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. In 2021, 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 2023-24 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. To conduct this survey, C fore personnel interviewed 1,036 college/university faculty and industry professionals (approx. 100 respondents for each study programme) to rate the Top 10 undergrad colleges providing them under six-nine parameters of higher education excellence. “Based on rating by experts, perceptual scores for colleges were collated. All the parameter scores were then added to arrive at the total score of every college, to rank the Top 10 colleges/institutions providing the ten most popular undergraduate programmes,” explains Premchand Palety, chief executive of C fore. In the following pages, we present league tables ranking India’s Top 10 colleges providing the most popular undergrad study programmes. “It’s good to know that we are among India’s Top 3 colleges for our B.Com programme in banking and finance. Yet our objective is to be ranked #1. As our high scores on all your survey’s six parameters of excellence show, Mithibai has excellent leadership and governance systems, rigorous curriculum and innovative pedagogy and good placements record. Moreover, we have introduced several value-added, skills-based certificate courses. Starting from the academic year 2023-24, all our courses will be designed as per NEP 2020 guidelines with students offered the choice of electives from other streams. This multidisciplinary approach will enable the overall development of students” – Prof. Krutika Desai (right), Principal, Mithibai College (Autonomous), Mumbai “It’s an honour to be ranked India #1 in the highly transparent and dependable EW rankings. IIIT-Hyderabad is widely known for its research-led undergrad education which is unprecedented in India. This has enabled us to excel year after year in the annual EW rankings. Our differentiated computer science B.Tech programme permits students complete flexibility in selecting electives and also undertaking research projects. In addition, its trans-disciplinary structure allows…
Since last year when government varsities were segregated according to their subject specialisations, the National Law Universities (NLUs) have dominated EW India Gov. Law & Humanities league table Even as India’s legal system is collapsing under the weight of pending caseload — a record 47 million cases are pending in the country’s courts — legal education institutions are flourishing and multiplying across the country. According to Union law minister Kiren Rijiju, currently 1,721 colleges/ universities — including 920 private colleges, 248 private universities, 383 government law colleges and 170 government varsities — offer law study programmes countrywide. Of them, the most prized are the 24 National Law Universities (NLUs) promoted by Central/state governments pursuant to the second-generation legal education reforms (1985) implemented by the Bar Council of India. Admission into NLUs is through the highly competitive CLAT (Common Law Admission Test) — in 2022 of the 61,574 students who wrote CLAT, a mere 2,175 were admitted.
The 4,223 knowledgeable EW sample respondents have reconfirmed the new genre O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU, estb.2009) India’s #1 Liberal Arts and Humanities University. Sited on an 80-acre campus in Sonipat (Haryana), JGU is awarded top score on six of the ten parameters of higher education excellence including curriculum and pedagogy, research and innovation, leadership, internationalism, industry interface and faculty welfare and development. Prof. C. Raj Kumar, the cheerful polymath Oxford and Harvard-educated founding vice chancellor of JGU, is delighted. “This is testament to our unwavering dedication to academic excellence, innovation, and social impact. At JGU, we are committed to playing a pivotal role in developing well-rounded, compassionate, and socially responsible graduates, who can competently tackle the multifaceted challenges of the 21st century,” says Raj Kumar. Although JGU is currently a comprehensive law, liberal arts and humanities university which has received global acclaim (ranked India’s #1 private university by the London-based QS), it is mindful of NEP 2020’s mandate for all universities to transform into autonomous multidisciplinary higher education institutions (HEIs).
Since the Central government-promoted IIMs admit a minuscule 2 percent of the 2.2 lakh graduates who write their annual CAT (Common Admission Test), in 2016 your editors took a considered decision to rank only non-government private B-schools which admit the vast majority of business management students, writes Dilip Thakore India’s top-ranked B-schools led by the 20 Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs), the first of which — IIM-Calcutta — was established in the early 1960s followed by IIM-Ahmedabad and IIM-Bangalore shortly thereafter, sited on hundreds of acres of lush campuses but who admit barely 5,000-6,000 postgraduate students per year, have transformed into islands of privilege and unaccountability. Requests for interviews by your editors are routinely rejected by busy directors. Yet half a century since they were established with American largesse (a subject on which they suffer collective amnesia), the IIMs, which until the new millennium used to heavily subsidise students’ tuition and residence fees (current fees: circa Rs. 13 lakh per year), have failed to revolutionise India Inc. Per-employee productivity and returns in Indian industry remain among the lowest of major nations.
The 2023-24 league table of India’s best private medical and health sciences (including health management) universities comprises 11 exclusive higher ed institutions conferred university status by the Centre/state governments for excellence in medical/health sciences teaching and research. The reaction of vice chancellors of the topper universities. “We are pleased to learn that Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research is ranked India’s #1 private medical university for the second year in a row. This is acknowledgement of our unswerving commitment to quality and excellence in medical and health sciences education, research and patient care. In particular, our top scores under the parameters of faculty competence, research and innovation and industry interface are proof of the dedicated efforts of our highly qualified faculty to continuously update curriculums and pedagogies. At SRIHER, research is a high priority area and several of our faculty have published papers in high impact journals. In addition we have research collaborations with institutions of repute within India and abroad. Moreover SRIHER has established an Innovation and Incubation Center with funding support from Govt. of India to incubate 18 start-up companies in healthcare technology. Now with NEP 2020 coming into force, the university has formed a committee to proactively implement NEP recommendations specifically in the health sciences domain” — Dr. Uma Sekar (centre left), Vice Chancellor, Sri Ramachandra Institute of Higher Education and Research (Deemed University), Chennai
In this issue we have rated and ranked 36 private engineering and technology universities which provide superior quality education and have been awarded deemed university status In all assessments about the growth and development potential of Indian industry and emergence of India as a superpower of the 21st century, the country’s Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs) are given pride of place. But the reality is that the country’s 23 IITs and 31 NITs admit only 32,000 school-leavers per year, i.e, 2 percent of the 1.6 million who write their JEE (Joint Entrance Exam) followed by the IIT Advance exams — widely regarded the world’s toughest higher education entrance exams. The remaining 1.28 million school-leavers who opt for engineering and technology education are absorbed by the country’s 3,415 other government and private engineering colleges — some of the latter grudgingly designated ‘deemed’ universities for the superior education they provide. And of these other engineering and technology higher education institutions (HEIs), the privately promoted constitute a clear majority. That’s why when the sui generis EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings (EWIHER) were conceptualised and introduced in 2013, we have awarded pride of place to private engineering colleges and universities which are separately rated and ranked. Indeed, IITs and NITs are deliberately excluded from our league tables. Firstly, because they admit a very small and top-ranked minority of school leavers, and secondly because they routinely top the league tables of all media publications as also rankings published by government. Therefore right from the start we have omitted the IITs and NITs from the annual EWIHER. Our prime objective is to aid and enable the remainder 98 percent who don’t make it into the prized IITs and NITs to make an informed choice of an engineering HEI. In our previous issue (April) we ranked the country’s most respected engineering colleges which admit school-leavers into undergraduate study programmes. In this issue, we have rated and ranked 36 private engineering universities. These institutions provide superior quality engineering and technology education and have been awarded ‘deemed-to-be-university’ aka deemed university status, empowered to award their own degrees and diplomas. On the other hand, undergrad colleges are obliged to award degrees of the universities to which they are affiliated, although autonomous public and private colleges are also permitted to inscribe their names on university degrees. However unlike public (government) universities, deemed universities are not permitted to affiliate any colleges. Nor are they permitted to describe themselves as universities simpliciter. They are obligated to use the word ‘deemed’ and until recently the elongated ‘deemed-to-be-university’ in their titles.
With the National Education Policy 2020 mandating the transformation of all colleges and universities into multidisciplinary institutions by 2035, they are the flavour of the season Multidisciplinary universities are the flavour of the season. The new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has mandated that all specialised or single stream colleges and universities including undergrad colleges, should begin the process of transforming into multidisciplinary universities and complete it by 2035. The Kasturirangan Report (2019) which was substantially translated into NEP 2020 made a strong case for multidisciplinary universities. Somewhat belatedly it advocated that India’s large number of engineering and technology undergrad colleges which because of their high quality of education have been conferred university status, should begin the process of introducing liberal arts, science and commerce and other study programmes (business management, law, medicine etc) and small, single stream, colleges in a given area could “cluster” to coalesce into universities. This makes good sense as a university by definition should offer access to a whole universe of higher learning making it easier for students to select a major from a particular stream, and combine it with minors from other streams to acquire well-rounded higher education. Thus an engineering student can study business management simultaneously. This would avoid wastage of time and learning involved in their first completing a four-year engineering programme and subsequently signing up for a two-year MBA programme with a B-school as is the current practice. It’s not uncommon for duly qualified engineers to transform into marketing managers of consumer goods who don’t put their engineering education to any use at all.
Although they dominate this sector, government agriculture universities have not been able to sufficiently raise per hectare yields to best global levels India’s government agriculture universities are one of the big disappointments of the post-independence national development effort. Although the apex-level Indian Council of Agriculture Research (ICAR), Delhi is credited with having master-minded the Green Revolution of the 1970s, it received great help from American agro-scientist Dr. Norman Borlaug, who introduced the Mexican dwarf wheat variety to India. Yet despite the success of the Green Revolution, the plain truth is that average wheat and rice yields in India are a fifth of China and a tenth of France, Ukraine etc, and although 60 percent of the population is employed in the agriculture sector, it contributes a mere 17 percent of GDP. This situation is not helped by the media-aversion of ICAR (estb.1929) and its affiliated 71 government agriculture universities. They have transformed into fortresses which resist all media enquiries into their governance and performance. Typically, they are defined by huge establishment expenses, low tuition fees for students, and large research budgets. And while their model farms sustained with best fertiliser and pesticide inputs showcase impressively high yields, they maintain minimal connect with rural communities and farmers. Some years ago, they abolished their ‘extension services’, i.e, application of research and laboratory know-how in wider fields beyond their campuses.
It’s pertinent to note that India’s 657 government including 235 Central and 422 state government universities educate 73.1 percent of the total 41.3 million students in higher education Although India’s fast multiplying new genre private universities constitute the glamour section of the annual EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings (EWIHER), government varsities continue to be the dominant force in higher education. Of the country’s 1,113 universities, 657 are government-promoted (cf. 446 in the private sector), according to the latest All India Survey of Higher Education 2020-21 (AISHE). More important, 657 government including 235 Central and 422 state government universities educate 73.1 percent of the total 41.3 million students in higher education. Therefore in 2020, the annual EWIHER, which until then rated and ranked only private universities, was expanded to also rank the best reputed Central and state government varsities inter se. Last year, in keeping with our commitment to continuously improve and refine our ranking surveys, the broad category of government (and private) universities was further sub-divided according to subject specialisations. In EWIHER 2023-24, 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 and oranges type comparisons and makes it easier for school-leaving students and graduates to select government universities (whose tuition fees tend to be substantially lower) best suited to their aptitude and academic aspirations.
The EWIHER 2023-24 league tables ranking India’s best private and public universities are presented at a time of great flux in Indian education, especially higher education. NEP 2020 mandates that all colleges and universities gradually transform into multidisciplinary, autonomous higher education institutions, writes Dilip Thakore and Summiya Yasmeen Almost imperceptibly, Indian education is experiencing a sea change. The logic of the belated liberalisation and deregulation of the Indian economy in 1991 is being applied to the education sector. Suddenly without fanfare and trumpeting, foreign school chains and universities are (as reported in detail by EducationWorld, see cover feature www.educationworld.in/1991-inflection-point-for-indian-education/) setting up shop in school and higher education. Even if globalisation of Indian education is happening three decades after unshackling of the economy in 1991 which immediately doubled India’s annual GDP growth mired in the rut of 3.5 percent for over 50 years after independence to 7 percent, and lifted 400 million citizens out of debilitating poverty, better late than never. The greatest impact of liberalisation of Indian education is likely to be felt in the higher education sector. On January 5, the University Grants Commission issued its long awaited draft University Grants Commission (Setting up and Operation of Campuses of Foreign Higher Educational Institutions in India) Regulations, 2023, which permits foreign universities ranked among the global 500 by respected ranking agencies such as QS and Times Higher Education, to establish greenfield campuses in India.
Aspiring prime minister Rahul Gandhi often asks why business tycoon Gautam Adani is so “close” to prime minister Narendra Modi. A better question would be: can any industrialist or businessman afford not to be on the right side of any politician, especially the prime minister. The plain truth is Rahul’s great grandfather Jawaharlal Nehru, a professed historian, overlooked the reality of ancient India’s sound tradition of private enterprise for over five millennia which had transformed this subcontinent into the world’s wealthiest region contributing 20 percent of global annual income right until the mid-18th century. He imposed “a socialistic pattern of society” upon newly independent India and strangled private enterprise. Following Rahul’s great grandfather, his granny and daddy who succeeded each other as prime minister with monotonous regularity, continued to ram licence-control-permit legislation through obliging parliaments, smothering private enterprise while decreeing promotion of hundreds of Soviet-style public sector enterprises. According to a 2021 research study conducted by the Observer Research Foundation and TeamLease Ltd, private companies in India are subject to 1,536 laws, of which 678 are enacted by the Union government and 858 by state governments. Within these laws private enterprises are subject to 69,233 ‘compliances’, of which 43,966 are mandated by state governments and 25,537 by the Centre. That’s not all. 20,805 ‘compliance clauses’ in state legislation and 5,230 decreed by the Centre mandate jail sentences ranging from three months to 10 years for non-compliance. All this despite liberalisation of industry in 1991. That’s why it makes good sense for anyone aspiring to establish large scale, world-class companies to be close to the prime minister and other worthies. Meanwhile according to a front page headline in the highly-respected Chennai-based daily The Hindu (February 10) 225,000 businessmen and professionals renounced their Indian citizenship and fled abroad in 2022. Last productive citizen leaving, switch off the lights. The electricity may restart.
A merry game of musical chairs is being played in the country’s top-ranked schools. In wake of the belated liberalisation of Indian education, including the K-12 sector, global multinational school chains entering the moribund education sector and greenfield schools springing up everyday, principals/headmasters and well-qualified, competent subject teachers have become hot property. Therefore, the scramble for best principals and teachers, often with remuneration packages which are stupendous by K-12 standards, hitherto a low-wage island. Yet perhaps the most beneficial impact of the liberalisation of K-12 education has been the emergence and evolution of high-performing professional principals and teachers who are demanding — and getting — the remuneration and respect they deserve. Skand Bali had moved in 2021 from the top-ranked Hyderabad Public School, Begumpet to the greenfield Adani International School, Ahmedabad, lured by a reportedly unprecedented remuneration package. But reported ‘disrespect’ by Dr. Priti Adani prompted him to put in his papers last month and revert to HPS, Begumpet, which was experiencing a corner office vacancy following the resignation of principal Madhav Saraswat lured away by the top-ranked Good Shepherd International School, Ooty. Earlier Saraswat had been poached from the Scindia School, Gwalior which under his watch for the first time bested the perennially first-ranked Doon School, Dehradun in the category of boys boarding schools in 2020-21. Likewise Trilok Singh Bisht, for years principal of the top-ranked Jodhamal School, Jammu, who had been poached by DPS, Vasundhra with a huge pay package, quit for alleged disrespect and has signed up with the consistently Top 10 rated Blue Bells, Gurgaon. This is all for the good. It’s high time professional principals rather than promoters, began to call the shots in the country’s premier schools. It’s a signal for the entire K-12 education sector.
Hardly two months have elapsed since the Hindenburg Report of a shady outfit of confessed short-sellers with no fixed address and five ‘researchers’ on their payroll, wiped out a staggering Rs.9 lakh crore of the market value of Ahmedabad-based coal, ports, green energy, grain silos and airports tycoon Gautam Adani on the Indian stock market. But suddenly the country’s market pundits and investigative journalism stars have gone silent on the issue of who is/was Hindenburg, and who were the real short-sellers behind their damning motivated report. By now the latter must have delivered their Adani Group shares parked two months ago, paid off Hindenburg and are no doubt partying with their ill gotten gains. Despite official indignation, there is no SEBI investigation and little is being heard about the Supreme Court ordered enquiry into this matter which Adani has welcomed, because quite obviously he is the victim rather than the villain of this staged drama. Now that the dust has settled, who are the real losers in the panic created by this report generated by the rag-tag-and-bobtail Hindenburg outfit? Certainly not Adani who is still in the global Top 20 rich list and is unlikely to have been reduced to a chapatis and water menu. Nor Hindenburg or their employers who have benefitted mightily. The real losers are millions of bona fide investors and unemployed youth countrywide. Following RaGa’s naive discovery that Adani is an arch villain — and nobody including the prime minister — is ready to speak up for him, this go-getting tycoon has abandoned or delayed his infrastructure expansion plans in India and is busy building ports and infrastructure abroad. That won’t bother RaGa. Despite never having earned a degree, held a job or taken a business risk, he’s doing alright. According to the Association for Democratic Reforms which keeps track, RaGa has assets and wealth valued at Rs.16 crore.
The Anatomy of Hate Revati Laul Westland Books Rs.1,499 Pages 220 The author has chosen to study three individuals who swiftly meld into mobs, to understand the circumstances and motivations that make them ready tools of politicians and revivalists In recent years, there has been an increasing tendency of enraged vigilante groups running amok, creating havoc and mayhem in civic society. Under the protection and cover of powerful politicians, safety of numbers, and official complicity, horrific crimes have been perpetrated countrywide by lynch mobs. Independent journalist, film maker, and social reformer, Revati Laul has bravely investigated the identities of individuals who quickly band into riotous mobs indulging in loot, arson and worse. Using the Gujarat riots of 2002 as the backdrop canvas, Laul has chosen to study the personalities of some individuals who swiftly meld into mobs, to understand the “belly of the beast” and the circumstances and motivations that make them ready tools of politicians, revivalists and criminal elements. Laul has selected three individuals — Pranav, Dungar and Suresh —from differing social and cultural backgrounds to investigate this phenomenon. Over 14 years of interviews and research, battling threats and trolling, and support through financial crises by angel investors, she has compiled this path-breaking anatomy of pliable foot soldiers of hate mongers. She expresses special gratitude to 105 unknown people who crowd-funded this study contributing Rs.9.6 lakh within 15 days, because they believed this book needed to be written — and read. Pranav — a pseudonym — is a college-going Brahmin youth, with no specific ideology, who is swept into the riots, witnesses the mayhem and together with some college mates, seizes opportunities to loot up-market department stores. After graduating and job hunting, he finds himself working in an NGO engaged in rehabilitation of the victims of communal riots, and comes face-to-face with those whom his orthodox Hindu culture had taught to hate. It took Laul ten years of interaction to get Pranav to detail the mental trauma he suffered because of contradictions between his Hindu upbringing and his remorse for atrocities inflicted on Muslim neighbours during the 2002 riots in Gujarat. Dungar — also a pseudonym — is a Bhil tribal, member of a community isolated by the accident of birth, who can’t see a way out of poverty, struggle and menial existence. In the RSS, he discerns a passport to upward mobility. By participating in their satsanghs he rises rapidly up the ranks of the sangh parivar (RSS family) because of his extraordinary ability to arouse and inflame mobs, charging them up with unlimited quantities of illegally brewed country liquor made available by the parivar in the “dry” state of BJP ruled Gujarat. Under the protection of the parivar, his rise is meteoric and he is currently a political leader. Suresh ‘Langdo’ is from the Chahar community which has a historical tradition of thievery, violence and lawlessness. Stricken by polio at a young age, he compensated his handicap by persistent body building to transform into the neighbourhood bully.…
The Digital Ape: how to live (in peace) with smart machines Nigel Shadbolt & Roger Hampson Manjul Publishing House Rs.354 Pages 90 We are reassuringly told that AI actually is poor at “commonsense reasoning”, and while they are superhuman in completing certain tasks, they are “overall bad at generalising” At the heart of The Digital Ape: How to Live (in Peace) with Smart Machines lies the fundamental question that has been haunting human beings for the last few decades — is Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the cusp of ‘waking up’, with the ruinous consequences of consigning humans to the trash can? If you look at the staggering pace of tech advancements that have taken place in the past 50 years or so, there is enough evidence to suggest that the possibilities of AI are no longer restricted to works of sci-fi — there are good reasons to base our fears on. The authors — Nigel Shadbolt, principal of Jesus College, Oxford and professor of computer science at Oxford University and Roger Hampson, an academic and public servant — do well to put these fears to rest in this very readable book. “Machines at this stage simply have nothing to compare…,” they write. “They have no selves. Nor do we yet have, except for isolated and narrow capabilities, a sufficiently good picture of what is happening inside our heads to begin to model it with machines, let alone to ask a machine to imitate or do it.” In fact, we are quite reassuringly told that while AI researchers intended to build systems which would be able to solve abstract problems in computational reasoning for maths and science, they are actually poor at “common sense reasoning”. So while they are superhuman in completing certain tasks, they are overall “bad at generalising”. Perhaps the first instance when AI fears really hit us was in the 1990s when IBM’s Deep Blue supercomputer programme beat then world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a six-game play-off. Deep Blue was capable of evaluating 100-200 million chess positions per second, and its win had a chilling effect on Kasparov. Later in an article, he described the experience as sensing a “new kind of intelligence” on the other side of the table. These questions about sentience in robots, the authors remind us, are (as mentioned before) deeply rooted in whether humans will be able to fully understand what makes up our “consciousness”. “Sentience is one end product of hundreds of millions of years of descent with modification from prior living things. We have no certainty about how it is constituted, but it seems at the least to include both perception and activity,” they write. The book also probes the larger existential concerns about AI. For instance, while taking the example of the 2014 sci-fi movie Ex Machina, the authors examine whether an android of the future will be able to fool us into thinking it is a human. Can it trick us into believing that it is conscious? And…
-Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru) Sriya Sainath (25), a computer science engineering graduate of NIT-Rourkela and currently a first year MBA student of the blue-chip IIM-Bangalore, was adjudged Young Analyst 2022 of the London-based Institute of Analytics (IoA) in early March. IoA is a global organisation established to encourage responsible and ethical data science professionals. Earlier in 2018 while interning with Adobe Research, Mumbai after she bagged the Adobe India Women in Technology Scholarship besting 4,000 contenders, Sriya secured a patent supported by Adobe for a novel dynamic pricing mechanism she designed for data enterprises. Subsequently during a three-year stint with Microsoft India, Hyderabad (2019-2022) after graduation, she worked on integrating privacy safeguards into data storage systems. “I’m very grateful to Prof. Dinesh Kumar, chairperson at the Data Centre and Analytics Lab of IIM-B’s Decision Sciences department for nominating me. Now as a youth ambassador of IoA, I am committed to promoting responsible use of data and fostering a culture of ethical data usage and professionalism within the community,” she says. Although born and raised in non-metro Bhubaneswar (Odisha), the younger daughter of Basant Nanda, a senior sales executive in a private firm, and mother Lali Rath, a rural development trainer, Sriya was inspired to achieve by her grandmother Debjani Mishra, the state’s first woman mountaineer, and grandfather Rabindranath Rath, a former IAS officer as much as by her parents. “My grandmother taught me to scale new heights even with sub-standard equipment. Since then, I have never been shy of aiming high,” says Sriya, a school and college topper and winner of InsideIIM’s ‘Most Promising Incoming MBA Student’ award against 3,000 applicants from India’s top B-schools last August. Evidently, there’s no stopping this young winner who aims high and devises ways and means to get there. “ I intend to apply my learning to start my own venture. It is entirely possible to create value for others and do it while respecting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals,” says this driven achiever. Wind beneath your wings!
-Runa Mukherjee Parikh (Ahmedabad) There was a thrilling sense of deja vu in the Jhala household when Ahmedabad-based Veerangana Jhala (7) was conferred the National Bravery Award 2023 ahead of Republic Day (January 26) in Delhi by Major General (Retd.) ‘Ironman’ Vikram Dogra, for displaying extraordinary courage in saving 60 human lives in a fire on August 7, 2022 that gutted their apartment building in Ahmedabad. Unlike her grandfather Krishnakumarsinh Jhala who was presented the All-India NCC Best Cadet Junior Division award by then prime minister Indira Gandhi on Republic Day in 1969, Veerangana was deprived of the privilege of being part of the R-Day contingent of bravery awardees because this ceremony was discontinued in 2017. Nevertheless this courageous child of Adityasingh Jhala, a hospitality chain consultant, and gemologist mother Kamakshi, and class I student of the Cambridge (UK)-affiliated Adani International School, Ahmedabad, is delighted with all the attention. The many plaudits and hosannas this young braveheart has received include a scholarship until graduation. “When Veerangana switched on the air-conditioner in her bedroom that night, a spark triggered a raging fire that engulfed our apartment in the Bodakdev suburb. The minute she saw the spark, she came running to inform me in the adjacent room. I immediately sent her out of the apartment to request a neighbour to call the fire brigade and alert all our neighbours, mostly senior citizens. Our elderly neighbours informed me later that my little girl not only helped them evacuate to a nearby garden but even managed to switch off the main electric switch,” recalls mother Kamakshi. According to father Adityasingh who was away on business that night, Veerangana had been familiarised with the fire drill exercises which are normative in the hospitality industry where he works. Mother Kamakshi attributes her daughter’s bravery to her rural upbringing. “We spend a lot of time in our village Chuda with our extended family members. Spiritually grounded and connected to her roots, she has developed a deep sense of duty and empathy towards challenged and elderly people in particular,” says her proud mother. Certainly her life’s journey has begun well.
Studio pedagogy takes a very different approach. A substantial number of contact hours and credits are given to undergrads to resolve live workplace problems individually or in team writes Pratyush Shankar Traditionally, engineering education has been perceived to be a higher education discipline that requires good grasp of theoretical concepts and a fair amount of workshop or practical exposure during the time spent in a bachelor’s degree programme. This traditional pedagogy succeeded to a certain extent in creating a generation of engineers and technocrats who have participated in nation-building and also contributed to building excellent engineering companies. However in recent times, there is a felt need to equip students with more real life and shopfloor experiences while they are still studying. Studio pedagogy, successfully used in numerous architecture and design schools worldwide, offers a good model for application in engineering education as well. In traditional engineering colleges, theoretical inputs in the form of lectures are given to students on the assumption that when confronted with practical workplace problems, graduates will apply this knowledge to solve them. However, there’s no dearth of evidence that chalk-n-talk pedagogy discourages creativity and innovation that is sadly missing in fresh engineering graduates. Studio pedagogy takes a very different approach. A substantial number of contact hours and credits are given to undergraduates to resolve live workplace problems individually or in teams. Over the course of every semester, students try and find the most innovative solutions to complex problems by applying access theory, case studies and tinkering with differing ideas. The role of faculty is transformed from ‘sage on stage’ to facilitators to whom students turn to for assistance. This pedagogy transforms students from passive to active learning participants in classrooms. Moreover, students develop strong ownership of their ideas when a project ends with an innovative solution. In most design schools, the studio course has the maximum number of credits and hence the maximum contact hours. It is not unusual to find a studio course having 9-12 credits in a given semester. A typical five-year architecture programme would have nine to ten studio modules. Each module poses a live or practical problem to be solved by students following discussion and debate. The studio model is designed to compel students to apply theoretical inputs they have been taught in study programmes. In this pedagogy the studio is a learning hub that demands holistic understanding of a problem, be it the quantum of resources used, technology deployed, or user behaviour. This stimulates creative thinking and fresh ideas, and provides a connect between theory and practice. Studio learning also generates high interest among students and there is a great amount of learning when students witness peers ideate differing solutions to common problems. This pedagogy if applied to core engineering subjects such as civil, mechanical and electrical, can lead to an enriching learning process. Navrachana University has implemented studio-based courses in these core disciplines of engineering with excellent results. Projects are designed and given to students to complete during a 16-week semester.…
Duolingo & Next Genius initiative Mumbai, april 26. The US-based Duolingo Inc, which has designed the global Duolingo English Test (DET), a modern English proficiency assessment for international students and institutions, and its India partner, Next Genius Foundation, are embarking on an Inspiring India Tour to visit 1,000 high schools across 50 cities in India over the next two years. The tour is an initiative to introduce DET and other educational resources to students and counsellors across India. Comments Dr. Neeraj Mandhana, founder of the Next Genius Scholarship Program: “English proficiency tests are mandatory for admission into most universities and colleges abroad. Next Genius is happy to partner with Duolingo to reach out to more students and schools, spread awareness about DET and our scholarship programme to support students’ academic and professional aspirations. India is the largest market for DET with people taking English proficiency tests in 1,200 cities and towns in the past year, making the Inspiring India Tour initiative timely and relevant.” “Our goal is to provide modern English proficiency assessment that’s accessible to the broader Indian population.” says Tara Kapur, India Marketing Head of DET. “DET is recognised by over 4,000 institutions in over 50 countries, and is trusted by top universities in the US, UK, Canada, Australia,” she adds. Semiconductor industry program Bengaluru, april 24. The Department of Electronics & Communication Engineering (E&C Engineering) at the Manipal Institute of Technology (MIT), Manipal, in collaboration with Semi-Conductor Laboratory, has launched a new course — B.Tech Electronics Engineering (VLSI Design and Technology). This programme is specially curated to support creation and scaling up of an ecosystem for manufacturing semiconductors in India. A four-year undergraduate programme, it will provide students with an in-depth understanding of the subject. The course curriculum covers a wide range of topics such as digital electronics, VLSI design and testing, analog and mixed-signal circuits. “Through this programme, students will not only gain knowledge, but they will also acquire hands-on experience of cutting-edge technology, allowing them to excel in their future careers. The semiconductor industry is expected to require 20,000 qualified professionals by 2025 and our programme aims to close this gap by providing students with the competencies to work in this thriving industry,” said Cdr (Dr.) Anil Rana, Director, MIT Manipal, speaking on the occasion. CleverTap-Barefoot partnership Mumbai, april 18. CleverTap, the world’s #1 Retention Cloud, announced a partnership with Barefoot Edu Foundation to promote STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education in budget private schools (BPS) in Mumbai. This partnership intends to develop fully operational STEM labs in 12 BPS citywide. These labs will enable students to demonstrate increased retention of textual subject knowledge through formative and summative testing. Six of the 12 STEM labs will be exclusively for girl children. Students will be given resources to demonstrate their creativity in applying textbook concepts to real-world problems through engaging activities like melas and competitions. “At CleverTap, we are true believers that ‘a brilliant mind can come from anywhere’ and hope our efforts can help…
J&K Moving direct appeal Kathua/jammu, april 20. Days after class III student Seerat Naaz in a video message urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ensure basic facilities at her government school in Kathua district in the remote Lohai-Malhar block, Ravi Shankar Sharma, director of school education (Jammu), initiated action to give the school a facelift. Elaborating on her school’s pathetic condition, Naaz said students are forced to sit on dirty floors, which often stain their uniforms. She also highlighted the poor condition of toilets and the building’s unfinished construction work. “I request you to build a nice school for us so we can continue our education and not get scolded by our mothers for getting our uniforms dirty,” the girl said in a moving appeal to the prime minister. “A project worth Rs.91 lakh was sanctioned to upgrade the school but pending administrative approval, the work was stalled. It has now been sorted out and work is underway,” Sharma confirmed after visiting the school. Delhi Anganwadis upgradation New delhi, april 24. All 11,000 anganwadis (government preschools) in the national capital will be provided with a 35-item learning kit to make learning enjoyable and interactive. Moreover, they will observe ‘ECCE Day’ every month together with parents, said Atishi Marlena, Women and Child Development Minister of the AAP state government, after reviewing anganwadi projects with department officials. Addressing a press conference, the minister said: “Early childhood education is a priority of the AAP government. Anganwadi workers and supervisors will receive training from master trainers. To involve parents in children’s education, the Delhi government will celebrate ECCE Day every month by inviting parents to participate in group activities with their children.” Parents will also receive counselling to create supportive environments for their children’s education at home, she added. Uttar Pradesh Girls outperform boys Prayagraj, april 25. Girls outperformed boys in the intermediate and high school examinations conducted by the Uttar Pradesh Secondary Education Council this year, said Mahendra Dev, Director of Secondary Education, while announcing board exam results. The pass percentage of girls in the high school examination was 93.34 percent, against 86.64 percent for boys. In the intermediate examination, the pass percentage of boys was 69.34 percent, against 83 percent for girls. Congratulating successful students, Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath tweeted: “May your future be bright with the grace of Maa Saraswati. Students who bagged top 10 positions at the state and district levels in the class X and XII board exams will be honoured.” Kerala History deletions ignored Thiruvananthapuram, april 26. Higher secondary students across the state are likely to be taught portions that the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has deleted from its class XI-XII history textbooks, including those pertaining to Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination and subsequent ban on the RSS, said the state’s general education minister V. Sivankutty, after chairing a curriculum steering committee meeting. “The curriculum committee unanimously decided to include all portions omitted from the old textbooks in the syllabus,” said Sivankutty. Maharashtra Swachh Bharat circular…
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) After procrastinating for several months over the issue of implementation of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, West Bengal’s Trinamool Congress (TMC) government has signalled a rejig of its strategy. In what is being interpreted as a sudden softening of its opposition to NEP 2020, on March 17, the higher education department wrote to registrars of all state universities to introduce the “new curriculum and credit framework” in compliance with NEP 2020 recommendations for four-year undergraduate programmes in the forthcoming academic year starting July. The state government’s decision came after the secretary of the University Grants Commission (UGC) wrote to it on January 31, asking it to implement NEP guidelines. Currently, West Bengal’s 20 state-aided universities, 49 government-owned and 433 government-aided degree colleges and 11 private universities offer three-year undergraduate programmes. Soon after the announcement, on March 27, the state government set up a 10-member committee comprising Bankura University VC Deb Narayan Bandyopadhyay, North Bengal University VC Om Prakash Mishra, Rabindra Bharati University VC Nirmalya Narayan Chakraborty, under the chairmanship of Jadavpur University VC Suranjan Das, to get feedback about NEP and formulate a higher education policy tailored to the needs and interests of West Bengal. The committee will submit its report by May end. The sudden U-turn of the state government in accepting the BJP government at the Centre’s diktat has startled the stakeholders of education in West Bengal (pop.91 million), including teachers’ associations, educationists and students. They are miffed that the announcement was made without teachers and professors being taken into confidence, ambiguity in the directive over what will become of the two-year Master’s programme, and also that learning compulsory yoga has found place in the directive. Additionally, there is concern that the four-year undergrad programme could result in more dropouts, corporatisation of the education sector, and reduced role of state governments, enabling the Centre to acquire more power in education, contrary to the spirit of the Constitution of India. Academics of leading colleges of Kolkata are also voicing concern regarding implementing NEP from July as they feel that faculty shortages — according to them, nearly 2,000 assistant professors and 100 principals posts are vacant in government colleges, along with lack of adequate infrastructure including availability of classrooms to accommodate students for two extra semesters — will stymie introduction of the four-year undergrad degree programme. Academy dons express surprise that the same TMC government which was opposed to NEP 2020, and described it as an RSS agenda to impose Hindi and standardised curriculums on all states against the spirit of federalism, is suddenly in love with NEP 2020. “NEP 2020 will encourage corporatisation of the education system and destroy the state-funded education sector from school to university levels. In a vast country like India, which has diversified socio-economic conditions, a common yardstick cannot be applied to all states,” thundered former but now disgraced education minister Partha Chatterjee. Moreover last year, Bratya Basu, who replaced Partha Chatterjee as the education minister in 2021, had said that…
Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai) Tamil nadu’s education exceptionalism — the state’s DMK government wants to run its own NEET (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test) for admission into the state’s medical colleges, aspires to teach engineering undergrad and postgrad study programmes in Tamil and wants to be exempted from the three languages formula in K-12 education — is generating disillusionment within the state’s higher secondary system, the springboard for higher education. In a report tabled in the state’s legislative assembly on April 21, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India commented that enrolment in Tamil Nadu’s government secondary and higher secondary schools declined by 14.76 percent and 11.84 percent respectively during the period 2016-21. The report attributed this to factors such as poor infrastructure and teacher shortage. The report said that although the state achieved a GER (gross enrolment ratio) of 94.20 percent and 78.60 percent at secondary and higher secondary levels in 2020-21 which compares favourably with the all-India average of 79.89 percent and 53.80 percent respectively, higher secondary level enrolments in aided and unaided private schools and other schools, increased by 3.97 percent during 2016-21. However, the CAG report’s attribution of poor infrastructure and teacher shortage for the sad plight of the state’s 3,685 secondary and 4,339 senior secondary schools, has drawn mixed response from academics and education activists. “There is undoubtedly a growing teacher shortage in government schools. But to get enough quality teachers, they need to be paid well. Presently, teachers in government-run schools take home a modest Rs.12,000 per month. With too few takers, contract teachers lacking adequate subject knowledge are signed up to teach children. This situation is getting worse and has adversely impacting enrolments in government schools,” says Prince Gajendra Babu, general secretary of the State Platform for Common School System, Tamil Nadu, adding that 18,862 teachers’ posts are vacant in government schools. To arrive at its conclusions about poor infrastructure, CAG personnel sampled 108 government schools and reported a 44 percent shortage of classrooms in 48 schools equivalent to 227 classrooms. Consequently, it’s not unusual for classes to be conducted in the open, under the shade of trees, under-construction buildings and makeshift classrooms. Statewide, the CAG report estimates the shortage of classrooms at 11,711. However, some educationists contest CAG’s conclusions that poor infrastructure and teacher shortage are the prime causes of declining standards in government schools. “It is not as if all private schools have good infrastructure. Small private schools in rural areas are run in small houses and yet attract a sizeable number of children. Infrastructure development is an ongoing process for all schools. However, the teacher shortage is real. In all, there are 45,000 vacancies across the state in primary, secondary and higher secondary schools and a large number of high schools function with one or two graduate teachers. For the enrollment decline, one also needs to look at long-term demographic data such as rural-urban migration,” says Aruna Rathnam, a former education and child protection specialist at Unicef, Chennai, and member…
Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) Even if belatedly, primary-secondary education is becoming an important election issue — at least in state legislative assembly elections. Credit for this must primarily accrue to the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which against all expectations swept the Delhi state assembly elections in 2015 and 2019 and also the Punjab state election last year. Reform of K-12 education — and especially bringing government schools on a par with private schools — is given high importance in AAP’s election campaigns. Moreover after being voted into office, the AAP government of Delhi has walked the talk by allocating 25 percent of its annual budget for school education — spruced up the infrastructure of government schools, provided smart uniforms to children, introduced computers and even sent principals and teachers of government schools for training to Finland and Singapore, unprecedented initiatives for public schools. And the outcomes of these initiatives have been equally unprecedented. Delhi government schools claim CBSE board exams results on a par with private schools. Moreover in the latest EducationWorld India School Rankings 2022-23 — the largest and most comprehensive worldwide — the Delhi government’s Rajkiya Pratibha Vikas Vidyalaya (RPVV) primary-secondary schools were ranked #1 and #2 among state government schools countrywide with four ranked in the Top 10. AAP’s sweeping victories in Delhi and Punjab attributed in large measure to its primary-secondary school reforms agenda, has not gone unnoticed in Karnataka which goes to the polls on May 10. All major political parties including the Congress, BJP, JD(S) and AAP, which released their election manifestos on May 1-2, have allotted substantial space to upgradation of the state’s 71,000 government primary-secondary schools — a hitherto neglected issue in Indian electoral politics. An estimated 50 million people in the state are eligible to vote for 224 assembly seats in Karnataka (pop.65 million) next week. The ruling BJP, which is pulling out all the stops — including road shows featuring prime minister Narendra Modi — to win a second term in office, has made big K-12 education reform promises in its manifesto. Among them: to increase the budget allocation for education to 6 percent of GSDP (gross state domestic product) to “ensure quality education for every student in the state, as per NEP guidelines”; to launch PRE-KSHANA Mission (pre-primary education) to ensure that all pre-primary and primary students achieve foundational literacy and numeracy by 2025; upgradation of 65,911 anganwadis and to establish IIT-like Karnataka Institute of Technology in every district statewide. Moreover if elected, it promises to introduce the Visvesvaraya Vidya Yojane under which “the state government will partner with eminent individuals and institutions for holistic upgradation of government schools to top class standards”. Likewise, the main opposition Congress party’s manifesto promises to restore “the true values of Bharat and Karnataka” and scientific temper by rewriting textbooks (a reference to the BJP rewriting history texts); fill teacher vacancies in government schools and colleges within a year; make the compulsory mid-day meal more nutritious, and regulate fees of private schools. More importantly,…
Autar Nehru (Delhi) India is headed for a sweeping reorganisation of its school system in the next few years. The 628-page draft National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF-SE) made public on April 6, based on the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, offers ample evidence of the impending overhaul. The NCF-SE draft has been placed in the public domain for feedback and suggestions from all stakeholders without a deadline and also circulated to state governments for their views. The expectation within the Union education ministry is that NCF-SE will move closer to finality within the next three-four months and new textbooks will be written for the academic year 2024-25. The latter process has already begun with history textbooks authorised by NCERT — a subsidiary of the Union education ministry — which have omitted the entire Mughal period (1526-1857), having already generated massive controversy. Undoubtedly there are several positive features in NEP 2020 including the formalisation of early childhood education, inclusion of vocational education and promotion of critical thinking in lieu of rote learning, in school education. The Steering Committee for implementing NEP 2020, chaired by the indefatigable Dr. K. Kasturirangan, has already completed the NCF-FS (foundational stage) made public last October to universal acclamation. Now it is working on NCF-SE which will be followed by detailed implementation manuals for NCF-TE (teacher education) and NCF-AE (adult education). The recently completed draft NCF-SE is an exhaustive and detailed document of 628 pages which provides a road-map for seamless integration of 13 curricular goals for transforming school education in all its stages. This draft will be supplemented by manuals written by 25 focus groups and a consultative process. In a statement accompanying release of the draft NCF-SE for public scrutiny, the ministry of education says: “Given the diverse needs of students, multiple pedagogic approaches, learning-teaching material at the different stages of school education, it is felt important to take feedback from students, parents, teachers, teacher educators, experts, scholars and professionals on the various sections and recommendations of this NCF-School Education. While giving your feedback, it needs to be kept in view that this is a pre-draft of the NCF-SE which still requires several rounds of discussion within the National Steering Committee (NSC). Feedback from diverse stakeholders will further help NSC to look critically into different modalities and approaches that this framework is proposing.” Although the voluminous reports and deeply detailed NEP 2020 implementation manuals produced after the Kasturirangan Committee’s 484-page report was translated in the 60-page NEP 2020 and the production of the 360-page NCF-FS (foundational stage) report followed by the 628-page NCF-SE report to be followed by 10 implementation volumes reflect well on Dr. Kasturirangan’s enthusiasm and attention to detail, it raises questions of over-centralisation and prolixity. Not a few educationists wonder about implementation time lines and who will read these detailed reports and volumes. “NCF 2005 was also finalised by 10 focus groups which produced excellent implementation reports. But the point is very few principals and teachers bothered to read them,…
“Viewed through the prism of brutality, thus, history has few heroes. If the Mughals were violent, it was not because they were Mughals; it was because they were royal.” Manu S. Pillai, historian and author, on many justifying the NCERT’s deletion of chapters on Mughals in school textbooks by pointing to their brutality (Times of India, April 14) “India’s primary advantage in embracing the China-plus-one challenge is the country’s demographic profile. We must devote more attention to our children, youth and women to realise our demographic dividend fully.” Viral Acharya, professor of finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business, on why India needs an action plan to cash its demographic advantage (Mint, April 20) “Time for all of us to hang our heads in shame: India slips in World Press Freedom Index, ranks 161 out of 180 countries.” Shashi Tharoor, Congress MP (Twitter, May 3) “IIT should not be merely an educational institute but become laboratory of public welfare ‘Lok-Kalyan’. IIT must be hub of entrepreneurship. The students must aspire to be job creators not just job seekers. IITians must become the face of new India with no discrimination.” Dharmendra Pradhan, Union education minister, addressing the convocation ceremony of IIT-Bombay (May 3) “Seeing the tears in the eyes of sportspersons who won laurels for the country by their dedication and hard work is very painful. Their grievances should be heard, and justice be given.” Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, secretary of the All-India Congress Committee on the protest by Olympic wrestlers against alleged sexual harassment (May 5, Telegraph) “Wake up and smell the coffee. (Article 370) is history. The sooner people realise it, the better it is.” S. Jaishankar, Union external affairs minister at the meet of SCO foreign ministers (May 5)
GDCW pride I was delighted to learn that my alma mater — Government Degree College for Women, Begumpet, Hyderabad — is ranked among India’s Top 3 government autonomous colleges in the EW India Higher Education Rankings 2023-24 (EW April). Congratulations to principal Dr. Padmavathi, faculty and students for continuing the GDCW tradition of empowering women with quality higher education. I was also pleasantly surprised to discover from the distinguished alumni information provided on the college website, that many alumnae have taken up teaching as a profession. Kudos to them for taking up the challenge of educating the next generation! Renuka Reddy on email USPs suggestion Congratulations for publishing the comprehensive EW India Higher Education Rankings 2023-24 (EW April). At a time when UGC has allowed foreign universities to set up campuses in India, the country’s best higher education institutions need to be acknowledged and celebrated. However as a well-wisher, I have a suggestion for conducting your interviews more innovatively. Without doubt the managements of the Top 3 colleges and universities are bound to have positive reactions. But given that print space is precious, perhaps you could consider highlighting 5 USPs of these stellar educational institutions to enable school-leavers and graduate students to make informed higher education decisions. Himanshu Jain Mumbai For this they need to study parameter scores in the league tables which are presented in detail — Editor Gritty young achiever Thanks for highlighting the achievements of promising sailor Preethi Kongara in your Young Achiever section (EW April). Her story of grit and determination against all odds is inspiring. It’s heartening to read that she greatly values the importance of education for success in life. Wishing her a sea of opportunities! Kannagi Maria Chennai Important omission I wish to draw your attention to the misrepresentation of India’s map in your magazine (EW April). Although you have taken the trouble of including the Andaman and Nicobar Islands this time, you have failed to include the Union territory of Lakshadweep. However small this region is, it belongs to the Indian Union. Let’s get our geography right! Madhavan Iyer Kozhikode Sorry — Editor Flawed recruitment system In the insightful Expert Comment essay ‘Transfer sword over government school teachers’ (EW April), Prof. Krishna Kumar has rightly questioned why government schools are denied the privilege of school-based teacher recruitment which private schools enjoy. The centralised teacher recruitment and transfers system for government schools invests tremendous power in the hands of bureaucrats and politicians which they will never give up. The many teacher recruitment scams that surface with monotonous regularity are more than enough proof that this system needs to be replaced, and fast. Mitali Basu Kolkata Corruption sword The Delhi Education News report ‘No let up in education reform’ (EW April) seems to side-step the fact that several AAP leaders are facing allegations of corruption. First, Manish Sisodia and now chief minister Arvind Kejriwal are under the CBI scanner for allegedly favouring liquor traders. If these allegations are true, it won’t be long before…
The omission of the epochal Mughal era (1526-1857) and references to the importance Mahatma Gandhi attached to Hindu-Muslim unity as also his assassination by a Hindu/RSS fanatic in 1948, in the model class XII history textbook written and commissioned by the National Council for Educational Research & Training (NCERT) — an autonomous subsidiary of the Union education ministry — has sparked nationwide outrage. Over 250 respected historians have written to the Union education ministry protesting acts of omission and commission in this model NCERT approved history textbook which is likely to be approved by a large number of state governments and prescribed for CBSE-affiliated and state schools countrywide. NCERT spokespersons have justified the deletions on grounds that because of learning loss during the 82-week pandemic shutdown of schools countrywide, it had become necessary to lighten the curriculum load of students. However, the protestors including academics highlight that the deletions from history texts are conveniently customised to suit the electoral campaign messaging and anti-Muslim prejudice of the BJP which is ruling at the Centre and in several states. In support of their contention, they point out that the new class XII textbook fails to mention that Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by Nathu Ram Godse, who was a member of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), the ideological mentor organisation of the BJP. Nor does it mention that Gandhiji died in the cause of Hindu-Muslim unity. The incumbent chairman of NCERT is Dr. Dinesh Prasad Sakhlani, hitherto professor of ancient history at HNB Garhwal University, Uttarakhand. He and other board members of NCERT underscore the BJP government’s proclivity to appoint relatively obscure academics with greater interest in the pre-Delhi Sultanate and Mughal periods to high positions in academia. Be that as it may, protest of the 250 academics about omission of 300 years of Mughal rule over India from the history texts of school-leaving class XII students can hardly be brushed aside. It’s pertinent to note that the 28,560 schools affiliated with the Central Board of School Education (CBSE) — the country’s largest national exams board which includes schools top-ranked by EducationWorld — are obliged to teach these fractured, distorted histories to their school-leaving students. With no knowledge of Mughal rule, how will they explain the Taj Mahal, Qutb Minar, Red Fort and other grand monuments of Mughal India to their children? Or the presence of 215 million Muslims in India? Or indeed the music, cuisine and sartorial fashions of the country? Crass American tycoon Henry Ford famously opined that “history is bunk”. On the contrary, it is perhaps the most important subject of all. It tells us who we were, how we got here and why we are who we are. That’s vitally important knowledge.
The 17-day strike called by private medical practitioners in Rajasthan in response to the Rajasthan Medical Care (RMC) Act, 2022, which ended on April 4 after unaided private hospitals which have not received aid or facilitation by the government were exempted, was a national disgrace and exposed the ugly face of the medical profession. The pay-first practice of the healers’ profession in other states of the country is no different. The Hippocrates Oath is taken by all medical practitioners when they graduate. The latest version approved by the World Medical Association in 2022 inter alia enjoins duly qualified medical practitioners to swear to “not allow his/her judgement to be influenced by personal profit or unfair discrimination; be dedicated to providing competent medical service, in full professional and moral independence, with compassion and respect for human dignity…” Against this backdrop, the RMC Act which reminds the medical fraternity that under Article 21 of the Constitution, all citizens have a fundamental right to life and liberty which other citizens are obliged to respect, quite rightly made it obligatory for all hospitals, clinics and facilities to admit and attend to patients in any medical emergency without insisting on “pre-payment”, a widespread practice countrywide. This was an overdue provision, given that government hospitals and facilities are too few and spread out in the state (pop.82 million). However, the Act aroused great resentment within the medical fraternity of the state who called a general strike of almost two weeks during which private doctors also shut their clinics, causing great harm to the public. Finally, the strike was called off when the (Congress) government agreed to exempt private hospitals with capacity of less than 50 beds which had not been allotted any government concessions such as land at concessional price and hospitals running in public-private partnership mode, defeating the major purpose of the RMC Act. Indeed the Act should have gone further and punished individual doctors who refuse to treat patients during life threatening emergencies without pre-payment. In this connection, it’s curious that while government and the courts are adamantly against “commercialisation of education,” they have turned a blind eye to rampant commercialisation of healthcare. It’s an irony that a large number of practising doctors who heartlessly demand pre-payment or else, have received highly subsidised education in the country’s 273 government medical colleges. Even in private medical colleges, a substantial percentage of students pay government-controlled tuition fees subsidised by taxpayers. Under s.12 (1) (c) of the Right to Education Act, 2009, private schools are obliged to admit poor children in their neighbourhood free-of-charge into class I and retain them until class VIII. The cost of educating them is to be recovered from the State according to a prescribed formula. A similar obligation should be imposed upon all medical practitioners. The right to life itself should be placed on a higher pedestal than the right to education.
The public often forgets the vast scale and diversity of subcontinental India. For instance, within the education sector there are 1.4 million primary-secondary schools; 43,796 junior and undergrad colleges and 1,113 universities countrywide established to serve the educational needs of over 500 million children and youth. It’s quite obviously impossible to evaluate and rank them all. Therefore all ranking agencies and media publications restrict themselves to rating and ranking the Top 1,000, Top 200 or other appealing number. Moreover contrary to popular opinion, it’s also impossible to conduct physical audits of even the small numbers. It would be very expensive and time consuming. The audit methodology of grading universities is practiced by NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council, estb. 1994) which dispatches task forces of academics to conduct on-site institutional audits — at the assessee institution’s expense. That’s why in the 29 years since NAAC was established, it has assessed a mere 9,062 colleges and 418 universities in India. Therefore the standard method for assessing education institutions is by constituting a sample respondents database of knowledgeable individuals and persuading them to award perceptual scores on a scale of 1-100 under several parameters of school, collegiate and higher education excellence. The scores awarded under each parameter are totaled to rank institutions inter se. The other methodology is to constitute a jury of eminent educationists and invite them to rank education institutions in separate categories. Of the two methodologies we prefer the former because it is based on field interviews with a large number of knowledgeable individuals and is likely to be more accurate. However in EducationWorld we also resort to using jury evaluations to rate and rank self-nominated schools. In EducationWorld, we accord high importance to institutional ratings and rankings. Over the years the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings introduced in 2007 in which every September we rank over 4,000 schools countrywide in discrete categories under 14 parameters, has evolved into the largest schools rating and ranking survey worldwide, and generates tremendous enthusiasm. The great public interest in our school and preschool (estb.2010) ranking surveys prompted us to introduce the annual EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings (EWIHER) of undergrad colleges and universities in 2013. The country’s Top 500 Arts, Science, Commerce colleges divided into private autonomous and non-autonomous and government autonomous and non-autonomous — it’s complicated — were separately ranked under several parameters last month (April). In this issue, we similarly evaluate India’s Top 300 government and private universities. EWIHER 2023-24 will prove very useful to school leavers and graduate students for short-listing, if not finalizing, the most aptitudinally suitable higher education institution.
Demographic dividend opportunity & illusion
Suddenly our huge population is expected to yield a “demographic dividend” that will enable us to catch up with China and the US and transform India into a global economic power Now it’s official. On July 1, India will overtake China as the world’s most populous nation. Though this was expected for some time, a recent report by the authoritative United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has proclaimed the exact figures. On July 1, India’s population is expected to be 1.429 billion, cf. China’s 1.426 billion. While a few decades ago India’s rising population was a cause for despair, now in a remarkable turnaround, it is considered a national asset in government circles. Suddenly our huge population is expected to yield a “demographic dividend” and the “world’s largest workforce” will enable us to catch up with China and the US and transform India into a global economic power. But the ground-level reality is entirely different. Unless India gets certain developmental parameters right — and that’s a big if — the demographic dividend may transform into a disaster. The tart Chinese reaction to UNFPA’s population report is telling. Size matters, said Beijing, but a “quality workforce” matters more. “Nearly 900 million of the 1.4 billion Chinese are of working age, and on average have received 10.9 years of education,” a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman lectured. “For those who have newly entered the workforce, their average length of education has risen to 14 years.” Against this, the mean schooling years of Indians over age 25 is a mere 6.7 years (after the Covid pandemic), and the quality of education is relatively poor. About three decades ago, the UNFPA commissioned this writer to bring out a book on developing countries whose family planning programmes had been successful. That was the time when there was worldwide concern over the “population explosion”. The Indian sub-continent (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh), most of Africa and Latin America, were averaging around three percent annual population growth rates, and women were having four-five children. However, some developing countries, realising the danger to their economic development, had started to get their act together. China did it by compulsion, with its draconian “one-child” policy (abandoned six years ago, as the problem of an ageing population loomed). Others by persuasion, and providing modern forms of contraception. But two factors were common to all the successful countries: the importance of providing primary education and basic healthcare to the entire population. Mao Zedong, now reviled for his megalomania and massive blunders like the Cultural Revolution, at least got that right, and universalised literacy and basic healthcare. Several developing countries notably Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea also got it right — and reaped the demographic dividend. Sadly, India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, got it wrong. Most of the government’s funds for education were allocated for setting up institutes of higher learning. Primary education and basic healthcare were neglected. Hence, India’s family planning programme was a non-starter. Ham-handed and authoritarian attempts, like Sanjay Gandhi’s…