privately promoted. Therefore for the past seven years the annual EWIHER solely rates and ranks the country’s Top 100 private B-schools. Ab initio the league table of India’s Top 100 private B-schools has been dominated by the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad (ISB) promoted in 2001 by the biggest names in India Inc, including the Bros Ambani, Adi Godrej, Bros Goenka among others. Sprawled over a 260-acre state-of-the-art campus in Gachibowli, a suburb of Hyderabad, ISB is not ‘recognised’ by AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education) because its flagship postgrad compressed business management study programme is of 13-months duration against the standard 24-months programme mandated by AICTE. But ISB is routinely ranked above the IIMs by the London-based Financial Times and its MBA graduates are snapped up by Indian and offshore companies at remuneration packages equaling and often exceeding the premier ABC (Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Calcutta) IIMs.
India’s agriculture universities receive scant media coverage depite 60 percent of the country’s population engaged in agriculture and allied vocations and industries The National Dairy Research Institute, Karnal (NDRI, estb.1923) and Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana (PAU, estb.1963) are jointly ranked India’s #1 agriculture varsities in EWIHER 2022-23. NDRI (ranked #19 in 2021-22) is awarded top scores on the parameters of curriculum and pedagogy, industry interface and placements and PAU (#26) is top-ranked on the parameters of faculty competence, research and innovation, and infrastructure. Promoted by the Central government and accorded deemed university status in 1989, NDRI is also designated an ICAR (Indian Council of Agricultural Research) institution. “We are thrilled to be ranked India’s #1 agricultural university in the EW survey. FYI in the ICAR rankings of agricultural universities also, NDRI has been ranked India #1 for five years consecutively. Last year, the institute filed 11 patents and commercialised six technologies, initiated cloning of indigenous cattle breeds and conducted 29 training programmes despite disruption of the Covid pandemic. We are working dedicatedly to make NDRI among the Top 10 agriculture universities of the world,” says Dr. M.S. Chauhan, director of ICAR-NDRI since 2020. Following NDRI and PAU at the top are the ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, Delhi at #2 (#34 in the composite 2021-22 league table), Chaudhary Charan Singh Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar and GB Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, jointly ranked #3. The Top 5 table is completed by the previously unranked Navsari Agricultural University (Gujarat) at #4 and Indian Veterinary Research Institute, Izatnagar, Bareilly at #5 (#37), which have received huge promotions in this year’s domain-specific league tables.
Ranked #7 in the composite EWIHER 2021-22, National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru is India’s #1 public law and humanities university in 2022-23 with top scores in a record nine of ten parameters The carving out of a separate law and humanities league table has given a huge boost to the National Law School of India University (NLSIU), Bengaluru, widely acknowledged as India’s premier institute of legal education. Promoted in 1986 as India’s first law university under the leadership of legendary legal educator N.R. Madhava Menon (1935-2019), NLSIU — ranked #7 in the composite EWIHER 2021-22 — is India’s #1 government law and humanities varsity in 2022-23 with top scores on a record nine of the ten parameters of higher education excellence including competence of faculty, research and innovation, curriculum and pedagogy and placements. Dr. Sudhir Krishnaswamy, vice chancellor of NLSIU, welcomes the university’s #1 ranking in the new law and humanities league table. “We are honoured by this recognition. NLSIU is known for having revitalised legal education in India. However, we are more than a legal education institution. Our five-year degree programme includes learning of the social sciences and humanities. Our pedagogy is focused on the intersection of law with the social sciences and humanities such as sociology, cultural anthropology, history, politics and economics. With the National Education Policy 2020 recommending the conversion of all higher education institutions into multidisciplinary universities, we intend to boost research and knowledge creation, upgrade and expand our syllabus to develop new law and multidisciplinary programmes -says Krishnaswamy, an alum of NLSIU and Oxford University, who was appointed vice-chancellor in 2019.
Surprisingly, Anna University, Chennai is awarded top score under the all-important parameter of research and innovation, rather than Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore The second most populous league table in the rationalised EW government universities rankings 2022-23 is of varsities offering engineering & technology programmes. Unsurprisingly, this 20-strong league table is dominated by the Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru (IISc), also ranked India’s #1 government university in the undivided league table of 2021-22. Spread over a sprawling 440-acre campus in the garden city, IISc is ranked India’s #1 engineering and technology public university in 2022-23 with top scores under a record eight of ten parameters of higher education excellence including competence of faculty, placements, and industry interface. Promoted in 1909 through a generous land grant from pioneer industrialist J.N. Tata who founded the Mumbai-based Tata business empire, IISc is funded by the Central government through generous grants of the Union government (Rs.727.25 crore in the Union Budget 2022-23). However, the abject dependence of IISc on government largesse has cast a shadow over autonomy of this venerated university. Director Dr. Govindan Rangarajan declined to comment on the elaborate EWIHER rankings on the ground that the survey is not “authorised” by government. “As a matter of policy, we officially participate only in government of India rankings or those designated by GoI,” he informed your correspondent. Following IISc is Anna University, Chennai at #2 (#5 in 2021-22) and Delhi Technological University at #3 (#7). Unlike the top leadership of the centrally funded IISc, the management of the state government-promoted Anna University (AU, estb.1978) is more forthcoming and appreciative of EWIHER 2022-23. Surprisingly, AU is awarded top score under the all-important parameter of research and innovation in which the score awarded is based on objective criteria viz, faculty papers published in refereed journals and cited in the Scopus Index. We welcome the new rationalised EW survey which evaluates universities in their domains. Since the establishment of the College of Engineering, Guindy in 1794, we have come a long way in pioneering and spearheading growth of technical education and research. Over the decades, AU, with its highly-qualified faculty has led several research and consultancy projects that have enhanced teaching-learning processes. Our campus hosts several autonomous research centres for executing innovative research projects and a full-fledged Centre for Intellectual Property Rights and Technology Transfer. An Entrepreneurship Development and Innovative Council has also been set up recently to enable and facilitate the startup ecosystem at the university. Therefore, I am not surprised by our top score for research and innovation in your rankings, -G. Ravikumar, registrar, Anna University, Chennai, which has 11,934 students and 922 faculty on its muster rolls.
In EWIHER 2022-23, government universities are ranked in nine separate categories — multidisciplinary, law and humanities, natural and life sciences (including medical), engineering and technology, all-women, agriculture etc. This segregation eliminates apples with oranges type comparisons, writes Summiya Yasmeen India’s public higher education system comprises 16 deemed-to-be, 54 Central and 444 state government universities. Among them, 16 elite government varsities conferred deemed university status for teaching and research excellence by the Delhi-based University Grants Commission (UGC) are top-ranked followed by well-funded Central universities and good, bad and ugly state government universities. Together, these 624 public universities educate over 32 percent of India’s 37.4 million students in higher education. Though over the past quinquennium, the country’s new genre private universities — which have multiplied from 276 in 2015-16 to 403 in 2021-22 — are giving stiff competition to the once highly prized public universities, the latter continue to dominate the Indian higher education ecosystem. Especially given that the 444 state government universities affiliate over 40,000 undergraduate colleges countrywide, prescribing their academic syllabuses, sanctioning new study programmes, conducting examinations and awarding degrees. Moreover, with government institutions offering highly subsidised higher education, they are more affordable and preferred over relatively pricey private universities by the great majority of the country’s 260 million households. Although the annual EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings (EWIHER) initiated in 2013, were initially restricted to assessing private universities, in 2020 separate league tables rating and ranking the country’s best reputed Central and state varsities were introduced. This year, in keeping with our commitment to continuously improve and refine the EWIHER, we have further sub-divided the broad category of government (and private) universities according to their domain specialisation. Therefore in EWIHER 2022-23, government universities are ranked in nine separate categories — multidisciplinary, law and humanities, natural and life sciences (including medical), engineering and technology, all-women, agriculture, physical sciences and sports, maths and research. This segregation eliminates apples with oranges type comparisons and makes it easier for school-leaving students and graduates to select universities best suited to their aptitude and academic aspirations. To conduct the EW India Government University Rankings 2022-23, the highly-reputed Delhi-based market research and opinion polls company Centre for Forecasting & Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore, estb.2000) interviewed 4,105 sample respondents comprising 2,236 faculty, 1,047 final year students of 163 universities, and 882 industry representatives in 25 cities countrywide. These respondents were persuaded to award public universities of whom they have sufficient knowledge, scores of 1-300 on ten parameters of higher education excellence, viz, faculty competence, faculty welfare development, research and innovation, curriculum and pedagogy (digital readiness), industry interface, placements, infrastructure, internationalism, leadership/governance and range and diversity of study programmes. Higher weightage is given to the critical parameters of faculty competence (150), research and innovation (300) and infrastructure (150). EWIHER ranks 161 government universities in nine categories with the multidisciplinary institutions league table being the most competitive and populous. India’s best government multi-disciplinary universities Higher education institutions offering multidisciplinary programmes are popular with students as they provide a…
Privately promoted liberal arts universities are a relatively new phenomenon in Indian education. For several decades after independence, liberal arts and humanities education was out of fashion in middle-class India Rationalisation and restructuring of the EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings which were hitherto grouped under the heads of private and government simpliciter has not only made it easier for school-leavers and scholars to choose colleges and universities better suited to their aptitudes and aspirations, but also provided higher education institutions (HEIs) their proper place in the sun. For instance in 2021-22, O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU, estb.2009), which provides excellent, globally benchmarked liberal arts, humanities and law undergrad and postgrad education, was ranked #3 in the composite private un iversities league table. The Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE, estb. 1953, a multidisciplinary university) and Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani (estb.1964, an engineering and technology HEI) were ranked above JGU in that order. Self-evidently that’s not a level playing field assessment given their vastly different syllabuses and academic objectives. Restructuring and rationalisation of previous year’s league tables has enabled these three institutions to top their discrete league tables. Privately promoted liberal arts universities are a relatively new phenomenon in Indian education. For the past seven decades Arts, Science and Commerce HEIs were mainly the province of the Central and state governments while private initiatives in higher education were focused on engineering and medical colleges, the most successful among them awarded university status. Moreover for several decades after independence, liberal arts and social sciences education was out of fashion with India’s middle class and therefore attracted little, if any, private investment. Liberal arts education dispensed by government HEIs was widely regarded as the fall back option of school-leavers who failed to qualify for admission into the IITs, NITs and top-ranked private engineering and much-too-few medical colleges. However, this middle-class mindset changed after the historic but belated liberalisation and deregulation of the Indian economy in 1991. With the economy which was stuck in the 3.5 percent per year GDP growth for over 40 years, recording 7-8 percent growth in the new millennium, the country experienced a surge in demand for economists, well-educated lawyers, social scientists and communication professionals. JGU, conceptualised by its founding vice chancellor, the Oxford and Harvard educated Dr. C. Raj Kumar who persuaded steel tycoon Naveen Jindal to endow a corpus of Rs.500 crore upon JGU, was one of the first new genre private liberal arts, humanities and law universities off the blocks. Within the short span of 12 years under Dr. Raj Kumar’s relentlessly go-getting leadership, the fully residential JGU has established 12 schools including law, liberal arts and humanities, business, international affairs, government and public policy and communications and journalism on an 80-acre campus at Sonipat (Haryana), an hour’s drive from New Delhi. While growing at breakneck speed, JGU has won numerous respected encomiums. The London-based Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) ranks JGU India’s #1 private university in its latest World Univerity Rankings and JGU’s law school…
According to the National Medical Commission, the number of medical colleges countrywide aggregates a mere 562, of which 276 are privately promoted institutions, nowhere near enough for a country with a population of 1.35 billion One of the conspicuous failures of post-independence India’s centrally planned Soviet-inspired socialist economy in which private initiatives in higher education were rigidly controlled by the rents-extracting neta-babu (politician-bureaucrat) brotherhood, is the small number of medical and life sciences higher education colleges. According to the National Medical Commission, the total number of medical colleges countrywide as of May 2021 aggregates a mere 562, of which 276 are privately promoted, nowhere near enough for a country with a population of 1.35 billion. With a large number of India’s 50-60 million middle class households anxious for their progeny to qualify as doctors of latter-day allopathic medicine — there are a large number practising as doctors of ayurvedic and unani medicine — medical education in socialist India has a long history of scams and scandals. For almost a century, supervision of medical education, accreditation of medical colleges and registration of medical practitioners was the privilege of the Medical Council of India (MCI) which after the mushroom growth of private medical colleges in the 1980s, became a byword for corruption until its repeatedly elected president Ketan Desai was prosecuted for corruption, and MCI was abolished and replaced with the National Medical Commission in 2020. But meanwhile, promotion of greenfield medical colleges was reduced to a trickle. The outcome of an accentuating supply-demand imbalance was that a large number of aspiring medical practitioners enrolled in medical colleges in Malaysia, Russia, Ukraine and China which offer relatively affordable medical education compared with Western countries.
Of the total number of 4,500 engineering colleges in India, 3,415 are privately promoted. And among them, a large number have been awarded the status of universities because of their high NAAC ratings and good industry reputation Engineering and technology institutions of higher education hold a special place in the imagination of post-independence India’s several generations. After prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru famously declared dams and factories as the new temples of India, and the Central and state governments began a massive infrastructure construction and public sector corporations promotion programme under Soviet-inspired central planning, there was a rush in the newly liberated middle class to sign up their children for engineering. As a result a large number of engineering colleges including India’s famous IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology) mushroomed across the country. But with the Central government-sponsored IITs and NITs (National Institutes of Technology) admitting a mere 2 percent of the 1.3 million IIT aspirants who write the annual IIT-JEE entrance examination, a multitude of privately promoted engineering colleges have sprung up countrywide, especially in south India. Indeed of the total number of 4,500 engineering colleges in the country, 3,415 are privately promoted. And among them, a large number have been awarded the status of universities because of their high NAAC ratings and good industry reputation. Since 2015, EducationWorld has been rating and ranking India’s best private universities separately to enable the great majority of school-leavers who don’t make the cut to enter the IITs and NITs to choose the next-best option. We also rank government/public engineering colleges – excluding the heavily-subsidised IITs and NITs because they routinely top the league tables of all media publications and also because as stated above, they admit a very small percentage of school-leavers aspiring for engineering higher education qualifications. For several years, the Birla Institute of Technology & Science, Pilani, Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology, Patiala and Vellore Institute of Technology (Tamil Nadu) have been highly ranked in the annual EWIHER. This year after classification of private and public universities into separate league tables of multidisciplinary, liberal arts, engineering & technology universities, it’s unsurprising that these institutions are top-ranked in that order in the discrete league table of private engineering universities.
– Sanjay Viswanathan, an alum of University of Strathclyde and Harvard Business School and founder-chairman of the London-based Adi Group and Ed4All In the 21st century India will overtake the US and China to become the most prosperous nation in the world again. To attain this objective we need a National Doctrine starting with mindset change In the seventh century CE, Xuanzang (602-664 CE, also known as Hiuen Tsang), a peripatetic Chinese Buddhist monk, scholar, traveller, and translator, defied his kingdom’s ban on travel abroad and came overland to India. Over 16 years (629-645 CE), his travels in India took him to Kashmir, Mathura, Ayodhya, Prayagraj, Varanasi, and Nalanda among other seats of learning. At the famous Nalanda Univesrity, he schooled with Buddhist masters including Silabhadra. When he returned to China, he shipped 657 Sanskrit texts centred on Mahayana and Hinayana Buddhism on 20 packhorses. To his surprise, Emperor Taizong welcomed him as a national hero and set up a large centre of learning in Xi’an. Over 2000 years before Xuanzang set foot in India, we had shown the world our academic brilliance through Sushrutha, Kanada, Aryabhatta, Chanakya, Adi Shankara and Madhvacharya, among other eminent scholars. Maharishi Kanada developed the foundations of atomistic approach to physics and philosophy and wrote of anu or atom and its indestructible nature in the Sanskrit text Vaisesika Sutra2200 years before John Dalton propounded atomic theory. My prediction is that in the 21st century, India will overtake the US and China to become the world’s most prosperous nation again. So, how can we regain our intellectual leadership and vigour and emerge once again as a global pioneer and inventor nation that will drive human civilisation and progress? For this, India needs a National Doctrine comprising elements — Mindset, Structure, Building Blocks, and Values. In this essay, let’s start with Mindset.
To rationalise evaluation under the broad heads of private and government, universities are rated and ranked in 15 separate categories including multi-disciplinary, liberal arts, engineering and technology, social sciences, and medical and life sciences among other discrete league tables, writes Dilip Thakore and Summiya Yasmeen Even if it sounds somewhat immodest, a unique feature of the richly detailed annual EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings (EWIHER) — introduced in 2013 and now spread over two issues (May-June) — is continuous improvement and refinement. A decade ago, we began rating and ranking undergrad Arts, Science and Commerce, and Engineering and Technology colleges and B-schools. Subsequently, we introduced the concept of rating and ranking private and government higher education institutions separately, given their vastly differing institutional cultures. Eight years ago, we stopped evaluating and ranking the well-funded and heavily-subsidised Central government-promoted 23 IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology), 31 NITs (National Institutes of Technology) in the engineering and technology league tables, and eliminated the country’s 20 IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management) from the annual EWIHER. The rationale of these omissions is that they routinely top the league tables of all media publications, including India Today, and the business dailies. Your editors reasoned that including the well-resourced and subsidised Central government-promoted IITs and IIMs would be repetition and replication of mainstream media publications, and of peripheral interest to the great majority of school/college-leavers given that IIMs, NITs and IITs admit a mere 2 percent of school-leavers and graduates who write their entrance examinations.
Evidently, union home minister Amit Shah is not a student of history. If he was, he wouldn’t have advised chief ministers of India’s 28 states and eight union territories to adopt Hindi as the medium of inter-state communication, as he did while addressing the 37th meeting of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee on April 7. Since he is unlikely to engage in scholarly pursuits to make good his academic deficit, this short editorial may serve the useful purpose of enlightenment. The first historical truth that the Hon’ble minister should recall is that in 1956, following public protests and demonstrations in several southern states, perhaps ill-advisedly, a States Reorganisation Committee (SRC) recommended redrawing inter-state boundary lines on the basis of dominant language. The SRC report was accepted by the Centre, and state governments were permitted to develop their dominant languages for education and administrative purposes. Earlier at the time when the Constitution of India was promulgated and endorsed by Parliament (1950), it was declared that Hindi in the Devanagiri script “shall be” the official language of the country after 15 years. In the interregnum, English “shall continue to be used for all official purposes to the Union”. However in 1965, when Hindi was declared the official language, there was stiff opposition countrywide, especially in southern India and particularly in Tamil Nadu which threatened to secede from the Indian Union. Therefore, the status quo, i.e, continued use of English for inter-state communication has been maintained for the past 57 years. Meanwhile, the three-languages formula starting from 1950, under which all in-school children would start learning the state language, Hindi and any other language including English, proved a non-starter because the general populace of Hindi speaking northern states showed no interest in learning a third Indian language, and the southern states, especially Tamil Nadu, were — and remain— averse to teaching and learning Hindi. It is this ambiguous arrangement that Amit Shah has attempted to disturb with gratuitous advice to states to use Hindi and attempting to re-impose it as the national language even as during the past six decades, English has evolved into the national and global language of commerce and industry, and India’s upper judiciary. The Hon’ble minister should bear in mind that similar attempts at language chauvinism in neighbouring countries have proved disastrous. Sri Lanka’s 1960s declaration of Sinhalese as the sole national language alienated its Tamil minority and resulted in a ten-year civil war which destroyed the economy. Similarly, Pakistan’s imposition of Punjabi/Urdu resulted in the partition and establishment of Bangladesh. The plain truth is that English/Inglish has transformed into the language of upward socio-economic mobility in contemporary India. The minister would be well-advised to divert his attention to more pressing matters. Also read: Hindi promotion not in the National interest
It’s surprising that the prime minister and top BJP leadership seem unaware that the rising tide of hate speeches and demonitisation of the country’s 220 million-strong Muslim minority by BJP’s affiliated sangh parivar and hindutva fringe groups could derail the economy limping back to normalcy after two years of serious pandemic disruption. They need to bear in mind that in fiscal 2020-21, the country’s GDP contracted by an unprecedented 7.6 percent and despite a low base grew by 8.9 percent in 2021-22. Nor is a big bounce-back likely in the current year. The World Bank’s latest estimate forecasts 8 percent against its earlier forecast of 9.2 percent in 2022-23. Despite this grim scenario, holy men in dharm sansads are openly threatening violence against Muslims, proscribing the hijab (headscarf) in classrooms, evicting Muslim vendors from temple premises and pressing for a ban on halal meat in Karnataka under the benevolent watch of the ruling BJP government at the Centre and in 12 states. Nor is blatant minorityism restricted to fringe Hindutva groups. In early April, the BJP government of Madhya Pradesh demolished shops and homes of Muslim youth who allegedly stone-pelted a procession during the Hindu festival of Ram Navami. There’s no shortage of evidence that domestic and foreign investment flows dry up in conflict zones that suffer frequent law and order breakdown. Investment famines exacerbate unemployment, spur inflation, reduce government tax revenue flows, feed civil unrest and fan fires of violence. Neighbouring Pakistan which persecutes its Hindu, Shia and Baloch minorities, Sri Lanka which alienated its Tamil minority, Uganda which exiled its Asians in the 1970s, have all destroyed their economies by practicing crude majoritarianism. In the circumstances, the BJP leadership that is deaf to hate rhetoric and blind to vigilantism and violence against India’s Muslim and other minorities who are woefully underrepresented in legislatures, civil service, police, judiciary, and the professions, needs to disabuse itself of the notion that anti-minorityism will consolidate the Hindu vote behind it. The steady descent of Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Uganda among other nations into chaos and disorder should awaken it to the reality that peace, harmony and fraternity are the prerequisites of national socio-economic development. In particular, it’s time for the prime minister Narendra Modi to speak up and crack down on Hindutva fringe groups brazenly indulging in anti-minority rhetoric and violence, to establish rule of law. The Constitution of India guarantees minority rights and several sections of the Indian Penal Code provide for punishment of individuals making incendiary speeches and perpetrating sectarian violence. To stem India’s accelerating slide into majoritarian and anti-national communalism, hate-speech disseminators and vigilantes need to be speedily arrested, tried and sentenced under due process. An unambiguous message that India is a country ruled by law in which minority rights are respected, should come from the prime minister’s office.
Currently, 403 private universities and 126 deemed (private) universities licensed by the Central government are on the 1,027-strong list of Indian universities approved by the Delhi-based University Grants Commission. According to some estimates, more than 70 percent of India’s youth in higher education are in private HEIs, writes Dilip Thakore Contrary to popular belief, privately-promoted higher education institutions (HEIs) — undergrad colleges and universities — have made a substantial contribution to post-independence India’s nation-building effort. Although with India having foolishly adopted the Soviet-inspired “socialistic pattern of development” and central planning immediately after attaining political independence from British rule, it became fashionable to vilify private education providers as capitalist exploiters, despite official discouragement, there’s been a steady growth in the number of private HEIs. For the simple reason that neither the Central nor state governments have sufficiently invested in education. Way back in 1967, the high-powered Kothari Commission recommended that the government (Centre plus states) should invest “at least” 6 percent of GDP in public education, but that target has never been attained. For the past 75 years, government investment in public education has averaged 3.25-3.5 percent per annum. A direct consequence of taking the populist socialist road to perdition has been that the country’s population has tripled to over 1 billion, because central planners were unaware that universal education is the best contraceptive. The original sin of under-investment in public education was compounded by conspicuous failure to supervise the quality of education dispensed in government schools and higher education institutions. As repeatedly highlighted in the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) of the Pratham Education Foundation, over 55 percent of class V children in government rural primaries can’t read class II textbooks. In higher education, 85 percent of the country’s arts, science and commerce graduates — especially of HEIs promoted by state governments — are not sufficiently qualified for induction into Indian and foreign multinationals, according to Aspiring Minds, a Delhi-based human resources recruitment company. Currently, 403 private universities (the majority licensed by state governments) and 126 deemed (private) universities licensed by the Central government are on the 1,027-strong list of Indian universities approved by the Delhi-based University Grants Commission (UGC). According to some estimates, more than 70 percent of India’s youth in higher education are in private HEIs. Therefore since the EWIHER were introduced in 2013, your editors have been rating and ranking private and government/public universities separately on the reasoning that they tend to have totally different institutional cultures, tuition fee and accountability structures. In particular, with tuition fees frozen for decades in government HEIs, the modest tuition and other fees levied by private universities — albeit very modest by international standards — have drawn continuous criticism from academics and media pundits who foolishly expect and demand that all education institutions must be run as charities, a chorus sanctified by the Supreme Court and the upper judiciary. Nevertheless despite harassment and red-tape, the number of private universities has steadily increased and they have made a significant contribution to…
Bigotry is bad for business & economy
The stark truth is that violence and minority bashing is bad for business and the economy. It damages the fabric of society, interrupts commerce and breaks down law and order – Neeraj Kaushal What deep sense of insecurity compels BJP karyakartas (rank and file) to fear that the existence of other cultures in society threatens their own? What inferiority complex urges them to believe that unless they terrorise minorities, they will not be true Hindus? These questions require deep psychological analysis. In recent months, BJP bhakts have gone full steam against the minorities. They are frothing with hate speeches on social media, staging provocative processions, threatening violence, and engaging in demolitions in minority neighbourhoods and places of worship, and stirring up minority schools and colleges. First, it was love jihad, then violence against minority schools, then rewriting textbooks to glorify Hindu kings and vilify Muslim rulers, next inciting violence around mosques and churches, engaging in violence against individuals suspected of being involved in the cattle trade followed by aggression against people eating meat, then imposing restrictions on the sort of meat restaurants can sell. The list continues to grow. There seems to be a presumption that bigotry, minority bashing, and communal violence hurts only minorities, even when there’s enough evidence to the contrary. The stark truth is violence and minority bashing is bad for business, and the economy. It damages the fabric of society, weakens institutions of governance, interrupts commerce and breaks down law and order. Spreading hatred against minorities may benefit the BJP by way of consolidation of Hindu votes, but it’s a dangerous game that can spark communal riots leading to widespread socio-economic consequences. Sadly, leaders of the BJP government at the Centre and in several states are slow and often silent, in condemning instances of hate speech and violence against minorities. And the silence of top BJP leaders is more deafening than the high-volume hate speeches of its rank and file. It’s self-evident that industry and business prosper in peaceful and orderly environments. When civic governments impose restrictions on businesses based on the religious practices of a certain community, it affects not only the business of that community but all businesses. Recent guidelines issued by the Delhi Municipal Corporation on restaurant owners to label the meat they serve is a case in point. While some restaurants may slaughter animals they use in food preparation, most buy it from butchers and may not know how the animals are slaughtered. All restaurant owners — Hindu, Christian, Sikhs — will be adversely impacted by these orders. Cow vigilantism combined with ban on cow slaughter has nearly killed the cattle economy in the Hindi belt, impacting Hindu cattle rearers as well as Muslim cattle traders. The price of milch cows has fallen from Rs.50,000 to Rs.15,000 in recent months, with few takers for male calves. Villagers, including Hindus, find it more profitable and less risky to rear buffalos rather than cows. The number of male calves in the country has fallen…