The historic economic liberalisation and deregulation initiative of 1991 which lifted production restraints imposed upon Indian industry by the ubiquitous licence-permit-quota system, has dramatically transformed India into a major exporter of goods and services. But with Indian academia still mired in the licence-permit-quota mindset, it hasnt been able to supply foreign trade specialists in adequate […]
When Pune-based computer science student Rizwana Shaikh (18) first saw a white patch develop on her left arm, she wasnt unduly worried. Nor were her family members, easily attributing it to an insect bite or a food allergy. But after another patch appeared on her face, she was rushed to a doctor and tests diagnosed […]
Ghaziabad-based Manoj Kumar Gohil, screenplay writer and theatre artist, made his directorial debut this year with Accept Me, a film on albinism, an inherited group of disorders resulting in the absence or decreased production of melanin, the colouring pigment present in the skin, hair and eyes.The 144 seconds silent film which took only a day […]
Armoogum Parsuramen is the new head of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco, estb. 1945) in New Delhi, supervising this highly-respected bodys operations in India, Bhutan, Maldives and Sri Lanka.Beginning his tenure in the national capital in September with a flurry of activity, on November 16 Parsuramen flagged off Unescos 64th anniversary […]
With the Indian media and entertainment industry comprising film, television, radio, music and the evolving gaming and animation industries witnessing explosive growth, theres a commen-surate demand upsurge for skilled professionals capable of developing content for new age digital media.Anticipating this demand and lacuna in quality media education in India, Chennai-based entrepreneur Rathish Babu promoted Access […]
Long before the idea of a computerised unique identity number for all Indians dawned upon the Union government, Asias first DNA Bank promoted by IQRA Biotech Services had been set up in Lucknows Biotech Park in June 2008, with the objective of providing every Indian with a DNA identification tag.Saeed Ahmed, Lucknow-based director of the […]
Internationally acclaimed environmentalist Vandana Shiva delivered the 4th annual Henry Volken Memorial Lecture to a packed audience at the Indian Social Institute (ISI) in Bangalore on September 16 on the theme of ‘Global warming and climate change: ecological consequences for the poor countries and the possible responses. The lecture was instituted by the Society of […]
With the global economic meltdown forcing corporates worldwide to cut costs, Indias once-booming IT sector, which increased its headcount to over 1 million in 2008, can no longer afford to spend millions on in-house training for new recruits. This ill wind for the IT industry is blowing favourably for the innovative Bangalore-based upskilling company A […]
An educator who believes that primary education should be life and skills-oriented rather than purely content driven, Mumbai-based Nupoor Kanchan recently (January 2009) registered ILEAP (Integrated Learning Enrichment Achievement Programme), a first-of-its-kind learning centre for children in the age group four-12.The mission of the ILEAP is to create an engaging, stimulating education environment in which […]
The Indian army, which boasts its own 123 schools countrywide, inaugurated its first primary-secondary school — The Golden Palm Army School (GPAS) — in the port city of Chennai on May 26, to educate children of serving army officers, as also grandchildren of ex-servicemen. The new school is expected to end the uphill struggle faced […]
A private sector pioneer in the provision of high-quality professional (engineering, medical, business management, pharmacopeial, nursing etc) education, and perhaps India’s sole higher education multinational with campuses in Nepal, Malaysia, Dubai and Antigua (West Indies), the Bangalore and Manipal-based Manipal Education Group (MEG) has taken a great leap forward in new technologies-enabled distributed, aka distance […]
Ramanujam Sridhar, chief executive of the Bangalore-based Integrated Brand-Comm Pvt. Ltd (estb. 1998), a well-known public relations firm, is a multi-skilled missionary of brand management. Apart from overseeing his firm, which has 80 employees on its muster roll and boasts blue-chip corporate clients including Omega Healthcare, Indus League, Manipal Education and Big Bazaar, Sridhar delivers […]
Two months ago, six-year-old Sushma Walimbe, a cherubic girl who carries a broken doll with her wherever she goes, spent her mornings playing on heaps of gravel and sand on the construction site of a huge residential complex in Pune. Now, she has a fixed routine and from 9.30 a.m to 12.30 p.m, does her […]
For Avnita Bir, principal of Mumbais prestigious CBSE-affiliated K-12 RN Podar School (estb. 1998), the purpose of education is to encourage learning to learn and not learning to know. Therefore the schools management prides itself on providing balanced holistic education to its 2,700 students. Its strong focus on academics apart, RN Podar School has […]
A Rome-based singer and composer, Andrea Camerini (42) uses the medium of music to help children express themselves and transcend barriers of race, religion and gender. His first school project was with the Roma (Gypsy) community in 1997, and since then he has journeyed to South Africa and India to jointly write songs for peace […]
Emotions, expressions, faces. these are the dominant themes of Kathrina Wegmann’s portraits of life as she flirts with her camera to produce the perfect picture. A resident of Dehradun for over two years until she relocated to Delhi, Wegmann took to professional photography in 2002. Ever since she has been transforming simple everyday expressions of […]
Unlike most professionals and academics who dread the prospect of retirement, Prof PK Ghanekar, who retired last year as head of the botany department at Pune’s Abasaheb Garware College (estb. 1945), is delighted. Now he is busy doing what he loves most — travelling and writing (in that order) — while continuing to teach part-time […]
The Gurgaon-based Bharti Foundation (regd. 2000) — the philanthropic trust of the Rs.9,000 crore Bharti Enterprises — which promotes K-12 schools countrywide under its Satya Bharti Schools banner, is all set to inaugurate 78 new primaries by end May. The trust (corpus: Rs.200 crore) has already promoted 158 primary schools in the states of Punjab, […]
Arguably the most passionate health journalist in the subcontinent, Lucknow-based Amit Dwivedis despatches on health and development run in more than a dozen publications around the world, even as awards and encomiums are heaped upon him. Among them: a certificate of merit from the San Francisco department of public health, USA (2002) and a youth […]
Since October 2008, Hemant and Sangeeta Chhabra, and Simona Terron, have been on a mission — to collect old bicycles. This mission is not driven by a passion for vintage bicycles or entering the Limca Book of Records, but by the desire to facilitate the access of rural children, many of whom have to walk […]
For all students who dread the prospect of mugging up mathematical formulae and equations, Ravindra Keskar, a former lecturer at the St. Xavier Institute of Engineering, Mumbai, has a simple solution. He propagates use of the Japanese art of origami (folding paper to create diverse three-dimensional shapes) to make squares, cubes, circles, cylindrical and other […]
Six distinguished professors of business management from a disparate mix of American universities, headed by Chennai-based Dr. Sankaran P. Raghunathan, have joined forces to promote the National Management School (NMS) Chennai — the southern port citys newest high-end B-school. Formally inaugurated on February 5, NMS is the precursor of a chain of 25 B-schools proposed […]
Dr VM Bachal, former principal of Pune’s renowned Fergusson College, is all set to release a series of books tracing the history of this premier college in its 125th jubilee year. To be published in Marathi, the books will also trace the socio-economic growth of Pune (aka Poona, pop. 4 million), which has grown from […]
Although India hosts the contemporary world’s largest audio-visual entertainment industry with Bollywood and its regional clones churning out 877 feature films per year, and numerous television companies producing millions of reams of footage, the country’s animation industry surprisingly, is still at a nascent stage. This is primarily because until recently, there were barely any qualitative […]
A natural raconteur and performer, for the past decade Chennai-based Jeeva Raghunath has been enthralling children not only in India, but also in Thailand, Malaysia, USA, UK, Canada, Sweden and Cayman Islands with her rich repertoire of Indian, Asian and western folk tales. In a varied and rewarding career, she has conducted training programmes and […]
Currently relocated in Dehradun, editor and freelance writer/journalist Indrani Talukdar has written and edited thousands of articles for national and international magazines and dailies. So when she sent her first novel When the Lamps were Lit for publication to 4indianwoman.com, a California-based website, they were quick to award her a contract. A global writing platform […]
For Meena Ganesh, one of India’s top women executives, the wheel has come full circle. A graduate of Madras University and IIM-Calcutta, Meena Ganesh’s first work assignment was with the computer education and training pioneer NIIT Ltd (1985-1992), where she initiated computer training programmes for education institutions. After an interregnum of 23 […]
Environmental degradation, disease, ignorance, malnutrition and child abuse, are exacting a heavy toll on the health and well-being of children across the country. Yet, little attention is being paid to educate them on health issues, with the subject usually relegated to the back burner.Determined to reverse this reality and educate students, teachers and the community […]
In 1969, Meera Mahadevan, a Delhi-based housewife was moved by the plight of a child lying by a busy road unattended, as the parents — construction workers — were obliged to neglect their infant even as they built a new India. That was the genesis of Mobile Creches, recalls Devika Mahadevan (31), the energetic chief […]
A dedicated teacher, trainer, education consultant and edupreneur, Chennai-based KR Maalathi is a woman of numerous accomplishments. Though she discharges her multiple roles with equal zest, her prime focus area is helping edupreneurs promote schools, and hand-hold them through the entire institution development process. For this purpose, she promoted KRM Training and Consultancy Services Pvt. […]
The trend of Indian emigres returning home — a phenomenon accelerated by the economic meltdown in the US and the West — is being warmly welcomed, especially if the accompanying baggage includes ideas and concepts to bridge Indias fractured education system. The baggage of Dinesh Mehta and Narender Oruganti of Gurgaon/California-based Catura Broadband Solutions Pvt. […]
One of the major infirmities of education systems the world over is that they tend to accord minimal importance to developing the general or extra-curricular knowledge of students. That’s a glaring lacuna which Mumbai-based education entrepreneurs Gautam and Ami Goradia are determined to address by providing a combination of qualitative content and robust technology. The […]
On August 8 the Dubai-based Global Education Management Systems (GEMS) announced the launch of its biggest project in India to date — the Guruvar Awards for teachers. These awards have been instituted for the teaching profession with the twin aims of not just rewarding excellent teachers who have made an indelible difference, but also those […]
Human capital development has to become the top priority of Indian business and industry. Thousands of schools, colleges and skills development centres need to be promoted immediately in urban and rural India to fulfill industrys growing demand for skilled professionals, says Jaithirth aka Jerry Rao, founder chief executive and chairman of the Bangalore/New York-based software […]
In June 2002 Bangalore-based Prabhu Jahagirdar quit a high-profile job in the IT industry to promote the Pupil Tree primary school in his hometown Bellary (pop.317,000), a small town in northern Karnataka, to fulfill his modest ambition to serve the community. Six years later this class I-XII CISCE/state board affiliated school, promoted by the Pupil […]
The Delhi-based Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University aka IP University (estb. 1998), which has an aggregate enrollment of 40,000 students in its eight schools and 86 affiliated institutions, is perhaps Indias only community varsity offering study programmes in subjects such as disaster management, rehabilitation, real estate etc and providing skills upgradation courses for working professionals […]
The Scripps National Spelling Bee is an eagerly anticipated event in Americas education calendar, attracting thousands of school students across the US every year, particularly those of Indian origin who have displayed an uncanny ability of repeatedly winning the Spelling Bee. Though not yet as high-profile as its American counterpart, India has its own Spelling […]
In Dehradun where more than 25 mld (million litres per day) of waste — often toxic — water is discharged directly into rivers, environ-mental activist Sandeep Singh is an individual committed to a life saving mission. For the past 13 years Singh has been in the forefront of saving the River Suswa, flowing past Doodhli […]
Singapore-based edupreneur R. Sinnakaruppan wears many hats. Currently, he is chairman/CEO of Kip Mcgrath Worldwide Education Centres (KMWEC), Singapore (estb. 2005), chairman of Singapore Education Academy (estb. 2008), managing partner of Indus Age Advisors, a corporate advisory firm, chairman of Vimarks Holding Pvt. Ltd, a Singapore-based software consultancy firm and chairman of Educare Enrichment (S) […]
One of the several beneficial fallouts of the 30 million-strong (excluding Pakistan, Sri Lanka & Bangladesh) Indian diaspora, is the knowledge and learning inflow into the mother country which is assuming impressive proportions. A good example of this ‘reverse brain drain is Singapore-based Global Indian Foundation (estb. 2002), which has promoted the Global Indian International […]
Parents of students from the Delhi Public School (DPS) in Dwarka staged a peaceful protest at Jantar Mantar on Saturday, expressing their concerns over alleged .....Read More
The Jharkhand High Court on Friday directed the state’s director general of police, Anurag Gupta, to formulate a standard operating procedure (SOP) to enhance security .....Read More
