Endowed by American philanthropist Amos A. Lawrence (1786-1852), LU is an exclusive undergrad liberal arts and music university routinely ranked among the Top 200 in THE World University Rankings Promoted 173 years ago — a year before the state of Wisconsin was promulgated — Lawrence University (LU, estb.1847) is one of America’s oldest co-ed higher education institutions. A residential liberal arts college and conservatory of music for undergrad students, LU is ranked among the world’s Top 200 higher ed institutions in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2020 and #58 in the National Liberal Arts Colleges 2020 league table of US News and World Report. Endowed by American merchant and philanthropist Amos A. Lawrence (1786-1852), the eponymous university’s main campus is sited in Appleton, Wisconsin with its second 425-acre Bjorklunden Vid Sjon campus perched on the shore of Lake Michigan, two hours northeast of Appleton. Moreover, LU’s international centre is sited in Bloomsbury, London. LU is an exclusively undergraduate liberal arts and music university. It offers its students bachelor of arts and bachelor of music (four-year programmes) and a five-year BA/B.Mus double degree. The liberal arts menu includes 40 academic majors/minors ranging from biomedical ethics to film studies, while LU’s nationally reputed Conservatory of Music offers majors in music education, theory, composition and performance. Currently, the university has 1,500 undergraduates from 50 countries worldwide mentored by 173 faculty, on its muster rolls. Distinguished LU alumni include poet-novelist Marjorie Liu; David Mulford, former US Ambassador to India and movie actor William Dafoe. Appleton. Sited in the mid-west state of Wisconsin overlooking the River Fox, Appleton (pop.74,000) is routinely listed among the most livable — based on quality-of-life indicators — medium-size cities of America. It offers a well-connected road transport system, an international airport, 28 public parks, the Hearthstone Historic House Museum and Performing Arts Centre, Fox Cities Baseball stadium, and hosts offices of large business corporations including Thrivent Financial, Miller Electric and McCain Foods. The city’s College Avenue is lined with a dizzying array of restaurants (from five-star to late-night pizza) and coffee shops. Appleton has a humid continental climate. Summers are warm with the mercury rising to 32.2°C, winters are dry and windy. January is the coldest month in which the mercury could dip to -12°C and snowfall is often 4 ft. deep. Campus facilities. LU’s 84-acre campus in downtown Appleton is bifurcated by River Fox. The north campus hosts academic buildings while the southeast shore campus hosts the university’s impressive sports and athletics facilities. Campus facilities. LU’s 173-years history is showcased in its 1853-built Main Hall listed in America’s National Register of Historic Places. The four main academic buildings feature state-of-the-art classrooms, laboratories, five 100-seat lecture halls and 26 music studios. Other facilities include the Worcester Auditorium, Wriston Art Centre and Warch Campus Centre. Moreover, the Seeley Mudd Library houses a collection of 415,000 books and periodicals, 21,000 musical scores, 20,000 audio recordings and access to electronic resources, images and digital collections. In keeping with the tradition of America’s best universities, LU offers excellent sports infrastructure including the 3,676-seat Banta Bowl football stadium, an eight-lane perma-athletics…
Promoted a mere six years ago with a first batch of 96 students, the IB (Geneva) and CAIE (UK)-affiliated BIS has quickly established an enviable reputation as the most admired international day school of Rajasthan – Paromita Sengupta An extraordinary latter day success story in K-12 education is Bodhi International School, Jodhpur (BIS, estb.2014). Promoted a mere six years ago by the city-based business tycoon Naresh Bothra, his wife Nitu, brother Manoj and Shailee Bothra and Namit Bhandari, this co-ed K-12 school affiliated with the offshore Geneva-based International Baccalaureate (IB) and Cambridge Assessment International Education (CAIE, UK) exam boards, has quickly established an enviable reputation as the most admired in- ternational day school of the western state of Rajasthan (pop. 68 million). Despite its recent vintage, BIS has been ranked Rajasthan and Jodhpur’s #1 international day school for three years consecutively in the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings. Moreover in 2019-20, the school was also conferred Educa- tionWorld’s Grand Jury Award in the category of career counselling leadership. Currently, this day school sprawled over a six-acre campus with 175,000 sq. ft of built-up area in uptown Jodhpur (pop. 1.1 million), has 693 students (including 259 girls) mentored by 79 well-qualified teachers on its musters. “I am delighted that within three years of admitting our first batch of 96 children, BIS has sufficiently im- pacted Jodhpur’s educators, parents and teachers to establish itself as the city’s #1 international day school. Launching BIS as an international school affiliated with Cambridge International and IB right from the start in a non-metro city, posed for- midable staff recruitment problems. But by casting our net wide to recruit a highly capable principal with international experi- ence, and also investing heavily in teacher training and professional develop- ment, we have been able to maintain high teaching- learning standards,” says Naresh Bothra, promoter- chairman of BIS. A business management alum of Jai Narain Vyas University, Jodhpur with cost and works ac- countancy and company secretary qualifications, Bothra is also the pro- moter-chairman of Bothra Interna- tional, a partnership firm (estb.1994) that exports high-quality customised household and office furniture to 35 countries worldwide. The school’s state-of-the-art carefully landscaped campus (monitored by 24X7 CCTV BIS vista: extraordinary success story. Inset: Dr. Venunadhan Pillai coverage) offers 40 air-conditioned ICT- enabled classrooms, separate labs for computer science (60 terminals), physics, chemistry, biology, STEM, media, language and mathematics. It also Naresh Bothra hosts a knowledge and resource hub housing 9,000 volumes with 18 journal subscriptions, built according to Cambridge International and IB specifications. “Teacher training and professional development to ensure that our faculty delivers best quality internationally benchmarked educa- tion to our children is given high priority in BIS, with workshops conducted through the year to keep our teachers abreast with emerging ICT enabled pedagogies and international practices. Their brief is to nurture our students’ learning Bodhi International School is a K-12 strategies, multiple intelligences and co-educational day school affiliated metacognition. As a result although our first batch of 24 A-level (Plus Two) students is yet to graduate this month, they have already…
To compile the EW India Private Engineering Colleges Rankings 2020-21, 150 field representatives of the Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting and Research Pvt. Ltd interviewed 1,063 faculty, 1,368 final year engineering students and 423 industry representatives countrywide – Summiya Yasmeen Engineering education in India is facing an unprecedented over-supply and graduate unemployability crisis. During the past five years, enrolments in the country’s 3,415 engineering institutions have nose-dived. In 2019, 50 percent of capacity in BE/B.Tech/M. Tech degree programmes countrywide was unutilised, and a mere 600,000 of the 1.5 million engineering students who graduated last year were campus recruited. Following this sharpest five-year fall in enrolments and 60 percent graduate unemployability, last year the Delhi-based All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) — the apex regulatory body for technical education — constituted a special committee under the leadership of Dr. B.V.R. Reddy, chairman of IIT-Hyderabad, to suggest ways and means to reform and revive engineering education in India. Identifying “low enrolment, lower placements and low employability” as the causes of this malaise, the Reddy Committee recommends that AICTE should not licence any new engineering colleges until 2022 and encourage ene gineering colleges to diversify from traditional disciplines such as electrical, mechanical, civil engineering to provide study programmes in new technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, quantum computing, data sciences etc. Moreover, it called for eliminating faculty shortages and promoting greater academia-industry cooperation. Accepting the committee’s recommendations to freeze capacity with alacrity, in early February AICTE banned promotion of greenfield engineering colleges for two years. Against this gloomy backdrop, EducationWorld presents its EducationWorld India Private Engineering Institutes Rankings 2020-21 to enable higher secondary school leavers with engineering on their minds to pick and choose the most aptitudinally suitable private colleges for undergrad education. Since 2016, EducationWorld has been excluding the heavily subsidised and routinely top-ranked Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and National Institutes of Technology (NITs), preferring to evaluate and rank the country’s Top 100 private engineering colleges to enable the 98 percent of students who don’t make it into the top 2 percent of the 1.14 million school-leavers who write the IIT/NIT Joint Entrance Exam annually, to choose the most suitable among private institutions, some of which are rapidly closing the IITs/NITs versus the rest gap. To compile the EW India Private Engineering Institutes Rankings (EWIPEIR) 2020-21, 150 field representatives of the Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting and Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore, estb.2000), the country’s premier market research and opinion polls company (which also conducts the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (estb.2007) and EW India Preschool Rankings (2010)), interviewed 1,063 faculty, 1,368 final year engineering students and 423 industry representatives countrywide. These sample respondents were persuaded to rate engineering institutes (of whom they had sufficient knowledge) on nine parameters of excellence, viz, faculty competence, placement, research and innovation, curriculum and pedagogy, industry interface, value for money, infrastructure, faculty welfare, leadership and governance. The scores awarded by respondents under each parameter were totaled to rank the country’s Top 100 private engineering colleges/institutes inter se.…
The paradox of India’s multi-layered structure governing higher education is that some of the country’s most admired undergrad colleges, which should have been awarded academic autonomy decades ago, are tied to the apron strings of their affiliating universities. These colleges are ranked separately in EWIHER 2020-21 Even in the 21st century, India’s higher education system is a regulatory maze. The country’s 39,931 undergraduate colleges and 993 universities are strictly monitored, supervised and regulated by several apex organisations including the University Grants Commission (UGC), All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) and Medical Council of India (MCI) etc, which in turn are governed by the Union ministry of human resource development (HRD) accountable to the Union cabinet. Moreover, capital intensive institutions of science, technology and business management such as the Indian Institute of Science, IITs and IIMs (and JNU) — established by special legislation of Parliament — are directly controlled by the HRD ministry. This multi-tiered regulatory structure governing higher education was designed to enable government and the ruling party at the Centre — i.e, Congress which ruled over post-independence India for over half a century — to closely monitor and supervise higher ed institutions to ensure that capitalist and other heretical ideologies and content didn’t creep into their syllabuses and curriculums. This Big Brother supervisory system was inspired by communist ideology, especially of the (since collapsed) Soviet Union. Independent India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter Indira, who served three terms as prime minister after Nehru’s demise in 1964, were deeply enamoured with the Soviet Union and its control-andcommand economy. Hence the strict regulation and ‘backdoor nationalisation’ of India’s pioneer private higher education institutions whose academic and administrative autonomy was — and remains — severely circumscribed by government organisations such as UGC, AICTE which prescribe elaborate rules and regulations for universities which stringently control and micro-manage affiliated colleges. In all states of the Indian Union, private colleges are obliged by law to be affiliated with state or Central universities. As a result some state universities such as Mumbai, Bangalore and Madras, have 600-700 affiliated colleges. As such they are obliged to follow the prescribed syllabus of the affiliating university which conducts exams, awards grades and degrees. Under this standardisation process, even India’s most famous private colleges established more than a century ago have substantially lost their identities and reputation because syllabuses and curriculums have been reduced to the lowest common denominator, exam papers are evaluated by university appointed assessors and degrees awarded are of the affiliating university. Following liberalisation of the Indian economy in 1991 and emergence of academically and financially autonomous private universities established by special legislation of state governments (education is in the concurrent list of the Constitution of India), which have been enthusiastically welcomed by the public, there’s been increasing pressure from top-ranked colleges for academic autonomy. They want to build their brands and recover their lost independent identities. Consequently, under its rules and guidelines UGC has awarded academic (and financial) autonomy to 747 (of 39,931…
It’s a sobering reminder to a nation being swayed by antiminority rhetoric that four of the Top 5 private autonomous colleges are institutions promoted by various orders of India’s minuscule Christian community In these troubled times when the damage inflicted upon the economy and society by the rampaging coronavirus aka Covid-19 is being compounded by the anti-minority majoritarianism of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its ideological mentor organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), it’s a sobering reminder to the nation that four of the Top 5 in the EducationWorld India Private Autonomous Colleges Rankings 2020-21, are missionary institutions promoted by various orders of India’s minuscule (2.3 percent of the population) Christian community. Ditto two of the Top 5 in the league table of the Top 100 non-autonomous colleges ranked separately in the EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings 2020-21. In these difficult times when the country is being divided by politicians and the economy debilitated by the coronavirus epidemic, it is apposite to appreciate the huge contribution that the minority Christian community and particularly its men and women of the cassock and habit, have made to undergraduate education in post-independence India. Contrary to popular belief, autonomous colleges and universities aren’t necessarily financially independent institutions. Autonomy is conferred upon them by the Delhi based University Grants Commission (UGC) in acknowledgement of their superior academic standards and better learning outcomes. Under its charter, UGC (estb.1956) monitors and regulates all colleges and universities in India (except higher education institutions directly established by Acts of Parliament (IISc, IITs, IIMs etc) and technical education institutes supervised and regulated by the Delhi-based AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education). Under ss.12 and 26 of the UGC Act, 1956, the commission is empowered to confer autonomy on selected undergrad colleges of over ten years of standing with A Grade NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council of India) certification, if they apply for autonomous status. However, award of autonomy to colleges of ten years-plus standing and NAAC A grade certification is not automatic. Additional inspection and certification of high academic and administrative standards by specially constituted UGC task forces is necessary. In short, the country’s 747 (December 2019) autonomous colleges (out of a total 39,931 countrywide) are officially acknowledged as a class apart and above the vast majority of the country’s undergrad colleges. In the circumstances, it’s unsurprising that Dr. Rajendra Shinde, principal of St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai (SXM, estb.1869), is delighted this 151-year-old college is ranked national #1 in the inaugural EducationWorld India Private Autonomous Colleges league table with top scores under four — faculty competence, faculty welfare and development, curriculum and pedagogy and leadership — of the five parameters of education excellence by which colleges have been evaluated this year. SXM provides high-quality arts, science and commerce degree and some postgrad progammes and has introduced its own self-designed Bachelor of management studies (BMS) and Bachelor of mass media, B.Sc (IT) and Masters in ancient Indian culture and archaeology among other innovative study programmes. “I am very…
It’s important to note that among (state) government promoted colleges countrywide, autonomous institutions enjoy special standing and privilege by virtue of their UGC conferred autonomous status. Since 2018 when EducationWorld introduced its inaugural EW India Arts, Science & Commerce (ASC) Colleges Rankings, we focused on rating and ranking private colleges. However this year, on the advice of members of our Board of Advisors and eminent academics, we have divided the broad category of ASC colleges into three sub-categories: private autonomous, government autonomous (as classified by the University Grants Commission) and Top 100 non-autonomous colleges. Until March 31, 2018, the Delhi-based UGC has awarded 708 colleges countrywide autonomous status i.e, academic autonomy. While over 38,000 non-autonomous colleges are tied to the apron strings of their affiliating universities, autonomous colleges are permitted to review existing courses/programmes and restructure, redesign and prescribe their own courses/programmes of study and syllabi; introduce new courses/programmes; evolve independent performance evaluation systems, conduct examinations and notify results. They are also allowed to issue mark sheets, migration and other certificates subject to degrees being awarded by parent university with the name of the college permitted to be inscribed on the degree certificate. Unsurprisingly, UGC has set stringent conditions precedent for awarding colleges much-prized autonomous status. Applicant colleges must be of more than ten years vintage and “accredited by either NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council) with minimum ‘A’ Grade or by NBA (National Board of Accreditation of the All India Council for Technical Education) for at least three programme(s) or be awarded autonomy by a corresponding accreditation grade/score from a UGC empanelled accreditation agency”. Of the 747 colleges conferred autonomous status by UGC, 643 are privately promoted and 104 in the (state) government sector. To compile the 2020-21 EW league tables of India’s best private and government autonomous (as well as Top 100 non-autonomous) colleges, the well-known Delhi-based Centre for Forecasting & Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore) interviewed 4,813 sample respondents comprising 1,946 college/ university faculty and 2,467 final year college students and persuaded them to rate India’s sufficiently well-known colleges on five parameters of tertiary education excellence, viz, competence of faculty, faculty welfare and development, curriculum and pedagogy, industry placement record, infrastructure and quality of leadership/ governance. Low-profile institutions rated by less than 25 respondents are not ranked. Though UGC’s criteria for grant of autonomy are uniformly applicable to all applicant institutions, it’s widely acknowledged that private autonomous colleges are several notches above government autonomous colleges, promoted and managed by cash-strapped state governments which nevertheless set tuition fees very low. The perceptual difference between private and government autonomous colleges is evident from the huge gap in the total scores awarded by this year’s sample respondents to top-ranked colleges in the two categories. While St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai is ranked India’s #1 private autonomous college with a total score of 630, the top-ranked government autonomous college — Maharaja’s College, Ernakulam — has an aggregate score of 539, a difference of almost 100 points. Therefore, to avoid apples and oranges comparisons, privately…
To create level playing fields, in this issue we present EW India Higher Education Rankings 2020-21 ranking private autonomous, government autonomous and Top 100 non-autonomous colleges separately on five common parameters of collegiate excellence – Dilip Thakore Perhaps the greatest tragedy of post-independence India’s failed national development effort is that even the brightest and best of the country’s intellectuals are unable to fully absorb the proposition that high-quality education across the spectrum from pre-primary to PhD is the essential prerequisite of national prosperity. This is why despite using reams of newsprint to propagate their prescriptions for socio-economic progress and growth of the nation, the public intellectual who recommends top budget priority for education is a rara avis. Despite a mountain of historical evidence in the public domain testifying that the dominance of OECD nations in the global order is attributable to sustained investment in public and private education, India’s academy and public intellectuals at best bleat a weak chorus in support of top budgetary and resource allocation for educating the world’s youngest youth and child population of over 500 million. In the Union budget 2020-21 presented to Parliament and the people on February 1, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman allocated a sum of Rs.99,312 crore for education — or Rs.122,312 crore if one adds the allocation made for ECCE (early childhood care and education) in the country’s 1.6 million anganwadis run by the Union ministry of women and child development. But this sum adds up to a mere 0.54 percent of GDP. If the provision made for public education by India’s 29 state governments and Union territories is added, it aggregates to Rs. 6.8 lakh crore, equivalent to a mere 3.1 percent of GDP. Against this the spend of 190 countries around the world averages 5 percent of GDP. Prudently, developed OECD countries routinely allocate 6-12 percent of GDP per year for public education. Last month in the annual post budget issue of EducationWorld, your editors presented a detailed schema/calculus outlining ways and means for the Union government to mobilise an additional Rs.6 lakh crore for investment in public education, and Rs.2 lakh crore in public primary health. In the unlikely event of this schema being accepted, the Central government’s outlay for education would increase to Rs.7.22 lakh crore, equivalent to 3.18 percent of GDP (Rs.227 lakh crore) and the outlay for public primary health to Rs.2.65 lakh crore (1.16 percent of GDP). Significantly, although EW’s additional resource mobilisation plan for public education and health was sent to over a dozen nationally renowned economists (and Niti Aayog, the Central government’s think tank) with an invitation for comment and critique, none of them has responded. Indifference towards public education is pervasive in Indian society where high productivity, the outcome of good education, seems to be a peripheral issue. Your editors are exceptions to this rule. Indeed the raison d’etre of this publication encapsulated in our mis-sion statement (“to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national…
Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India; K.S. Komireddi; HURST; Rs.314; Pages 224 In 1964, Rajni Kothari wrote about the unique nature of the Indian party system describing it as a “one-party dominance” characterised by the existence of a multiparty system dominated by one party, the Indian national congress. It was an umbrella organisation extending its ideology to other parties, internalising and absorbing dissent within and without its ranks, and, effectively being the only viable national political option for millions of voters. However, while Kothari was intrigued by the operation of the congress as a party, he was also acutely aware of how the dominance he referred to was extended to other areas as well. In the 1960s the congress, the self-appointed heir to the mantle of governance after independence, also influenced the framing of the constitution, built institutions, staffed them with yes-men, initiated coercive counter-insurgency in areas which saw local resistance, annexed Sikkim, Goa, Hyderabad and managed to arm twist the ruler of Kashmir, Hari Singh, into signing the Instrument of accession which legally bound Kashmir to India. the party reneged on promises of plebiscites in Kashmir and nagaland and didn’t think twice about strafe bombing Aizawl to defeat the Mizo national front. It won election after election, got embroiled in numerous scams, imposed the emergency, rewarded compliant men and women, and played around with the presidency and president’s rule. And yet, the Indian public repeatedly rewarded it. Why? Kapil Komireddi’s book Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India is an eye-opener. He believes that one reason the congress was vehemently defended and propped up by public intellectuals was because of its almost fundamentalist commitment to the idea of a secular India. this commitment was the prime factor that shielded the congress from harsh criticism from liberals. Malevolent Republic: A Short History of the New India is a catalogue of what went wrong in India under congress rule and how that paved the way for the mephitic political institutionalisation of the BJP. Komireddi writes: ‘they (congress politicians) thought of themselves as modern democrats, but oligarchy was the condition of their supremacy. only strongmen, the British had suggested, could bring order to India. congress internalised that lesson.” However, the BJP alternative doesn’t have any redeeming features. If congress was tied to secularism, which Komireddi argues is a non-negotiable essential condition for the unity of India, the BJP’s reactionary alternative has moved as far away as possible from that ideal. It argues that secularism was inserted into the preamble without debate, how minorities could live in fear not as equals but only if they acknowledge the superiority and dominance of the majority Hindu community. after decades of being forced to follow a concept that only college-educated graduates understood, this political expression of baser ascriptive instincts became something that mobilised core constituencies in the Hindi heartland. Attempts to inspissate Hindutva ideology brought repeated rounds of communal violence. If congress was squarely to blame for the 1984 anti-Sikh riots, demolition of the…
India, Empire & First World War Culture: Writings, Images & Songs Santanu Das; Cambridge University Press Rs.1,774; Pages 466 Winner of The Hindu literary prize (2019) in the non-fiction category, this history of the first World War and India is a deeply researched, well-structured retrieval of unconventional archival material that revolutionises ways of understanding transnational human and cultural negotiations during the Great War 1914-1918. Santanu Das, professor of literature and culture at oxford university, takes the reader beyond official records and statistics, traditional sources of war history, and ferrets out facts and anecdotes of the Great War that he describes as “artefacts in the wardrobe”. Over the past few years, there’s been revived interest in WWI in which the major role played by over a million Indian sepoys/ soldiers was routinely blanked out by Western historians. The Great War divided Indian opinion with imperial loyalty clashing with rising nationalist sentiment. Das has analysed loyalist speeches of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, the nationalist writings of Lokmanya Tilak, a popular Bengali recruitment play enacted in public theatres, and fawning supplications of native princes. additionally there are reports of debates in Punjab newspapers that actively contributed to multivalent war-time discourses in British India. The war zones as reconstructed in this book range over the “farthest fields” of the European/ Western and middle eastern theatres in which Indian sepoys, primarily peasants, as well as educated, middle-class professionals, fought bloody battles for imperial Great Britain. paradoxically, the battlefront was a democratic space in which racially and socially discriminatory codes of civilian life were buried under the rhetoric of patriotism, sacrifice, self- discipline and masculinity. Das documents the trajectory of swaraj or the self-rule movement subtly dovetailing the modest benefits derived by impoverished peasants from across the subcontinent who enlisted in British armies in Europe and elsewhere. The combatants were Sikhs from Punjab, Gurkhas from Nepal and Pathans from the rugged terrains of the north West. the noncombatants were mainly qualified physicians from Bengal. The array of images reproduced in India, Empire & First World War Culture — the bloodstained spectacles of private J.n. or ‘Jon’ sen, the only Indian in the West Yorkshire regiment, preserved in the Dupleix museum in Chandernagore (an erstwhile french enclave in British India); a poignant letter written by a young village girl Kishen Devi who had learnt to read and write so she could correspond with her father Hamilcar Sewa Singh serving in Egypt; the trench notebook of Jemadar Mir mast who influenced by the Turko-German jihadi mission, defected to the Germans and eventually found his way home via Kabul — are a few of several artefacts, bearing testimony of Indian involvement in the Great War. the author believes such off-beat histories “occupy a strange space between life-writing, travel-writing and war writing: one never knows where one ends and the other begins”. How did creative literature of that era shape public opinion and discourses regarding the War? this is to be found in the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore, a story by his elder…
An alumnus of Osmania, Hyderabad and Cambridge (UK) universities and founder-chairman of Cobra Beer Partnership Ltd, a premier brewing company in the UK, India-born Lord Karan Bilimoria CBE, DL, is chancellor of the University of Birmingham (UoB), UK — a Russell Group (i.e, research-intensive) varsity. Sarah Berry interviewed him in Delhi. Excerpts: You are visiting India as chancellor of UoB. What are the main objectives of this visit to India? UoB is one of the Top 100 universities of the world, according to the QS World University Rankings 2020. Our India connection dates back to 1909 when we welcomed the first students from India to our Edgbaston campus. Since then, more than 1,000 Indian alumni have been awarded degrees by UoB with many having had illustrious careers in government, industry and the professions. The prime objective of my visit to India is to nurture existing relationships and partnerships and build new ones across diverse sectors — with alumni, government, education institutions and Indian industry. UoB is scheduled to sign partnership agreements with Punjab Sports University, Patiala and the National Sports University, Manipur. Both partnerships will include an active exchange of knowhow covering a wide range of areas including sports nutrition, physiotherapy, psychology and performance evaluation. In UoB, we have a state-of-the-art sports and fitness centre, set up with a budget of £55 million (Rs.477 crore) to provide excellent sports and fitness education. These partnership agreements will enable the two Indian sports universities to contemporise their curriculums and infrastructure and produce world champions in the near future. Another high-potential partnership we will be signing is with the National Rail and Transportation Institute, Vadodara, India’s sole logistics university to modernise its curriculum, especially in the areas of signalling and simulation. This institute is a subsidiary of Indian Rail ways, one of the largest rail networks in the world. Therefore, this partnership has huge potential for learning and exchanges. Our UoB Centre for Railway Research and Education is proud to work closely and collaboratively with the Indian Railways. The University of Birmingham traces its origins to the Mason College (1843), a pioneer in medical education in the UK. How satisfied are you with the modernisation and contemporisation of UoB? In UoB, we believe that continuous innovation and preparedness for industry and technology changes are essential. Our university campus has beautiful old buildings but also a very modern library that seamlessly integrates high-tech with old world learning and houses 1.8 million volumes. Similarly, our sports and fitness education centre is among the world’s best. Ditto our Centre of Excellence for Evolving Engineering Education Research… I could go on giving many other examples. Therefore, I am very satisfied. The University of Birmingham also has an International Development Department. What are the objectives of IDD? The main objective of the IDD is to facilitate research to design responses to global challenges across a breadth of interests, and to bridge ideas and practice. It’s pertinent that the university’s IDD has over half a century of experience in ground breaking research, teaching, and policy advice and offers Masters and Ph D programmes through correspondence and on-campus classes. How deep is the engagement of…
For Rana Kapoor, former high-flying promoter-chairman of the private sector Yes Bank whose Rs.10 face value equity share was quoted at Rs.285 in its heyday and attracted public deposits of Rs.227,610 crore, the fall from grace was swift and vertiginous. It has come as a great setback for monitors of the floundering Indian economy — including your editor — pressing for the privatisation of the country’s dysfunctional 27 public sector banks (PSBs) which since they were ill-advisedly nationalised way back in 1969, have been a major drag on the high-potential Indian economy. The exposure of this Rutgers University alumnus with decades of experience with Bank of America and later the Netherlands-based Dutch Rabo Bank, as a common cheat, is a bad advertisement for private enterprise. Now a rising mountain of evidence is emerging that Kapoor was clearly afflicted with a common infirmity of successful Indian — especially North Indian — businessmen: effete epicureanism, i.e, excessive materialism and greed for the good life. This translated into purchase of extravagant homes and bungalows in Delhi, Mumbai, London and elsewhere abroad and hosting lavish parties round the year. This jet-set lifestyle cannot possibly be supported by salaries of even best paymasters among publicly listed companies. Therefore to pay for his deadly sin of avarice, Kapoor vastly expanded the lending operations of Yes Bank. The bank’s total advances increased from Rs.55,633 crore in 2014 to Rs.241,500 crore in 2019. Moreover he started massively advancing Yes Bank depositors money to troubled, struggling companies in desperate financial straits — Anil Ambani’s ADAG, Zee Entertainment, Dewan Housing Finance — which were arm-twisted to pay huge kickbacks into shell companies promoted by Kapoor and his socialite wife. The wonder is that it took India’s keystone cops — Reserve Bank, SEBI, Enforcement Directorate, income tax authorities — who are paid to monitor the financial markets, so long to unravel Kapoor’s simplistic swindle. Elementary, my dear Watson!
Shoot first and investigate later. This seems to be the modus operandi of the BJP/NDA government, vaulted to power at the Centre with a landslide victory in 2014. Two years later, Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a dramatic announcement on November 8, demonetising high value currency notes. The unstated prime objective of the demonetisation initiative was to delegitimise large cash hoards believed to have been accumulated by the routed Congress party during its ten-year rule (2004-2014) at the Centre. The stated objective was to delegitimise black money piles of industry tycoons, businessmen, anti-socials, terrorists, smugglers, gangsters, and to usher in a digital cashless economy. Evidently the overweening mandarins of the government think tank, Niti Aayog, established in 2014 to replace the 64-year-old Soviet-style Planning Commission, failed to warn the prime minister and cabinet about the repercussions on 90 percent of the country’s working population in the informal sectors of the economy — farmers, small scale industry, retail trade and daily wage labour — heavily dependent upon the cash economy. Thousands of small businesses and farmers across the country were wiped out and millions of daily wage labourers died of starvation. Mysteriously over 95 precent of the delegitimised high value notes were legitimised before D-day, rendering the whole exercise fruitless. Four years later reacting to the new coronavirus pandemic sweeping the world, in a national broadcast on March 24, the prime minister announced a countrywide lockdown giving four hours notice, confining all citizens to their homes for 21 days. Again Niti Aayog failed to advise the PM and cabinet of the likely impact of the lockdown on the 90 percent working in the informal economy who would suffer loss of daily wages, in particular migrant labour which is obliged to scour the country in search of low-paid employment. Because of post-independence India’s foolish embrace of sterile socialism, over 100 million of the poorest of society are forced out of their rural homes to work for daily wages in distant parts of India. They can’t stay “at home” because they live on their working sites. And following the lockdown order, couldn’t get back to their villages because all public transport was shut down. With no faith in the powers that be, millions of these indomitable citizens started trekking towards their villages even as the Central and state governments blamed each other for not foreseeing massive unemployment, wage loss and malnourishment they would suffer. To tide over low income households and daily wage migrants during the lockdown, the Union government has announced a pathetically inadequate Rs.1.70 lakh crore relief package. Against this your editor has repeatedly sent a detailed schema to mobilise Rs.8.09 lakh crore for education and health by cutting establishment and defence expenditure, middle class subsidies, disinvestment and imposition of modest flat taxes on income tax payers. Redirection of this package proposed by EducationWorld last month (March) would make direct cash transfers of Rs. 4,444 per month to 150 million hard-pressed households for the next 12 months. This resource mobilization proposal has been repeatedly sent to the PMO and Niti Aayog, without acknowledgement or response. The national interest demands that a sum of Rs.8 lakh crore is immediately disbursed to 150 million households by printing notes, and…
– Usha Pandit is the CEO of Mindsprings, educational consultant, teacher trainer, expert in gifted education, and author If India’s education policy formulators take a few leaves from prominent educators, we would have a clear roadmap to re-evaluate and solve the nation’s chronic education deficit. From Piaget’s Constructivism schema, they could learn how children connect with prior knowledge, and learn by doing. From Dr. Maria Montessori, they can learn about how children learn independently and Vygotsky’s zonal proximal development scaffolding would advise them that syllabuses and curriculums should inspire children to undertake tasks that stretch their capabilities. Educators also need to be aware of Skinner’s behaviourism which posits that if children are praised, they change their behaviour for the better. Moreover, Dr. Howard Gardner has demonstrated that all children are endowed with multiple intelligences that educators should identify and nurture. There are four distinct stages of physical, cognitive, emotional and social development in children between the ages of 0-2; 3-7; 8-11 and 12-16. At 0-2, the child already has one language — her mother tongue — learnt in the home environment. At this stage, the brain is completely ready for spoken languages and that’s why we should focus on developing oral skills. At 3-7, when a child enters pre-primary school, she is in her element — curious, playful, keen, imaginative and creative. Research indicates she has capability to learn five-ten new words every day. If taught through play, fundamental math, experiential and sight-reading become enjoyable and are learnt easily. In upper primary school (age eight-11), children need to develop core learning skills taught through a variety of hands-on activities, stories, games, print and digital inputs. In high school (age 12-16), students should develop critical thinking and problem-solving skills to validate theory, transform into autonomous learners, do teamwork, experience internships, become socially aware and engage in reflection. At all stages, teachers should appreciate differentiation and celebrate the diversity of potential in children. The foundation years are critical. They lay the cornerstones of all future learning. Hence, early childhood care and education (ECCE), accorded insufficient official attention, needs to be given high importance to build cognitive and social capital, as belatedly recommended in the National Education Policy 2019 draft of the Dr K. Kasturirangan Committee. What children don’t enjoy in the first two stages (0-7) is mechanical, overly technical education. Forcing children to engage in repetitive reading and writing numbers and alphabets, rudderless word study, and over-focus on the nuances of phonics, is not conducive to their cognitive development. Regimented classes that offer little free play and low sensory inputs in the form of pictures, materials and other resources can stunt youngest children’s minds and implant early disinterest and dislike of academics. Nature shows us there are clear stages in the growth of all organisms that require timely interventions to stimulate development. A young plant or animal has a natural growth trajectory that goads it towards becoming a successful tree or adult. The natural trajectory of young homo sapiens is similar. Understanding of age-compatible cognitive development curriculums and processes is required in contemporary education.…
Ridhima Pandey (13), a class IX student of the CBSE-affiliated BMDAV Centenary Public School, Haridwar, Uttarakhand is the Indian counterpart of Swedish teenage green warrior and environmental activist Greta Thunberg, who was recently named Time magazine’s Person of the Year 2019. She persuaded the Supreme Court to review her 2017 petition complaining of government inaction against climate change which was rejected by National Green Tribunal (NGT) on the plea that it contained “flimsy grounds”. In September 2019, Ridhima was invited to join a group of 15 student activists worldwide led by Thunberg, which congregated in New York to file a landmark law-suit against five countries — Argentina, Brazil, France, Germany and Turkey — under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989, for failing to substantially reduce their carbon emissions. The elder of two children of Dinesh Pandey, a field officer of the Wildlife Trust of India, and Vinita, a beat officer in Uttarakhand’s forest department, Ridhima began her green crusade when she was just nine after she moved with her parents from the small town of Haldwani to the holy city of Haridwar in 2013. “I was deeply moved by pictures of floating trees, cars, animals, flooded homes and especially of weeping children in the devastating floods of 2013. Three years later in 2016, I accompanied my father to the national capital and filed a petition before NGT, praying for a directive to the Central government to fight climate change. The tribunal dismissed my petition. I hope the Supreme Court will act on this urgent matter,” she says. Committed to saving our fragile Planet Earth from environmental upheavals, Ridhima is clear about her future study options. “I am exploring pre-university courses and a bachelor’s programme in environmental science in Indian and foreign universities. My ultimate dream is to work full-time with the Environment Conservation Trust, an NGO promoted by my father in 2019, and to co-ordinate a national Clean Ganga campaign, ban plastic, recycle waste and undertake other green projects to save India’s children and youth,” says this committed environment activist. Autar Nehru (Delhi)
Aranyo Ray and Vaishnavi Pandey — higher secondary students of Kalyani Public School, Barasat (West Bengal) and Tagore International School, Delhi respectively — were adjudged national winners of the Pramerica Spirit of Community Awards (PSCA) 2020 at a glittering ceremony held in Delhi on February 24. Both were presented with a gold medallion, certificates of excellence, a cash prize of Rs.50,000 and round trip to Washington DC. Launched in India in 2010 as an initiative of Pramerica Life Insurance Ltd — a joint venture of the US-based Prudential Financial and DHFL Investments (India) — PSCA is an annual awards programme which acknowledges and celebrates pre-collegiate youth who positively impact their local communities through voluntary service. Disturbed by the harmful effects of toxic pesticides on farmers and the environment in Ranaghat, his native village, Aranyo has developed two scientific, sustainable and affordable organic pesticides branded NanoCide and SoyaSafe. The main component of NanoCide is rice husk ash, an abundant agricultural waste and SoyaSafe is a methyl jasmonic acid (MeJA) extract from phytohormones found in all plant life, especially the jasmine flower. “NanoCide and SoyaSafe have been successfully tested in 1,820 farms in Ranaghat with the ready assistance of the local panchayat and farmers’ cooperatives. The Pramerica cash prize will enable me to start production and eventually benefit millions of farmers countrywide,” he says. On the other hand, Vaishnavi has been awarded for promoting Flawless Flaws, a firstof-its-type awareness and support campaign run by Tagore International School, to sensitise society about acid attacks on women. Through street plays and cultural programmes the campaign’s volunteers raise funds for survivors to meet medical expenses, check illegal sale of acid by pharmacies and find suitable jobs for survivors. “A chance interaction with spirited acid attack survivor Laxmi Agarwal four years ago inspired me to start Flawless Flaws in 2016 with the support of my school principal Nikita Mann Tomar, senior education advisor Madhulika Sen and mentor Vedica Saxena who encouraged and guided this initiative,” says this can-do social activist. Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) & Paromita Sengupta (Bangalore)
With a third of the global population and K-12 and higher education institutions in 185 countries including India, locked down since mid-March to prevent the spread of the coronavirus aka Covid-19 pandemic, educators worldwide are confronted with the greatest disruption since the Spanish flu outbreak of 1918. Consequently, education institutions are responding to this disruption by shifting from traditional classrooms to online teaching learning and installing new ICT (information communication technologies) software and downloading two-way video conferencing apps to adhere to their academic calendars. The silver lining of the Covid-19 crisis is that it has stimulated education institutions and edtech companies the world over, to innovate ICT solutions to ensure that the teaching-learning process continues. Here’s how several randomly selected institutional managements are responding to the Covid-19 challenge. Riverside School, Ahmedabad Students of this Cambridge International, UK-affiliated school chose to continue their on-site volunteer work with the elderly in retirement homes and with children in paediatric cancer centres under the school’s unique Callinteer programme. Every morning Riverside volunteer students continue to engage with and provide online comfort and good cheer to the elderly and child cancer patients in specified old age homes and childcare centres. Their calls — often made through Facetime or Skype — last for 10-30 minutes and include playing online games. “The feedback from caregivers and nurses is that the elderly and children look forward to these interactions which liven their day,” says Kiran BirSethi, founder-director and principal of this top-ranked co-ed international day school. Arya Gurukul School, Mumbai Thane (Mumbai)-based Arya Gurukul School has completed final examinations of classes V-VIII students by switching to the online mode. An online portal was promptly created for scrutiny of science (class V), Sanskrit (class VI), social studies (class VII) and math (class VIII) papers. The digital platform was developed by the school’s technical support team working round the clock. The parents of all 546 classes VVIII students responded positively for conducting these exams online. Students were given weblinks to write the exams online at a time of their choice within a 48-hours time window. LEAD School@Home programme The Mumbai-based Leadership Boulevard Pvt. Ltd (estb.2012), a company that provides integrated technology, curriculum and pedagogy as a complete learning solution for classes I-IX to over 800 schools countrywide, has designed a new LEAD School@Home solution for all English-medium schools countrywide to start their new academic year in April. Over 100,000 students of the company’s 800 partner schools began their new academic year on April 2, learning four critical subjects — English, math, science and social science — online. In a special offer to enable children to continue learning, Leadership Boulevard offers seven days free trial of Lead School@Home to all schools countrywide, followed by a price offer of Rs.200 per student per month to continue learning the four subjects. “Our learning system and technology ensures that if children can’t come to school, we can take school to their homes. Now any school can begin its academic year every Monday starting April 6 by accessing LEAD School@ Home. All they need is to register on the LEAD School portal and our team will help them started quickly. Subsequently, parents can monitor their children’s progress through…
Kohima, March 4. Speaking at a function to mark the launch of digital education in 15 state government colleges, Nagaland’s chief minister Neiphiu Rio said Smart classrooms will improve the quality of education in the state and make teaching-learning interactive and engaging. Also speaking on the occasion, Temjen Imna Along, minister for higher education and tribal affairs, said Nagaland is the first state in North-east India to introduce Smart classroom technology in government-run colleges. Punjab: MDM workers pay hike Chandigarh, March 4. Punjab’s education ministry has proposed to raise the honorarium of mid-day meal workers from Rs.1,700 to Rs.3,000 per month, said education and public works department minister Vijay Inder Singla, responding to a question posed in the state legislative assembly. Under the Central government sponsored mid-day meal scheme for government primary school children, a total of 42,205 cooks-cum-helpers work in primaries across the state preparing and distributing meals for 1.58 million children, Singla informed the House. This is the second time their honorarium had been raised since the Congress party was voted into office in the state in 2017, he added. Odisha: Sexual abuse charge Jajpur (Odisha), March 9. A temporary teacher of a government upper primary school was arrested on charges of sexual abuse of two students in the Jajpur district after parents of the victims filed FIRs against him. The crime came to light when one of the girls narrated the incident to her parents. Curiously, the school management declined to respond to the parents’ protests prompting them to file a police complaint. District education officer Krushna Chandra Nayak has ordered a thorough enquiry into the matter. Himachal Pradesh: Fake degrees trove Shimla, March 11. Himachal Pradesh police arrested Munish Goel, assistant registrar of the Manav Bharti University (MBU), Solan after three FIRs (first information reports) were filed against the varsity under various sections of the Indian Penal Code. The charges include cheating, and issuing fake degrees, chief minister Jai Ram Thakur informed the legislative assembly. Police also raided MBU’s affiliated Madhav University in Mount Abu and sealed its administrative complex after seizing 1,376 blank degree certificates, 14 stamps, four despatch registers, 50 migration certificates, 319 blank mark cards and several other documents, he added. “The state police is probing the matter. Stringent action will be taken if any university is found selling fake degrees,” education minister Suresh Bhardwaj informed the house. Gujarat: Abandoned answer papers scandal Ahmedabad, March 18. Three bundles of unevaluated class X science subject answer scripts were found by a roadside near Virpur town in Rajkot district, A.J. Shah, chairman of the Gujarat Secondary and Higher Secondary Education Board, informed the media. The class X science exam was conducted by the state board on March 7. Adressing the media, education minister Bhupendrasinh Chudasama said: “I have ordered an urgent and thorough investigation to find out whether more answersheets are missing. The probe will reveal whether this happened accidentally or deliberately. Strong action will be taken against those found responsible for this,” he added. Jammu & Kashmir: Indian Army initiative Jammu, March 1. Under its Operation Goodwill initiative, the Indian Army has established Smart class rooms in a government higher secondary school in Bagga village of Jammu’s Reasi district. The school makeover initiative includes complete conversion of two conventional classrooms into Smart classrooms, improvement of…
“Education must deal with the deeper anxieties of the young in order to retain its own sanctity and credibility. The hatred that found open expression for some days in north-east Delhi has put a question mark on the capacity of the system of education to nurture the core values a democratic order demands.” Krishna Kumar, former director of NCERT, on the damage done to education by the recent communal riots in Delhi (The Hindu, March 16) “The treatment of the poor in this crisis seems to bear all the hallmarks of what the State did to them during demonetisation: They are asked to sacrifice disproportionately for the common good, they are treated with impunity, and the state acknowledges their needs only very grudgingly.” Pratap Bhanu Mehta, former vice chancellor of Ashoka University, on how the national lockdown has ignored the poor (The Indian Express, March 28) “The coronavirus pandemic is not going to rob China of its DF-41 intercontinental ballistic missiles or the J-20 Mighty Dragon stealth bombers. But it will most certainly take away a far more potent weapon: Global trust. In the last four months, it has suppressed facts, lied, silenced whistleblowers, bullied its citizens and the world community… despite being the originator of this apocalyptic outbreak.” Abhijit Majumder on why China must pay for its coverups of the Covid-19 pandemic (firstpost.com, March 25) “Like many disease outbreaks, Covid-19 does not distinguish between rich and poor. There is worldwide attention on it because it threatens every country regardless of development status.” Mami Mizutori, head UN Office for Risk Reduction on the rampaging Covid-18 epidemic (Times of India, March 23) “There was supreme irony in the PM’s call for applauding health workers. It led to complete disregard of the basic principle of avoiding crowds.” TJS George in an essay ‘When leaders set bad examples’ (Sunday Express, March 29)
The upside of the global rampage of the Coronavirus, aka Covid-19 pandemic, which at the time of writing (April 2) has infected 1 million people worldwide and caused 53,238 deaths — and 2,567 and 72 respectively in India — is that it has vastly improved the business prospects of India’s hitherto struggling edtech companies. Although an estimated 380 ed tech companies have sprung up around the country to service the world’s largest child and youth population of over 500 million, and a large number of them have raised venture capital, edtech entrepreneurs have been having a hard time persuading school managements in particular to integrate digital ICT (information communication technologies) into their classrooms. Despite this, several new edtech companies have sprung up with an eye on the country’s 375,000 private independent and 400,000 private budget (affordable) schools which host almost half of the country’s 250 million in-school children. Especially in Bangalore (pop. 10 million), commonly known as the ICT capital and Silicon Valley of India. Currently an estimated 300 edtech companies have their head offices in Bangalore. Following the outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic and nationwide shutdown of schools and work from home orders of the Central and state governments, all of them are receiving a flood of enquiries and reporting a significant uptick in business. Suddenly school managements and households across the country are signing up for online classes to ensure that their children’s education is not disrupted by the nationwide Covid-19 lockdown. This upsurge of interest in digital classrooms and online learning has come as manna from heaven for edtech companies. Thus far they have been struggling to cope with teacher resistance to online learning. But such resistance is melting away during the prolonged period of schools closure which began in mid-March. Several Bangalore-based market leader companies including Byju’s, Vendantu, TCS iON, Catalyst Group and DPS’ Entrar have moved swiftly to cater to the demand for digital classrooms and online learning packages. For instance the Bangalore-based Think & Learn Pvt. Ltd, aka Byju’s, was quick to publish expensive (reportedly Rs.50 lakh each) full front page ads in the top-selling Times of India offering “free live classrooms taught by India’s best teachers” on specified days and specific times for children in classes IV-X, as also for class XI-XII students aspiring to write JEE and NEET. These virtual classes could be accessed on all digital devices including mobile phones for free-ofcharge trial. Curiously, despite liberally expending vast amounts by way of ephemeral advertising on television and shortshelf life dailies, Byju Raveendran, the eponymous founder-CEO and other directors of this e-learning company which has attained unicorn ($8 billion or Rs.59,200 crore) valuation through repeated rounds of funds raising despite barely breaking even, believe they are not answerable to media. Repeated calls to the company to ascertain cost-benefit details of its expensive advertising campaigns (which also feature movie star Shah Rukh Khan) proved infructuous. Therefore whether this heavily advertised company, which has an estimated 3 million K-12 student subscribers who pay Rs.15,000-34,000 per subject per year for supplementary and refresher education, has benefited from the Covid-19 crisis, remains a mystery. Akhand Swaroop Pandit, promoter-CEO of the Delhi-based Catalyst Group Pvt. Ltd (estb. 2018), is more forthcoming. This company broadcasts recorded lectures from its studios across the country to students preparing for the IIT-JEE and UPSC public entrance exams on the subscription model. Currently the company has 280,000 registered subscribers who pay Rs.2,000-38,000…
Although neither chief minister Mamata Banerjee nor any leader of the Trinamool Congress (TMC) has publicly articulated it, the top brass of West Bengal’s ruling party — a breakaway of the now disintegrated Congress party which led India to independence from British rule 72 years ago — is viewing the Coronavirus aka Covid-19 threat sweeping the country, as an opportunity. West Bengal’s legislative assembly election is scheduled for next summer 2021, and TMC’s chances of winning a third consecutive term in Kolkata’s Nabanna — Bengal’s new administrative headquarters seemed an uphill task, given unprecedented surge in popular support for the BJP. In General Election 2019, the BJP won a never before 18 of West Bengal’s 42 seats in Lok Sabha, Delhi, reducing TMC’s tally from 39 won in General Election 2014 to 22. But now following the TMC government’s swift and decisive action to halt the spread of Covid-19 across West Bengal (pop. 91 million), the BJP and its loquacious leaders have disappeared from Kolkata’s media. Responding swiftly to the Covid-19 pandemic, the TMC government has ordered 300 ventilator machines, 2 lakh masks, 3,000 gloves and 2 lakh test kits for citizens. In addition, chief minister Mamata Banerjee issued orders to three government hospitals and five private hospitals to conduct Covid-19 tests and reserve 2,500 beds for hospitalisation cases. As a result, medics and hospitals have tested 88 samples and placed 18,700 people under home surveillance while recalling 2,500 retired medical specialists, doctors, nurses and paramedics to treat Corona suspected and affected persons. Although modest, given the state’s massive 91 million population, these timely measures have shown good results. According to ICMR (Indian Council for Medical Research, Delhi) the number of Covid-19 positive cases in West Bengal is 69 with seven deaths against the national toll of 3,374 and 75 (April 4). Even West Bengal’s academics —most of them still sympathetic to the CPM (Communist Party-Marxist) which ruled Bengal uninterruptedly for 34 years (1977-2011) and wrecked the state’s economy by provoking a massive flight of capital and human resources from the state, and whom Banerjee routed in the 2011 assembly elections and again in 2016 — concede that the TMC government has moved with commendable speed to contain the spread of Covid-19 in the state. The national lockdown and social distancing prescribed by the Central government is strictly enforced, schools and all education institutions have been shut down even as the flow of essential supplies has been maintained. “During the past few years, Banerjee had acquired a reputation as a mercurial and often short-tempered leader. However, her response to the Covid-19 crisis has been calm and calibrated. From a firebrand politician, she has metamorphosed into an able administrator with a human face,” says Aniruddha Lahiri, a former teacher at the CBSE-affiliated South Point School, Kolkata and respected academic. The Coronavirus pandemic has caused unparalleled damage and disrupted the lives and livelihoods of millions of citizens across the country. But it has considerably improved the prospects of the TMC and Banerjee in the assembly election scheduled for next summer. Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)
With all 62,303 k-12 schools in Tamil Nadu (pop.72 million) shut down since March 16, prior to the national lockdown decreed by the Central government on March 25 due to the danger posed by the Coronavirus pandemic, the state government has announced promotion of 7 million classes I-IX children to the next grade without their having to write any examinations. This decision represents a U-turn for the government. Last September, the state’s AIADMK government following the lead of the BJP government at the Centre and amendment of s.16 of the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, which prohibited any examina tions and automatic promotion of all classes I-VIII children, had re-introduced public exams for classes V and VIII children in the state and abolition of no-detention provision. “The government’s announcement of automatic promotion of students to the next class has come as a welcome relief. The Covid-19 outbreak has already generated panic and fear across the state, and forcing children to prepare for exams would have caused them greater anxiety. This decision has come at the right time. At the same time it is the responsibility of parents to find ways to ensure that children learn at home on a daily basis so that they are prepared for the next higher class,” says Arumainathan, president of the Tamil Nadu Parents Welfare Association. Although this decision has been generally welcomed, the state government’s extension of promotions to class IX students — the pre-amendment RTE Act covered classes I-VIII (elementary school) children — is being questioned. A large number of under-prepared students will enter class X and will be obliged to write the class X school-leaving board exams next March/April. The apprehension is that a large percentage will fail the class X public exam of the state board next year. “The current policy allows schools to detain academically weak children if they perform poorly in class IX. Once the schools reopen we will hold remedial classes for classes X and XII students to prepare them for the 2021 board exams. Right now because schools are closed we are finding ways and means to teach our students on online platforms. But online learning is less effective than classroom education. Secondly, children from low income households don’t have digital devices and Internet connection. Therefore, the closure of all schools since March 16 has caused children great stress and anxiety,” says K. Radha, founder of the Little Oxford Matric Higher Secondary School, Chennai, affiliated with the Tamil Nadu State Board of School Education Dr. K. Palanivelu, professor of environmental studies at Anna University, Chennai, concurs. “In this crisis situation caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, the decision of the AIADMK government to promote all students of classes I-IX is correct. However there is a possibility that many students won’t touch their books at all. The process of preparing for public examinations is important as it improves students learning capability. When classes resume teachers should teach intensively and continuously test children to ensure they don’t fall behind,” says Palanivelu. Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai)
Maharashtra’s five-months-old three-party (Shiv Sena, Congress and Nationalist Congress) Maha Vikas Aaghadi (MVA) government is under fire for having pressed ahead to complete the school-leaving exams of the Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MSBSHSE) until March 21, despite the state government itself having issued ‘work from home’ orders to industry and ordering shutdown of all educational institutions on March 14 to contain the Covid-19 pandemic raging across the state. In this connection it’s pertinent to note that Maharashtra (pop.112 million) has reported the highest number of Covid-19 positive cases (1,018) and 45 deaths (April 8) of all states of the Indian Union. According to a political opponent, failure of Education Minister Varsha Gaikwad to direct MSBSHSE to call-off the exam has raised the spectre of a large number of the 1.7 million students who wrote the exam until March 21, having been infected by the virus. In particular, the question being asked is why the education ministry and MSBSHSE didn’t call off the SSC exam on March 14 after Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, invoking the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897 and s.144 of the Criminal Procedure Code, banned all public events and gatherings in Nagpur and Nashik. During the period March 3-20, 1.7 million class X students of the 21,000 schools affiliated with the state exam board had written exam papers prescribed by the board with only the geography paper scheduled for March 23 (Monday) remaining to be written. However, following widespread criticism from teachers and parents, the exam was called off over the weekend. “Looking at the current situation in the state, it has been decided to postpone Monday’s SSC exam. Fresh dates for the exam will be announced after March 31,” said Gaikwad in a press statement issued on March 21. The contradictory directives being issued by the MVA coalition government during this national emergency — and particularly at a time when the state is reporting the country’s largest number of Covid-19 positive cases and death toll — has aroused widespread anger and exposed cracks in the hastily cobbled opportunistic coalition government comprising three political parties with long records of mutual hostility. “It’s quite evident that education minister Gaikwad — a four-term Congress MLA — is taking decisions independently without any accountability to the cabinet,” says a Shiv Sena leader who preferred to remain anonymous. Politicians apart, academics are also flummoxed by Gaikwad’s cavalier disregard of the cabinet decision to shut down schools — and by implication — examination halls which by definition are public gatherings.
Last December after final year students of the Central government-funded Delhi University (DU) wrote their fifth semester exam, the results, under normal circumstances, would have been declared in end January (2020). But owing to a combination of unforeseen circumstances — the national lockdown on March 25 following the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic, and a prolonged university teachers strike that began on December 4 last year — the exam results haven’t been declared as yet, three months later. The apprehension of final year university students about losing an entire year is perhaps greater than fear of the novel Coronavirus, which has infected 6,412 citizens countrywide and inflicted 199 fatalities (April 10). Many of these students readying to apply for higher studies abroad haven’t been able to do so because of the delay in declaration of the fifth semester results. “I have applied to RMIT University, Melbourne. I need to submit my fifth semester results so they can evaluate my academic record. Banks also ask for semester results before sanctioning education loans,” Mukul Upadhyay, a final-year student of Delhi University’s Deen Dayal Upadhyay College, told a news agency. For these students, an indefinite strike called by the powerful Delhi University Teachers’ Association (DUTA) on December 4 last year, which went on for almost three months before it was called off on February 26, was the beginning of their travails. The strike was the union’s response to a university circular that demoted 4,000 adhoc faculty of Delhi University to the status of guest lecturers. The sticking point is that the remuneration of guest faculty is several notches lower than of ad hoc faculty, some of whom have been teaching in DU for over a decade. The cash strapped university, whose tuition fees have remained frozen for several decades, can’t afford to recruit full- time faculty despite a large number of vacancies because they have to be paid sky-high Seventh Pay Commission prescribed salaries. Therefore it has some 4,000 underpaid ad hoc faculty on its payroll. According to DUTA their demotion to the status of guest lecturers is insulting and unacceptable. According to university insiders, the duration of the DU teachers strike was prolonged because of a tussle between the HRD ministry and vice chancellor Yogesh Tyagi over the ministry having recommended some appointments in the VC’s office which was resisted by Tyagi. The stalemate led to some critical positions in DU remaining vacant and a period of indecisiveness. With correction of examination papers suspended during the 85-day strike period, students were caught in the crossfire. And their plight was exacerbated by the Covid-19 outbreak which forced educational institutions to shut down before the national lockdown was ordered on March 25. The number of students affected is huge. DU is India’s largest institution of higher learning and among the largest worldwide. The disruptions in Delhi University’s academic calendar due to the strike and subsequent lockdown have proved to be the last nail in the coffin of final year students. With teachers and university administrators confined to their homes, the prospect of students losing a whole year has become all too real. The new term was to start in January, and a new batch of students will be entering their final year, even before the…
The breakout of the global Coronavirus, aka COVID-19, pandemic has brought education systems around the world to a grinding halt with lockdowns and stay-at-home orders prompting mass closure of education institutions. In India, since the March 25 mandatory nationwide lockdown, all teaching, assessment and evaluation work in education institutions has been adversely impacted and in most cases deferred. All major examinations, including public entrance exams such as JEE and NEET have been postponed and several schoolleaving board exams in the states of the Indian Union abandoned midway. On March 18, the schoolleaving class X and XII exams of the Delhi-based pan-India CBSE and CISCE school boards were postponed until further notice. This story was repeated in higher and professional education institutions, which also had to close down campuses and discontinue classes and project work mid-semester. Meanwhile on April 1, the CBSE board, which has 22,145 affiliated schools, issued a statement directing them to award mass promotions to all students in classes I-VIII as mandated by s.16 of the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009. For students in classes IX and XI, whose examinations are pending, the board has directed schools to use term results to promote or detain students. Class X exams have been completed (except for the riot-hit area of Delhi’s northeast district) but evaluation work is on hold with evaluators asked to assess papers at home and submit marks online. For class XII, the board has decided to reschedule exams for 11 main subjects when external conditions permit. The CISCE board has not officially cancelled its exams but is to take a decision on rescheduling them. The silver lining of this depressing scenario is acceleration of the switch to online education platforms and options countrywide. The national digital education platform SWAYAM, a massive open online courses (Moocs) initiative of the Union HRD ministry, offers a wide array of school to university study programmes including 61 undergrad and 43 postgraduate courses. It is seeing a spike in users after UGC and AICTE advisories. SWAYAM courses — managed and conducted by IIT professors — offer class IX to university-level lectures on Prabha DTH TV channels, and are being promoted as a useful interim arrangement to cope with current classroom transaction disruptions. Meanwhile — and perhaps inevitably — top-ranked private schools, colleges and universities have quickly switched to online platforms to deliver lectures, lessons, assignments and even project assignments to athome students using Zoom, WebEx, Loom, Google classroom, Skype, among others. “We were among the first schools in the country to move to online classes in the first week of March itself. Currently we conduct daily online classes from 8 a.m-1 p.m using Zoom and Google Classroom. I am confident that all glitches will be removed as teachers and students become familiar with the technologies involved, which is a bonus in itself,” says Arunabh Singh, director of the CBSE-affiliated Nehru World School, Ghaziabad. Indeed some educationists paradoxically appreciate that the Covid-19 crisis has accelerated the leisurely pace at which Indian educators were introducing game-changing ICT (information communication technologies) in education. “Never before in history have India’s higher education institutions adopted new technologies and pedagogies with such zeal. Some institutions which were proactive in utilising technology have the advantage over status quoists, who preferred continuity over modernisation. But now everybody is realising there is no escape from online learning…
The cover story ‘Union Budget 2020-21: Small change for human capital development’ (EW March) highlights the step-motherly treatment of Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman to education. While defence, corporate and middle-class subsidies enjoy undeserved priority, human resource development is an unwanted orphan. The Draft National Education Policy (NEP) 2019 provides a visionary blueprint that sets out the template for liberal education and holistic development of youth with “21st century skill-sets”. In all likelihood, NEP will be implemented by private schools and universities, rather than moribund and lackadaisical public education institutions. While we may praise the draft National Education Policy of the Kasturirangan Committee, there are government strategies hidden between the lines. The concessions given to private sector education, for example, degree-granting powers to all colleges by 2030, and the promise of light statutory oversight, are calculated to attract greater private investment into education. This skew towards the private sector brings imbalance with the public sector, and betrays the surreptitious policy to continue underfunding education in the Centre’s budgetary allocations. The same mind-set applies to sops for the private health sector, but that is a story for another day. Your ‘Resource mobilisation for Indian education’ table is an inventive and realistic calculus to canalise greater funding into human development in our cash-strapped economy. Glenn Christo Shillong Shocking profligacy Congratulations to EducationWorld for presenting a wellresearched analysis of the Union budget, and especially for demonstrating how to raise resources for public education (EW March). The Union budget is a true reflection of the Central government’s spending priorities and unfortunately education — accorded highest priority by governments of developed countries — is at the bottom of the agenda for the government of a nation hosting the world’s largest child and youth population. Special thanks to you for exposing that establishment expenditure of the government at a massive Rs.6.09 lakh crore is almost 20 percent of the budgeted revenue of the Union government. Your exposé of this government profligacy is shocking and scandalous especially when compared with your revelation that the ratio of establishment expenditure to revenue of Reliance Industries Ltd is a mere 1.82 percent. Sameer Desai Ahmedabad Background checks please Most schools in the national capital — accorded top ranking in your K-12 education rankings surveys — demand donations from parents at the time of admission. Collecting donations from parents is nothing but corruption. In my opinion, corruption breeds more corruption. My request to the EW team is to conduct thorough background checks of all top-ranked schools from the national capital region before including them in your EW league tables. Pronoy Kumar Ghose New Delhi Heartwarming initiative Your inaugural EducationWorld India Budget Private School (BPS) Rankings 2020 Awards report (EW March) celebrating India’s most admired BPS was heartwarming and overdue. Kudos to EducationWorld for conducting the first independent survey to rank India’s Top 300 budget private (i.e, affordable) schools in 143 cities and towns across the country, and convening BPS leaders on a common platform to deliberate ways and means to make high-quality affordable schooling a reality for India’s educationally under-served children. Vrinda De Gurgaon Vain hope Thank you FOR presenting a comprehensive report of the Union Budget 2020-21 and highlighting the continuous neglect of human capital development in India (EW March). It exposes the short-sighted vision and consistent failure of successive governments at the Centre to revive the country’s systemically flawed education ecosystem. With national (Central…
The outbreak of the coronavirus aka Covid-19 disease is essentially the revenge of animal species against humankind. As detailed by Prof. Yuval Noah Harari in his best-seller book Homo Deus (2017), unspeakable cruelty against nature and animals has been committed in the process of mankind asserting its dominance on Planet Earth. In particular, during the past half century since invention of factory farming incentivised by rising standards of living in the West which spiked demand for meat and poultry — formerly the privilege of the aristocracy — from the middle and working classes, factory farming of domesticated animals has become big business with the best mass production systems and practices of industry being adopted to incubate, rear and harvest livestock. In animal factories, especially in developed OECD countries, millions of cattle, chickens, pigs are reared in tiny, standing-room only pens, force fed, artificially inseminated to produce eggs, calves, chicks and piglets during the entire duration of their nasty miserable lives before they are carved up and served on dining tables. With exotic wildlife species such as bats, pangolins, snakes and crocodiles also farmed and harvested in populous, fast-modernising China, it was only a matter of time before deadly pathogens and viruses incubated within highly stressed factory animals, entered the human food chain. The spread of factory farming and cruel conditions in which animals are mass reared in the manner of agriculture produce has inevitably created conducive conditions for germination of powerful bacteria and viruses resistant to antibiotics. Moreover with antibiotics mixed into the animal feed to protect livestock bred in dirty and high stress environments, traditional antibiotics have become less effective for human beings and the SARS, MERS, Ebola and Covid-19 epidemics have followed in quick succession. The international panic and national lockdowns in countries around the world following the Covid-19 contagion is a sombre warning for humankind to restrain its greed, return to more frugal lifestyles and relearn to respect animal rights. Failure to heed this warning is to roll out the red carpet for more global pandemics.
Although the three-week national lockdown of the Indian economy ordered by the Central government on March 25 is undoubtedly well intentioned, it is likely to prove a good prescription overdose — a cure that’s worse than the disease, in the memorable phrasea of US President Donald Trump. During the past three months since it claimed its first victim in the Hubei province of China in January, coronavirus has spread across the world with lightning speed to claim 108,907 lives and infected 1.78 million people in 198 countries (April 12). In India it has claimed 289 lives and infected an estimated 8,504 citizens while spreading panic and chaos. As explained by prime minister Narendra Modi in a nationwide television broadcast to the citizenry on March 24, the lockdown is necessary because the Coronavirus, aka Covid-19, is highly contagious, and causes severe respiratory problems with a high likelihood of death, especially in ailing elderly people. Therefore social distancing, minimising contact with strangers, avoiding crowds and workplaces — because Covid-19 is initially asymptomatic — can slow down its spread. The pervasive fear in all countries worldwide, including the US, UK, Italy, France, Singapore, Indonesia and Hong Kong is that the number of serious hospitalisation cases may overwhelm their health infrastructure. Given that India’s health infrastructure is many degrees inferior, it’s indisputable that a national lockdown as ordered by the Central government is necessary. However misgivings on the duration of the lockdown and adequacy of the official relief package amount of Rs.1.70 lakh crore announced by Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on March 26, are legitimate. In this connection, it’s important to appreciate that the socio-economic profile of India is vastly different from the developed OECD countries and China. Over 90 percent of India’s 450 million workforce is employed or self-employed in the informal sector. These citizens subsist on very low wages and incomes with over 100 million of them being migrant labour with entire families surviving on their daily wages. Moreover the size of the average ill-equipped Indian home is 504 sq. ft with a third less than 258 sq ft. Forcing 400 million citizens to suffer loss of employment, daily income and stay “at home” 24×7 in ill-ventilated squalid conditions is impractical and cruel. Nevertheless a massive income transfer scheme for over 400 million citizens for the next 12 months is imperative to enable them to recover and rehabilitate. In the March issue of EducationWorld, your editors presented a detailed schema under which by reducing establishment and defence expenditure, slashing non-merit subsidies and accelerated privatisation of public sector enterprises and also imposing modest cesses on direct taxpayers, the Central government can mobilise Rs. 8 lakh crore for investment in public education and health (see https://www.educationworld.in/ union-budget-2020-21-small-changefor-human-capital-development/). In light of the Covid-19 black swan national emergency, this amount should instead be urgently distributed among 150 million (of a total 250 million) lowest income households countrywide by way of direct money transfers into their bank accounts or encashable RBI cheques. This will provide them a basic income of Rs.4,444 per month for the next 12…
This letter is being written from our editorial office in Bangalore on the tenth day after the March 25 national lockdown proclaimed by the Central government following the global outbreak of the novel Coronavirus aka, Covid-19 pandemic. During this period of disruption and enforced idleness, the EW team has been fully engaged in putting this issue together, despite unprecedented logistics and infrastructure problems. We have a proud record to maintain. EducationWorld has been published uninterruptedly every month since November 1999, and we are determined to maintain this record. In a timely Covid-19: Challenge and Response report, we present the initiatives of several education institutions and edtech companies that have speedily responded to the challenge of maintaining continuity of teaching learning in schools and higher ed institutions across the country. Moreover on a wider canvas, your editor with over four decades of experience in law, industry and business and education journalism suggests ways and means to mitigate the Covid-19 crisis pain of 150 million low-income households. Check out our editorials in this issue. Re our cover story, how many readers are aware that 747 of India’s 39,931 arts science and commerce (ASC) undergrad colleges are autonomous institutions conferred wide academic, administrative and financial freedom? Under India’s complex and complicated higher education regulatory system, an overwhelming majority of the country’s ASC colleges are nonautonomous. However, provisions of the University Grants Commission Act, 1956, empower the commission to award autonomous status to high performance colleges that are at least ten years old and have been awarded A grade certification by the Bangalore-based National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC). Clearly autonomous colleges — private and government — are a class apart and above. Therefore they need to be — and are — ranked separately in this issue of EducationWorld. Unsurprisingly, the waters of post-independence Soviet-inspired India’ higher education system are murky. Some of the country’s most respected undergrad colleges including St. Stephen’s, Shri Ram College of Commerce, Lady Shri Ram, Miranda House which should have been conferred autonomy decades ago, are not autonomous. They are still tied to the apron strings of their affiliating universities which in turn, are strictly controlled by UGC. Like I said, it’s complicated. Be that as it may, being made aware by Mumbai-based educationist Balkishan Sharma, director of the Nest Academy, that private autonomous and (totally unsung) government autonomous colleges are a class apart and above, we have ranked them separately in the EW India Higher Education Rankings 2020-21, Moreover we have also ranked the Top 100 nonautonomous ASC and Top 100 private engineering colleges separately to give the public and school-leaving students in particular, a clear picture of the status and standing of India’s Top 500 colleges. In the next (May) issue the country’s Top 100 private and government universities and B-schools will be rated and ranked.
Making NIRF more credible
Dr. R. Natarajan is former director of IIT-Madras and former chairman of All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) In mid-February China’s ministries of education and science and technology jointly issued a notification to reform the academic evaluation system to reduce “excessive reliance on the Science Citation and Social Science Citation indices” as key indicators for “academic promotions, job offers and allocation of research funding”. This radical initiative is backed by the finance ministry, which funds research in national universities. Moving away from international research publications was first announced by President Xi Ping during a national education conference in September 2018. Xi observed that “academic standards in higher education institutions should not be led by Western ideas or standards, and stressed that China should have its own academic standards and norms, not bound by international norms,” reports the London-based University World News (March 4). Dr. Futao Huang, professor of higher education at Hiroshima University, Japan, who has been studying the research culture of young academics in China, says that the shift of emphasis from international publication will translate into huge changes for China’s research evaluation system. He predicts that the status of several Chinese universities in major global university rankings will decline as a result of reduction in SCI publications from Chinese university researchers. That’s because in recent years Chinese scholars are second worldwide for the number of research papers published in international journals, behind only the US. Under the notification, while hard sciences will continue to be subject to international peer reviews and publication in international journals, in soft sciences, such as the humanities and social sciences, profound changes can be expected inasmuch as they have less international linkages and networks and conduct less international collaborative activities. In addition, as Prof. Huang highlights, English is not the language for soft sciences as it is for the hard sciences. It’s well-known that the major global university rankings — QS and Times Higher Education — are heavily influenced by research output and citations in peer reviewed journals published in English. This has a direct bearing on university rankings, and automatically favours Western and AngloAmerican universities which routinely top the QS and THE World University Rankings (WURs) league tables. Higher education institutions in non-English speaking countries of Europe (excluding the UK), Latin America, etc, suffer low rank as a result. However, this doesn’t apply to India where higher education is mostly in English. The plain truth is that research is given too little importance in this country’s 993 universities. Instead of addressing this lacuna, the common complaint against established WURs is that social equity issues such as reservation for the under-privileged and backward classes are not given any importance in them. The Indian response to the QS and THE WURs is the National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF) of the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry. In the annual NIRF, the country’s Top 100 universities, arts, science, commerce colleges, engineering colleges and other professional institutions are evaluated under several parameters including resources, research and stakeholder perceptions which are assigned differing weightage and ranked inter se. About 3,500 institutions have…