Renewed resolve on 17th anniversary

Exactly 17 years ago we launched EducationWorld — The Human Development Magazine with the avowed mission to “build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda”. Quite clearly that mission hasn’t been accomplished because public opinion is insufficiently, if at all, aroused. Therefore, neither the Central nor state governments have pushed public education significantly higher up their socio-economic development agendas. However, there has been some progress in the direction of attaining our mission statement. EW has made an impact on India’s influential and growing middle class which has welcomed this initiative to raise K-12 and higher education standards to global norms. Proof of this assertion is provided by the unprecedented enthusiasm exhibited by private education institutions, pre-primary to K-12 English-medium schools in particular, for this publication and its several initiatives to acknowledge excellence and innovations in education. The readership of EducationWorld — arguably the sole publication of this genre — is estimated at over 1 million per month. Moreover, the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings Awards, flowing from the annual EW India School Rankings, have generated tremendous enthusiasm, transforming our awards function into perhaps the largest celebratory conclave of school promoters, trustees and principals of reputed schools worldwide. But given that there are 1.40 million schools including 320,000 private schools, 37,000 colleges and 800 universities countrywide, self-evidently we haven’t succeeded in getting EducationWorld, which debates root and branch reforms in Indian education, to a critical mass of policy formulators, educators and students. As an English language publication, we haven’t been able to get our message across to the vast majority unfamiliar with this link language of India. And despite our offering almost free-of-charge translation and publishing rights to vernacular and multi-language publishing media companies, there’s been no response from their purblind managements who can’t seem to grasp the elementary proposition that a better educated populace is in their interest as it will boost the circulation and readership of their flagship publications. Moreover, post-liberalisation India’s smug middle class which has en masse enrolled its children in private schools, has little interest in public education. It also fails to grasp the elementary proposition that the higher productivity of a universally educated citizenry will make India an economic super-power again. Nevertheless in EducationWorld, we draw some comfort that due to our sustained efforts, education has moved from the bottom of the national development agenda to the middle. Therefore on our 17th anniversary, we reiterate our resolve to continue to beat the drum of access, equity and quality across the education spectrum. We are confident that governments and the public will soon see the light. Unending agony of benighted Bihar With the state’s overweening and ill-educated politicians riding roughshod over them, there seems to be no hope for the people of benighted Bihar (pop. 104 million). On October 19, the son of a prominent state politician of Gaya district was granted bail by the Patna high court despite his having brazenly shot dead a youth in broad…