Citizenship regimes, law & belonging: the CAA & the NRC Anupama Roy Oxford university press Rs.1,495 Pages 270 The power of the State to determine membership of political communities and people’s power to challenge the State are discussed In Citizenship Regimes, Law, and Belonging: The CAA and the NRC, Anupama Roy examines the form and content of recent changes to citizenship laws in India by placing the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA, 2019), the National Register of Citizens (NRC), and the Land Border Agreement (LBA, 2015) in their historical, ideological, and political contexts. The power of the State to determine one’s membership of a political community and the people’s power to challenge state power are the two types of powers that Roy alludes to at the beginning of the book. These allusions are elaborated with reference to two historical moments. The first moment was the people’s non-violent resistance in the South African province of Transvaal led by Mahatma Gandhi against state power. The people, largely Indians, were protesting against the imposition of the Transvaal Registration Act (1906) because it created an identity card for non-whites, who wanted to reside in Transvaal. But the identity card involved profiling Indians with photo mugshots and fingerprints, which the protesters believed was an affront to their dignity as they were being treated like criminals. The second moment is borrowed from Saadat Hasan Manto’s short story, Toba Tek Singh. In the midst of the violence wrought by the Partition of India in 1947 and discord between the newly-formed nations of India and Pakistan on most matters, the two governments concurred on the exchange of ‘lunatics’. The inmates of the lunatic asylum however resisted the madness outside. They refused to be boxed into either India or Pakistan. If Partition created new boundaries for India and Pakistan, the madness of Partition violence smudged the boundaries between lunacy and rationality. The two moments from the early and mid-20th century display the expansive power of the State to impact affective ties. At the same time, they reflect the power of the people to resist the State, and raise questions about the relationship between legal rationality and the power of the law. Those moments have found a new iteration in the 21st century. In chapter one titled Hyphenated Citizenship: The National Register of Citizens, Roy contends that NRC through the judicial route and the CAA through the legislative route introduced two distinct ways of determining Indian citizenship. The NRC in Assam became a citizenship register for people of Assamese origin as well as for identifying ‘illegal migrants’, who were incarcerated in detention centres. CAA made religion a criterion for determining those amongst illegal migrants who were eligible for Indian citizenship by naturalisation. Chapter two is titled Bounded Citizenship: The Citizenship Amendment Act 2019, where Roy examines the discourses surrounding the CAA and notes that the category of ‘illegal migrant’ had acquired a connotation that differs from the NRC. While the CAA sought to stretch citizenship safeguards to people facing religious persecution,…
India’s tipping point S. Narendra Bloomsbury India Rs.699 Pages 212 In this biography, the author details how prime minister Narasimha Rao unshackled the Indian economy by stealth During the past 76 years since India wrested freedom from almost 200 years of British rule, P.V. Narasimha Rao (PVNR, 1921-2004) was undoubtedly the greatest of India’s 14 prime ministers. Although he served only one term in office (1991-96), during those momentous years he substantially won the country’s economic freedom by pulling it out of the mire of neta-babu socialism which had sentenced it to a rock-bottom 3.5 percent GDP growth per year for four decades after independence, and wiped out the modest material aspirations of an entire generation of free India’s children. This informative biography written by S. Narendra, who as a senior aide of PVNR and principal information officer and adviser to the Union government (1992-98), had a ringside view of those tumultuous years during which the choke-hold of the neta-babu brotherhood on India’s economy was substantially broken, was overdue. It’s a measure of the extent to which the establishment is committed to the status quo ante, that this revealing biography which details the step-by-step dismantling of the licence-permit-quota regime, which had smothered the native spirit of private enterprise and perpetuated poverty and illiteracy in post-independence India, has been ignored by the media and media pundits. The plain truth is that India’s 400-million-strong middle class with deep connections — uncle, brother, nephew — prospering within the brotherhood, isn’t dissatisfied with licence raj. It provides hidden subsidies — inflation-proof salaries, subsidised electricity, water, higher education, pensions — and keeps private businessmen (baniyas) in check. Highly risk-averse, under the influence of Nehruvian socialism nothing gets the middle class goat more than businessmen prospering and flaunting their money. Which is why even three decades after liberalisation, Congress leader Rahul Gandhi of the Nehru dynasty continues to excoriate India’s most successful entrepreneurs — Ambani-Adani — who have risen from rags to riches for ‘corruption’, i.e, transgression of absurd economic laws enacted by negligent Parliaments down the ages. The author details how PVNR steered and unshackled the Indian economy by stealth for fear of the academy/establishment. Following Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination in 1991, Rao had been appointed PM with the tacit sanction of his widow Sonia Gandhi, whose expectation was that as a former minister in Rajiv’s cabinet he would be a pliable caretaker PM and toe the socialist line. But this calculation went awry because unlike all previous prime ministers, Rao was genuinely educated. Jawaharlal, the only Nehru to earn a university degree, scraped through with a third class degree in natural sciences at Cambridge and was totally economics illiterate. However that didn’t stop him from upturning the Indian economy which had a thousand year tradition of free enterprise, and converting it into a “socialist pattern of society”. Central planning meant strangling private enterprise and establishing vast public sector enterprises (PSEs) managed by business-illiterate, risk-averse bureaucrats who quickly ran them into the ground. This arid socialism…
Revolutionary capital-intensive AI technologies and robots are spreading fear of lay-offs and part-time employment for workers tardy about re-skilling and upgrading their skills. The message is going out to all employees from executive suites downwards: upskill or else writes Dilip Thakore With the invention of a bewildering mix of new technologies — AI, machine learning, blockchain, robotics, bio-medicine, green energy, EV (electric vehicles) and new sustainable climate technologies — making headlines in the print, electronic and social media, pervasive fear of redundancy and obsolescence is spreading countrywide. In corporate offices across the country, managements are discussing the impact of disruptive new technologies as they struggle to remain competitive with domestic and off-shore competitors in markets slowed by global inflation and falling consumer demand. The message is going out to all employees from executive suites downwards: upskill or else. Revolutionary capital-intensive AI technologies and robots are spreading fear of lay-offs and part-time employment for workers tardy about re-skilling and upgrading their skills. Speaking to a Times of India reporter (June 12), Saurabh Govil, head of human resources at IT behemoth Wipro Ltd, warned that in the current business environment of economic slowdown and lower hiring, IT professionals should focus on upskilling. According to Govil, the IT and ITES (IT enabled services) industry has reached a level of “sanity” on the issue of salary increases. Increments will depend on individuals’ reskilling and upskilling themselves. “In 2021, people had a lot of opportunities, our attrition was high and people were being hired at 30 percent premiums. That will not happen now. Now, niche skills like generative AI and cybersecurity will get a premium,” said Govil. Govil’s remarks are indicative of corporate sentiment across the spectrum of India Inc. With competition and inflation exerting pressure on margins, top managements have to improve employee productivity and can’t afford to have change-resistant employees on their payrolls. The best companies are signing up their most promising managers for company-paid executive programmes offered by top-ranked B-schools in India and abroad. Less favoured managers are expected to sign up for after hours and week-end programmes to remain contemporary and acquire additional skills and apply them pronto, to avoid being sidelined or sent away to remote regional offices. This sudden fear of obsolescence is being experienced even on the factory shopfloors of Indian industry. “Across India Inc, especially in large companies confronted with the prospect of international competition, the new mantra is more with less. Although they pay high salaries, they are downsizing and expect managers to be multi-skilled and ahead of the learning curve in adopting new technologies. Therefore, savvy, on-the-ball professionals in IT and ITES companies are enrolling with edtech companies to become acquainted with new products and processes so they can change domains if necessary. Moreover 21st century young professionals are totally different from their predecessors who were content with steady progress up the corporate hierarchy. They appreciate the necessity of acquiring new skills to remain in the race. Most of them are also anxious to acquire…
The looming closure of dozens of insolvent universities in South Korea will change the distribution of students across the country, potentially furthering inequalities between its regions and capital city, say scholars. Korea’s rapid demographic decline has already resulted in university closures countrywide — and it is expected to get far worse. This year, the ministry of education identified 84 financially insolvent institutions that need to close. According to recent figures compiled by the Korean Council for University Education (KCUE), the representative association of four-year universities, in 2040, there will be approximately 280,000 students eligible to enter university — 39 percent down from 460,000 in 2020. Currently, universities are required by law to shut if a government audit finds they don’t serve enough students to justify their existence. Many hold on as long as possible, becoming “zombie universities”, with leaders keen to avoid giving up their remaining assets to the local or federal government upon closure, as required by law. Jun Yoo, a professor in the department of Korean language and literature at Yonsei University, says that unless the government incentivises struggling universities to close before they face insolvency, it will have no choice but to maintain its strict, numbers-based system for shuttering the institutions. “The government could pay them a certain amount of money to shut down. Otherwise, the only way is going down the draconian… quota route, but it will then create major inequalities as Seoul schools will see a surge of students, and the countryside could become ghost towns,” he says. Stuart Gietel-Basten, professor of social science and public policy at Khalifa University of Science and Technology and an expert in Asian demography, agrees that the moves would cause a redistribution of students countrywide. “It is pretty inevitable that we (will) see the rise and fall of the sector,” he says, noting that “place” will be a large factor in which universities remain standing. Federally and regionally-funded institutions would generally fare better than their non-subsidised counterparts, he predicts. “There will be a big difference between the private and public ones. The market will dictate how long the struggling private ones will last.” While most scholars Times Higher Education approached were reluctant to say that struggling institutions should throw in the towel early, Philip Altbach, research professor and distinguished fellow at the Center for International Higher Education, Boston College, says it seems like the best course of action in a difficult situation. “‘Assisted suicide’ might well be the best solution for surplus private universities — and authorities need to provide realistic plans,” he says. How Korea handles the oversupply of universities could be instructive for other sectors, Prof. Altbach adds, because other countries with falling populations and a large number of student seats will also need to devise a plan for closing universities. “Korea is of course not alone in facing these problems,” he says.her the information. Snobbery and a national obsession with old stone mean that it is still a struggle to see people in Palladian mansions as…
The moment when his chemistry master pulled out a pistol, declared it loaded and waved it in the air was “probably”, says Justin Webb, a broadcaster, the worst point of his boarding-school career. Winston Churchill would recall the floggings, done until pupils “bled freely” and screamed loudly. George Orwell writes of being beaten so violently that his headmaster broke his riding crop and “reduced me to tears”. That British boarding schools are odd places is not news. For several centuries and for fat fees, they provided the English upper classes with a ripping blend of architectural beauty and physical discomfort; with neoclassical corridors and cold showers; with lashings of Latin and just plain lashings. The pupils they produced were an equally idiosyncratic mix of the sophisticated and the childlike, mingling precocious brilliance with speech that never quite left the classroom. It was a heady brew and Britain was intoxicated by it: of the 57 British prime ministers, 20 went to Eton. As Boris Johnson, one of their number, might say: “Crikey!” Boarding schools are not yet in trouble. Their pupil numbers are relatively constant — around 70,000 — owing partly to masses of boarders from abroad. But their charms may be becoming easier to resist. Elite private schools are a less secure route into the top universities than they were. In 2014, 99 pupils from Eton were accepted into Oxbridge; in the 2021-22 school year, it managed 47. Brampton Manor Academy, a state school in London, had 54. This raises hard questions about value for money. Annual fees for Eton were a mere £861 (Rs.90,327) a year in Mr. Johnson’s era. Today, its fees are £15,432 “each half” (which, as Eton’s website explains, means thrice yearly — £46,296 per year). For this, Etonians enjoy one pool; two chapels; three “theatre spaces”; a composer-in-residence; a filmmaker-in-residence; a pet pianist; and a director of “inclusive education”, who notes that to promote diversity at Eton, it is important “to enable people to talk about uncomfortable things”. Like, say, those fees. Perhaps the most profound threat to boarding schools is more fundamental. And that is the idea that to send a child as young as seven or eight away from home is not privilege but brutality. First XI cricket; scones for tea; huzzahs all round — it will still be very wrong. Older adolescents might well find the experience less cruel, perhaps even a relief. But as John Bowlby, a psychologist who was the father of attachment theory, put it: “I wouldn’t send a dog away to boarding school at age seven.” Richard Beard, a writer who lacerates private schools in his book, Sad Little Men, echoes the theme. The architectural beauty and bells and whistles of boarding schools, he says, are like the label on a dog-food tin which “isn’t for the dog; it’s for the person buying it”. Psychologists increasingly argue that posh care leads to bad outcomes. In 2011, the term “boarding-school syndrome” was coined by Joy Schaverien, a psychotherapist, to…
In a first, Taiwan’s ministry of education has approved a so-called merger between a public and private institution — a policy initiative that scholars say could be a useful model for other universities also on the brink of closure. In late May, the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST), a public institution, got the go-ahead to take over the assets of Hwa Hsia, a private technical university, that this year filled only 42 percent of its capacity. The island struggles with a declining population — also a growing problem in other neighbouring higher education sectors, including in Hong Kong and South Korea, where dozens of universities are flagged for closure due to under-enrolment. The Union of Private School Educators, Taiwan (Uprise) disputes the ministry’s description of the move as a “merger”, saying existing laws do not permit such manoeuvres. Scholars speaking with Times Higher Education voiced similar views. Angela Yung Chi Hou, professor and associate dean at the College of Education, National Chengchi University, in Taiwan, says the process is different in key aspects from a traditional merger. “(From) my understanding, if two universities merge, they shall have equal rights to discuss future development. The case indeed demonstrates that Hwa Hsia does not have any other choice but to close or dissolve the board of trustees,” she says. Even so, she believes the move, which she characterises as a takeover allowing NTUST to make use of Hwa Hsia’s infrastructure, is a good way forward — and potentially a solution for other struggling universities so they could avoid millions of pounds of infrastructure going unused. According to media reports, current Hwa Hsia students will be able to complete their degrees, although the university is not accepting new applicants.
Teheran’s past policies of allowing Iran’s higher education sector to “blindly develop” to absorb students facing a tough jobs market have exacerbated current high rates of graduate unemployment. According to figures recently released by the Statistical Center of Iran, roughly one million university graduates in the country are currently unemployed, making up 37 percent of the total unemployed population at a time of soaring inflation. While academics expressed reservations about the accuracy of the official figures, they agreed the situation is concerning. Amin Mohseni-Cheraghlou, assistant professor of economics at American University, says job prospects have not been helped by the recent proliferation of higher education institutions. “The government has allowed for more and more private universities to come to existence to absorb more and more of the unemployed youth and delay their entrance into the labour market — basically kicking the can down the road,” he says. This has made the labour problem worse, he continues, with many graduates underemployed: not having enough paid work or taking a position that doesn’t make full use of their education — or both. The higher education policy has had “unintended consequences” for the government, which faces the more difficult task of satisfying university-educated youth with high aspirations than of accommodating high school graduates, he notes. Roohola Ramezani, a researcher in Iranian studies at the IFK International Research Center for Cultural Studies in Vienna, agrees. “Over certain periods in the past, higher education has been blindly developed to postpone the unemployment crisis. So the unemployment is partly transmitted from a less to a higher-educated population.” If the current trend continues, he says, it will lead to Iran’s “higher education bubble” bursting as more people realise that a university degree does not guarantee them a job. Women fare much worse than men in the current situation: about 70 percent of female graduates are unemployed, almost three times the rate of male graduates (25 percent), according to official statistics. Academics say this has been a long-lasting problem tied to traditional gender roles — with women tasked with more domestic duties and with families sometimes not permitting their daughters to work — and to discrimination in hiring. “With the new policies of (promoting) population (growth) and childbearing, I think the gender gap might get bigger,” says Dr. Ramezani.
The University of California at Berkeley is starting a new college of computer and data science, in what it expects might become a nationwide model for coping with the field’s surging and often unmet demand. UC Berkeley, like many US campuses, has been overpowered by the rapid rise in interest in computing in recent years, with huge increases in graduate numbers without sufficient staff and infrastructure to cope with demand. California’s flagship public institution sees creation of the College of Computing, Data Science, and Society — UC Berkeley’s first new college in more than 50 years — as a way of helping the campus cope by consolidating the deluge of demand and then better allocating it. A key step will be tackling the data-science element via partnerships with faculty in other fields, says John DeNero, associate dean of undergraduate studies at the new computing college. These scholars might not teach computer programming, but have enough expertise in the computer-related aspects of their own specialities to teach courses about data usage, he explains. “Data science fundamentally is more scalable on the Berkeley campus because it involves faculty from all over, instead of mostly faculty from one department,” adds DeNero. Overall, the challenge facing UC Berkeley and US universities looks imposing. The average number of students in computer science fields nationwide has increased by more than six times its 2006 level, according to the latest annual compilation by the Computing Research Association (CRA). UC Berkeley has nearly 2,000 graduates a year in computer science and data science, up from just 200 a decade ago, and now representing almost a quarter of the university’s total undergraduate degrees. Data science accounts for close to half of those 2,000 graduates, after holding almost no share just five years ago. CRA says that since this nationwide enrolment surge began 20 years ago, the number of US teaching faculty in computer science fields had grown at only about half the rate of the growth in the number of students, and the number of tenure-track faculty has grown by only one-tenth the rate of enrolment growth. “The undergraduate population continues to grow, but there’s a smaller growth in teaching resources,” says Elizabeth Bizot, a senior research associate at CRA. UC Berkeley sets norms often followed at other institutions, and consolidation of its computer-science fields into a new college is not the only step it is taking. After much internal debate, says DeNero, UC Berkeley is also changing the two main ways that students get admitted as computer-science majors. Those accepted into computer science as part of their admission to the university will now be guaranteed a space, starting this academic year, ending a system by which they had to meet a grade-point-average threshold during a set of initial courses. And for students who try to switch into the computer-science major after their acceptance to the university, the opportunity will be allowed only in the sophomore year, and the decision will be based on a “holistic” assessment rather than…
-Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru) Professor Dame Heather McGregor is Provost and Vice Principal of the vintage Heriot-Watt University (HWU, estb.1821), Edinburgh’s Dubai campus, which has 4,500 undergrad, postgrad and doctoral students on its muster rolls. Newspeg. Prof. Heather was in Bengaluru on April 26-27 to further enhance this Scottish university’s profile and visibility among potential students in India, and address a well-attended alumni meet. Of HWU-Dubai’s enrolment of over 4,500 students, approximately half are from India or of Indian origin. History. A polymath with decades of teaching and industry experience, McGregor is an agriculture marketing and business management alumna of Newcastle and London universities who pressed on to research for a Ph D in finance from the University of Hong Kong. Moreover, she is also a qualified chartered global management accountant (CGMA), a Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (PFHEA) and a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Beginning her professional career as an investment banker, in 2004 she went solo and established a global personnel search firm which she led for 17 years, before switching tracks into higher education. In 2016, she was appointed Executive Dean of the Edinburgh Business School at HWU, Scotland and was deputed to take charge as provost and Vice Principal of its Dubai campus in September 2022. Direct talk. “Dubai is an attractive higher education destination for students from India for a variety of reasons. The quality of education is good. This cosmopolitan city is only a short flight from India, student accommodation costs are much lower compared to other parts of the world, cultural assimilation is easy, and the low crime rate and strong commitment to law and order makes students, especially women, feel safe. HWU’s business, engineering, and IT-related programmes have always been popular among Indian students. However, with the pace of digital and technological transformation, more students are choosing to enrol in artificial intelligence, data sciences and digital marketing programmes. Currently, with renewable energy and sustainability goals jumping to the top of global agendas, our programmes in sustainable engineering have also become very popular. Moreover, our average undergraduate tuition fee at $18,200 (Rs.14.92 lakh) per year, is comparatively lower than the $26,000-40,000 in the US. Through our strong industry-academia partnerships in Dubai, we are committed to our parent HWU’s philosophy of producing industry-ready graduates,” says Dame Heather. Future plans. Recently granted Initial Institutional Licensure by the UAE Ministry of Education through the Commission for Academic Accreditation (CAA), which acknowledges high quality academic provision, HWU-Dubai is in the process of upgrading all its undergrad and postgrad programmes. “Although we are based in Dubai, our study programmes and curricula are on a par with our parent university in the UK, which is ranked among the Top 40 in the UK and in the Top 250 globally by QS World University Rankings 2024,” says McGregor. A higher education option worthy of serious consideration.
-Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru) Preeti Bhandary is co-founder of Learning Edge India Pvt. Ltd, Bengaluru. The company is franchisor of the 130-strong chain of Little Elly preschools in India and two overseas (Kathmandu, Seattle), which provide early childhood care and education (ECCE) to children aged six months-5-years. Little Elly’s early childhood curriculum — which draws from teaching-learning pedagogies of Dr. Maria Montessori and Rudolf Steiner — focuses on the physical, intellectual, emotional, and social development of preschool children, and is delivered by a team of 600 well-trained teachers worldwide. Newspeg. Early this year (January), Bhandary promoted two owned preschools in Mumbai and Pune, the first Little Elly preschool in Maharashtra. History. A science postgraduate of Mumbai University and a Montessori trained teacher, Bhandary acquired eight years of teaching and admin experience managing the Salmiya Playschool in Kuwait, where she moved soon after her marriage with husband Vittal. The couple returned to India in 2002 and established their first preschool in Bengaluru under the name of Little Elly (after Lord Ganesha) in 2004. Direct talk. “Within six months of the first Little Elly preschool, we promoted two more in the city. A year after their successful operation, we were approached by several aspiring ECCE educators who were aligned with our philosophy and vision, whom we appointed franchisees. Although my husband Vittal has been the main force behind Little Elly’s marketing, our chain of 130 franchised preschools has grown mainly by word of mouth publicity. That’s because our owned schools and carefully selected franchisees have built a strong, trustworthy reputation for the brand. Our reputation grew because we provided an innovative curriculum, high-quality teacher training and templates for parental involvement, safety and hygiene,” says Bhandary, explaining the secret of her success. In 2010, the founders of Little Elly preschools introduced Elly Childcare for multinational corporates, offering its ECCE curriculum and daycare services within and adjacent to corporate premises. Clients include: ITC, TVS Motors, Wipro, Alstom among others across Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Andhra. Five years on, their first CBSE-affiliated K-12 school under the name and brand of Glentree Academy was established which has since expanded to three campuses in Bengaluru. Future plans. Encouraged by enthusiastic public response to the Little Elly style of ECCE, Bhandary has drawn up ambitious expansion plans for India and overseas. “We are all set to welcome 50 new franchisees. By partnering with committed educators — mostly women edupreneurs — we intend to provide our well-established model of quality ECCE to communities in some western and southern states. Next year, we plan to promote our first owned Little Elly preschool in Dubai. I believe we have developed an ECCE model that will be accepted everywhere,” says Bhandary.
-Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru) Yogesh Kochhar, an arts and business management postgrad of Punjab University and the American Graduate University (Miami), and Harvansh Chawla, an alum of Delhi University and a Supreme Court lawyer of 25 years standing, are co-founders of the YOL (YourOneLife) Foundation, Dharamshala (YOLF, estb.2019). Following five years of deep research the foundation has developed a mobile app (YOL), a Happiness Program, which can dramatically improve students’ socio-emotional, happiness and intelligence quotients. YOL enables them to control and calibrate their usage of distracting social media swamped with information overload. The YOL Happiness Program has received top-level global endorsement. The not-for-profit YOLF has Prof. Phoebe Koundouri, Chair of the UN SDG-Europe and a member of the Evaluation Committee of the Nobel Foundation; Dr. Saamdu Chetri, founding former executive director, Gross National Happiness Centre, Bhutan, and Prof. Philip Kotler, Distinguished Professor of Marketing of the Kellogg School of Management, Illinois (USA), on its Board of Advisors and Validators. Newspeg. Since the app was launched in early 2022, it has also been endorsed by Prof. Anil Sahasrabudhe, former chairman of AICTE, and is receiving “the serious attention” of Dr. Padmakali Banerji, Vice Chancellor of Sir Padampat Singhania University, Udaipur; Prof. J.P. Pandey, Vice Chancellor of Abdul Kalam Tech University, Lucknow; and Prof. R. Velraj, Vice Chancellor of Anna University, Chennai. According to Kochhar, these institutions are all set to introduce the YOL Happiness Program as a 2/4 credits course blended with a major. It will be accessible on customised apps acquired and owned by these institutions, in the new academic year 2023-24 beginning this month. History. After graduating from Punjab University and American Graduate University, Miami, Kochhar acquired over three decades of corporate experience with several blue-chip companies in India (Tata Tea, Essar, Microsoft India), the UK and UAE before a chance encounter in 2013 with American psychiatrist-author Harold Bloomfield made him aware of the urgency of finding a solution for young social media addicts incrementally becoming “devoid of purpose, objectives and destination”. Following this epiphany, he quit corporate life to take an entirely different path. Together with Chawla, he promoted the Dharamshala-based YOL Foundation in 2019. “Our goal was to develop an app-based YOL Happiness Program that would enable children and youth to reclaim their minds from the digital social media ocean in which they are adrift. With a six-member team of highly qualified designers, we have developed the YOL Happiness Program App which enables people to measure the time they spend on social media leisure apps Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat etc — and suggests ways and means to cut back and engage in creative learning,” says Kochhar, also a member of the World Happiness Foundation, Florida (USA). After the formal launch of YOL in early 2022, Yogi and his team made a presentation to then AICTE chairman Prof. Anil Sahasrabudhe, who immediately resonated with its objectives, stating that it will “rescue the mind on the same phone that stole it.” Direct talk. “The app not only measures time spent on…
-Aartie Rau (Mumbai) Dr. Amrita Rajpal is founder of Edu Learrn Grow (ELG, estb.2019), a Mumbai-based education consultancy which provides well-researched curriculums, teacher development programmes, schools promotion and franchising solutions for the early childhood care and education (ECCE) sector. She is also co-founder of The ABCD Show, an online platform where experts share best ECCE practices, and Territory Head (Mumbai) of the Early Childhood Association of India. Over the past 25 years, this committed ECCE professional has enabled the promotion of over 200 preschools countrywide. Newspeg. In April, Rajpal led a successful workshop on ‘Conducting observations and assessments for the early years’ for teachers of the Children’s Academy Group of three schools in Mumbai, followed by workshops for the Pawar and Symbiosis groups of schools in May-June. History. Married young at 19, Rajpal became a mother at 21 years. A graduate of Mumbai University, her foray into education started with a part-time job at a local preschool. “While working there, my interest in child development grew to the extent that I was motivated to start studying again and I enrolled in a course in early childhood education,” recalls Rajpal, who began her career with Kangaroo Kids Education. Driven by “a strong desire to continuously learn and upskill,” Rajpal completed a post-graduate diploma in early childhood education from the New Zealand Tertiary College and certificate courses from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Earlier this year in March, she was awarded a doctorate in early childhood education by the Theophany University, Haiti. Direct talk. “After a successful 12-year stint with Kangaroo Kids, I knew the time was right to start my own enterprise and share my expertise with the larger community of ECCE educators, in particular, edupreneurs who wanted to venture into this sector. Since then, ELG has enabled establishment of over 200 preschools countrywide, providing them aid, advice and well-researched ECCE curriculums and innovative pedagogies to create engaging learning environments for youngest children. In 2020, I also co-founded the online ABCD Show to share best ECCE practices. A greater part of my career as an educationist has been spent in disseminating best practices to develop children’s thinking and inquiry skills from youngest age,” she says. Future plans. Rajpal has recently signed up as consultant with Taabur, a startup. “I plan to share my learning to make Taabur the go-to online platform for parents to access meaningful early development activities for children as well as provide parenting sessions. I have a busy calendar in the new academic year for conducting professional development workshops for teachers,” says Rajpal, who is also half-way through writing a book for educators which she hopes to publish by year-end. Wind in your sails!
-Dilip Thakore (Bengaluru) In the provision of education services and attracting students from abroad, the Federal Republic of Germany (pop. 85 million) — Europe’s wealthiest and most technologically advanced country — is an also-ran despite higher education being provided almost free of charge to all, including foreign students. This is a situation that Dr. Ing (Engineering) Carsten Schröder, co-founder and Managing Director of the German Academy of Digital Education (DADB, estb. 2018), wants to change. “We intend to bring cutting-edge world-class technology knowledge from Germany to engineering students and corporates in India and countries of the Global South, which includes South Asia and Africa,” says Schröder. Newspeg. Last month (June), Dr. Schröder embarked on a tour of India, visiting DADB’s potential and existing partners. DADB’s online upskilling programs cover a wide range of new-age engineering technologies such as 5G, advanced communication networks, electro-mobility, Industry 4.0 / Internet of Things, renewable energy and bio-mass technology. Corporate clients include Fraunhofer, Siemens, Rohde and Schwarz, Nokia, Intel, and Qualcomm. Moreover, several top-ranked universities in India have partnered with DADB for student and faculty programs. They include BITS-Pilani, IIIT-Kottayam, Lovely Professional University, Bennett University, and R.V. College, Bengaluru. History. An industrial engineering graduate of the Technical University of Berlin, research scholar at the Fraunhofer Research Society, Berlin for six years and Managing Director of the National Academy of Engineering, Munich for a decade (2001-2011), in 2015, Schröder went solo and established S2M, a Berlin-based technology transfer “science to market” company. Three years later in 2018, he also promoted DADB to “transfer globally-admired engineering knowledge in higher education from Germany to the world, and particularly to India and the emerging countries of Asia and Africa.” Direct talk. “DADB is the first company to share Germany’s globally respected engineering expertise. From our studios in Berlin, a team of 50 highly skilled professionals, including scientific editors, graphic designers, and lecturers, provide engaging digital content to university students and working professionals in the Global South to enable them to acquire the latest applicable knowledge drawn from German universities and industry. It’s important to note that DADB is not an engineering education platform like Coursera and EdX. We own and produce our own content and provide short-duration — two/three-week summer and winter programs for university students, and year-round programs for professional engineers to learn and apply latest technologies from German industry. The purpose is to make university students job and start-ups ready and provide professional engineers cutting edge knowledge advantage,” says Schröder. Future plans. With German companies including Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Volkswagen, Bosch, Thyssen-Krupp, and Airbus, among others, having established excellent reputations in India, Schröder is bullish about DADB’s prospects in this country. “We have already received a warm welcome from the academy and industry. I believe our engineering upskilling programs can give a huge productivity push to India’s youth and industry,” says this highly-qualified and accomplished educator-entrepreneur with a sharing and caring mindset.
All school teachers must become familiar with Chat GPT as soon as possible. They should utilise its speedy capability to produce lesson plans, worksheets and assessments writes Lawrence Fray Nations are vying for Artificial Intelligence (AI) supremacy, businesses are harnessing it for their own ends and educators need to come to terms with it. It’s clear that its potential benefits can revolutionise teaching-learning processes, improve learning outcomes, and facilitate student success. It can help teachers plan, assess and evaluate learners as groups and individuals, and enable them to draw important inferences from student data to inform their own teaching and formulate plans for whole school development. Chat GPT. Chat GPT is an AI chatbot that provides conversational responses based on its immediate evaluation of the user’s requirements. However, the responses need to be checked before incorporating them into any official communication as Chat GPT can, and does, make mistakes although it continues to learn and improve. Download it to your computer and your phone and ask it what you will; it’s always ready to help. And, at the time of writing, it’s free-of-charge. Chat GPT is becoming popular because it can interact with students as smoothly as a human. It can match its communication level to the learner’s so there are no barriers to comprehension. Better still, the learner’s self-confidence increases as she is in charge of terminating the conversation at the click of a mouse. Students can certainly use AI to improve learning. It has become the quintessential tutor with an ever-expanding database greater than any individual could have hoped for. Inevitably, there is a downside. Chat GPT could be used to sidestep the learning process by commanding it to churn out essays and solutions without the student making the necessary effort to engage with the teacher’s lessons. Yet a basic law of education, which states that ‘effective learning is proportional to effort’ cannot be circumvented. True, in a matter of seconds, Chat GPT can provide a completed assignment that otherwise would take a student substantial time and effort to research and produce. But such misuse of AI-based learning platforms not only replaces proper learning with easy solutions (with disaster looming when examination time comes around), it also hampers the development of critical thinking and problem-solving skills of students. More seditiously, it can trivialise the importance of teacher-student interaction. In short, there are great differences between a student’s use of Chat GPT to clear doubts and another who deploys it as a homework-generator. Like all discoveries throughout history, it is the user’s intention, rather than the creation itself, which determines the consequences. Against this backdrop, let’s examine the role of AI in four main areas of the teaching-learning transaction. Planning for learning. All school teachers must become familiar with Chat GPT as soon as possible. They should utilise its speedy capability to produce lesson plans, worksheets and assessments for specific age groups on any topic when properly prompted. Moreover as a lesson planning tool, it is truly a blessing.…
Although Prime Minister Modi gave a good account of himself in his recent state visit to the US and perhaps even charmed President Biden and the general populace, Modi bhakts should resist the temptation to interpret this bonhomie as blanket endorsement of BJP rule over India during the past decade. That the word ‘democracy’ was mentioned over a dozen times in the speeches of the two leaders, is a subtle indicator that the US expects the Modi administration to practice democracy in the full sense of the word, i.e, improve its human rights, especially its minority rights protection record, if it is to expect large-scale American technology transfer and investment. There’s no doubt that the US establishment has been spooked by the astonishingly swift rise of Communist China into a high-tech superpower capable of challenging the US in the global arena. As recently as 2001, the US had smoothed the way for China to enter the WTO as a less developed country entitled to duty-free imports into the US, and American multinationals such as GM, GE and Apple were officially encouraged to establish large supply chain subsidiaries in the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Furthermore, research students from China were given free passes into American cutting edge technology establishments. Only recently has the American polity become aware that the assumption that liberalisation if not democracy, would spread in China as it prospered, was a monumental mistake. Now with China having grown into a Frankenstein ready to absorb Southeast Asia into its sphere of influence, only the world’s most populous country with a 430 million middle class can be transformed into a counterweight to the PRC. It’s not love of PM Modi, but fear of President Xi Jingping, who far from liberalising modern China, is tightening the grip of the 100 million-strong all-pervasive CPC (Communist Party of China) over the country, that has prompted the American re-discovery of India. Modi bhakts, please note.
The reason why India’s landmark economic liberalisation and deregulation initiative of 1991 has not delivered double digit rates of annual economic growth it should have during two decades past, is because closet commies and bolshies within the Academy are not yet convinced that capitalism aka free markets, is the best prescription for rapid economic growth. This despite overwhelming evidence that the world’s wealthiest countries — including communist China — are free market economies. Evidence that free markets work best is provided by the recently concluded Indian Premier League Cricket Championship. Since the highly monetised limited (20) overs championship matches began in 2008, the Board of Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) has become the world’s wealthiest cricket governing council. In the recently concluded IPL 2023, revenue aggregated a massive Rs.9,978 crore. Dozens of cricket players from obscure towns and no-hope backgrounds have been auctioned, bought and sold for crores of rupees, earning huge playing fees and transforming into millionaires. Moreover, cricket stars from the world over have lined up to participate in this tournament. This cornucopia is in sharp contrast to the pre-new millennium era when BCCI was controlled by government. The match fees paid to our great cricket stars of yesteryear such as Vinoo Mankad and Polly Umrigar aggregated Rs.500 per test; they travelled to test match venues by second class train and lived in poky three-star hotels. Today, following the vast riches in BCCI coffers, even Ranji Trophy (inter-state tournament) and junior cricketers travel by air and are accommodated in five-star hotels, making it a win-win situation for all. Time for lefty and bolshie academics to acknowledge that free markets, aka capitalism, works.
News that HDFC Bank and HDFC (Housing Development Corporation) Holdings have merged to form HDFC Bank, the fourth largest lender in the world by market cap, is a great leap forward for an economy whose housing stock is arguably the worst worldwide. Over 80 percent of the country’s 260 million households live in dilapidated homes averaging 500 sq. ft in urban India, and in rural India a large number of families live in thatched roof dwellings. Hopefully the merged entity will extend its operations to affordable housing for the masses which was its prime objective when HDFC was promoted way back in 1977. However, this objective has remained unrealised because the corporation has restricted itself to providing term loans to the urban middle and upper classes. This landmark initiative has poignant memories for your correspondent because as founding-editor of Business India, I strongly supported the promotion of HDFC, India’s first housing loans company launched due to determined efforts of the late H.T. Parekh (1911-1994). I was indignant that housing loans long-established in the UK (as building society loans) were not permitted under India’s cock-eyed socialist dispensation. Therefore when HDFC acquired the all-important licence to dispense home loans, we fully endorsed its promotion and celebrated it in print. To the extent that when HT’s nephew Deepak Parekh was appointed managing director — a classic case of nepotism which was criticised by bolshie journalists — we justified it. However when EducationWorld was launched in 1999 and was struggling to remain afloat, Deepak – a powerhouse in Indian finance — declined to support it notwithstanding our commitment to raising standards in public education, the sine qua non of national development. Simultaneously, he made no effort to lead HDFC into the affordable housing segment, which could have been essayed by cross-subsidisation of interest rates. Therefore well into the 21 century, India remains a country for the middle class, of the middle class and by the middle class in which over 800 million citizens, deprived of half-decent education, live in shanties that are an affront to human dignity. A disappointment on two counts.
Even as the government school system has proved a monumental failure with a steady exodus of children into private schools, in all 28 states and eight Union territories rents-seeking bureaucrats are tying up private school promoters and managements in red tape and nit-picking minutiae, writes Abhishree Choudhary, Bhavna Mundhra & Prisha Saxena Although post-independence India’s infamous licence-permit-quota raj in industry substantially ended in 1991 with the landmark liberalisation and deregulation of the Indian economy, it is alive and kicking in Indian education, K-12 education in particular. Even as the public (government) school system has proved a monumental failure with a steady exodus of children into private schools, in all 28 states and eight Union territories rents-seeking bureaucrats are tying up private school promoters and managements in red tape and nit-picking minutiae. For instance in the southern state of Karnataka (pop.69 million), over 1,000 private schools are under the guillotine for sundry charges ranging from adding new classes without official permission, levying unreasonable fees, teaching in the English medium and claiming to be CBSE/CISCE-affiliated schools pending approval of affiliation applications. On February 15, the state’s education ministry said that “criminal charges” will be filed against 1,316 ‘unauthorised’ private unaided schools for contravention of various provisions of the Karnataka Education Act 1983.
-Autar Nehru (Delhi) A class IX student of Prelude Public School, Agra, Akshar Mishra is the latest teen to join India’s league of young novelists. On April 8, this 14-year-old’s second novel The World of Magic Powers (Himanshu Publications) was released at Prelude School jointly by Dr. Prateep Philip (former DGP, Tamil Nadu & author), Salim Arif (writer and theatre director) and Girija Shankar (senior journalist-author). This is the young writer’s second novel after Dozen Spurring Tales (2019) which has thus far sold 1,500 copies, the proceeds of which have gone to a local cancer charity. Inspired by J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, the novels are a potpourri of fantasy and sci-fi. “Akshar’s class teacher Pooja mam identified his writing skills in early age and took on the responsibility of editing 12 of his best stories for inclusion in his first novel. When the teacher made a mention of Akshar’s talent during a conversation with the school’s Director-Principal Dr. Sushil Gupta, he read the manuscript and instantly approached a Delhi-based publisher he knew. Dozen Spurring Tales (price: Rs.99) was finally released on April 11, 2019 at Prelude Public School thanks to Dr. Gupta. With such an encouraging management, I believe this school deserves to be ranked Agra #1 in the EW India School Rankings,” says Akshar’s father Shabd. The Mishras chose to move from the maximum city Mumbai in 2008 to Agra’s Dayalbagh Ashram where “life is all about purity, commitment, dedication, hard work, honesty & simplicity”. This enabled Akshar to devote a lot of time to reading and writing. When Covid hit India and the world went online, Akshar hand wrote his second book which was edited and proof-read by his senior school English teacher Ranjana Gupta. To transform into a novelist, young Akshar practices time management. “I make sure I read for two hours every day after completing my homework. But I also make time for sports and games and I’m in the school football team. The advantage I have is that I don’t have distractions like television or digital gizmos. So I have plenty of time for writing,” says this disciplined young author. Aspiring to study computer science after completing class XII, Akshar wants to become a social entrepreneur which will provide him “plenty of material” to continue writing on the side.
-Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru) Team Udaan comprising Prisha Dubey, Anupriya Nayak and Vanalika Konwar — all class XII students of Amity International School, Saket, New Delhi — was adjudged winner of the inaugural Corporate Social Responsibility Program of Samsung (India) — Solve for Tomorrow (SFT) 2022 National Innovation Competition, for developing an eco-friendly, affordable and washable sanitary pad. At the grand finale staged in Andaz Hotel in New Delhi last November, the Top 3 teams received a grant of Rs.1 crore and a six-month incubation for their project at IIT-Delhi. On March 30, the team incorporated Menstrumate Pvt. Ltd. An initiative of technology conglomerate Samsung (India), SFT 2022 attracted participation of 18,000 students in the 16-22 years age group who showcased their creative and innovative skills to solve real-world problems. The Top 10 teams qualified for the finals after six months of rigorous training and mentoring by experts from Samsung and knowledge partner Foundation for Innovation and Technology Transfer (FITT), IIT-Delhi. The winning team attributes a large part of their achievement to school support. “We are immensely grateful to Vice Principal Dr. Alka Saxena without whose support we would never have been able to complete the project. We did the initial research in the Atal Tinkering Lab of our school, and our teachers helped us develop a preliminary business model,” says Team Udaan spokesperson Vanalika. Currently focused on holding workshops for underprivileged girl children in partnership with ‘Amitasha’, a women-centric initiative of the Amity Group, Team Udaan has ambitious plans for the future. “We intend to introduce our product in the market and make it accessible in the remotest corners of the country. Once this is achieved, our prime goal is to transform our company into a women-centric innovation hub that not only facilitates healthcare through tech, but also raises social awareness around key issues,” says Vanalika. Wind beneath your wings!
Sited on a green 80-acre campus in Montreal, the largest city of the Francophone province of Quebec, McGill is consistently ranked among the world’s Top 50 universities by THE and QS, writes Reshma Ravishanker Founded in 1821, McGill University is one of Canada’s — and the world’s — most reputed institutions of higher learning. This 202-year-old publicly-funded university is consistently ranked among the world’s Top 50 higher education institutions. In the latest QS World University Rankings 2023, McGill is ranked #31 worldwide and in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2023, #46. Sited on a green 80-acre campus in Montreal (pop.1.7 million), the largest city of the Francophone province of Quebec, McGill offers a rich menu of academic programmes. The university’s 25 faculties and professional schools offer undergraduate and postgrad degrees in over 300 academic disciplines to 39,513 students mentored by 1,778 faculty. The extensive range of academic subjects offered includes computer science, agricultural economics, management, environment, chemistry, finance, music and psychology. McGill has an interesting history. In 1813, James McGill, a Scottish immigrant who prospered in Montreal, bequeathed £10,000 and a 46-acre estate to found the Royal Institution for the Advancement of Learning — later named after him — to provide quality education for Quebec’s minority English-descent population. Chartered in 1821, McGill began instruction in 1829 with the establishment of its faculty of medicine. The faculty of arts followed in 1843 succeeded by modern languages, commercial studies and science. Indian origin scientist Prof. H. Deep Saini is the incumbent 18th Vice Chancellor of the varsity. The university is also a pioneer of sports education. The world’s first modern football game was played in 1874 between teams of McGill and Harvard universities. Moreover, it was a McGill graduate, James Naismith, who invented the game of basketball. The university website also claims that “McGill is arguably the birthplace of hockey”. Montreal. Canada’s second largest urban area, Montreal’s thriving commercial centre is within a few blocks from McGill’s main campus. A student-friendly multilingual city — English and French are the most spoken languages — it ranks #1 in Canada and #6 worldwide in the QS Best Student Cities Index 2019. Housing rents are low, as is the crime rate. Commuting is also convenient with provision of excellent public transport services. The old parts of Montreal near the harbour have been carefully restored to their 18th century splendour although new contemporary office towers built over the past two decades dominate areas near the university. The city also hosts modern shopping complexes and an eclectic mix of restaurants serving cuisines from around the world. Montreal has cold, snowy winters while summers are warm. Temperatures range between 50C to -100C in winter and 180C-210C in summer. Campus facilities. McGill is spread across three campuses: Downtown (80 acres), MacDonald (1,600 acres) and Gault Nature Reserve (2,470 acres). McGill’s historic tree-lined main Downtown Montreal campus is an oasis of green at the foot of Mount Royal Park, whose summit hosts the largest and finest urban park…
Promoted in 1978, VS has earned a well-deserved reputation in the national capital for providing holistic, values-based, culturally-rooted education to its 4,600 students, writes autar nehru Named after Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), India’s most influential philosopher-seer and social reformer, Vivekanand School, Delhi (VS, estb.1978) has earned a well-deserved reputation in the national capital for providing holistic, values-based, culturally-rooted K-12 education to its 4,600 students tutored by 200 teachers. Sited on a four-acre campus in the upscale Anand Vihar suburb, the co-ed VS is affiliated with the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). In the latest EW India School Rankings 2022-23, VS is ranked among Delhi’s Top 60 co-ed day schools with high scores on the parameters of academic reputation, faculty competence and co-curricular education. Promoted in 1978 by Y.D. Ahuja, a former mayor of Delhi (1988-89), under the aegis of Vivekanand Shiksha Samiti (regstd. as a society in 1978), VS began its innings as a cluster of 13 neighbourhood private schools scattered across residential colonies in the trans-Yamuna area. In 1987, the society was allotted a four-acre plot in Anand Vihar by the Delhi Development Authority, after which all affiliates were merged to form the Vivekanand School in 1989. In addition, the society owns and manages a primary school with 400 students in Preet Vihar, 5 km from its main campus. “Education at Vivekanand School is deeply rooted in the belief that children develop optimally when delivered a balanced education combining rigorous academics with latest pedagogies supplemented by sports, co-curricular and most important, values education. Therefore, while our education philosophy is firmly anchored in Indian culture, spiritualism and traditions, our curriculum and pedagogies are contemporary, integrating newest technologies and best global practices,” says Pradyumn Ahuja, an engineering alumnus of IP University, Delhi, who took charge as chairman of the school in 2016 from Ahuja senior, who had steered it for 38 years. Since his appointment as chairman seven years ago, Ahuja has introduced several teaching-learning, student support and well-being innovations. “All our systems and processes are being re-directed towards a student-first approach. For instance, we have recently issued a directive under which every student is obliged to participate in academic and co-curricular activities in a micromanaged enabling classroom environment and several mapped appreciation and recognition events. This has resulted in improved learning outcomes across the board,” he says. The school’s comprehensive education philosophy and student-centred systems have paid off handsomely. VS students have consistently excelled in academics. In the recently concluded 2023 CBSE class X exam, the average score of the 358-strong cohort was 77 percent and in the class XII boards, the average score of students was 80 percent with 126 students averaging above 90 percent. Moreover, 13 students cleared the IIT-JEE Advanced this year, and an average of ten students have been securing scholarships every year in the highly competitive Mukhyamantri Vigyan Pratibha Pariksha Scheme (MVPPS), a scholarship programme of the Delhi government to promote science subjects among secondary students. Progressive pedagogies, rigorous curriculum and well-trained teachers apart,…
“Education is the cornerstone of the bond between India and the United States. Students from both countries are learning and growing alongside each other, discovering the people that they want to become and building a better world together. Working side by side, our nations can create a safer, healthier, more prosperous future for everyone.” Jill Biden, First Lady of the US, at the Skilling for Future event attended by Indian prime minister Narendra Modi in Washington (June 22) “The third decade of the last century gave new momentum to the struggle for India’s independence. Now the third decade of the new century will give impetus to the development journey of India. The large number of upcoming universities, colleges, IITs, IIMs and AIIMS are becoming the building blocks of new India.” Prime minister Narendra Modi speaking at the centenary celebrations of Delhi University (The Hindu, June 30) “We’ve seen them – Snapchat, TikTok and several others – serve as places where violent gatherings have been organised, but there’s also a form of mimicry of the violence, which for some young people leads them to lose touch with reality. You get the impression that for some of them, they are experiencing on the street the video games that have intoxicated them.” Emmanuel Macron, President of France, on the role played by social media in fuelling the recent riots in France (Al Jazeera, June 30) “Byju’s and its investors assumed and pushed huge growth rates… Educational brands take a long time to build. Some of the world’s top institutions have been around for centuries. It takes at least a few decades, not a few quarters. Neither can you see education as a pre “maximise financial-returns’ product.” Chetan Bhagat, well-known author, on the steady downfall of India’s most valued edtech company Byju’s (Times of India, July 3)
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) Under provisions of the Constitution of India and well-established conventions, just as the President of India, the ceremonial Head of State, is obliged to act on the advice of the council of ministers, i.e, the Central government, similarly the Governors (appointed by the Central government) of India’s 28 states and eight Union territories are obliged to act only on the advice of state governments. Essentially, state governors are the eyes and ears of the Central government appointed by the Centre to preserve the unity of the country. But while it’s the obligation of governors to act and issue orders solely on the advice of the duly elected state governments, in instances when they are formed by political parties opposed to government at the Centre, state governors are often encouraged to make life difficult for their governments. In West Bengal (pop.91 million) which has been ruled by the Trinamool Congress led by its fiery three-term chief minister Mamata Banerjee since 2011, the state government is less than enamoured with the BJP government at the Centre. This antagonism has been mutual and during the past few years, Jagdeep Dhankar, former governor of West Bengal (now Vice President of India), publicly criticised the TMC government on several issues including maintenance of law and order and conduct of assembly elections. Under well-established convention, state governors are also required ex-officio to serve as Chancellors of government universities in all states and Union territories. On June 1, the state’s new governor C.V. Ananda Bose, who assumed office last November, unilaterally appointed 11 interim vice chancellors including of the top-ranked University of Calcutta and Jadavpur University after completion of tenures of the previous incumbents, an initiative criticised by state education minister Bratya Basu as illegal as the state government had not been consulted. “Moreover as per University Grants Commission rules, ten years of academic experience at the professor level is mandatory and most of the appointees don’t have this qualification,” Basu told the media. However, with ten of the 11 appointees having accepted office, on June 12, the higher education department sent a notice asking the appointees “not to draw pay and allowances applicable to the vice-chancellor of a state-aided university and that any non-compliance will be viewed seriously”. In Bengal, the salary of a senior professor of a public university is Rs.2.10 lakh per month and of a vice chancellor Rs.2.40 lakh. This confrontation between Raj Bhavan (governor’s official residence) and the TMC has been building up for a while. In April, Bose had issued a circular asking all VCs to send weekly reports to Raj Bhavan. At that time, the education ministry had objected to the circular even though Raj Bhavan had stressed that the chancellor’s priority is to safeguard the best interests of students. According to Prof. Om Prakash Mishra, former interim VC of North Bengal University, “the governor by no means has a legal authority to directly communicate with the VCs or ask for reports”. Former VCs, whose services were…
Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) The newly elected congress government of Karnataka (pop.69 million), sworn in on May 19, is wasting no time in implementing its pricey election promises. The government has gone into overdrive to implement the Congress party’s five pre-election “guarantees” — 200 units of free power, 10 kg of rice per person in Below Poverty Line (BPL) households, free-of-charge travel for women in government buses, Rs.2,000 per month for women heads of the family and Rs.3,000 for unemployed graduates. Moreover, it has moved with alacrity to fulfill its election manifesto promise of rewriting school textbooks to wipe out the alleged hindutva bias of the previous BJP government. On June 17, the education ministry issued a circular revoking 18 changes introduced by its predecessor BJP government in Kannada and English medium social sciences textbooks for children in classes VI- X, prescribed for 78,424 state board affiliated schools. The changes include removal of a chapter on RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) founder Dr. Keshav Baliram Hedgewar and an essay authored by right-wing activist Chakravarti Sulibele. A letter written by former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru to his daughter Indira Gandhi, and chapters on vedic culture, rise of new religions, human rights, women freedom fighters are among seven new introductions. However, with the new academic year having already commenced on May 31, and textbooks printed and dispatched (with the old content) to all government and aided schools statewide, Madhu Bangarappa, the newly inducted minister for school education, announced that the revised content will be printed and distributed as additional booklets. The backstory to the textbooks revision row is that in September 2021, BJP education minister S. Suresh Kumar constituted a 15-member Textbook Revision Committee (TRC) headed by Rohith Chakratirtha, a Kannada language novelist and staunch BJP and sangh parivar (RSS/BJP family) supporter. Seven months later, the TRC submitted its report and recommended changes in Kannada and English social science texts. Chapters on Mysuru’s heroic Muslim ruler Tipu Sultan, social reformer Basavanna, Dravidian movement pioneer Periyar and social reformer Narayana Guru, who opposed the caste system, written in previous textbooks, were excised, and new chapters eulogising RSS/hindutva ideology were introduced. Undeterred by criticism from opposition parties and academics, the BJP government (2019-2023) went ahead with its textbook revision exercise and new textbooks were printed and distributed to students for the academic year 2022-23. Now, the newly elected Congress government has revoked these changes. The revision/rewriting of textbooks by the new Congress government after commencement of the new school academic year in June, has not found favour with academics and private schools in the state. “We are one month into the new academic year. The first formative assessment is scheduled for July. We have no idea when these booklets will come. All this confusion is sure to disrupt teaching-learning,” says T. Lokesh, president, Registered Unaided Private Schools Association (RUPSA), which has a membership of 13,000 budget private schools statewide. With newly elected governments at the Centre and states decreeing revision of school texts to reflect their…
Prachi Bhardwaj (Delhi) Even as the national council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) — the country’s largest school textbook publisher — is struggling with writing textbooks to implement the 623-page National Curriculum Framework for School Education 2023 prescribed by a steering committee chaired by Dr. K. Kasturirangan, author of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, two highly respected academics — Suhas Palshikar and Yogendra Yadav — have written to NCERT to remove their names from all NCERT political science textbooks listing them as advisors. The two academics have resigned in protest against NCERT having excluded all references to the Mughal era (1526-1865), the Emergency (1975-77) imposed by the late prime minister Indira Gandhi, literary contribution of Dalit writers, Gujarat communal riots (2002) and Naxalite movement from revised sociology and political science textbooks for classes IX-XII. The academics say they were neither informed nor consulted about these revisions. “Textbooks cannot and should not be shaped in this blatantly partisan manner and should not quell the spirit of critique and questioning among students of social sciences. These textbooks as they stand now do not serve the purpose of training students of political science in both the principles of politics and the broad patterns of political dynamics that have occurred over time,” they wrote in the resignation letter. These resignations have created a stir in academia and the media because Palshikar and Yadav are highly respected academics. Palshikar is a former professor of political science at the high ranked Savitribai Phule University, Pune and chief editor of Studies in Indian Politics while Yadav is a former member of the National Advisory Council of the UPA-Congress government, a prominent television commentator and promoter-president of the Swaraj India Party. Following Palshikar and Yadav’s resignation, 33 academicians including Pratap Bhanu Mehta, the well-known public intellectual, Radhika Menon (Delhi University), Nivedita Menon (Jawaharlal Nehru University), Kanti Prasad Bajpai, Vice-Dean at the National University of Singapore, and former JNU professor Rajeev Bhargava have called out NCERT for “jeopardising the collective efforts” of the Textbook Development Committee (TDC) of the year 2006-07. In a letter to Dinesh Prasad Saklani, Director of NCERT, they have raised concerns about the potential negative impact of the recent rationalisation process on their collaborative and innovative work as part of the TDC. In response to Palshikar and Yadav’s resignation letter, NCERT has declined their request to remove their names. “Textbooks at the school level are developed based on the state of our knowledge and understanding on a given subject. Therefore, at no stage individual authorship is claimed, hence the withdrawal of association by any one is out of the question,” says a NCERT circular issued on June 9. Moreover, NCERT spokespersons say that children’s curriculum load had to be reduced because of the prolonged closure of schools — averaging 82 weeks nationwide — during the Covid-19 pandemic. However, these explanations have cut no ice with the two academics because of the similarity between the omissions in the revised textbooks and Hindu majoritarian philosophy…
India Today Best Colleges super portal New delhi, june 23. The India Today Group has launched a brand-new online portal for its Best Colleges Survey — “the most credible and exhaustive ranking of institutions of higher learning in India for over a quarter century” — featuring six years of ranking data as well as a wealth of granular information on thousands of institutes of higher learning. According to a India Today press release, the interactive portal offers easy access, analysis, and guidance to the Best Colleges of India survey results for 2,000 colleges across 14 major streams —Engineering, Architecture, BBA, Mass Communication, Hotel Management, Fashion Design, MSW, BCA, B.Com, B.Sc, BA, Law, Medical and Dental. Aside from the colleges ranking — which can be filtered by state and city — the site also allows cross comparisons on five major indicators of quality: intake & quality of governance, academic excellence, infrastructure & living experience, personality & leadership development and placement & career. It also provides a wealth of data about each college, from courses offered and eligibility requirements to admission fees, cut offs, placements, faculty data, and information on the institute’s industry connect, says an an India Today spokesperson. One of many USPs of this new portal is the Jobs in Demand section which offers insights on the positions and salaries on offer to graduates from different streams. A separate section on the Best Emerging Colleges presents new institutions of excellence while information on important exams, including JEE, NEET, CUET, LSAT and BITSAT is also available for easy reference. “We invite everyone to visit our website — https://bestcolleges.indiatoday.in — for some happy, productive surfing, and we wish aspiring students all the very best,” says the spokesperson. Primus-IRMA Excellence Lab New delhi, june 8. Primus Partners Pvt. Ltd (Primus, estb.2010), a Delhi-based consultancy firm, and the Institute of Rural Management, Anand (IRMA, estb.1979 in by Dr. Verghese Kurien), have jointly promoted PRIMA: Primus IRMA Excellence Lab. The objective of this initiative is to harness the industry expertise of Primus Partners and the academic excellence of IRMA to drive innovation, research, and knowledge sharing in rural management. Under this partnership, Primus will offer internship opportunities to selected final year IRMA students to acquire valuable hands-on experience of a career in management consulting. The PRIMA project will also facilitate guest lectures by industry experts and thought leaders, fostering a vibrant exchange of ideas and experiences. “Our expectation is to drive innovation, develop impactful research, and empower the next generation of professionals in rural management and agriculture,” said Davinder Sandhu, co-founder and chairman, Primus Partners. Added Dr. Umakant Dash, director of IRMA: “The Primus IRMA Lab marks an exciting milestone in our journey of academic excellence to address critical issues in rural management and agriculture. We are eager to embark on this journey of knowledge creation and collaborative learning.” BITS-Pilani’s new Centre for Excellence Pilani, june 27. BITS-Pilani announced receipt of a donation of US $1 million (Rs.8.2 crore) from alumnus Ranvir Trehan, a technologist-entrepreneur.…
Gujarat Model primary Ahmedabad, june 6. A late 19th century government school operational until 2018 in Vadnagar, Mehsana district which Prime Minister Narendra Modi had attended in young age, has been restored by the Archaeological Survey of India. Under Project Prerna (‘inspire’) — the vernacular school is being developed as a model for the country. Being redeveloped according to prime minister Modi’s vision, it will serve as a model for primary schools countrywide. Designed as an “experiential school” offering a “unique pedagogy”, it will use new technologies to impart values and inspire children to become catalysts of change in future, says a Gujarat government spokesperson. “Two students from each of the country’s 740 districts will be selected for a week-long study tour of the model school in 2024,” he added. Odisha Samanta solicitude Bhubaneswar, june 7. The Kalinga Institute of Industrial Technology (KIIT), Deemed-to-be University, Bhubaneswar will provide employment to one family member and free education to children whose parents died in the June 2 triple train accident near Balasore, in which 280 passengers lost their lives. Announcing the humanitarian package, Dr. Achyuta Samanta, founder of KIIT and the Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS) said: “We will offer a job to one member from each family at KIIT/KISS and provide free-of-charge education to their children at KISS and KIIT as per their eligibility.” Earlier during the Covid-19 pandemic, KIIT had stepped forward to support students who lost their parents to Covid by providing free education and jobs to their family members. Kerala Grievance redressal panels Thiruvananthapuram, june 8. Following protests over the suicide of a female student of a church-run private engineering college in Kottayam district, the state government announced that grievance redressal committees would be constituted in all higher education institutions statewide to investigate complaints lodged by students. This is the outcome of a second-year student found hanging inside her hostel room in early June. Some students alleged that their teachers were “harassing” them on several issues including use of mobile phones on campus. Addressing a press conference, the state’s higher education minister R. Bindu said: “The proposed panel will comprise principals of colleges and heads of departments of universities. Representatives of student unions and nominees of Parent Teachers’ Association (PTA) and the university syndicate will also be part of the new panels.” Chhattisgarh Intelligent initiative Raipur, june 10. Eighty-nine classes X and XII students who topped the Chhattisgarh Board of Secondary Education exams were given joyrides in a seven-seater helicopter by the state government under an annual reward scheme announced last year by chief minister Bhupesh Baghel. This year, 54 class X students and 35 class XII students including ten from the Scheduled Tribes were presented this reward. “This intelligent initiative has proved very popular with students and inspires them to study hard for their board examinations,” said a state government spokesperson, addressing the media on the occasion. Telangana Deliberate omission charge Hyderabad, june 23. The Telangana State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT) is mired…
Absolute gems Your cover story ‘America’s hidden gems private universities’ (EW June) was an absolute gem especially for school-leavers like me exploring higher education options beyond Ivy League universities The 14 universities of the Michigan Colleges Alliance seem to offer excellent higher education with the added advantages of low teacher-pupil ratio, plus internship and placement opportunities in the heart of American industry. I have put them on my shortlist! Sahasrata Sen on e-mail Irrational classification With the EducationWorld India School Rankings coming up soon, I have one serious query. Why is it that Bishop Cotton School, Shimla doesn’t appear in your website searches for exactly what it is — a boys’ boarding school? Since last year, your magazine has reclassified us in the ‘vintage’ category without any consideration that we are a progressive, non-profit private school unlike other boarding schools on a profit-making mission. Would you classify Harvard, Cambridge and Oxford universities as vintage institutions despite the reality that they are the world’s most progressive universities in terms of academic curriculum, ethos and facilities and are not stuck in the ‘dark ages’ when they were founded? It is our humble request to EW to move us back to the category of ‘boys boarding schools’ from the ‘vintage’ category meant only for wine and cars. Let’s not forget that Bishop Cotton School, Shimla was modeled on UK’s well-known Marlborough College (estb.1843). This is a winning formula and therefore, parents continue to send their boys here to become gentlemen. Rebecca Weale Dean of Admissions Bishop Cotton School, Shimla Unwarranted coverage Your cover story ‘America’s hidden gems private universities’ (EW June) exposes the colonial mindset that drives the upwardly mobile Indian middle class to believe that Western education in English-speaking countries is the smart passport to jobs and success in 21st century workplaces. I am disappointed with the huge coverage given to foreign higher education institutions, especially at a time when some of India’s best universities — most of them privately promoted — can be compared with the world’s best. Samrudhi Ramesh Bengaluru Glaring omissions I am a medical practitioner from Bengaluru. I happened to come across your EW India Higher Education Rankings 2023-24 issue (EW May). I was appalled to see only three medical and health sciences universities from Karnataka in the Top 10. M.S. Ramaiah Medical College, St. John’s Medical College, Kempegowda Institute of Medical Sciences, Siddaganga Medical College and Research Institute — all well-reputed for research — find no place in your rankings. Time for C fore to expand its vision. Suresh Raghottam Tumakuru The EW India University Rankings 2023-24 ranks universities, not undergraduate colleges. The institutions cited are colleges affiliated with state universities — Editor Disturbing trend The Karnataka Education News ‘Broken system’ (EW June) highlights a disturbing trend of excessive political interference in education. In Karnataka, the victorious Congress government is hell-bent on reversing several of the education initiatives taken by the predecessor BJP government. It wants to rewrite textbooks and roll back implementation of NEP 2020. The…
The prolonged stand-off between India’s international medal winning wrestlers and Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh, chairman of the Wrestling Federation of India (WFI), over allegations of the latter having taken advantage of his position to sexually harass seven women wrestlers, highlights much that is wrong with Indian sports and the justice system which seems beyond redemption. On April 21, seven young women wrestlers, including a minor, training under the auspices of WFI mustered up courage to complain against Sharan Singh’s repeated abuse of young sportswomen training for international tournaments and championships. Claims of misconduct included inappropriate touching, soliciting sexual favours with inducements and stalking. The cause of these young sportswomen — many of them village girls who braved rural patriarchy to train for this contact sport to bring honours and medals to the country — was taken up by several Olympics and Commonwealth Games wrestling medal winners, notably Bajrang Punia and the Phogat sisters who have also been conferred national awards. However despite repeated attempts, the Delhi police which is under the administrative control of the Union home ministry, declined to file an FIR (first information report) which is the mandatory first step towards initiating prosecution. This is because Sharan Singh is a five-term BJP Member of Parliament from the Kaiserganj constituency in Uttar Pradesh, the heart of the Hindi belt from which the BJP receives its major support. Singh reportedly commands considerable obedience, even if not respect in his pocket borough and neighbouring environs. The latest news on this shameful imbroglio which has provoked nationwide outrage is that an FIR has been filed and the Delhi police is preparing a case against him. The Union government has promised to lodge formal prosecution proceedings against Sharan Singh by end-June. Singh meanwhile, has denied all charges and says he is “ready to be hanged” if any of the charges are proved in a court of law. Three important lessons arise from this scandal which given the infamous law’s delay in 21st century India, is unlikely to be resolved in the near future. The first is to make the Attorney General and under him the Director of Public Prosecution’s offices independent of the Central and state governments. This has been recommended by several of post-independence India’s 22 Law Commissions (whose reports are promptly shelved) and is the reality in several common law countries, including the UK and United States. If also mandated in India, delay in filing the FIR and initiating prosecution proceedings as witnessed in the case under reference would not have arisen. Secondly, even if legislation is not possible, a national consensus needs to be evolved that only people who have excelled in a particular sport should chair its governance councils. And third, girl children should be taught from early age that it’s legitimate self-defence to clobber sexual offenders on the spot of the offence.
The warm bipartisan welcome accorded to Prime Minister Narendra Modi by President Joe Biden and the American establishment on his latest visit to the United States is indicative of belated awareness in India and the US that the two countries are natural allies with common interests and objectives. That this awareness dawned on both countries so late is a tragedy rooted in the anti-Americanism of British-educated Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter Indira Gandhi who shared the disdain of upper class Britons for class-agnostic Americans. Therefore, despite the plainly obvious commonalities shared by the US and India — democracy, free and fair elections, independent judiciary and the seven freedoms (Article 19 of the Constitution) — although professing neutrality in the American-Soviet Cold War of 1945-89, successive Nehru-Indira administrations tilted towards the Soviet Union on big global issues. Yet perhaps the greatest signal of their Soviet bias was junking of the subcontinent’s historic ideology of private enterprise and free markets in favour of Soviet-inspired central planning, promotion of capital-intensive public sector enterprises (PSEs) and suppression of private business and industry. Instead of learning from America and adopting a free markets economy (which communist China did in 1978), national savings were canalised into government-run PSEs managed by business illiterate bureaucrats and clerks who quickly ran them into the ground. The promised profits from PSEs which according to India’s Soviet Gosplan-style five-year plans would generate surpluses to fund public education and health, never materialised, plunging high-potential post-independence India into the nether ranks of the world’s poorest and most illiterate nations. Against this backdrop, the reset in US-India relations evidenced by the unprecedented red carpet rolled out for Prime Minister Modi and tall promises of technology transfers, US investment in trade and education are most welcome. Quite obviously, India needs to thoroughly cleanse the Augean stables of licence-permit-quota raj and get back on to the capitalist road as communist China did 40 years ago, to record extraordinary annual rates of double-digit GDP growth. And there can be no better partner in this national re-engineering than the US which since the Second World War has retained its position as the world’s wealthiest, most secure and freest democratic country. As a result of foolish economic development policies, contemporary India with annual GDP of $3.75 trillion is at a severe disadvantage compared with hostile neighbour China ($19 trillion). To catch up and realise the high potential of the world’s youngest nation, there cannot be a better partner than our fellow democratic country, the United States of America. When the US extended its hand in friendship seven decades ago, the opportunity was missed. We should not miss it again.
A great mistake the Congress party made after independence was to abandon the sub-continent’s ancient tradition of free enterprise and free markets and take a sharp Left ideological turn under the influence of Jawaharlal Nehru, free India’s first prime minister. Nehruvian socialism resulted in politically free India becoming an economically enslaved nation. All business, industrial and education initiatives became subject to government supervision and permission — “everything was disallowed until it was allowed”. Nehru’s legacy of socialism was continued by his daughter and four times prime minister (1966-84), Indira Gandhi. Inevitably, economic development suffered and for almost 40 years free India experienced an annual 3.5 percent rate of GDP growth – as against 7-10 percent in South-east Asia and China. This economic stagnation was unacceptable. In 1978, the very year when Deng Xiaoping firmly placed neighbouring communist China on the “capitalist road”, your editor was appointed founding-editor of Business India and later BusinessWorld to expose the folly of licence-permit-quota (LPQ) raj over business and industry. These pioneer publications prepared the ground for the belated liberalisation of the Indian economy in 1991 under the under-appreciated prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao (see Book Review pg. 62). After numerous adventures and twists and turns of fortune (to be detailed in my memoirs under halting preparation), with India remaining a laggard in the global race for socio-economic development, one came to the conclusion that the country’s rickety education system was at fault. Licence-permit-quota raj, which had enfeebled Indian business and industry, had migrated to the education sector. Therefore for the past 23 years, EducationWorld has been in the vanguard of reforming the country’s education system from preschool to Ph D. And one of our top priorities is to end LPQ raj in education. Although we have moved the needle of public policy on several issues in education — ECCE (early childhood care and education), skilling, and a larger role for private higher education — on this issue we have had little success as highlighted by the authors of a research study who have written the cover story of this issue. The obstinate endurance of LPQ in K-12 education has had serious repercussions on the system and is a major speed-breaker on the way to India transforming into a $30 trillion (from $3.75 trillion currently) economy by 2047, when the country will celebrate its centenary year of freedom. Therefore all right-thinking people should read our informative cover story and speak up for ending LPQ raj in K-12 education. The role of education ministries at the Centre and in the states is to upgrade the country’s 1.2 million government schools, not to over-regulate private schools which are essentially a matter of voluntary contract between parents/students and institutional managements. And in our unprecedented special report feature, we highlight the upskilling panic which is spreading through all sectors of the economy. Perhaps a beneficial development.
Global private higher education revolution
Private universities are arguably the best in their countries. Despite challenges, private institutions have brought vitality to moribund higher education environments In the past half-century and especially since the new millennium, there has been a quiet but extraordinary promotion of high quality non-profit private universities, especially in the Global South (Asia, Africa). These universities are changing the landscape of global higher education. They are providing new ideas about organisation, curriculum and even philosophy of higher education in countries where academic institutions are usually traditional and bureaucratic. These universities, often supported by substantial private philanthropy, have been able to attract top-rated students and high-quality faculty. The elite private higher education sector is small — perhaps 150 worldwide. The largest number is in the United States, with perhaps half the total, and a few in countries such as Japan and South Korea. Some Latin American countries also host private Catholic and other private universities. But the largest growth area for premier private higher ed institutions is now the Global South. There have been several periods of development for these universities. At the end of the 19th century, wealthy American capitalists sponsored newly invented German-style research universities in an effort to build scientific capacity in the United States. Stanford, Chicago, and Johns Hopkins, among others, were established and quickly became renowned private universities. Waseda and Keio, with similar missions, were founded in Japan. In the Global South, elite private universities began to be established in the mid-20th century. Examples include the Tecnologico de Monterrey (Monterrey Tec), established in 1943 in Mexico by industrialists. A decade later, the Manipal Academy of Higher Education was founded in India, followed by the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani. These pioneer private universities now have multiple campuses in their country and are among the best and most innovative national academic institutions. In the following decades, additional innovative universities were founded. Symbiosis International University in Pune, India, was established in 1971 as an internationally-focused institution, and the Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH) was founded in 1986 in South Korea. INSPER, an independent university in Sao Paulo, Brazil focusing on business, economics, and (later) engineering was founded in 1987. LUMS University (formerly Lahore University of Management Science) in Pakistan, was founded in 1984 and grew from a management training institution to a comprehensive university. There were a small number of additional universities founded during this period in other countries. Although there are probably under 50 such institutions in the Global South, there are some elements common to all. Among them — Financial backing: These universities are, in their national contexts, well-resourced due to their establishment by wealthy individuals or businesses. Innovation: The universities represent new ideas about curriculum, teaching, organisation, student affairs, and other aspects of academic life. Excellent facilities: They have built ‘state-of-the-art’ campuses that are attractive to students and faculty, and permit advanced research and scholarship. Governance: As private non-profit universities, they differ from public institutions in their countries in their approach to management…