“The coaching centres are giving training for the IIT entrance. As a result, students are not studying seriously for class XII exam and giving more attention to entrance. We want to get rid of coaching centres by giving more weightage to the board exam.”
Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal on replacing IIT-JEE with a new common entrance exam (June 5)
“We are working without a leader as a country. If we do not change, we would be down for years.”
Azim Premji, Wipro chairman, on decision-making paralysis in the government (June 12)
“Rapidly-modernising India is drowning in its own excreta.”
Sunita Narain, director of the Centre for Science & Environment, on a Unicef-WHO report stating that 60 percent of Indians don’t have access to proper toilets and sanitation (Nature, June 14)
“They chopped off the heads of their nobility. We are very lucky that we have held on to ours.”
Will Pakenham-Walsh, businessman from Britain’s Isle of Wight, referring to other European countries while celebrating Queen Elizabeth II’s diamond jubilee (Time, June 15)
“Technological solutions of the kind represented by edX can bypass the bruising political debates about quality compromises and the politics of education that surround the changes being contemplated in how students get into the IITs.”
Mint on edX, a new MIT-Harvard University online learning initiative (June 21)
“In Egypt’s confusion, one thing stands out: Egyptians, and Arabs elsewhere, want to run their own affairs. Kings or generals may slow progress to that end, but they cannot stop it.”
The Economist on the complex power struggle between generals and Islamists in Egypt (June 23-29)
“The only one that I need to worry about is Vishnu. The poor boy is 307 (sic) in the world and I don’t even know if he has grass-court shoes. So it’s a bit of a tough one.”
Tennis doubles star Leander Paes on partnering with Vishnu Vardhan in Olympics 2012 (June 29)