In the income tax department under the Union finance ministry, arrogance mixed with intellectual inertia is discernible in abundance. The destructive power that the department enjoys is on full display in the Vodafone and Cairn Energy cases in which highly reputed international tribunals have held against the Government of India for acts of omission and commission of runaway IT officials. Back in 2006, a Hong Kong-based company Hutchison Telecommunications International Technologies (HTIT) sold a Cayman Islands company CGP Investment Holdings to the Netherlands-based Vodafone International Holdings BV (VIH). CGP owned a 67 percent shareholding in Hutchison Essar (India). The IT department issued a tax notice for Rs.11,218 crore on VIH stating that since HTIT had earned a capital gain on sale of a company sited in India, VIH should have deducted tax at source. Yes the issue is complex. But the moot point is that our own Supreme Court held that the IT department’s claim for Rs.22,000 crore (after adding interest and penalties) was unjustified. Enter Pranab Mukherjee, then Union finance minister in the Congress-led UPA government. To be one up on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Mukherjee pushed a resolution through Parliament overruling the Supreme Court verdict, taxing VIH with retrospective effect. The Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague held that the retrospective tax demand from VIH was in violation of a bilateral investment treaty (1995) between India and the Netherlands. Similarly, following an offshore reorganisation of its India business by Cairn Energy plc (UK), the IT department levied a $1.4 billion (Rs.10,234 crore) capital gains tax demand on Cairn Energy and seized its assets in India of equivalent value. This demand was also overturned by the Singapore International Tribunal (1991) as being violative of a UK-India investment treaty. Meanwhile, the Central government, is moving heaven and earth to attract foreign investment into India in the wake of capital flight out of China. Clearly, it isn’t aware of the damage the runaway IT department is doing to India’s image as a trustworthy destination for foreign investors. Also read: Rising foreign influx into international schools
Some people — actually the majority — never learn. Right until 1980, some pundits say 1990, the GDP of the neighbouring — too close for comfort — People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Republic of India was on a par. Three decades later, PRC’s GDP is $15 trillion and India’s $3 trillion. That’s because from 1978 onward, the ruling Communist Party of China discovered that native Chinese are natural entrepreneurs, and placed the country firmly on the capitalist road of free markets and free enterprise. Likewise, Indians are also born entrepreneurs and traders, perhaps the only ones who can take on and compete with the Chinese. But instead of encouraging and stimulating our billion entrepreneurs and businessmen, lefty layabouts and politicians continue to pillory “suit-boot” industry leaders and businessmen. This anti-business threnody is being sung by the leaders of the prolonged farmers’ agitation in Delhi. Their tune is that the new farm laws are an Ambani-Adani conspiracy to exploit the country’s 600 million rural population. Hello, Kisan brothers! Is it rocket science to understand that companies run by Ambani-Adani, ITC, Britannia, Godrej etc with large resources and reputations to lose, will offer better contracts, farm-gate prices and logistics support than anonymous, sly, penny-pinching commission agents and middlemen? Because of the agriculture-industry divide, fruit and vegetable produce valued at Rs.93,000 crore is wasted annually, and rats instead of humans are consuming the rotting foodgrain mountains in ill-maintained warehouses of the public sector Food Corporation of India. The plain truth is that the country needs Ambani-Adani 1,000x to generate employment and tax revenues for government. Continuous neglect of primary education for over seven decades has precipitated an intellect famine. Not only in rural India. Also read: From Covid-19 to farm bills protest, here are the top news of 2020
Is India the most over-taxed country of the contemporary world? If one adds up all the taxes paid by the tiny fraction of the upper and middle classes (only 14.6 million citizens earn over Rs.5 lakh per year) obliged to pay income tax, it is arguable that India is the world’s most over-taxed nation. For instance, on a modest salary of Rs.12 lakh per year, citizens are obliged to pay Rs.4 lakh as income tax to the Central government. Moreover, a plethora of indirect taxes are levied — excise on most manufactured goods, GST (general sales tax) and service tax on a range of services including food and drink in restaurants. In addition, property tax is due to the state government by home owners, and heavy registration, petrol/diesel and road taxes are payable by car and automotive two-wheeler owners. To this list of official taxes, one must add parallel taxes, i.e, bribes and inducements to the country’s 18 million government employees to deliver any and every public service or conduct of ordinary business. Nor is that all. Then one must also add sums doled out to destitute citizens as alms and charity. In all civilised societies, the social contract is that in return for paying taxes, citizens are provided public goods and services. Yet the plain truth is that most government provided goods and services are so pathetic that self-respecting citizens tend to avoid them, and hesitate mightily to step into a police station or court of justice. So where does all the tax revenue go? In the next Union Budget to be presented shortly, please note that government establishment expenses (salaries, rents, perquisites including swanning about in ministerial jets, elaborate car convoys and foreign jaunts) consume 25 percent of the Union budget. Ditto state governments. That’s where. Also read: Tax-and-spend policies killing rural India
– Dr. D. Srikanth Rao is director of the Manipal Institute of Technology The global Covid-19 pandemic which has taken a toll of more than 1.79 million lives worldwide and has shutdown academia for over eight months, has confronted every domain of engineering with unprecedented challenges. Academics and corporates the world over are exploring how these challenges will impact traditional jobs in the new age of digital transaction, Internet of things, artificial intelligence, augmented and virtual reality and cloud data storage. Simultaneously, e-commerce corporations and platforms such as Amazon, Flipkart, MakeMyTrip, Uber, Swiggy have precipitated a services revolution by directly connecting producers and service providers with end-users. These new age corporations are continuously innovating processes to reduce the time gap between order and delivery, and delivering the right product to the right customer at the right time. For engineers, a plethora of new challenges and opportunities have arisen out of these new business models. With profit margins being squeezed, manufacturers can no longer afford high inventory and storage costs. Therefore, they are relying on engineers to develop machines augmented with wireless connectivity and sensors, connected to systems that can visualise the entire production process and make decisions on their own. Automobile showrooms are going virtual. Consequently, instead of holding huge inventories, factories can initiate production as soon as a customer places an online order. These are the manufacturing processes being increasingly demanded. Moreover in additive manufacturing and construction, 3-D printing is becoming pervasive. Recently, a Hyderabad-based startup named Skyroot Aerospace won the 2020 Startup Award, for designing launch vehicles with fully 3D printed upper stage liquid engines, which slashed manufacturing cost by 40 percent. Although currently these breakthroughs in digital technologies are happening in developed OECD countries, and ominously in neighbouring China, India is also heading for unprecedented change in the next ten-20 years, especially in infrastructure development. With assets value diminishing in importance, the country is transforming from an assets creation to a knowledge-development economy. With assembled and 3-D printed buildings, architects innovating construction designs are challenging civil engineers. Moreover, digital programmes are radically transforming the civil engineer’s vocation. Soon he/she will be able to monitor the progress of construction projects without leaving office and multiply the number of project contracts. In the medical sector as well, engineers are likely to outnumber doctors as technology is developed for wearable devices, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and AR & VR technologies become ubiquitous. Likewise, self-driven cars, 5G and 6G technology, fibre to home to OTT platforms are set to generate massive demand for electronics, media, animation and data science engineers. Even the neglected agriculture sector is being rapidly modernised with machines replacing humans for soil analysis, crop monitoring, optimising water and fertilizer usage and weather forecasts, market prediction, cold storage and for connecting farmers directly with consumers through tech interventions. Young graduates with specialisation in biomedical, biotechnology, instrumentation, electronics, data science and chemical engineering are likely to find new opportunities in agriculture and allied activities. In the defence sector as…
The persistent failure of police personnel countrywide to rise to bad occasions and discharge their duties with minimal competence has raised disturbing questions about police recruitment, education and training. Numerous police reform commissions and committee reports are gathering dust in government offices – Dilip Bobb is a former executive editor of India Today, Delhi The predominant image of 21st century India’s 2.8-million police force is not of a citizen-friendly keeper of public peace and order. The stereotypical image depicted in the media is of khaki-clad constables raining lathi blows on malnutritioned, and even elderly citizens. In recent months, this image has been reinforced after the tragic events in Hathras (Uttar Pradesh), over the brutal gang rape of a Dalit girl last September and clumsy cover-up attempts by the police, including senior officers. Before that, the Delhi Police was heavily criticised for its inept handling of the February 2020 riots in the capital’s north-east district. The police’s pathetic inability to restore peace in the riot-affected areas was excoriated by numerous public intellectuals and retired police officers. The 17,000-page charge-sheet, yet to be filed but leaked to the media, has one constable as a witness against seven accused. The report makes the impossible claim that the constable was able to identify the seven accused at different locations — all on the same day. These are only two recent examples of glaring ineptitude and lapses in police functioning. Since independence, the rock-bottom policing and investigative skills of the men in khaki have shown up in every major communal riot — Delhi (1984), Gujarat (2002) — and more recently in the Aarushi Talwar murder case in Delhi in 2008, and the tragic Sushant Singh Rajput suicide in Mumbai last year. The persistent failure of police personnel countrywide to rise to bad occasions and discharge their duties with minimal competence has raised disturbing questions about police recruitment, education and training. “Many of the principles and practices employed in our police academies are reminiscent of the traditional model of police training which was largely drill-based. Police personnel of all ranks need to be engaged in a continual re-examination of their roles. This cannot be achieved unless police leadership incorporates the latest concepts and practices in subjects as varied as criminology, sociology, cyber security, terrorism, criminal justice jurisprudence and organisational behaviour,” wrote Vinay Kaura, assistant professor at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the Sardar Patel University of Police, Security and Criminal Justice, Jodhpur (Rajasthan) in an essay in November 2018. Earlier, the Padmanabhaiah Committee on Police Reform (2000) and Second Administrative Reforms Commission (2016) castigated entry-level qualifications and training of constables as grossly inadequate. They recommended raising the qualification for entry into the civil police to higher secondary upwards graduates. They also recommended that constables and police personnel of all ranks should receive intensive soft skills training (communication, counseling and leadership) since they are required to interact with the public on a daily basis. Significantly, one of the principal recommendations of the Padmanabhaiah Committee…
A series of victories for student-led activism against controversial professors suggests that the cult of the supervisor in China is increasingly being challenged. A 123-page report of evidence compiled by Lyu Xiang, a former postgraduate student of Zhang Yuqing at the School of Chemical Engineering and Technology at Tianjin University, went viral online in late November and led to the institution’s swift decision to sack the professor after an investigation. According to the allegations, at least 50 peer-reviewed papers credited to Prof. Zhang and as many as 40 Master’s dissertations produced under his supervision between 2011-2020 involved plagiarism and data fabrication. Lyu dropped out of his course in 2016 and waited several years to reveal the report, until his fellow students had all graduated. The school responded in a statement that Prof. Zhang has admitted “his own wrongdoings” and said that other allegations are under further investigation. Liu Pu, director of journal and yearbook management at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Bureau of Scientific Research, says it’s “shocking to see that this professor got away with misconduct of this magnitude for such a long time”. “The rigorous structure and writing (of the dossier) make it a record-breaking allegation, which helped to draw public attention,” he told Times Higher Education. The case was followed by Wuhan University of Technology’s decision to backtrack on the reinstatement of former professor Wang Pan as a supervisor. He had been suspended two years ago after being accused of abuse linked to a student suicide. A follow-up investigation indicated that there was “poor supervision”. In response to a notice on Dr. Wang’s proposed reinstatement, staff and students launched an online petition that attracted nearly 28,000 signatures, requesting that the university should act with “empathy and social responsibilities” and “permanently cancel Wang’s graduate supervisor qualification”. The university swiftly announced it would not reinstate Dr. Wang as a supervisor after “receiving objections”. “Public scrutiny has played its role and pressured the universities to take action,” Liu told THE. However, he added that “more efforts are also needed to build a long-term mechanism, including improving independent investigation by third parties on misconduct and implementing more severe punishment where it is appropriate”. As a response China’s ministry of education issued a code of conduct for supervisors in December, advising academics “not to insult graduate students, nor to keep an improper relationship with students”. A draft of the code warns supervisors against treating students as “cheap labour”, according to local media, reflecting concerns that the country’s traditional reverence of professors led to many essentially making their students work for them as secretaries. Tang Jintai, a professor in the College of Journalism and Communication at Jinan University, says both incidents demonstrate “the capability and growing awareness of the rising young generation”, which demands “radical changes to the bureaucratic elements in the education system”. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education and The Economist) Also read: China: Student bargaining chips China: Unemployment spectre fears
Researchers have exposed widespread PhD plagiarism among Russian regional governors, which they say is part of a broader culture of academic corruption in a country where ghostwriters are routinely hired to win the rich and powerful the prestige boost of a doctorate. Checking hundreds of dissertations online against other text revealed that half the governors who have a PhD have committed plagiarism, according to two Russia-born academics based in Germany. In one case, a governor’s dissertation was made up entirely of text that had been copied and pasted from other sources. In Russia, PhDs have become a status symbol and a sign of “conspicuous consumption”, says co-author Anna Abalkina, a sociology researcher at LMU, Munich and expert on academic misconduct. Doctorates are obtained for “a lot of businessmen and politicians to write ‘PhD’ on their business cards”, she says, with a subset of professors turning a blind eye to plagiarism during the doctoral defence. Over half of Russia’s regional governors have PhDs, plagiarised or not. As well as shedding light on the scale of plagiarism in Russia, the study also found that governors with plagiarised PhDs performed worse in office on average, failing to develop their regions as quickly as their counterparts, as measured by metrics such as housing construction and the installation of broadband Internet. “Plagiarism is a prediction of corrupt behaviour and incompetence,” says Dr. Abalkina. “It says something about (the plagiariser’s) personality.” But this doesn’t necessarily mean the other governors actually wrote their PhDs — they may simply have avoided detection by hiring better ghostwriters. In other words, while they may not be honest, they are at least competent, and thus better at governing. “It appears to be plausible that high-ranking officials in Russia rarely write their Ph D theses themselves,” says the paper, published in Scientometrics. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education and The Economist) Also read: Russia: Subtle clampdown Russia: Foreign students recruitment drive Russia: Maths geniuses fleeing abroad
Dozens of Pakistani students have been waiting up to 30 months to learn whether they will be allowed into Oz for doctoral studies as the pandemic exposes Australia’s dismissive treatment of people who fortify its research training community. Some 50 Pakistani postgrads say they have received scant word on the progress of visa applications lodged during the past two and a half years. Many have deferred scholarships multiple times, with some forced to switch universities after offers expired. Some have paid “huge fees” retaking lapsed medical and language tests. Others have run out of options, with stipends and places cancelled. The applicants include students and lecturers in physics, chemistry, engineering and health, with specialities including solar cells, brain-computer interfaces and synthetic cancer drugs. Some say they have received no advice from Australia’s department of home affairs since applying for visas in mid-2019. Enquiries to the department elicit “generic emails that your application is under routine processing”, says mechanical engineer Najeeb Ullah. Civil engineer Tahir Saeed says the wait has been “torturous” for his family. Rizwan Younas, a Quetta-based chemical engineering lecturer, says the department should either accept or reject applications within 60 days. “It’s not just a visa, it’s my future,” he says. Times Higher Education understands that visa applications from South Asians wanting to undertake STEM-related Ph Ds are routinely referred to security agencies, which take turns to assess the risk of intellectual property theft. A home affairs spokesperson said character and security checking by other agencies could take “several months” and explained that “offshore services” related to visa assessments — including health checks and biometric collection — were being affected by Covid-19. But at least 27 applications were lodged well before the pandemic, which has only slowed processing because previously submitted evidence has passed its use-by date. Ironically, pandemic-related disruptions are the only thing stopping some students from abandoning Australia after having held firm initially because they felt “ethically bound” to their prospective supervisors. Physicist Abdul Khaliq says some friends are eyeing other countries. “But we are stuck in the middle of nowhere as we can’t meet the requirements due to the pandemic restrictions,” he adds. Medical researcher Braira Wahid, who says she has heard nothing from home affairs since mid-2019, is now looking elsewhere. “My research portfolio is quite strong,” she says. Australia relies on foreigners to undertake science-related Ph Ds. They outnumber domestic students in areas such as engineering and information technology. Phil Honeywood, chief executive of the International Education Association of Australia, says other countries update prospective students about the status of visa applications, but home affairs waits for clearances from all agencies before providing any useful information. He suggests the department should “initiate some feedback mechanism” to alleviate applicants’ “obvious stress”. A recent home affairs report shows that average waiting times have blown out as the pandemic reduces processing activity. The median processing time for postgraduate research visas soared from 20 days in the March quarter to 244 days between April and June —…
Experts are sceptical of the merits and feasibility of the Pakistan government’s plan to create a new ‘knowledge city’. Prime minister Imran Khan tweeted that it was his “dream to build Pakistan’s first knowledge city”, after launching the first phase of the project last October. It will be developed around the Namal Institute, which was established in 2008 and began as an affiliate college of the UK’s Bradford University where Khan was then chancellor. The plan is for the institute, located in rural Punjab, to evolve into the largest university town of Pakistan, with several academic centres, libraries and technology parks, as well as schools, shopping centres and hotels. Major construction work is expected to be complete by 2027, but the target is 800 students and 50 faculty members in the ‘city’ by 2023. Mehvish Riaz, assistant professor at the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, says the knowledge city “could transform the education, economy and technology sectors” in Pakistan, but there are more pressing higher education issues the country should focus on. “Considering the situation prevailing in existing universities that are facing budgetary cuts for research, salaries and other purposes, I don’t think starting a mega project like the new knowledge city is practical,” says Riaz who believes “it would be wiser to transform and upgrade existing schools, colleges and universities and provide much-needed facilities there before starting this mega project.” Pervez Hoodbhoy, Zohra and ZZ Ahmed Foundation distinguished professor in mathematics and physics at Lahore’s Forman Christian College, says the “trademark of past governments… has been to excitedly announce new science cities, technology parks, software hubs and centres of excellence” but none of them have ultimately delivered. “Our planners have no clue of how critically deficient Pakistan is in terms of high-level professors and researchers,” he adds. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education and The Economist) Also read: United Kingdom: Rising redundancies wave
UK universities have made thousands of staff redundant since the start of the coronavirus pandemic. Data, obtained by educational platform Edvoy using Freedom of Information requests and seen by Times Higher Education, show that over 3,000 staff were made redundant between March 1 and September 20 this year by the 104 universities that responded. This includes those employed on fixed-term contracts that ended without being renewed. The impact of the pandemic on university finances has led to reports of many institutions opting against renewing the contracts of staff in non-permanent roles. “The high number of job losses are a worrying indicator of the state of higher education in the UK. Casualisation has been a growing problem in UK universities, and these figures show how much this has been exacerbated by the pandemic,” says Nicole Wootton-Cane, editor at Edvoy. In July, the University and College Union estimated that thousands of staff on fixed-term contracts could lose their roles as a result of the pandemic. At the same time, the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that British universities could slash spending on temporary teaching staff by £200 million (Rs.1,977 crore), and on other temporary staff by £300 million owing to financial pressures caused by the crisis. Oxford University recorded 416 redundancies, mostly fixed-term contracts that expired. A spokesman said this figure was in line with previous years. The University of Cambridge reported 267 redundancies, while the universities of Leicester, York and Glasgow all topped 100. Raj Jethwa, chief executive of the Universities and Colleges Employers Association (UCEA), says institutions have “worked hard to minimise the impact of the pandemic crisis”. “In all sectors of the economy, Covid-19 has unfortunately led to job losses and the non-renewal of fixed-term contracts. HE institutions boast some of the best employment frameworks in the UK, and decisions affecting jobs are never taken lightly. All of UCEA’s members will involve their trade unions as staff representatives and work hard to avoid compulsory redundancies,” says Jethwa. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education and The Economist) Also read: Pakistan: Knowledge city mirage
US research universities have tempered hopes for a Biden administration boost in their budgets and overseas partnerships, seeing security and political complications well beyond Donald Trump’s anti-science and nativist antagonisms. In part, according to the main grouping of US research universities, this is because President Trump caused far less harm to their operations than he threatened, and in part, such academic leaders believe, because a government led by Joe Biden will still struggle to balance the need for global teamwork with the need for national security. “This is going to be a continual fight,” Tobin Smith, vice president for policy at the Association of American Universities, says of the quest for clear, consistent and balanced guidelines for US scientists seeking partners from abroad. President-elect Biden’s friendlier attitude toward foreigners, by itself, won’t be enough to overcome real concerns within US intelligence and law-enforcement communities about the threat they see from China and other potentially hostile nations, says Smith. Regardless of the administration, federal security officials tend to seek broad restrictions, sometimes covering entire fields of study. That can harm the development of US capabilities in fields such as artificial intelligence because other countries — including China — may have reached breakthroughs that US scientists haven’t yet achieved. “The more we put walls around broader things in our country, the more walls we put up around that knowledge in other countries,” says Smith. And President Biden’s approach to China, in particular, may not be significantly softer, explains Smith, given serious concerns within the Democratic Party about China’s record on human rights and democracy. This situation, he says, should serve as a warning to US universities — which have grown to depend heavily on Chinese students and researchers — that the time to find a more diverse set of options is approaching. “We have to rethink everything going forward in terms of finding students and scientists. We would be naive to think that it was going to continue forever,” he says of the current high levels of Chinese student interest. In terms of spending on science, Trump took office in 2017 pursuing a budget proposal that would have slashed federal research spending by 17 percent, and then urged similar multibillion-dollar reductions each year afterwards. But lawmakers from both parties refused, pushing budget plans through Congress that gave scientific research funding modest but steady annual gains. That’s expected to continue, with even greater emphasis on health fields led by cancer, which became a matter of deep personal interest to Biden after the death of his son Beau in 2015. “Congress has done pretty well by research funding” during the Trump administration, says Smith. “It is unclear if we will see huge changes” in funding levels during the Biden administration, he says. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education and The Economist)
Closed schools are bad for all children, but especially bad for poor and disadvantaged pupils. This basic pattern recurs wherever and whenever researchers look for it — in the wake of a polio epidemic in America in 1916, after teachers’ strikes in Argentina in the 1980s, and after a devastating earthquake in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir in 2005. Most experiments in school disruption come after isolated natural disasters. However, the Covid-19 pandemic is leading to a simultaneous global experiment. In America, where schools have been significantly disrupted for the better part of a year, the first batches of reliable data are being gathered to assess how bad the damage has actually been. Sorting through them shows that America hasn’t defied gloomy predictions. A recent analysis of standardised tests carried out by McKinsey, a consulting firm, found that pupils examined in the autumn had learned 33 percent less maths and 13 percent less reading than expected. For schools that are majority non-white, learning losses are much steeper: pupils in them learned 41 percent less maths and 23 percent less reading. NWEA, a producer and administrator of standardised exams used in primary and secondary schools, published its own review of autumn scores that is less worrisome. Pupils slid back substantially in maths, but not reading, with few detectable differences along racial or socio-economic lines. But a substantial share of students, disproportionately poor and non-white, simply did not take the tests this year — which may have flattered the results. Researchers from Brown and Harvard universities examining data from Zearn, an online maths-teaching platform, found that pupils in high-income schools are actually performing 12 percent better in their coursework than in January 2020. But for low-income schools, scores fell by 17 percent. The results suggest that the fears of worsening achievement gaps at the start of the pandemic were justified. There are enormous racial gaps in the type of instruction being received: 70 percent of black and Hispanic children are receiving fully remote education, compared with 50 percent of white pupils. Parents with the means to do so appear to be pulling their children out of public education altogether. There are 31,000 fewer pupils in the New York City public school system than in 2019; the roster in Austin, Texas, is 6 percent smaller. Instead, parents are hiring private tutors to teach their children in person. That is almost certain to widen the achievement gap. (Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education and The Economist)
– Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) Shraddha Fogla (35) is founder of 2monkeysandme (estb.2018), a Kolkata-based online portal for parents of children aged six months to nine years. Parenting advice apart, the portal features home activities, games, science experiment modules, STEM and DIY activities to boost children’s sensory, motor skills and cognitive development. Currently, the portal has 50,000 registered followers. Newspeg. Between May and August last year, Shraddha Fogla launched three homeschooling modules covering foundational literacy, phonetics and numeracy which have received enthusiastic response from parents. “These modules enable parents to homeschool youngest children during the pandemic. The modules comprise enjoyable activities which are easy to implement in home environments, and ensure that children are prepared when schools resume. We are all set to launch our fourth and fifth homeschooling modules in a month’s time,” says Fogla. Also read: India’s nascent homeschooling revolution History. A commerce graduate of the J.D. Birla College, Kolkata with a postgrad degree in international accounting and finance from the Cass Business School, London, Shraddha Fogla began her career in 2008 in her family’s company MPA Financial Services Pvt. Ltd. This was followed by a stint with another family company, BFS Infrastructure Pvt. Ltd. In 2014, she took a sabbatical after the birth of her first-born. “In 2017, I had my second son. Subsequently, I began researching enjoyable activities and pedagogies to introduce my boys to language, numeracy and social skills. I was pleasantly surprised to find they were not only having fun learning, but also retaining knowledge through my self-designed activities and games. This inspired me to share these modules with other parents who appreciated them. I also extensively researched learning modules covering STEM and art and crafts activities to enable the creative and cognitive development of youngest children,” says Shraddha Fogla. Self-funded by this mompreneur, 2monkeysandme parental aid and advice is available to followers free-of-charge on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube. However, homeschooling learning modules are priced at Rs.499 onwards. Future plans. Shraddha Fogla is now working on a plan to roll out an online digital teachers’ hub next year. “The objective of the educators hub is to encourage teachers around the country to share creative curriculums and pedagogies which enable activity-based home learning. We will also transform our website into an e-commerce portal for sale of products and services for children,” says this innovative young mompreneur.
– Autar Nehru (Delhi) An alumnus of North-Eastern Hill and Lucknow universities, Sushma Raturi is the first dean of the newly launched Saamarthya Teachers Training Academy of Research (STTAR), Ghaziabad. The academy provides online teacher training modules in 12 domains including content development and structural planning, leadership and assessment systems. Newspeg. STTAR was launched on July 15 by the Seth Anandram Jaipuria Group of Educational Institutions (SAJGEI) in collaboration with its flagship Jaipuria School of Business, Ghaziabad. Since then, it has conducted 50 online training sessions for over 3,000 teachers. History. SAJGEI (estb.1945) is the umbrella organisation of 19 K-12 schools, five preschools and two business management colleges in north India with an aggregate enrolment of 20,000 students mentored by 800 faculty. Against the backdrop of the Covid crisis disrupting K-12 education and conventional pedagogies, and teachers having to switch to digital teacher-training, SAJGEI launched STTAR with the mission statement to “equip school teachers and leaders with the skills and proficiencies required to create meaningful student learning experiences by developing professional expertise founded on scholarly inquiry, design thinking and research”. Direct talk. “The role and expectations of a teacher have radically changed after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. At STTAR, we believe teachers need to be urgently provided well-researched professional development programmes to enable them to deliver continuous education to children. Though we had to adapt our conventional teacher training pedagogies to the online mode, it’s been a blessing in disguise. Now teachers across the country are able to sign up for our intensively researched online training classes and workshops,” says Raturi, former head of teacher training at SAJGEI. Prior to signing up with SAJGEI in 2017, Sushma Raturi acquired a wealth of teaching and admin experience in several top-ranked schools including the Assam Valley School, Balipara, British School, Delhi, Loreto Convent, Kolkata, The Shri Ram School, Gurugram, and The Mombasa Academy, Kenya. According to Sushma Raturi, STTAR’s teacher training modules have been designed after intensive research of contemporary pedagogies and international practice and processes. “These training modules are practical and experiential, spanning vital components of K-12 education such as curriculum design, progression and alignment, offline and online effective teacher-pupil interaction, structured digital lesson plans, classroom observation and management,” she says. Future plans. As and when schools reopen, the academy will also offer hybrid, i.e, a blend of face-to-face and online teacher training programmes. “Post Covid, hybrid teacher training is likely to become normative. This fits in well with our objective of expanding our operations countrywide while continuously updating content and developing master trainers. Our sophisticated online training programmes will also enable us to provide in-service training to government school teachers in remote rural areas,” says Sushma Raturi. Wind in your sails! Also read: Covid-19 Frontline Education Warrior: Shishir Jaipuria, Chairman, SAJGEI
– Summiya Yasmeen (Bengaluru) Ekta Grover is founder of the mint new Shunya Impact Pvt. Ltd (estb.2020), Bengaluru, which has designed the Shunya Intelligent Classroom Learning Management System (LMS) mobile app for K-12 students. Based on latest machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies, Shunya LMS enables students and teachers to post class notes and assignments digitally to receive assessment feedback and remedial education assistance. Newspeg. In November, the company was named among the Top 100 edtech companies in India and South-east Asia by HolonIQ, a San Francisco-based ‘global intelligence platform for education’. History. A computer science engineering graduate of PESIT, Bengaluru and economics postgrad of Goethe University, Frankfurt (Germany), Ekta Grover has many years of rich and varied experience in the IT industry having worked with SAP; VMWare; (24)7.ai; BloomReach; AdNear and InMobi. In April last year, she quit InMobi to promote Shunya Impact. “In 2016 en route to office, I started giving rides to children to reach their government school. This continued for the next three years. During this time, I began thinking about how new IT technologies could be applied to benefit and improve children’s learning experiences. Last April, I took the plunge and started Shunya with the objective of applying advanced technologies to revolutionise teaching-learning in schools,” says Grover. Direct talk. According to Ekta Grover, Shunya LMS is revolutionary inasmuch as it applies latest machine learning and AI technologies to improve the learning experience of K-12 school children. “The unique proposition of Shunya LMS is that it charts an individualised learning programme for every child based on her academic history and progress. It does this in a content agnostic manner, as content is often a hyper local phenomenon. This app is very helpful to teachers who can provide customised remedial education to every child and thus raise overall teaching-learning standards. Hyper-personalisation of K-12 education is specially needed to enable teachers to identify and remedy learning gaps resulting from the prolonged shutdown of schools because of the Covid-19 pandemic,” says Grover. Future plans. With Shunya LMS receiving enthusiastic feedback from schools, teachers and students, Ekta Grover is focusing her energies on adding “intelligent features to make learning more personalised”. “This is the first edtech platform that measures the learning gaps of children and enables teachers to bridge them through remedial education. Given engagement challenges due to Covid-19, K-12 learning gaps will continue to widen, and we are hopeful about teachers embracing this new technology to enable children to recover lost ground,” she says. Fair winds! Also read: 5 Apps that are redefining online learning
– Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru) Delhi/Canon City, Colorado (USA)-based public health evangelist Dr. Rahul Mehra is the founder-promoter of Tarang Health Alliance (THA, estb.2016), a non-profit promoted with the mission to develop innovative content and train teachers to implement THA’s comprehensive health education curriculum — covering physical, mental and social well-being — in schools countrywide. Dr. Rahul Mehra was recently appointed India’s national representative to the UNESCO Global Health and Education programme which produces and shares knowledge to improve the health of children and youth worldwide. Newspeg. Empowered by CSR (corporate social responsibility) funding and a grant from the Rotary Foundation, last June after training their teachers, THA introduced online health education programmes for class VI students of three schools — Bluebells International School, Raghav Global School and Soami Nagar Model School — in the national capital. “We are studying the impact of the programme on health knowledge and behaviour in Bluebells International which will be evaluated at the end of the academic year after completion of a minimum 40 hours of health education. Moreover, monthly parent engagement meetings are being conducted during which we provide healthy nutrition, physical activity and mental health advice to parents,” says Mehra. History. An alum of India’s premier IIT-Kharagpur with a Ph D in bio-medical engineering awarded by New York University, USA, Dr. Rahul Mehra has over three decades of experience as a research scientist in the medical industry and academia (Medtronic Inc, Minneapolis, Montefiore Hospital, Bronx, Brooklyn VA Medical Center and Manhattan College, New York) and has registered 75 patents in his name. Direct talk. Mehra attributes the low longevity (average 69 years) of Indians — significantly lower than of China, Sri Lanka and even Bangladesh — to unhealthy lifestyles and practices. “Healthy lifestyles need to be developed from childhood. Therefore, THA’s goal is to make health education mandatory in all K-12 schools. Over the past five years since I promoted THA, I have invested substantial time in deeply researching educational pedagogies, health education in the US and India, and have also published four student workbooks and teacher manuals for class VI-VII children in our pilot project. I am delighted the National Education Policy, 2020 proposes that health education is included in school curriculums,” says Dr. Rahul Mehra. Future plans. Looking ahead, Mehra has ambitious plans for THA. “First, we plan to write student workbooks and teacher manuals for classes K-XII, then scale up our programme and develop a financially sustainable model. To begin with, we intend to work with CBSE and Delhi government schools and gradually with schools affiliated with other education boards. For training teachers, our plan is to certify them on health education as well as explore the possibility of starting our own teacher training institution,” says Dr. Rahul Mehra, clearly an individual with focused vision.
The malignant winds that have blown the Coronavirus over the Indian polity devastating industry and business, have also blown some good. They have thrust adoption and adaptation of new digitally-enabled techonologies into the country’s reluctant classrooms – Dilip Thakore Although infection rates and fatalities caused by the Coronavirus pandemic are on the downswing in India — possibly because of higher in-built immunity to disease of citizens of a polity in which for several decades government expenditure on public health averaged less than 1.5 percent — the socio-economic damage caused by the deadly virus has been enormous and under-reported. Even as the Union Budget 2021-22, which is scheduled to be presented to Parliament and the people on February 1, is being given its final touches, it’s clear that GDP, which was expected to increase by a modest 5 percent in fiscal 2020-21, will contract by 7.7 percent according to a National Statistical Office (NSO) forecast. Moreover, the unprecedented pandemic has increased unemployment from the normative 4-5 percent to 7.8 percent of the national workforce, and the number of unemployed is likely to rise to 37 million disrupting the lives and livelihoods of an estimated 100 million households across the country. Yet perhaps the most devastating impact of the lethal virus has been on India’s under-funded and under-serviced pre-primary to Ph D education institutions. The country’s estimated 300,000 preschools, 1.60 million K-12 schools, 39,931 colleges and 1,008 universities have been shuttered since March 25 when the Central government ordered the world’s most stringent national lockdown of all industry, businesses and education institutions at four hours notice. Since then, over 300 million children and youth have been restricted to learning best as they can from their homes across the country. Although a small number of top-ranked education institutions have managed to make a smooth switch to new digital technologies- enabled teaching-learning, the vast majority of education institutions — especially the country’s 1.20 million government schools — have failed to maintain learning continuity. According to the National Sample Survey 2017-2018, a mere 8 percent of Indian households with children and youth aged between five and 24 years have access to the Internet and computer devices (desktop, laptop, tablet, etc). Moreover, with an estimated 18 million people having lost their livelihoods during the past six months, 24 percent of Indian households that own smartphones are unable to afford Internet charges for children’s online classes. Typically, the reaction of the Central and state governments to the ominous pandemic cloud looming over the world’s largest — and high-potential — child and youth population has been lethargic and negligent. The plain truth as reiterated ad nauseam by your editors with a mountain of data, is that neither India’s neta-babu brotherhood which has micro-managed the low growth Indian economy for seven decades, nor the middle class establishment, has sufficiently grasped the intimate connection between universal high-quality education and national development. This is conclusively evidenced by the failure of successive governments at the Centre and in the states to increase the…
– Dipta Joshi (Mumbai) Plucky Siya Tayal (15), a class X student of the millennium city’s highly-ranked Shri Ram School, Aravali, Gurugram is making waves in social media circuits worldwide through her online ‘Project I Am Enough’ campaign. Launched on Instagram in July, the objective of this campaign is to contest ‘perfect body’ stereotypes and end the culture of body shaming by advising youth to accept and respect people of all ages, sizes and shapes. The campaign has thus far reached 762,000 accounts, according to Instagram data. Inspired by her parents’ empathetic attitude towards the underprivileged and insecure, and encouraged by her supportive teachers at Shri Ram School, Siya made societal change her mission at the young age of nine. In 2014, she promoted an umbrella organisation christened Bee Nifty under the aegis of a non-profit run by her late father. She launched social initiatives such as My Own Bag, which employs women in rural Haryana to craft hand bags and purses from waste fabric and sells them at school fests. Proceeds from another voluntary Christmas donation drive, Santa Cause are donated to fund the education of slum children of the Nayi Disha School, Gurugram. Siya’s social activism is being acknowledged in habitations far beyond Gurugram. In September 2019, she was selected as one of seven youth from India to outline her welfare initiatives at the Geneva headquarters of the United Nations. She was also appointed youth ambassador of the IM2030 (one million youth leaders by 2030) initiative of the United Nations Institute for Training and Research, which empowers youth to become changemakers in their societies. With her class X ICSE board exam round the corner, this ardent young activist is preparing to write her online pre-board examinations. “Whatever college programme or career path I choose, I am confident I’ll always find time to speak up for people on the margins of society. That is the social obligation of the country’s educated middle class,” says the spunky teen with an active social conscience. Wind beneath your wings! Read about young achiever: Chirag Falor
– Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru) It’s raining encomiums for Pune-based whizkid Chirag Falor (18). In October 2019, he aced SAT (formerly the Scholastic Aptitude Test) with a score of 1,560 out of a maximum 1,600 to win annual admission-cum-financial aid valued at 82 percent of tuition and boarding fees from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), USA to study for a bachelor’s degree in physics. Yet despite having commenced his undergrad freshman year online at MIT last September, he prepared for and wrote IIT-JEE (Joint Entrance Examination)-Mains 2020 followed by the IIT-JEE-Advanced 2020 in late September, and maxed it with a 100 percentile score and all-India #1 rank. “Although I had already been accepted by MIT, I simultaneously continued to study for the IIT-JEE reputed to be the world’s toughest entrance exam for my personal satisfaction as I had been preparing for these exams for four years. Therefore, I’m delighted that I topped the IIT-JEE Advanced,” says Chirag who has also won several national and international science Olympiad medals and certificates. This extraordinary achievement — admission into MIT and IIT of his choice — is the outcome of diligent preparation from age 15 when Chirag was a student at the CBSE-affiliated St. Arnold’s Central School, Pune. While in class IX, he signed up for supplementary coaching at Akash Institute, Pune to start preparing for IIT-JEE (Mains) four years later. To study in right earnest, in 2018 Chirag moved to Delhi to do his Plus Two and prepare for IIT-JEE at Akash Institute’s renowned Pusa Road centre. “I followed a rigorous schedule of 6-12 hours simultaneously preparing for national/international Olympiads and IIT-JEE. Not being fussed over by my parents and resisting the temptation to own a smartphone, allowed me to focus entirely on IIT-JEE. My only extra-curricular activity for four years was stargazing, signing up for science and astronomy Olympiads and playing chess and table tennis,” says Chirag. Having attained his lifelong ambition of topping IIT-JEE (Advanced), right now this young whizkid’s top priority is to proceed to the US in February for on-campus classes at MIT, Cambridge. “My focused and thorough preparation for IIT-JEE enabled me to do well in SAT and win a generous scholarship. Systematic study and hard work always pays off. Sometimes in unexpected ways,” says this promising space scientist in the making. Also read: Siya Tayal – ‘Project I Am Enough’
Bengaluru, December 17. Cambridge Assessment English, a department of Cambridge University (UK), has teamed up with the Bengaluru-based Enguru Live English Learning to launch Upskill, a new smartphone-based test of English. Upskill will enhance the employability of graduates aspiring for entry level jobs in corporate organisations and covers four skills — speaking, listening, reading and writing. Built around users’ lifestyles, this affordable, flexible test can be taken on the Enguru app on an Android device anytime, anywhere. It focuses on levels A1-B1 of the Common European Framework of Reference, to show potential employers that candidates have work-ready English skills. “Our mission is to help people to learn English and prove their skills to the world. We’ve developed Upskill as a quick, flexible, easily accessible, mobile based test which will boost the employability of graduates and entry level working professionals,” says T.K. Arunachalam, regional director — South Asia, of Cambridge Assessment English. Hyundai launches Saksham Mumbai, December 7. Hyundai Motor India Foundation, the CSR arm of Hyundai Motor India Ltd, launched ‘Saksham,’ a skills development initiative to boost employment opportunities in diverse sectors, starting with healthcare. Commenting on commencement of the programme, S.S. Kim, MD & CEO, Hyundai Motor India Ltd said: “Our Saksham initiative is aimed at empowering youth in vulnerable sections of society to become self-reliant. The initiative is a step towards providing skilled and trained support staff including medical attendants and janitors. The courses are certified by the National Skill Development Corporation.” The first project in the healthcare domain will run in two phases — the first covering states of Maharashtra, Delhi and Haryana — and Bihar and some other states in the second phase. The project will provide theoretical and on-job training modules to individuals followed by placement. Post training, students will be absorbed as patient attendants, janitors, general duty attendants, etc. The project is expected to place about 580 trainees by end-December 2020. Imagine Cup 2021 New Delhi, December 3. Microsoft India and the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) have combined to launch the Microsoft Imagine Cup 2021, an innovation challenge for technology students. Imagine Cup is a global competition designed to motivate students to apply artificial intelligence and other technologies to solve some of the world’s most critical social and sustainability problems. This year’s Imagine Cup will be held online with students competing to solve global challenges in four categories — earth, education, health and lifestyle. “The Imagine Cup competition is a platform for youth of India to couple technology with innovative ideas and build something that matters to them, makes a difference in their communities and creates societal impact. Our partnership with NSDC has been formed to empower young people across the country to collaborate, innovate and build for a sustainable future,” said Dr. Rohini Srivathsa, National Technology Officer of Microsoft, speaking on the occasion. National entrepreneurship contest Mumbai, December 3. The Mumbai-based Callido Learning Pvt. Ltd has partnered with IIT Roorkee’s e-Summit program to launch an entrepreneurship competition for school students. The competition…
New Delhi, December 3. The civil engineering faculties of 18 IITs, 26 NITs and 190 other reputed engineering colleges countrywide have signed collaboration agreements with the National Highway Authority of India (NHAI). Under the terms of these agreements, each institution will be permitted to ‘adopt’ a stretch of a national highway to enable its faculty, research scholars and students to make them subjects of study, said education ministry officials addressing a press conference. The partner institutes will offer safety, maintenance, riding comfort, congestion removal and new technologies usage suggestions to NHAI for consideration. NHAI will provide two-month internships to 20 undergrad and 20 postgrad students of these institutions every year. They will be paid monthly stipends of Rs.8,000 and Rs.15,000 respectively. Odisha Career guidance portal Bhubaneswar, December 25. In collaboration with the UN International Children’s Emergency Fund (Unicef), the state government has launched an Odia language mobile phone-friendly career guidance portal for secondary and higher secondary students statewide. The portal provides information on college, vocational institute scholarships, entrance exams and career pathways. “This portal is a significant medium for equipping secondary and higher secondary students in the state to navigate a smooth transition from school to work through higher education,” said Monika Nielsen, chief of field office, Unicef, speaking on the occasion. Karnataka Textbook revision order Bengaluru, December 18. The Karnataka Textbook Society has been directed to remove specified content from a class VI social science textbook, after the Brahmin Development Board complained that the content was “insulting” to their community. The impugned content highlighted by the minister included sentences such as “Sanskrit was the language of priests and the common man could not understand it” and “food scarcity was caused by Brahmanic religious rituals offering large quantities of foodgrains, milk, ghee and other material” and “sacrificing animals that were helpful to farmers in cultivation” contributed towards food scarcities. In a note to the society, the primary and secondary education minister S. Suresh Kumar highlighted controversial content in the textbook and recommended constitution of an expert committee to examine the content of all class I-X social science and language textbooks. Haryana Awakened Citizens Programme Gurugram, December 20. A Vivekananda Institute of Values (VIV) with an estimated project cost of Rs.22 crore is under construction in Gurugram. VIV will serve as a training hub for the values education-related Awakened CitizensProgramme (ACP) introduced by former HRD minister Smriti Irani in 2015 in 5,000 schools countrywide, said Ramakrishna Mission secretary Swami Shantatmananda at a press conference. A collaboration agreement between the mission and the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education was signed in 2014 to implement ACP in all CBSE schools. Since then, the programme has impacted over 100,000 students and trained 41,000 teachers in 5,000 schools including Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas and Kendriya Vidyalayas in Madhya Pradesh, Haryana and Rajasthan. Andhra Pradesh Status upgrade appeal Tirupati, December 9. Y.V. Subba Reddy, chairman of the Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams (TTDs), has requested Union education minister Ramesh Pokhriyal ‘Nishank’ to upgrade the government-promoted Sri Venkateswara Vedic…
“When people come out on the streets to protest against a law, they are not merely disagreeing but are questioning the legitimacy of the government. This is why the government sees dissent as a foundational attack on the very basis of the state. ” – Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, professor of political science at Ashoka University, Sonipat (The Indian Express, December 5) “About 18,000 of the 60,000 compliances in India prescribe jail as a penalty for non-compliance. Criminalisation should be cut from at least 75 percent of compliances.” – Manish Sabharwal, chairman, Teamlease Services on India’s ease of doing business (India Today, December 14) “The purpose of the recent APMC laws enacted by the Central government is to free up the farmer from the stranglehold of the APMC and allow him to sell his produce directly to the highest bidder…” – Arvind Panagriya, former vice-chairman Niti Aayog on the recently passed agriculture liberalisation laws (AgNews, December 17) “Three big trends have emerged that affect the future of India. First, to establish a sheer myth of common Hindu identity to the Indian nationhood, secondly, to entrench its conception of majoritarian nationalism signalling soft bigotry against minorities and thirdly, to secure the Hindutva nationalism through the effective centralisation of authoritarian top-down unitary rule by weakening of institutions and federalism and its practices.” – Shashi Tharoor, Congress MP, delivering a lecture on ‘Future of Indian Democracy’ (December 20) “A lot of people tell me the AMU campus is like a city in itself — thousands of teachers, lakhs of students… it’s like a mini-India. While on one hand you have Urdu education, you also have Hindi; while you have Arabic you also have Sanskrit. This diversity is not just AMU’s strength but also that of India.” – Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivering the keynote address at the centenary celebrations of Aligarh Muslim University (December 22)
– Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai) The AIADMK government has cancelled half-yearly examinations in all 39,300 government and government-aided schools in the state. Over 6.7 million children enrolled in these schools statewide who normatively would have written their half-yearly examinations in December won’t be tested. Earlier, quarterly exams usually held in September were cancelled. In a statement issued on December 16, K.A. Sengottaiyan, minister for school education, said the exams of government and aided schools have been cancelled because of the pandemic. However, private schools are free to conduct online exams at their option, says the official statement. Monitors of the K-12 education sector in Tamil Nadu are interpreting cancellation of exams in government and aided schools as admission of failure by the AIADMK government to ensure learning continuity of children in public education. While private schools have swiftly switched to online classes and are also holding examinations on digital platforms, the best that the government has been able to do is to broadcast teacher to pupil lectures on Kalvi TV, the state-run education channel. Learning outcomes from these one-way lectures are likely to be rock bottom even if children are herded into specially sanitised premises to write exams offline or online. “There has been no classroom teaching since March last year. Students have been learning only from programmes being telecast on Kalvi TV. Though it is a commendable endeavour, it has not been easy for them to adapt to this type of education. Therefore, examinations based on learning from these programmes would not have been fair,” says R.C. Saraswathi, headmistress of Government Girls Higher Secondary School, Chennai, which has an enrolment of 3,985 children and 121 teachers. Educationists in Chennai are almost unanimous that preoccupied with preparing for legislative assembly elections scheduled for May 28, the ruling AIADMK government has done too little to empower children learning from home. With middle class parents and students unwilling to touch under-resourced government schools defined by crumbling buildings, chronic teacher absenteeism and English teaching aversion, the overwhelming majority of children in government and aided schools are from bottom-of-pyramid households which can’t afford Internet connectivity and digital learning devices such as desktops, laptops and smartphones. Nor have government school teachers received special digital teaching-learning training. With the assembly election a mere four months away, the AIADMK government had proposed to restart classes in early January to please parents in favour of reopening schools. But following a sudden increase in Covid-19 cases at IIT-Madras and Anna University in mid-December, the education ministry is likely to postpone this decision as children are a high-risk group. “The government should resume conventional schooling for classes IX-XII students immediately with alternate days attendance. Neighbouring states including Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Karnataka have done this. For government school students in Tamil Nadu, in effect there’s been no learning for almost one year. Who is going to replace this year for them? Justice should be done to students studying in government-run schools. Recent data suggests that 300,000 children in Tamil Nadu have…
– Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) With the state legislative assembly election a mere four months away, political jousting in West Bengal (pop.91 million) is getting more fierce by the day. The ruling Trinamool Congress party led by stormy petrel chief minister Mamata Banerjee contesting for a third term in office, is confronted by the BJP, which rules at the Centre and in 12 states countrywide. In General Election 2014, BJP won a mere two of West Bengal’s 42 seats in the Lok Sabha. In General Election 2019, it won 18 with a vote share of 40.64 percent cf. TMC’s 43.3 percent. Quite clearly, already facing normative anti-incumbency fatigue, two-term chief minister Banerjee has a fight on her hands. Responding to defections from her party and high-profile campaigning in the state by top BJP leaders, Banerjee has gone into overdrive, announcing new employment-generating schemes and recruitment drives. Major announcements include conduct of final interviews to appoint 16,500 primary teachers in the state’s 92,000 government schools between January 10-17; hold a fresh, statewide Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) on January 31 and appoint 80 principals in state-funded colleges, where top posts are vacant, by February. These announcements have particular significance as thousands of teachers who have passed previous TETs are on the warpath, protesting the state government’s policy of complete freeze on teacher recruitment. During the year past, numerous protests have been staged across the state. Against this backdrop, Banerjee’s announcement on November 11 that the West Bengal Board of Primary Education will conduct final interviews of 16,500 graduates who passed TET way back in 2014, during January 10-17, has raised her credibility. Formal notice has also been given that the third TET will be held in offline mode on January 31 and 2.5 lakh graduates will write it. Simultaneously, the West Bengal Central School Service Commission (WBCSSC) has issued a notification for conducting a selection test for recruitment of assistant teachers for Santhali-medium schools, inviting online applications which closed on January 6. However just as the sky was beginning to look brighter for TMC and Banerjee, on December 11 the Calcutta high court cancelled the recruitment process for upper primary assistant teachers conducted by the WBCSSC and directed the commission to commence it afresh from January 4. Justice Moushumi Bhattacharya set aside the panel as well as the merit list of upper primary teachers and directed the commission to complete fresh appointments by July 31, 2021, when a new government will have been sworn-in. The issue of recruiting teachers for government schools which pay relatively high salaries prescribed by Pay Commissions appointed by the Central government, has been a contentious issue in West Bengal for several decades. During its prolonged and unlamented rule over the state for 34 uninterrupted years (1977-2011), the CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist)-led Left Front government almost totally de-industrialised Bengal through officially sponsored labour militancy and hostility to private enterprise and provoked continuous flight of capital out of the state. Therefore, government employment — including government school teachers’ jobs —…
– Dipta Joshi (Mumbai) From mid-January onwards, 8,000 private unaided schools across Maharashtra will block online classes for students with unpaid fees. The state’s independent schools say they have been forced to resort to this action as a survey conducted by them indicates 38 percent of financially unhurt parents have been withholding school fees for the past six-seven months. Likewise, with a mere 30 percent of parents of children in affordable budget private schools (BPS) paying tuition fees for the past nine months, BPS have followed the example of private unaided schools. According to the Federation of Schools Association of Maharashtra (FSAM) which has a membership of 5,800 BPS, many parents who refuse to pay fees block calls from school authorities even as their children continue to attend online classes. In mid-December, FSAM launched a ‘No fees, No school’ campaign and advised its members to discontinue online classes for three days (December 15-17). Over 1,500 schools in Pune, Mumbai, Thane and Dombivli responded by shutting down online classes. “For our member schools, fees paid by parents is the only source of income. For most of our members 20-30 percent of tuition fees payable for the academic year 2019-20 and 50 percent of fees for 2020-21, which were payable in advance, remain pending. As a result most of us cannot afford to pay our teachers full salaries. Parents who refuse to pay fees are doing great injustice to teachers as well as other parents who have paid their dues. Now we intend to take a tough stand against parents who haven’t paid their children’s fees,” says Rajendra Singh, president of FSAM. Following the national lockdown declared by the Central government to prevent spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, a large number of schools introduced online classes to maintain learning continuity of their students. Instead of being grateful, parents associations across the state demanded 50 percent fees reduction. To compound the problem, the Shiv Sena-led state government issued a government resolution (GR) dated May 8 warning private school managements of stern action if they increased fees or compelled parents to pay fees. Moreover, schools were directed not to collect remainder fees for academic years 2019-20 and 2020-21 and allow parents the option to pay quarterly or on a monthly basis. Aggrieved, educational institutions filed a writ in the Bombay high court which stayed the government’s GR on June 26. Unsurprisingly, the state government has sided with the parents lobby, ignoring video clips of parents threatening school managers and has supported the populist argument that private schools are “profiteering” from the pandemic. Moreover, education minister Varsha Gaikwad has promised to introduce parent-friendly amendments such as reviving the divisional fees regulatory committee (DFRC) to address fees-related disputes between parents and school managements, in the already existing Maharashtra Educational Institutions (Regulation of Fee) Act, 2011. Curiously, none of the irate middle-class parents’ representative associations provides a convincing answer to the question of why they don’t enroll their children in free-of-charge government schools, a telling commentary on…
– Autar Nehru (Delhi) The state government’s dithering over notifying guidelines for nursery admissions in Delhi for the academic year 2021-22, is generating confusion among young parents and school managements. Normatively, the admission process is spread over the months of December-January. However, this year because of the prolonged closure of education institutions since mid-March because of the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, admissions are on hold. Although there is no official word about the date on which nursery and kindergarten admissions will begin, unconfirmed reports suggest that the state government is thinking of postponing them for a whole year. This rumour is causing heartburn within private school managements in the national capital, more so because schools in Delhi NCR — Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon etc — have started their admission processes. Admission into nurseries of the too-few schools in Delhi that offer nursery classes is a big ticket event in the national capital. Queues for admission forms of top-ranked schools often snaked for miles notwithstanding the bitter cold and polluted air of the winter months, until a transparent system of drawing lots and online admissions was designed by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in 2016. Earlier it was normative for irate parents, denied admission for their progeny into schools of their choice, to file writ petitions alleging demands for capitation fees, child profiling and interviews, and obtaining stay orders. Because of poor civic planning and discouragement of greenfield private schools for decades, the demand-supply balance for nursery classes is totally skewed. Although 500 government schools offer nursery classes, there are few takers for them. The admissions rush is from middle and upper class households in Delhi (pop.19 million) for admission into 3,000 top-ranked composite private schools that offer nursery classes. This annual scramble for nursery admissions is understandable. Admission into nursery of a top-ranked EWISR (EducationWorld India School Rankings) composite school ensures smooth passage until class XII. “The state government should immediately announce nursery admission dates and guidelines if any. Under the guidelines of the past three years, admissions are made online under lottery system from neighbourhood applicants. Moreover, children admitted last year are already receiving restricted online education. Therefore the new batch can also be given limited online learning and can join physical classes after schools reopen,” says Vividh Gupta, principal, Bal Bhavan Public School, Mayur Vihar. Moreover this year, this annual season of anxiety is compounded by the Covid-19 crisis. With all education institutions shuttered and children learning remotely, is it appropriate to provide online learning for tiny infants in nursery classes? Most ECCE (early childhood care and education) experts warn against exposing youngest children to digital devices. However, some composite schools and standalone preschools citing education ministry guidelines are providing an hour per week teacher-pupil interaction. With the anti-Coronavirus vaccination campaign around the corner, secondary schools reopening and the industry and business lockdowns almost over, a rising number of working parents are worried about loss of learning if nursery admissions are cancelled this year.
Heritage Girls School, Udaipur is ranked #9 in the country among girls boarding schools in the EW India School Rankings 2020-21 (EW December). Needless to say, I’m extremely disappointed. We take these rankings very seriously and had worked extremely hard to ensure we smoothen out the wrinkles in our performance to move up a notch or two. Nevertheless, we accept the rank with grace and take this as an indication that we have to pull up our socks and start working. Tulsi Bhatia Principal, Heritage Girls School Udaipur Please note that the sample respondents who rate schools, vary from year to year. Meanwhile build your brand equity – Editor Methodology query It’s a matter of pride that DPS, Hisar is ranked in the premier EducationWorld India School Rankings year after year. In the latest EW India School Rankings 2020-21, DPS, Hisar is ranked #3 in the city, #17 in the state and #200 all-India with a total score of 1,023. This has triggered mixed feelings of ecstasy and defeat. In your Letter from the Editor you say that all schools were assessed on 14 different parameters of holistic education. We are more surprised than disenchanted as to how internal information could be so easily available to you without our consent to tabulate individual scores under all 14 parameters. We are also worried about the authenticity of the information gathered. In the same breath, we are all agog to know the elaborate criteria of rating and your sources of information. Please advise on what basis you have assessed us on the 14 parameters. This will enable us to address our shortcomings. Manju B. Sudhakar Principal DPS Hisar I am surprised you are unaware that the annual EWISR is the outcome of the perceptions of over 11,000 knowledgeable sample respondents who rate India’s Top 2,500 schools on 14 parameters of school education excellence. (Please study pg. 41-42 of EW November) – Editor Commendable evolution My heartiest compliments to EducationWorld for the slightly delayed but comprehensive EW India School Rankings 2020-21 Part I and II (EW November and December) issues. As a regular reader of EW — especially the school rankings edition — I am impressed with the way the parameters of school education excellence have evolved over the years to match the needs of changing times. For instance, inclusion of the ‘curriculum & pedagogy (digital readiness)’ parameter this year is apt to assess learning delivery during the pandemic. With schools forced to adopt online digital technologies during the past eight months of lockdown, performance on this new parameter assumes great significance! Another welcome inclusion in the issue is a new league table of philanthropic schools which is nothing short of inspirational! The concerted effort made by your team in these challenging times is praiseworthy. Congratulations again! Preeti Menon Gurgaon Re special needs children I am the father of a four-year-old special child with Down Syndrome. Recently while I was searching for schools to enrol him, I came across your esteemed EW India…
The on-going farmers’ agitation on the borders of Delhi NCR, now in its 44th day (January 8), has thrown a spanner into the recovery process of the Indian economy in the wake of the devastation caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, there is a great deal of confusion about the agriculture liberalisation and deregulation legislation. Together they liberalise and deregulate Indian agriculture in the same manner as the landmark legislation of 1991 substantially liberalised Indian industry and business. They are designed to allow farmers to sell their produce to purchasers of their choice, allow them freedom to enter into production and commercial contracts with private industry and firms. And the third Act removes warehouse inventory ceilings imposed by state governments on commodities traders enabling them to buy and warehouse agri produce without interference from government inspectors. Certainly this legislation will benefit the vast majority of the country’s 600 million-strong rural population whose average per capita income is one third of national income. Direct farm gate purchasing is in the public interest because horticulture (fruit and vegetables) produce valued at Rs.93,000 crore is wasted annually because of logistics and storage bottlenecks. Under these Acts a farmer can sell his produce to the highest private bidder or in APMC auctions, wherever he gets the best price. If prices fall because of over-production, he can sell to government at the prescribed minimum support price. This safety net has been retained. Essentially, these Acts of Parliament integrate agriculture and industry. They allow farmers to enter into pre-production contracts with agri-processing companies to protect them against wild price fluctuations which will also benefit consumers, because food processing companies will quickly transform surpluses into long-shelf life processed foods. Fears of farmers being short-changed by corporates are unfounded as the latter will be bound by cast-iron contracts and also fear of media exposure. Amendment of the Essential Commodities Act is also in the interest of farmers inasmuch as it enables the reinforcement of India’s weak warehousing industry. Farmers will have the option of warehousing their produce for sale in lean seasons, and also have the option of monetising warehouse receipts. Nevertheless the BJP/NDA government at the Centre is not blameless. With typical high-handedness it railroaded these revolutionary Bills, which affect the lives and livelihoods of 600 million rural citizens, without adequate debate and reference to farmers’ unions and leaders. It’s important to recall that in the 1960s when the country was confronted with the prospect of famine, the farmers of Punjab and north India responded to minimum price assurances and saved the situation by engineering the Green Revolution. The least they deserved was to be taken into confidence and explained the necessary agriculture reform provisions of these three Acts of Parliament in detail. In the circumstances, the Central government should repeal and re-enact these laws after dialogue and debate in and out of Parliament as demanded by farm union leaders.
For the indian economy the recently concluded year 2020 has been an unprecedented annus horribilis. Over 18 million employees in private industry have been rendered jobless and an estimated 100 million (of 300 million) citizens who had been pulled out of extreme poverty since the economic liberalisation and de-regulation of the dirigiste centrally planned Indian economy in 1991, have been pushed back below the poverty line. Although it sounds incredible, the year was even worse for Indian education. Particularly for the country’s 132 million children obliged by economic circumstances to attend 1.2 million dysfunctional state and local government schools defined by crumbling infrastructure, chronic teacher absenteeism and English teaching aversion, an entire year’s learning has been lost. Union education minister Ramesh Pokhriyal — a former writer of Hindi fiction who can’t speak a word of English, the link language of India — has made impractical noises about teaching children via television. Yet the ugly reality of the Indian economy (according to the National Sample Survey 2017-18) is that only 8 percent of Indian households with children in the 5-24 age group have Internet connectivity and computer devices such as desktops, laptops and tablets. According to the RTE Forum, a collection of 10,000 NGOs, educationists and social activists, an estimated 30 million children have dropped out of government schools since education institutions were ordered to be shut in March 2020. Following national outrage — because schools world-over started several months ago — in most states, schools have cautiously been permitted to reopen with senior students allowed back on sanitised campuses in early January, subject to parental consent. Primary and middle school children should also be allowed back into conventional classrooms immediately subject to institutional managements adhering to safety guidelines prescribed by the Union and state governments. With the national roll-out of the duly tested and approved Covishield and Covaxin vaccines round the corner, and sufficient data indicating that children are less vulnerable to the dread virus, no further time should be lost in enabling children to recover lost learning. Simultaneously, rapid induction of digital technologies in upscale private schools needs to be replicated in government institutions. If government finances don’t permit this, the charter school experiment and school voucher scheme should be introduced to improve and upgrade government schools. As in other sectors of the economy, radical reforms are overdue in Indian education. While it has proved a great threat and disruptor, the Covid pandemic has also offered an opportunity to reform and contemporise Indian education. It should not be missed.
It’s an ill-wind that blows nobody good. This ancient adage comes to mind even as the malignant ill-winds bearing the deadly Coronavirus, sweeps the world raining disease and death. Although the Coronavirus, aka Covid-19 pandemic which forced the Central government to lock down industry and businesses for over five months beginning March 25, severely disrupted the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of millions of citizens, its silver lining is that it has forced the induction of new digital ICT (information communication technologies) into the country’s hitherto tech resistant classrooms and lecture halls. As recounted in our first issue of 2021, informed monitors of India’s laggard education institutions are pleasantly surprised, even astonished, by the alacrity with which the teachers’ community countrywide has accepted the inevitability of wired classrooms and need to utilise sophisticated digital technologies to maintain the learning continuity of their students. This is especially true of 450,000 private schools which, contrary to popular perception, educate 47 percent, i.e, 120 million, of the country’s 260 million in-school children. Inevitably, children studying in the country’s 1.20 million government schools defined by crumbling buildings, chronic teacher absenteeism, poor sanitation and English language aversion, are not as fortunate. But the buzz about the substantial benefits of ICT-enabled teaching-learning is generating heavy pressure on the Central and state governments to induct new digital technologies into government schools. Be that as it may, blended learning — a combination of conventional classroom and remote from-home learning — is irreversible in the post-pandemic era. Compulsory classroom attendance, the non-negotiable requirement of the pre-pandemic era, is likely to become history. It’s quite likely that as in higher education, children will attend classes on alternate days, remaining connected with their teachers all the while. This will be a blessing inasmuch as it will cut down children’s harrowing daily commute to school in India’s increasingly crowded and traffic-choked cities and towns. These and other issues that are certain to transform education across the spectrum, are discussed in our cover story in this issue. With the police constantly in the news for egregious acts of omission and commission, experienced Delhi-based journalist Dilip Bobb was persuaded to investigate and report on the education antecedents and in-service training of police personnel. His report throws revealing light on why the police seldom gets good media coverage. In EducationWorld, we are always ready to acknowledge excellence in education to encourage institutional leaders and educators to continuously improve teaching-learning. Check out our Grand Jury awards for schools and preschools for excelling under several parameters. Best wishes for a Happier New Year!
