Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru)
Against the backdrop of rising student suicides being reported from Kota, Rajasthan — the tests prep capital of India where 26 secondary students committed suicide last year, the highest ever annually — the Union ministry of education has been under pressure to rein in the unchecked growth of the Rs.58,000 crore coaching classes […]
Nasrin Modak Siddiqi (Mumbai)
Mumbai nursery children. Inset: Dr. Swati Popat Vats
With the national education Policy (NEP) 2020 having restructured the 10+2 school system of over half a century to the 5+3+3+4 system by tagging on three years of formal early childhood education, the BJP/Shiv Sena government has issued a circular to all schools […]
Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru)
Girls toilet inauguration: caste shadow
Two back-to-back incidents of children in government schools being forced to clean toilets of their schools have provoked public outrage in the state. The first incident was reported on December 18 when photographs and video clips of some students of the Morarji Desai Residential School in Malur, […]
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)
The long-standing face-off between the state government and the state governor over the issue of appointment of vice chancellors (VCs) in 31 state government universities has transformed into a full-blown war between the Trinamool Congress (TMC) which rules West Bengal and the governor — an appointee of the ruling BJP government at the […]
Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai)
Poor student enrolment in the constituent colleges of Chennai’s prestigious Anna University (AU) is causing anxiety within the management of Tamil Nadu’s show-piece state government university, one of India’s top engineering universities ranked in the 501-600 band worldwide by Times Higher Education and among the world’s Top 2,000 by US News & World […]
“We have to bring some changes in the education system of our management institutions for more effective and inclusive development of the country.”
President Droupadi Murmu urging Indian business management institutes to connect their study programmes with Indian corporates, consumers and society (Indian Express, December 7)
“You must be joking about India becoming a developed, rich […]
Autar Nehru (Delhi)
CBSE school-leavers writing final exam: grades inflation hurdle next
With the two national school examination boards — the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE, 28,926 affiliated schools) and Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE, 2,700 schools) — and 69 state boards scheduled to stage their school-leaving examinations within the next […]
Autar Nehru (Delhi)
The UGC (setting up and Operation of Campuses of Foreign Higher Educational Institutions in India) Regulations, 2023, notified on November 7 by the apex Delhi-based University Grants Commission (UGC), has evoked disappointment and skepticism within academia. Long in the works, the Regulations are unlikely to enthuse foreign universities to establish branch campuses in […]
Nasrin Modak Siddiqi (Mumbai)
Although the latest Israel-Hamas war that began on October 7 when Hamas militia crossed into Israel and took Israeli citizens — mainly women and children — hostage resulting in relentless bombing of the Gaza strip governed by Hamas hasn’t impacted the tenor of life in India, it has had an unexpected fallout […]
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)
Although the next legislative assembly election in West Bengal is in the distant future (2026), three-term chief minister Mamata Banerjee (who in a classic case of nepotism has groomed her nephew Abhishek to take over after her) has less than six months to make good her promise to bag all 42 Lok Sabha, […]
Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai)
The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK)-led Tamil Nadu government is determined to scrap the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET) — the national exam to determine admission into all 704 medical colleges countrywide, including public and private medical colleges in Tamil Nadu.
For the past seven years since NEET was introduced, a political consensus opposing […]
Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru)
With student enrolment in the state’s 49,679 government schools showing consistent decline, Karnataka’s Congress government which was voted to power last May, has announced a plan to upgrade 600 government schools to the status of Karnataka Public Schools (KPS) by March 2024. On October 7, Madhu Bangarappa, minister for school education and literacy, […]
“If we are to truly uplift the socio-economically disadvantaged sections, working on mission mode to improve quality of education at school and college levels should be the foremost priority… Compelling higher rated institutions like IIMs and IITs to admit underprepared students from socio-economically weaker backgrounds into their Ph D programmes will not correct the ills […]
“India’s work productivity is one of the lowest in the world… So therefore, my request is that our youngsters must say, ‘This is my country. I’d like to work 70 hours a week.’ You know, this is exactly what the Germans and Japanese did after the Second World War; they made sure that every German […]
Nasrin Modak Siddiqi (Mumbai)
Suraj Mandhare
A scheme under which corporates, individuals and voluntary organisations (NGOs) have been permitted to ‘adopt’ government schools to improve infrastructure and education quality, has provoked widespread protests from government school teachers statewide.
On September 18, the BJP-Shiv Sena government of the state announced the scheme under which philanthropists, corporates and […]
Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai)
Ranked #427 among global universities by the highly respected London-based higher ed institution ranking agency Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), the state-government managed Anna University, Chennai, comprising 13 constituent colleges, three regional campuses with an enrolment of 18,000 students, is struggling with only 556 full-time teachers. On October 3, after hearing a batch of petitions […]
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)
Bengal teachers agitating for appointment letters
A year after the multi-crore teacher recruitment scam for West Bengal’s 92,748 government schools came to light following the arrests of Partha Chatterjee, former education minister, Kalyanmoy Ganguly, former president of West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE) and several other government and ruling party bigwigs […]
Autar Nehru (Delhi)
Primary school children: permanent APAAR record for all
When the 65-page national Education Policy (NEP) 2020, distilled from the 484-page report of the K. Kasturirangan Report, was released to an unsuspecting public on July 29, 2020, there was considerable scepticism about its implementation. But bit by bit, several important initiatives – CUET […]
Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru)
Madhu Bangarappa: invisible booklets
Somewhat unusually, the Congress government in Karnataka (pop.69 million), which completed 100 days in office on August 27, is on fast-track towards fulfilling its education-related election promises. On August 21, deputy chief minister D.K. Shivakumar announced that as per its manifesto promise, the state government has discontinued implementation […]
Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai)
A state in which public demand for (allopathy) medical practitioner qualifications is arguably highest countrywide, an August 16 notification of the National Medical Commission has caused widespread dismay.
Under NMC’s Extraordinary Gazette Notification wordily titled ‘Guidelines for Undergraduate Courses under the Establishment of New Medical Institutions, Starting of New Medical Courses, Increase of […]
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)
Governor Bose & Banerjee (left)
Control of west bengal’s 31 state-run universities by appointing vice chancellors of choice continues to be a bone of contention between the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) government and the state’s Governor, C.V. Ananda Bose, ex-officio chancellor of all state universities. Since May, 22 interim VCs have been […]
Autar Nehru (Delhi)
DUSU’s newly elected president Tushar Dedha: subsidies priority
Held on september 22 after a hiatus of three years because of Covid disruption, the Delhi University Students Union (DUSU) election was swept by the BJP-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) which bagged three out of four office-bearer posts. The Congress-affiliated National Students’ Union […]
“Second chances also pave the way for innovation and creativity. The history of human progress is punctuated by countless stories of visionaries who faced initial setbacks but later triumphed.”
Srinath Sridharan, author & Steve Correa, corporate advisor (Business World, September 23)
“In nearly six decades of general elections after independence, the ratio of women MPs never […]
“NEET-based selection process favours urban students and those who can afford costly coaching classes and hence is inherently against the poor and underprivileged.”
M.K. Stalin, chief minister, Tamil Nadu, on why the state government is opposed to the NEET medical exam (The Hindu, August 14)
“NEP speaks about learning in the mother tongue, experiential learning, flexibility […]
Reshma Ravishanker (Bangalore)
Deputy CM D.K. Shivakumar (right): NEP 2020 rejected
The newly-elected congress government of Karnataka, which won a bitterly fought legislative election against the BJP in May, has discharged its election manifesto promise of scrapping the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 promulgated by the BJP government at the Centre.
On August 21, deputy […]
Autar Nehru (Delhi)
Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan with Dr. Kasturirangan (left)
On august 23, india began a new progression to ‘decolonise’ its school education system with the release of the National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCF-SE), more than three years after the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 was promulgated on July 29, 2020. […]
Nasrin Modak Siddiqi (Mumbai)
New IIM-Mumbai main block. Inset: Prof. Manoj Tiwari
One of the curious anomalies of India’s higher education system was that until recently, neither Mumbai (nor Delhi) hosted one of the country’s 21 globally famous IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management).
The first IIM was established in Calcutta (now Kolkata) way back in 1961 […]
Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai)
Tamil Nadu chief minister MK Stalin
The DMK government of Tamil Nadu is determined to shift education from the concurrent list of the Constitution — which means that both the Central and state governments can enact legislation on education — to the state list.
During his Independence Day address in Chennai, chief minister […]
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)
The mysterious death on August 10 of Swapnadip Kundu, a first-year Bengali literature student of Kolkata’s high-ranked Jadavpur University (JU, estb.1905), because of alleged ragging by a group of senior students has once again brought the issue of harassment and ragging into the national spotlight. Thus far, 13 students, including three former students, […]
Nasrin Modak Siddiqi (Mumbai)
Class V children in Maharashtra: make-or-break exams back
Despite the landmark right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, having decreed that in the interests of joyous, stress-free learning in primary education (class I-VIII), children won’t be subjected to public examinations and every child shall be promoted until […]
Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai)
Government school children in Tamil Nadu
In the popular imagination, the peninsular state of Tamil Nadu (pop.68 million) is India’s most educated state churning out lakhs of well-educated doctors, engineers and scientists year on year. Therefore, a big slippage in school learning outcomes in the Union ministry of education’s Performance Grading Index […]
Autar Nehru (Delhi)
SNAMUN 2023 snapshot: boarding schools comeback
Despite news of flash floods triggering landslides, washing away roads, bringing down buildings and flooding Delhi after 45 years because of 72 hours of incessant rainfall in northern India’s Himachal Pradesh and adjacent regions in July, the 6th edition of SNAMUN ’23 was successfully staged at […]
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)
Within a month of the public standoff between West Bengal Governor, Dr. C.V. Ananda Bose, and the Mamata Banerjee government over the issue of the former’s appointment of 11 interim vice chancellors of state government universities without consulting the education ministry (as reported on these pages last month), these two arms of government […]
Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru)
Karnataka’s newly elected congress government is cracking the whip on the state’s 24 private universities, many of them established during the rule (2019-2023) of its predecessor BJP government. On July 17, the Under Secretary, Higher Education Department, shot off letters to registrars of private universities lambasting them for not inviting government representatives to […]
“The world is looking at India as a nursery of new possibilities. Many countries are approaching us to open IIT campuses there. Two IIT campuses — one in Tanzania and one in Abu Dhabi — are already about to start operations…. Various global universities are also reaching out to us, expressing their interest in setting […]
“Education is the cornerstone of the bond between India and the United States. Students from both countries are learning and growing alongside each other, discovering the people that they want to become and building a better world together. Working side by side, our nations can create a safer, healthier, more prosperous future for everyone.”
Jill Biden, […]
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)
Governor C.V. Ananda Bose
Under provisions of the Constitution of India and well-established conventions, just as the President of India, the ceremonial Head of State, is obliged to act on the advice of the council of ministers, i.e, the Central government, similarly the Governors (appointed by the Central government) of India’s 28 […]
Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru)
Bangarappa (left): additional booklets
The newly elected congress government of Karnataka (pop.69 million), sworn in on May 19, is wasting no time in implementing its pricey election promises. The government has gone into overdrive to implement the Congress party’s five pre-election “guarantees” — 200 units of free power, 10 kg of rice […]
Prachi Bhardwaj (Delhi)
Palshikar (left) & Yadav: academia & media stir
Even as the national council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) — the country’s largest school textbook publisher — is struggling with writing textbooks to implement the 623-page National Curriculum Framework for School Education 2023 prescribed by a steering committee chaired by Dr. K. […]
Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru)
Siddaramaiah: broken inheritance
The newly sworn-in congress government of Karnataka, which won an absolute majority (135 seats in the 224-seat legislative assembly) in a bitterly-fought electoral contest, has inherited a broken, ailing public school system from its predecessor BJP government. A mere nine days after Siddaramaiah (no initials) took oath as the […]
