The primary focus of Indian students tends to be on Ivy league and large universities on the East and West coasts. However, America’s 600 inland higher education institutions — many as good as the best — are unknown quantities to our school leavers and graduates, writes Dilip Thakore & Summiya Yasmeen Although because of adoption of inorganic socialist ideology immediately after independence in 1947 from almost two centuries of exploitative colonial rule, India remains one of the world’s poorest countries with an annual per capita income of $2,097 (Rs.172,000), somewhat paradoxically, it also hosts a middle class estimated at a humongous 432 million with annual household incomes of Rs.5-30 lakh ($6,000-36,000 ppp) by PRICE, a Delhi-based think tank. This translates into the world’s largest middle class after China, and greater than the entire population of the United States. This status conscious middle class is highly aspirational and unlike the majority of the population, is well-aware of the upward mobility value of high quality education. They send their children almost entirely to fees-levying private schools (48 percent of all 260 million school-going children are in private K-12 education) and are desperate to enroll them in the country’s Top 500 colleges (out of a total 43,000) and 300 (1,110) universities, especially the 23 globally admired Central government-run IITs (Indian Institutes of Technology), 20 postgrad IIMs (Indian Institutes of Management) and 273 government medical colleges. Unsurprisingly, competition to enter the best colleges and universities is intense. For instance, the 23 IITs admit a mere 2 percent of the 260,000 higher secondary school-leavers who write their famously tough JEE (joint entrance exams). The remainder 10 million school-leavers scramble for admission into the country’s Top 300 government undergrad colleges and universities and Top 500 private colleges/universities ranked by EducationWorld in April and May. Yet the dream of all middle class households is to bestow their children foreign — especially American — higher education. With their sprawling immaculately landscaped campuses, capital-intensive infrastructure including huge libraries and research capabilities, and high quality faculty, universities in America are sought after by India’s upper middle class who have become acutely aware that the best gift they can give their children is foreign — particularly American — higher education qualifications. And increasingly, households are readily selling land, homes, jewellery, stocks and shares and/or taking large loans to realise their American dream. Inevitably, not a few agents and consultants have mushroomed across the Indian landscape to promote American colleges and universities which are anxious to enroll undergrad and postgraduate students from India. Over the past half century, Indian students at American universities have not only contributed cultural diversity to their campuses, but many have gone on to distinguish themselves in all walks of life back home in India as also in American academia, business and industry. It’s worthy of note that the top-ranked Deans of Harvard Business School, the Booth School of Business and President-elect of Tufts University among other blue-chip American higher education institutions (HEIs) are India-born. Moreover, Indian alumni…
Reshma Ravishanker (Bengaluru) The newly sworn-in congress government of Karnataka, which won an absolute majority (135 seats in the 224-seat legislative assembly) in a bitterly-fought electoral contest, has inherited a broken, ailing public school system from its predecessor BJP government. A mere nine days after Siddaramaiah (no initials) took oath as the 24th chief minister of Karnataka (pop.64 million) after a four-day long leadership tussle with D.K. Shiva Kumar, sworn-in as deputy chief minister, the Karnataka High Court reprimanded the state government for not providing basic facilities such as drinking water and toilets in public schools. The court cited the Central government’s Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) data to the effect that of 47,068 government schools statewide, 823 lack drinking water facilities and 464 don’t have toilets. “Is it not a shame that we are not even giving drinking water to our boys and girls merely because they are studying in government schools at a time when private schools are providing mineral water and have classes with smart boards?” queried the division bench headed by Justice Prasanna B. Varale, while hearing a public interest litigation writ on out-of-school children. That’s not all. According to UDISE data, Karnataka ranks #2 countrywide for the highest number of single teacher schools. Of the 47,068 government schools, 29 percent i.e, 13,649 are single teacher institutions, second after Jharkhand (30.9 percent). In the neighbouring state of Kerala, a mere 4 percent of government schools have only one teacher. But while independent agencies such as the high court and UDISE have exposed the pathetic condition of the state’s government schools, the education ministry’s own, internal survey paints a rosy picture. In May, the ministry released results of a survey on its ‘Kalika Chetarike’ supplementary learning programme – introduced in April 2022 to make up for children’s pandemic learning loss. According to the survey, Kalika Chetarike is a big success with 87 percent of government school teachers and 88 percent parents reporting improvement in children’s learning capabilities. B.S. Rishikesh, head, Hub for Education, Law and Policy, Azim Premji University, says there is an overall sense of satisfaction among teachers and parents about the Kalika Chetarike programme. “The purpose of this programme was to address the issue of foundational learning and numeracy loss during the pandemic induced closure of schools. Children had forgotten what they learnt and couldn’t cope with new lessons. Kalika Chetarike rightly asked school teachers to set aside teaching of the syllabus and focus first on developing children’s conceptual learning and fundamental literacy and numeracy. If not for Kalika Chetarike, children would not be able to recover the pandemic learning loss. In states that have not had a similar programme, the impact on children’s learning levels will be felt after a few years,” says Rishikesh. However Dr. A.S. Seetharamu, former professor of education, Institute of Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru questions the programme’s ‘success’. “Pre-Covid, the learning levels of children were already low. What the Kalika Chetarike programme has done is merely stem…
Autar Nehru (Delhi) College and university rankings have always been a controversial issue in India. There are several government rankings agencies notably the Bengaluru-based National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC, estb.1994) and latterly the Union education ministry’s National Institutional Ranking Framework (NIRF, estb.2015). Neither of these official HEIs (higher education institutions) ranking agencies inspire much confidence within the academic community or among school-going students and college graduates searching for higher education options. Since it was established 29 years ago, NAAC has accredited only 418 universities (out of 1,113 countrywide) and 9,062 undergrad colleges (42,000) under the voluntary HEIs accreditation system. Most new genre private liberal arts, law, science and engineering HEIs, which are transforming Indian education, don’t bother about NAAC accreditation which at best is an add-on. Neither do the multiplying tribe of education consultants or students looking for higher study options. Moreover for HEIs, acquiring NAAC accreditation is a tedious and expensive affair. In addition to paying a fee — Rs.6.5 lakh — inevitably, there’s a massive amount of paperwork involved. After much form-filling, NAAC deputes an inspection team mainly comprising retired academics to the applicant HEIs to audit — at the applicant college/university’s expense — and verify their excellence claims. And it’s well-known in academia and the knowledgeable public that in instances where visiting task forces are provided excellent on-campus hospitality and gifts, these institutions tend to receive high A and A++ ratings. Recently eyebrows were raised over NAAC awarding the Bhubaneswar-based Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan (SOA) private deemed university the highest score of 3.88 out of a maximum 5.00 — a rating higher than of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISc) and every other university countrywide. According to a Times of India report (October 2, 2022), “seven institutes, all in the private domain have a NAAC score that is higher than the best Indian university”. Ironically in NIRF 2022 published by the Union education ministry, IISc is ranked the country’s #1 university. Recently (March) Prof. Bhushan Patwardhan, who was appointed chairman of NAAC in February 2022, resigned from his post in protest against the opaque and questionable ratings awarded by NAAC, expressing apprehension about the “possibility of vested interests, malpractices, leading to the awarding of questionable grades to some HEIs”. Not that the NIRF rankings inspire much confidence either. In NIRF 2022 which is heavily skewed in favour of government HEIs, in its overall Top 100 league table (headed by IIT-Madras), Bharathiar University, Coimbatore (#24), Savitribai Phule University, Pune (#25) and Siksha ‘O’ Anusandhan, Bhubaneswar (#30) are ranked higher than the highly regarded Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS-Pilani) ranked #32 and commonly accepted as the private sector equivalent of the top-ranked government-run IITs. In the EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings 2023-24 (which excludes IITs), BITS-Pilani is ranked India’s #1 private engineering and technology university. Moreover, Amity University, ranked India’s #1 multidisciplinary university in EWIHER 2023-24, is ranked #42 in NIRF 2022. In November 2022 an Overarching Committee was constituted after reports of compromised data security…
The recently concluded legislative assembly election in Karnataka won by the Congress party with an absolute majority, offers several important lessons for politicians and citizens of all hues and ideological persuasions. Driven by transformational new digital technologies and instant communication provided by social media, electorates across the country are not what they were ten — even five — years ago. Although the neta-babu brotherhood is doing its best to keep the mass of the citizenry steeped in ignorance and poverty by continuing to neglect education — the national outlay for public education (Centre plus states) remains static at 3-4 percent of GDP and Karnataka’s public education system is riven with teacher recruitment rackets, highly adverse teacher-pupil ratios, language chauvinism and particularly English teaching-learning aversion — young citizens have shown amazing capacity and capability to self-learn. Therefore, the incrementally young electorate has seen through the BJP’s old hat Hindu vote consolidation and anti-minorities election strategy. If the party leadership had its ear close to the ground, it would have discerned pervasive fear of unemployment and an upskilling panic among the state’s — indeed the country’s — youth who now form the majority of voters. The second cause of the BJP’s rout is its failure to check — forget about rooting out — corruption which has become deeply entrenched within the administrative system. Every government service provided to the citizen comes at a price. It is easier for a camel to enter the eye of a needle than for citizens to emerge from a property sub-registrar’s office without paying a bribe. Government — including police and teachers jobs — carry a price tag. Every service from provision of water, electricity, and license to issuance of a death certificate, requires palm greasing of relatively well-remunerated government servants who have transformed into a callous lumpen bourgeoisie. And although the prime minister addressed 19 rallies and six roadshows in the state, he totally side-stepped these grave allegations, giving substance to the ‘folklore of corruption’ that the money collected goes all the way to the top. This deep-rooted ‘double taxation’ system in the state has exasperated even the middle class. Hence the BJP rout. Yet the auguries are not good. The Congress victory was largely facilitated by an expanded public welfare promise which will have to be funded by increased taxation of the middle class, already fed up with the state’s ‘double taxation’ system (official and unofficial taxes). This could discourage private investment, if not capital flight. There’s a leadership fight in the Karnataka Congress, and rehabilitated Congress dynasty leader Rahul Gandhi is vilifying India’s few world-class private industry leaders — Ambani-Adani — and seems hell-bent on reimposing neta-babu socialism which devastated post-independence India. More like Tweedledum replacing Tweedledee.
A report released early last month (April) by the transnational accounting and corporate consultancy firm Ernst & Young and iMocha — billed as the world’s leading skills intelligence and skills assessment platform — titled Tech Skills Transformation — Navigating the Future of Work in 2025 and Beyond reveals a huge deficit of adequately technology skilled personnel beyond “traditional IT” in Indian industry. The report says a significant majority, or 81 percent of surveyed organisations acknowledged encountering shortages in “power user or developer” tech skills. Merely 19 percent of organisations reported having established a skill taxonomy. Presumably, the companies surveyed covered a cross section of Indian companies including MSMEs (medium and small scale enterprises) which contribute 30 percent of GDP and employ over 40 percent of the 420 million personnel employed in Indian industry. This report should send alarm bells ringing in the grandly titled Union ministry of education, skills and entrepreneurship presided over with glacial calm by Dharmendra Pradhan, impervious to all calls for interview by this specialist publication for education and human resource development. Yet as the overtly manifest shabby construction and maintenance of the country’s expensive infrastructure — roads, bridges, railways, power plants and civic infrastructure — testifies, skilling generation next and upskilling the generation currently in employment — especially labour employed in MSMEs — needs to become an urgent national priority. In his seminal book India’s China Challenge (2020), Ananth Krishnan, a China expert, recounts that because of sustained investment in primary and vocational education, China’s Town and Village Enterprises (TVEs) have played a major role in transforming our neighbour nation into the manufactures factory of the world. He recalls visiting a TVE sales exhibition “the size of ten football fields” thronged by traders from India purchasing everything from incense sticks and ganesha images to cast iron forgings and motor car accessories, and cramming them into giant steel containers for import into India. Small wonder that India’s bilateral trade deficit with China has crossed over $100 billion. Indeed without imports from China, Indian industry would be devastated. Expectedly, the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 makes right noises about vocational education for children from young age. It recommends that children start learning a vocational skill from class VI. But it muddies this recommendation by making a populist, politically correct suggestion that they apprentice with rural artisans to acquire hands-on VET. This is inadvisable because of poor education and continuous deprivation of modern tools and technology, rural artisans aren’t equipped to shape students and youth into technically competent, high productivity shopfloor and other workers that Indian industry — and agriculture —urgently needs. Twenty-first century India’s most pressing problem is not unemployment, it’s unemployability.
Intelligent rankings Congratulations to EducationWorld for publishing yet another comprehensive higher education rankings issue (EW April and May). It has intelligently rated and ranked junior and undergrad colleges and universities across the country under critical parameters of higher education excellence. Our senior school students look forward to and benefit immensely in making informed higher education choices after completing their higher secondary education. Equally helpful are your Institution Profiles of top-ranked foreign universities which provide a wealth of information. Ajith Jacob, Principal Choice School, Kochi Useful purpose I recently subscribed to EducationWorld and read Part I and Part II of your annual EW India Higher Education Rankings 2023-24 (EW April and May) with great interest. Congratulations to C fore and EW for conducting and publishing a thorough higher education institutions rankings survey! In my opinion, the recently introduced rankings of Top 10 institutes for the most popular undergrad courses serve a very useful purpose. Ranking colleges and universities according to subjects/degree programmes greatly helps students choose the best college for academic programmes of their choice. Prem Khosla Gurugram Words of appreciation I am a regular reader of EducationWorld. Your May issue with its vibrant red cover looks absolutely stunning! Such a welcome departure from the routine greens, blues and blacks! The high-quality content as usual, was in line with your education mission, informative and insightful. Keep up the good work! Dr. Sunayana Shinde Pune Admission rethink I came across your impressive magazine (EW May) while exploring a private science college for my son’s admission. Congratulations to your team for the enormous effort they have put in to compile the elaborate higher education rankings. I must admit that after running through your league table of private multidisciplinary universities, we had a second round of discussions with family members to rethink our preferences. Nalini Narayani Chennai Missing information I noticed a post on your social media handles a month ago about the EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings Awards event which surprisingly did not provide any information about the venue until a week prior to the event. As a lecturer in a private college, I was keen to know the venue as the event would have been an excellent opportunity for educators like us to network. Hoping to hear about similar events and venues much in advance to be able to participate. Sukesh Mukherjee Kolkata Well-deserved award I am in complete awe of young Veerangana Jhala who was profiled in your well-written ‘Young Achievers’ column (EW May). All of seven, her presence of mind in alerting all the senior citizens of her building to vacate while also switching off the main electric supply is worthy of great admiration. Her National Bravery Award was well-deserved. Interestingly your article also highlights the nuances of positive parenting. Allowing children to stay close to their roots helps imbibe the qualities of empathy and care, while learning fire drill skills saves many lives. This is a wake-up call to all parents of growing children. Kudos to the Jhalas! Shyla…
fter liberalisation and deregulation of the dirigiste socialist Indian economy in 1991, the country’s middle class has grown and prospered. According to some estimates it numbers 400 million or 80 million households, as the outflow of Indian graduates and latterly school-leavers, to universities in English-speaking countries — the US, UK, Australia and Canada as also to European countries — has become a torrent. India’s new upwardly mobile middle class has become acutely aware that the best quality higher education offered by well-equipped Western — especially America’s — universities is the smart passport to jobs and success in the increasingly complex workplaces of the 21st century. Therefore currently an estimated 500,000 Indian students are enrolled in higher education institutions abroad, 40 percent of them in the US. Thus far, the focus of education consultants and students aspiring for US education has been on America’s famous Ivy League institutions and universities on the east and west coasts with excellent marketing skills and international outreach. However, many of America’s relatively insular colleges and universities (in the US they are synonymous) of impressive vintage and offering high quality academic programmes are unfamiliar to Indian students and households. This reality impacted EducationWorld CEO, Bhavin Shah forcefully when he connected with the Michigan Colleges Alliance, a consortium of 14 independent (mainly undergrad) colleges sited in Michigan — the heart of America’s manufacturing industry, hosting megacorps including General Motors, Ford, Chrysler and several heavyweight defence, chemicals, and pharma multinational corporations. Excellent academic, co-curricular and sports education apart, these well-endowed colleges offer generous scholarships, and internship and placement opportunities in globally admired companies, and expressed great interest in welcoming school-leavers and graduates from India. The outcome of Shah’s week-long visit to Michigan and endorsement of MCA and its low-profile but excellent higher education institutions is our unprecedented cover story in this issue. It is certain to arouse great interest in students aspiring to attain the dream of globally reputed high quality American higher education. In addition in this issue, we present a pictorial essay of the EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings Awards function staged in Delhi in which India’s most admired colleges and universities that topped the EWIHER 2023-24 league tables in several categories (published in April & May) were felicitated and awarded. With insightful editorials, expert columns, book reviews and news reports from around the country, we hope this Monsoon issue will enthuse our growing community of print and online readers.
Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai) Love for one’s native language is a commendable virtue. But forcing it down the throats of everyone residing within a country or state smacks of dictatorship. Especially in a country comprising 29 linguistic states in which English or more accurately ‘Inglish’ is the language of Parliament, judiciary and business. And in a country in which every citizen has a fundamental right to reside in any state or region and practice a business, trade or profession and one in which professionals and families are frequently transferred from one state to another for short duration, it becomes harassment. Yet so great is the love of mother-tongue for India’s politicians that decreeing Hindi — the lingua franca of North India’s half a dozen socio-economic backward but most populous states — the national language is high priority for them. Leaders of the ruling BJP at the Centre make no secret of officially or unofficially ‘imposing’ Hindi as the national language. Prime minister Narendra Modi and home minister Amit Shah traverse the country making thunderous speeches in Hindi without translators. This has sparked a reaction in several more socio-economically advanced states of peninsular India. The newly elected Congress government of Karnataka has promised to intensify the exclusive usage of Kannada in government and administration. And on May 22, the state’s Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) government issued an order to make Tamil as an additional compulsory subject in classes IX-X of all schools including 1,469 schools affiliated with the Delhi-based Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), and 124 schools affiliated with the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) from the start of the academic year 2024-25. Hitherto, schools affiliated with these national exam boards were free to choose the medium of instruction and additional second languages. A circular from the Directorate of Private Schools states that the syllabus and exam pattern for students of these schools will be determined by the Director of Private Schools. The final written class X exam for all private school students in Tamil language will be conducted by the Director of Government Examinations, and a separate certificate will be issued to them. The state government’s resolve to make all school children statewide study Tamil, is not something new. It stretches all the way back to the 1960s when the Congress government at the Centre decreed Hindi as the national language countrywide. Riots broke out in Tamil Nadu and gave rise to the Tamil nationalist DMK party which (together with its breakaway offshoot the AIADMK) has been elected to power ever since. This new GO (government order) is under the Tamil Language Learning Act, 2006 which decreed learning Tamil would be compulsory for all students in classes I-X. Over a decade ago, this legislation was resisted by several education associations, academics and students and challenged in the high court which upheld it. However on appeal, the Supreme Court exempted students of schools promoted by linguistic minorities in the state and schools affiliated with the pan-India CBSE, CISCE…
Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) A single judge bench of justice Abhijit Gangopadhyay of Calcutta High Court currently hearing the multi-crore school jobs scam in West Bengal, which exposed dire irregularities in appointment of teachers in 82,748 government primary schools, and uncovered evidence of administrative malfeasance, on May 12, ordered cancellation of appointment of 32,000 candidates recruited as teachers on the basis of Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) 2014 results. According to the court, there was evidence of massive corruption in the interview process and in many cases, the mandatory aptitude test wasn’t conducted. While ordering cancellation of 32,000 appointments, Justice Gangopadhyay directed the West Bengal Board of Secondary Education (WBBSE) to immediately arrange for recruitment of eligible candidates — from TET 2014 panel as well as from the 150,000 fresh candidates who qualified in TET 2022, held on December 11 after a gap of five years — within three months. He also ruled that the 32,000 illegally appointed teachers can continue to work for the next four months, but will receive the salary of para teachers. Since May 18, 2022, after Justice Gangopadhyay ordered a CBI investigation into the TET scam, in which aspiring primary school teachers paid an estimated Rs.10-20 lakh to middlemen, began unfolding, threads of corruption started leading to top state government ministers. In the past one year, the Enforcement Directorate, a financial frauds investigation unit of the Central government, and CBI have arrested former education minister Partha Chatterjee; former president of WBBSE, Kalyanmoy Ganguly, Shanti Prasad Sinha, former adviser to West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) among others including Subiresh Bhattacharya, a youth wing leader of the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC). Moreover, a web of companies through which the cash flow was managed came under the scanner of the Central investigative agencies following which ED sleuths provisionally attached properties of the accused valued at Rs.103.10 crore. It is pertinent to note that in West Bengal where overt and disguised unemployment is rife with 7.6 million registered unemployed youth, and small and medium-scale industry salaries are rock-bottom, teaching jobs in government schools which pay Rs.33,000 per month-plus are highly prized. Families desperate for sons and daughters to be employed as teachers in government-run schools often sell property and/or take loans to pay upto Rs.20 lakh as bribes to government officials to land these jobs. With appointees having lost their jobs after paying hefty amounts as bribes to ruling party leaders, the high court judgement is bad news for TMC and chief minister Mamata Banerjee, now serving her third term in office. According to informed academics, the declining learning standards of primary children has a direct link with the TMC government’s ill-advised utshoshree (‘origin’) teacher transfer policy launched by chief minister Mamata Banerjee on August 2, 2021. This populist policy entertains teachers’ request for return to cities where they were first recruited, emptying out rural schools. Because of this policy, many rural schools are unable to admit students in higher secondary (classes XI and XII), as there are no teachers…
“Earlier, we used to give just kitabi gyan (book learning) to our students, but this will change with the introduction of the New Education Policy. The new NEP focuses on practical learning. Such an education system is at the centre of NEP and now it is the responsibility of the teachers to implement this system on the ground.” Prime minister Narendra Modi, addressing the 29th Biennial Educational Conference, organised by the All India Primary Teachers Federation (May 12) “Textbook revision will definitely happen as it was one of the poll promises. The revision will happen in the interest of students and without any flaws on the part of the government, education authorities and the administration.” Madhu Bangarappa, Karnataka’s minister for school education in the newly elected Congress government (June 1, New Indian Express) “One must admire the patience and diligence of the protesters faced with the wall of contempt and indifference, and then surviving it calmly. They realised that politics needs networking and solidarity as well as a community ready to listen to their demands. A claim to justice becomes the new ballet of solidarity. This was the message that should have been broadcast from the new Parliament building…” Shiv Visvanathan, professor, OP Jindal Global University, and social scientist on the ongoing protest by wrestlers (June 1, Deccan Herald) “But investments in education and health are long gestation projects that do not yield results in one electoral cycle or even over a generation. The improvements are gradual, success is a process and while the benefits are perceived, they are not tangible. All these attributes do not lend itself to a grand inauguration like the inauguration of an edifice.” Duvvuri Subbarao, former RBI governor, on the inauguration of the new Parliament building (Times of India, June 1)
Punjab Education officers suspended Chandigarh, may 30. Harjot Singh Bains, the state’s school education minister, ordered the suspension of three officials of his ministry on charges of dereliction of duty. During a surprise inspection of the Government Primary School, Lambayan in SAS Nagar district, class V students brought to the minister’s attention that they were yet to receive their English textbooks. Investigation revealed that 3,500 textbooks had not been printed due to the negligence of ministry officials. As a result, 2,500 students were deprived of English textbooks. Apart from suspension orders issued against the three officials, the minister also ordered the district education officer and block education officer to be issued show-cause notices. Uttar Pradesh Prisoners good show Lucknow, may 7. Ninety-five percent of prisoners in Uttar Pradesh’s jails who wrote the class X state board examination passed, while the class XII success rate was over 70 percent. “Fifty-seven of the 60 inmates who wrote the class X examination averaged 82.40 percent, a first-division score. Of the 64 inmates who wrote the class XII board examination, 45 passed with 13 percent scoring first-division marks,” a prison department official said at a press conference. “Inmates who study in the prisons are given light physical work and during the board examinations, they are exempted from all manual work. Books and study materials are made available to them in jail. Moreover, most jails have libraries from where they can access study materials,” he added. Maharashtra Biodiversity study scholarships Mumbai, may 3. The state cabinet recently approved a proposal to provide scholarships to 75 students over a period of three years for conducting research in mangroves and marine biodiversity in top-ranked universities abroad, said an official statement issued by the Chief Minister’s Office. The outlay for the scholarships is estimated at Rs.31.50 crore. Every year, 25 students will be given scholarships by the forest department’s Mangrove and Marine Biodiversity Conservation Foundation. These scholarships will be awarded to students admitted into higher educational institutions abroad ranked within the Top 150 in the latest annual World University Rankings league tables of the London-based Times Higher Education (THE) or Quacquarelli Symonds (QS). Thirty percent of these scholarships will be awarded to women students. Madhya Pradesh Girl child education drive Bhopal, may 2. Observing Ladli Laxmi Utsav (festival of the girl child), chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced his government’s decision to pay the tuition fees of meritorious girl students from MP admitted into IITs, engineering, law, and medical colleges. “Under the Ladli Laxmi Yojana, fees for engineering, law, IIT and medical colleges will not be paid by parents, but by Shivraj mama (uncle),” he said, addressing a press conference. Chouhan added that henceforth Ladli Lakshmi Utsav will be celebrated in every city and panchayat of Madhya Pradesh from May 9-15, during which various competitions, programmes and health check-ups will be organised. Himachal Pradesh Ineligible vice chancellors Shimla, may 20. The vice-chancellors of two private universities in the state have been found ineligible for the post after thorough…
Griffith’s two coups Delhi, april 28. Griffith University, Australia signed MOUs with two of India’s top-ranked higher ed institutions — Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore and Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE) — when its delegation led by Vice Chancellor Prof. Carolyn Evans visited India recently. The agreement with IISc will build on an existing collaboration between Griffith’s Australian Rivers Institute and the IISc’s Water Solutions Lab. The partnership will explore the potential for a dual postgraduate degree program, which will enable eligible Indian students to complete their postdoctoral degree at Griffith in Australia, enabling students to be certified by both institutions and acquire valuable international experience. The MoU with MAHE, initiated in 2007 is being renewed to focus on health, allied health sciences, environmental engineering and student exchanges and recruitment. Under the renewed agreement, the two institutions will launch a jointly supervised Doctor of Philosophy (Ph D) program at Griffith, which will provide a tuition scholarship as well as living stipends to two eligible MAHE doctoral candidates per year. “The fact that both these partners have been recognised by the Indian government as Institutions of Eminence is proof of their reputation for excellence. We are proud to be partnering with them,” said Prof. Carolyn Evans, speaking on the occasion. Oxford Big Read competition New delhi, may 9. Oxford University Press (OUP) India announced the launch of the 5th edition of its Oxford Big Read (OBR), a global annual reading competition designed to promote good reading habits among primary-secondary school students. OBR is open to all school students of classes I-IX across India. The competition is tailored to specific class groups: Level 1 (classes I-III): Children are required to design a new book jacket for an OUP book and write two sentences about the book. Level 2 (classes IV-VI): Pupils are required to write “something interesting” about a book, its title, author, type of story, setting, and main characters, indicating likes, dislikes and suggest story line changes. Level 3 (classes VII-IX): Children are obliged to write a critical review of an OUP book. Entries for the competition must be submitted through schools. Deadline for submission entries in each category: October 5, 2023. Individual entries from parents/children will not be accepted. National-level winners will be announced on October 30, and global winners on November 30. The submitted entries will be adjudged by an expert jury. BCI-Microsoft’s ESY New delhi, may 29. British Council (India) and Microsoft India signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) for a co-developed three-year partnership programme titled English Skills for Youth (ESY). The programme aims to enhance life opportunities for youth aged 18-25, particularly women of socio-economically marginalised communities across India. According to a BCI statement, the prime objective of the ESY project is to enhance employability opportunities for youth. Microsoft and BCI have co-developed this programme to teach English language communication skills to students. The ESY solution will be integrated into rural engineering colleges linked to Microsoft’s existing NGO/partner skilling projects for the underserved. Under this…
India will have to make a strenuous effort to make sure its youth are healthy, educated and capable. A delay will mean they will not transform into the demographic dividend they could become India recently overtook China to become the most populous country of the world. Ostensibly, this was due to India’s population growing at a rapid pace, and China having stabilised its rate of population growth. Citing China’s example as the country that has successfully controlled its population, there have been several calls for stricter, control-centric policies to curtail the freedom of couples to have as many children as they want. Becoming the most populous country in the world can be a rattling experience. In March and April, I participated in numerous seminars and interviews conducted by global media, representing virtually all continents of the world. The questions that they kept asking were: What is the implication of being the most populous country of the world? Where is India headed in the next few decades? The interviews lasted longer than anticipated as journalists moved from one subject to another, from demography to resources to politics, India’s youth and the ageing population. It was one of the greatest demographic events in India, perhaps even more important than crossing the one-billion mark in 2000. I took pains to explain that India and China are countries with distinct cultures and governance systems. India is a large democracy where although many people don’t have control over their next meal, they have control over who their elected leaders will be. India’s people will not tolerate control-centric coercive family planning measures. We realised this when coercion was briefly used during the Emergency (1975-77), targeting males for forced vasectomies. Around 6.2 million men were sterilised in one year, according to a BBC report. In his book The Sanjay Story (1978) eminent journalist the late Vinod Mehta documented the misery of males who were forced to undergo sterilisation, some even dying due to botched-up procedures or infection. This traumatising experience remains deeply embedded in the collective psyche of India, particularly of male citizens. The share of male sterilisation in all family planning methods — temporary and permanent — is a minuscule 0.3 percent while women’s sterilisation is 37.9 percent according to the National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5, 2019-21). It means women are obliged to bear the burden of child-bearing and family planning. This debacle shows that one mistake can cause long-lasting — if not permanent — damage. Contrary to popular perception, India’s population has been stabilising slowly, and definitely. According to NFHS-5, India’s total fertility rate (TFR) is 2, i.e, at replacement level. China’s experience of following a coercive approach has landed it in a demographic crisis with a fertility rate which is lower than replacement level indicating a declining young population and a rapidly increasing older population leading to highly adverse sex ratios. Adamantly refusing to adopt coersion, successive governments of India pursued development-focused policies and a rights-based, voluntary approach in family planning. At the same…
-Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata) A class X student of Kolkata’s top-ranked Modern High School (MHS) for Girls, Anandini Sengupta (15) is still savouring the sweet taste of success, months after her short story Hope Floats was selected from 10,000 entries and published by Scholastic Publishers in an anthology titled Teen Tales. The Top 16 entries of aspiring teenage authors in India were published last November (2022). That’s not all. Last April (2022), this budding short form narratives writer-poet bested 700 entries worldwide to win the Elmbridge Literary Competition (UK) 2022, for a story titled The Red River after bagging the city-based daily The Telegraph’s Under-18 Award for Creative Writing in March. Still earlier in October 2021, Anandini won the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Commended Poet award of the Poetry Society, London, for her poem The Mosquito while her story Home Is Where the Heart Is won the Leyla Beban Young Authors Foundation (USA) $1,000 for the 1,000 words Creative Writing Contest award. Competitive writing is second nature to all members of the Sengupta household. Mother Nandini, a commerce teacher at MHS, won first prize in a competition organised for teachers of Commonwealth nations in 2016 among several other awards. Her father Anandamoy Sengupta, an IT telecom professional, loves weaving tales, while grandfather Prithwish Dasgupta was a regular contributor to weekly supplements of national dailies and magazines. “By the time I was six, I had started reading Satyajit Ray’s classics, Agatha Christie’s crime novels, Ruskin Bond and unabridged plays of Shakespeare. I strongly believe that wide reading is the foundation of good writing,” says this prescient teen. The awards and recognition she has received is a huge motivation. “I submit my creative works for any competition that comes my way for the exposure and valuable feedback. I am very grateful to school principal Damayanti Mukherjee for encouraging me to write scripts for school plays and uploading all my award-winning stories on the school website,” she says. With a deep interest in history, this young writer is intent upon doing a bachelor’s in the subject after completing higher secondary education. “Histories are essentially stories with description and analysis. Studying this subject is certain to improve my writing skills,” says this young writer, who has acquired maturity beyond her years.
-Paromita Sengupta (Bengaluru) Bengaluru-based Aarav Lad (9) was adjudged first runner-up in the 9-11 age group among 120 solo pianists in the fifth online edition of the International Festival-Contest ‘Music of the World,’ staged in Israel in March. The competition attracted contestants from 24 countries worldwide. Debuting in his first international competition, this pre-teen prodigy wowed the jury with his technical skills, creativity, and interpretation of the modern 1.5-minute composition of Kevin Olson’s Time Traveler followed by the 3-min Allegro of Danish musician Friedrich Kuhlau and Etude of Hungarian composer Stephen Heller. Open to soloists and ensembles in the 6-36 years age group, the objective of the annual competition — held in online mode — is to strengthen interest in culture and art, establish partnerships between contestants and musicians of Israel. The elder of two children of Kapil Lad, marketing head of a Singapore-based start-up, and Ankita, finance manager of a multinational, Aarav, a class IV student of Bengaluru’s Ekya School, JP Nagar, is quietly exuberant about his recent achievement. “I am very grateful to my teachers — Bengaluru-based concert pianist Natallia Kapylova and Belarus-based Liudmila Drazhnik — with whom I have trained in person and online over the past year. I am also lucky to have full school and parental support,” says Aarav, who has recently written the London College of Music Grade V exam. “Last year (2022) after we moved to Bengaluru from Mumbai, my parents bought me an upright acoustic piano, my most prized possession,” says Aarav, who follows a daily practice regimen of one hour and three hours on weekends. Other than music, young Aarav enjoys solving math puzzles, speedcubing, reading and playing badminton. “I intend to combine music and math in higher education. Although I enjoy playing Western classical compositions, I hope to compose my own music someday,” says the virtuoso in the making. Wind in your sails!
Citation Dr. Naresh Chandra is Director (Education) of the B.K. Birla College of Arts, Science & Commerce (Autonomous), Kalyan, Mumbai (BKBCK, estb. in 1972 under the patronage of Shri B.K. Birla and Smt. Sarala Birla). An alumnus of Meerut University, Dr. Chandra is a veteran educationist with over four decades of teaching, admin and leadership experience. Dr. Chandra began his career at the B.K. Birla College in 1980 as a lecturer in botany. Subsequently in 1988, he was appointed Principal, serving with distinction until May 2018 (except the period when he was on lien). His leadership and commitment to quality improvement and pedagogy innovation has been instrumental in transforming BKBCK — which has an enrolment of over 13,000 students — into one of the country’s top-ranked colleges dispensing high-quality, contemporary undergrad and postgraduate education. In 2015, BKBCK was conferred ‘College of Excellence’ status by the University Grants Commission (UGC), which also awarded it autonomous status in 2018-19. In the latest EW India Higher Education Rankings 2023-24, BKBCK is ranked India #10 and Maharashtra #6 among private autonomous colleges. Yet Dr. Chandra’s contribution to Indian higher education extends beyond BKBCK. He has served as Pro Vice Chancellor of the University of Mumbai (UoM, estb.1857) for two terms — 1997-2000 and 2012-2015. During his tenure at UoM, he was instrumental in introducing innovative, career-oriented, new-age study programmes and several initiatives to upgrade university administration, evaluation system, campus development and student welfare. Simultaneously, Dr. Chandra has worked on major research projects; served as research guide for doctoral scholars of the University of Mumbai; serves as a member of the National Academy of Sciences India (NASI), a Fellow and Life Member of the Indian Botanical Society and as Associate Editor of the Journal of Cell and Tissue Research. A well-respected higher education leader, Dr. Chandra has been nominated by the Maharashtra state government to several committees on higher education, to contribute his expertise to policy formulation and implementation of the National Education Policy 2020. “The progressive growth of B.K. Birla College into a nationally Top 10 ranked institution has been a very satisfying experience. Our prime objective is to ensure that students receive well-rounded best quality education to prepare them for life and fulfilling careers. However, quality improvement is a continuous journey. We are committed to serving this great temple of learning and continue to contribute to the process of transforming Indian higher education in line with NEP 2020,” says Dr. Chandra. For his dedicated service as teacher, researcher, facilitator, and academic leader in India’s higher education system and in particular, for nurturing BKBCK for over four decades into a nationally respected higher education institution, the Editors and Board of Directors of EducationWorld are pleased to present the EW Extraordinary Achievement in Education Leadership Award 2023-24 to Dr. Naresh Chandra.
Citation Director of the Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies (JBIMS) — an autonomous unit of the University of Mumbai — for two terms and currently Senior Professor, JBIMS, and Dean, Faculty of Commerce and Management, University of Mumbai (UoM), Prof. (Dr.) Kavita Ramchandra Laghate is one of India’s most respected women higher education leaders with a long and distinguished career in commerce and business management education. An alumna of Nagpur University, Dr. Laghate began her career in 1993 as lecturer in the department of statistics, Nagpur University followed by tenures at the Sydenham Institute of Management Studies Research and Entrepreneurship Education, Jankidevi Bajaj Institute of Management, and Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies — all sited in India’s business and commercial capital, Mumbai. In 2011, she was appointed professor at JBIMS, routinely ranked among India’s Top 20 B-schools in all media and government rankings. A year later, she was promoted to the office of Director of this prestigious degree-awarding B-school. In 2015, she was nominated to the Senate of University of Mumbai, and after serving her term was reappointed Director of JBIMS in 2018. Simultaneously, she served as finance and accounts officer of UoM, and Director of its Institute of Distance and Open Learning. In 2022, Dr. Laghate was re-appointed appointed senior professor at JBIMS. During her decade-long innings at JBIMS as Director, Dr. Laghate has played a major role in nurturing and developing Mumbai’s top-ranked B-school respected for producing industry-ready business management graduates. It was during her first term as director that JBIMS was granted autonomous status in 2014 by Mumbai University. Apart from nurturing and developing JBIMS into the commercial capital’s Top 3 B-schools, Dr. Laghate has substantially contributed to contemporising business and commerce curriculums of UoM’s over 700 affiliated colleges. In her capacity as Dean, faculty of commerce and management, UoM, she is shouldering the responsibility of NEP 2020 implementation and preparing its 2024-29 perspective plan. “My career in higher education has been very fulfilling especially the experience of preparing JBIMS for grant of autonomous status. Yet throughout my three decades in UoM, my objective has been to ensure that affordable quality higher education, particularly business management education, becomes accessible to youth from all sections of society,” says Dr. Laghate, who has published 36 research papers in well-known journals and addressed over 38 national and international conferences. In 2014, she was conferred the Best Director Award of the Higher Education Forum, Mumbai. For her extraordinary contribution to the growth and development of higher education in Maharashtra, particularly upgrading commerce and business management education standards, the Board of Directors of EducationWorld are delighted to present the EW Extraordinary Achievement in Education Leadership Award 2023-24 to Dr. Kavita R. Laghate.
The annual EducationWorld Grand Jury India Higher Education Rankings were introduced in 2019 to acknowledge and felicitate higher education institutions (HEIs) — especially newly-promoted, low-profile HEIs. Special juries of knowledgeable educationists are constituted to recommend conferment of the EW Grand Jury Awards upon higher ed institutions implementing best practices. To select progressive higher education institutions across the country, we invited nominations from educationists, individuals and higher ed institutions themselves supported by evidence of best practices in 14 categories including extraordinary leadership, campus design excellence, best academia-industry alliance, new-age study programmes leader among others. Evidence-supported nominations were received from 510 higher education institutions countrywide. To assess the evidence and rank nominated institutions in each category, this year’s Grand Jury comprised eminent educationists Prof. A.S. Seetharamu, former professor of education, Institute of Social and Economic Change, Bengaluru and education advisor to the Karnataka government, Mehul D. Mehta, chairman MDM Group, start-up mentor and investor, Dr. Hiren Ghelani, IT entrepreneur & coordinate member of Saurashtra University and Gujarat Technical University. The Grand Jury duly assessed the nominations and supportive evidence and ranked Top 10 HEIs in each category.` Best Academia Industry Alliance Institutions spearheading alliances and collaborations to bridge the academia-industry gap, promote industry internships, enhance graduate employability and job-readiness. “We are overwhelmed by the India #1 award for Best Academia Industry Alliance. It validates that we are moving in the right direction. As one of the country’s Top 10 private autonomous colleges, our prime objective has always been to offer new-age programmes and deliver industry-connected education that prepares our students for 21st century workplaces. Therefore, we have ensured that our curriculums are continuously updated with inputs from business and industry. Moreover, we provide several internship opportunities and top companies such as Reliance and Motilal Oswal visit our campus annually for placements” — Prof. Dr. Moushumi Datta, Principal, Nagindas Khandwala College, Mumbai (estb.1983, 6,800 students and 80 teachers) University of the Year A university which demonstrates exceptional performance in the academic year 2022-23 in terms of academic outcomes, research, teaching, faculty development programmes, and innovative initiatives. New-Age Study Programmes Leader Higher education institutions pioneering the introduction of new-age and futuristic industry-aligned study programmes. Diversity Inclusion & Equity Institutions which admit students from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, cultures and nationalities. Provide all students equal opportunities and ensure their participation in all activities regardless of culture, language, gender, economic background or disability. “We are overjoyed to be ranked #1 all-India in the category of New Age Study Programmes Leader. It acknowledges our commitment to creativity, innovation, and academic excellence. The distinguishing features of NAFDI are its industry-connected curriculum; high-quality faculty, most of whom are practicing professionals from the fashion and design industry, experiential pedagogies and internships. Our strong emphasis on delivering employable skills education has ensured that our graduates are industry ready and equipped with the skills to hit the ground running” — Balkishan Sharma, director, Nest Academy of Fashion, Design & Innovation, Mumbai (NAFDI, estb.2018, 400 students and 20 teachers). Best Skills Development Education Higher…
With appropriate tools and strategies, educators have the opportunity to harness the power of AI to provide personalised, engaging and effective learning experiences for children writes Robinson Philipose In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has made headlines around the world and scared educationists with alarmist predictions of widespread testing malpractice. But on the other side, AI has great potential to transform traditional teaching and enable teachers and students in K-12 education. Teaching has traditionally been a manual and human-intensive vocation in which teachers must design lesson plans, develop course material and deliver lectures. While this pedagogy has worked in the past, it is time consuming and leaves little room for innovation and experimentation. It’s a one-size-fits-all pedagogy. India’s normative 1:40 teacher-pupil ratio makes it difficult to personalise the education of every student. Like a doctor attending many patients prescribes medicines based on individualised lab reports, similarly a teacher should be able to address the learning deficit of every child in her classroom. AI makes this possible. With the advent of AI, educators now have powerful tools and technologies to create personal, engaging, effective and customised learning experiences for their students. Here are some ways AI can transform teaching-learning in K-12 education: Diagnostics. The first step in personalising education is to diagnose every child’s learning deficit in each subject, not possible within a 40-minutes period. This humanly impossible task is made easy with an AI-powered common test in every subject which will immediately disclose the learning deficit of every child in a classroom of 40 students in just three minutes. Personalised learning. AI can report the progress and performance of every student to enable customised teaching to suit individual needs and preferences. Traditional pedagogies oblige educators to take a one-size-fits-all approach, delivering the same content to all students, regardless of individual learning style or pace. On the other hand, AI algorithms can assess the strengths and weaknesses of every child and prescribe lesson plans accordingly, enabling her to learn at her own pace for better retention and comprehension. Smart tutoring systems. AI can also be used to develop smart tutoring systems (STS) that provide instant feedback and guidance to students as they learn and adapt to their learning styles and capabilities, thus providing more personalised and effective learning experiences. These tutoring systems use AI algorithms which provide personalised feedback and guidance to students throughout their learning. Natural language processing. AI chatbots can be used to answer students’ queries in real time, providing instant guidance and assistance. This is particularly useful for students who have difficulty understanding certain concepts and need help at home. AI-powered chatbots can answer routine student questions and clear assignment doubts. Natural language processing (NLP) is the backbone of chatbots, allowing them to understand and respond to human speech. Automated grading. Furthermore, AI can automate the assessment process, freeing teachers to attend to necessary admin duties. Simultaneously, it provides students faster assignment feedback thus enabling them to improve their grades. Moreover, AI assessments are entirely based on data and…
Victory City Salman Rushdie Alfred A Knopf Rs.519 Pages 352 An engaging novel about the founding and ultimate fate of the Vijayanagar empire (called Bisnaga) after a European mispronounces it On August 12, 2022, Salman Rushdie was due to speak at the Chautauqua Institution in New York State. Shortly after the speakers ascended the stage, a 24-year-old man named Hadi Matar attacked Rushdie with a knife. While Rushdie survived the attack, he was left visually impaired in one eye, much like the blinded protagonist of his new novel who recovers her personhood after being blinded by a king for her written words. At the time of the attack last year, Rushdie’s next novel Victory City was set to be released in early 2023. Victory City is an engaging fictional saga about the founding and ultimate fate of the medieval Vijayanagar empire (called Bisnaga in the story after a European mispronounces it), which spanned most of southern India between the 14-16th centuries. At the centre of the novel is a young girl, Pampa Kampana, who grows up to become a celestially blessed sorceress and queen of Bisnaga several times over. She has a powerful desire to live and outlive everyone. This desire has been shaped by her witnessing a jauhar in her childhood. Pampa Kampana loses her mother to this act of collective self-immolation and grapples with grief and disbelief that turn into defiance of death. At this point, she is blessed by Goddess Parvati who pronounces, “You will fight to make sure that no more women are ever burned in this fashion, and that men start considering women in new ways, and you will live just long enough to witness both your success and your failure, to see it all and tell its story, even though once you have finished telling it, you will die immediately and nobody will remember you for four hundred and fifty years.” The novel begins with an excavated manuscript in Sanskrit titled Jayaparajaya (Victory and Defeat) that was interred in a clay pot during the fall of Bisnaga in the 16th century. The story is told by the fictitious translator of the manuscript, who remains a voice that is occasionally seen in a note or a footnote. The translator of this manuscript breathes Pampa Kampana and the Vijayanagar empire back into existence for a 21st century audience. The manuscript is about Pampa Kampana and Bisnaga; it is her story told in her words and how she shaped an empire. In the novel, Pampa Kampana who carries the blessing of Goddess Parvati and lives for over two centuries, gives two battle-weary brothers, Hukka and Bukka, a sack of magic seeds that are sown and burst forth into a city created out of magic. Her dream is of a kingdom where men and women are equal, and no woman is without voice. However, the brothers, who reign in turn and marry Pampa Kampana in turn, struggle with inclusion and religious fundamentalism, which tend to undermine this project…
Parenting in the age of anxiety: raising children in india in the 21st century Abha Adams Aleph book company Rs.399 Pages 224 Well-known K-12 educator Abha Adams discusses the challenges and choices parents face, and must make, while raising children in these fractious times Abha Adams’ reputation as India’s pre-eminent educationist precedes her, and for good reason. As a pioneering force in education, among her many accomplishments, her instrumental contribution in the setting up of the country’s iconic institutions, widely regarded as schools that are centres of excellence — Shri Ram schools & Step by Step — themselves speak volumes of her knowledge and insights. In a life dedicated to education, her enduring and distinguished career began as a student at Delhi’s Lady Shri Ram College. Abha Adams is the embodiment of wisdom, a fountainhead of an all-encompassing philosophy of teaching and parenting with contemporary relevance, more pressing and urgent than ever. It is in this very real context, against a backdrop of severe identity-crisis and a loss-of-self, that Adams’ book Parenting in the Age of Anxiety (PITAA), becomes pertinent, immediately applicable, and serves as a valuable guide to parents, caregivers, guardians, teachers, mentors and principals. The book’s cover is disarmingly simple, but the content is potent. Adams discusses the challenges and choices parents face, and must make, while raising children in these fractious times. Parents, teachers, counsellors, child psychologists, psycho-therapists, family therapists, and most importantly, children share their first-hand experiences in this book. Besides confronting challenges like early puberty, advancing adolescence, and fitting in with friends to the pain points of teenage years, PITAA also addresses present-day issues like mental health and well-being and problems of raising children with special needs. Critical issues like substance abuse, self-harm, sexual orientation, suicide, and teenage pregnancies, which are usually brushed under the carpet, are discussed at length. Among a slew of self-help books, there are some key differentiators that make PITAA stand head and shoulders above the rest. First, Adams is an author who represents an educated, deeply insightful amalgam of real-world, current and relevant experience. The value of career-academics is unquestionable. However, in her case, theoretical knowhow is supplemented by extensive practical, hands-on experience. Second, the author is successfully able to share case histories and offer solutions to three distinct audience-sets directly — parents, educators and students. Third, the most crucial age-range whilst raising children is also addressed: from birth to teenage years. Simply written, yet thorough, this succinct book is a treasure of observations and result-oriented suggestions. Fourth, it presents a very nuanced understanding of behaviour, triggers, circumstances, stimuli, and resulting manifestations; born from which are solutions bedrocked in a winning merger of practicality and prudence. The cornerstone of civilisation is not science; it is language. Adams elucidates this critical point by going to the very source of technology when she shares that all tech magnates, from the pioneering Bill Gates to the eccentric genius Elon Musk, ensure that their own children have no access to tech products for the…
According to top brass of the State Bank of India, May 15 was a red letter day for the bank and the country. Full front-page ads splashed in the Times of India and several other dailies informed the long-suffering public of the silver jubilee (25th anniversary) of SBI credit cards. For your editor, it was a day of heart-burn, if not lamentation, because it raised the question why retail credit made its debut in India half a century after credit cards had become commonplace in the US and other Western countries. Today there is a blanket of silence over precisely who were the economists who advised the (Congress) governments of the time to proscribe retail credit. Several histories of independent India have been written, but their acclaimed authors are silent on this issue. Your editor’s explanation of this mass deprivation is that under the Soviet inspired socialist development model, citizens’ savings were siphoned away for investment in capital-intensive public sector enterprises (PSEs) which were expected to generate vast profits that would build millions of affordable homes, public schools and consumer durables. Yet these grand schemes went bust when business-illiterate bureaucrats, appointed to run PSEs, could never generate the “surpluses” (profit was a bad word) envisaged by 13 grand Five-Year Plans. As a result, the modest material aspirations of an entire generation of Midnight’s Children were reduced to dust. Only in 1991 since the Industrial Development Regulation Act, 1951, which strangled private enterprise, was scrapped by Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, has retail credit become available to citizens. Yet the learned economists and Central planners who denied ordinary retail credit to a whole generation have never been called to account. Indeed, most of them have gone on to greater glory.
The death in London on May 17 of Srichand Parmanand Hinduja at age 87 received grudging paragraphs and cursory coverage in the Indian print and television media, given to saturation coverage when politicians and movie stars with relatively modest achievements go the way of all flesh. The seeds of the global Hinduja family were laid by Parmanand Hinduja who built a modestly successful carpets trading business in Karachi, Sindh in pre-partition India. However, this business was shut down when after Partition the family fled to India in 1947. In Mumbai, Parmanand started over as a commodities trader (onions, potatoes, iron ore) and built up a sizeable trade with Iran. But with growth and development of business in India severely curtailed by pervasive licence-permit-control raj of the Indira years, the family moved to Iran and during the Reza Shah Pehlavi years, built a formidable fortune trading in commodities. However with the return of Ayatollah Khomeini from exile and the beginning of clergy dominance in Iran, SP read the writing on the wall and liquidated, moving the family fortune to Geneva and London in the nick of time before rigid foreign exchange controls were imposed. In the UK where business is governed by rule of law, under SP’s leadership the Hindujas purchased British Leyland’s truck manufacturing business in India (now Ashok Leyland) and the French oil company Chevron, and against all odds, established a bank in Switzerland (Hinduja Bank), made sound investments in real estate, emerging to top the Sunday Times league table of UK’s rich with a net worth estimated at $31.7 billion in 2022. Real estate assets include Carlton House Terrace, the Xanadu-style Hinduja family residence, down the Mall from Buckingham Palace and the under-construction Raffles Hotel which is slated to emerge as Europe’s most luxurious. Unfortunately in recent years, cracks have appeared in the brothers ‘everything belongs to all and nothing to one’ wealth sharing philosophy with the next generation falling out. But that does not detract from the heroic adventures, leadership and sense of timing of SP, perhaps the last of the old-world business tycoons of the 20th century.
The Adani case gets curious and curiouser. Now that the Supreme Court has absolved SEBI (Securities & Exchange Board of India) of any lapses in investigating whether there was any truth in the Hindenburg Report of January which accused infrastructure — airports, marine ports, cement, grain silos and edible oils, media — developer Gautam Adani of fraud stock price manipulation, money laundering etc, which sent the value of all Adani group equity shares crashing, wiping out almost Rs.10 lakh crore by February 5, Adani shares have started climbing again. Moreover, R.N. Bhaskar, author of Gautam Adani: The Man who Changed India (2022), says that Adani owns “hundreds” of cargo ships, each registered under separate companies and foreign flags, and can be bought and sold overnight and several companies in Australia, Dubai, Israel and Egypt. They are legally entitled to purchase Adani company shares. Therefore, the only subsisting charge against Adani is that through these and other opaque firms, he has breached Rule 19 of SEBI regulations that disallows promoters from holding more than 75 percent of the equity in any listed company. One wonders why it’s necessary to impose a ceiling on promoters’ shareholding. True it will create a shortage of tradable shares in the marketplace, but it also reflects a promoter’s confidence in the success of his enterprise. In this particular case even if as alleged, Adani holds a greater percentage of arbitrarily imposed ceiling and raises funding against inevitably higher valued stock to build force multiplier infrastructure, the strategy works in the public interest. As to the question why the Adani wealth meltdown has attracted so much comment in this education magazine, while Adani has suffered a massive loss, your editor — a bona fide investor in the India growth story — has also lost a bundle.
Corruption in education — India & China
Indulging in corrupt practices in China has become highly risky. The anti-corruption drive launched by Xi Jinping be it in the education sector, military or the party itself, hasn’t spared anybody What unseated the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) from power in Karnataka? The widespread perception, well-grounded in reality, that it was indeed a “40% commission sarkar” in the state. Bribe-taking had permeated every office of government. I say this out of personal experience. Three years ago, I persuaded a philanthropic organisation to make a significant donation to the school my wife and I studied in. Located in Athani in North Karnataka, it bears her grandfather’s name because he had established it a century ago. We were keen to set up a new English-medium school in the same premises named after her late father. The school management agreed. However, for two long years, the agreement couldn’t be implemented because permission for renaming the school didn’t come from the relevant office of the education ministry. Reason: Babus wanted their palms greased. People in Karnataka know of far worse cases of corruption in the education system. Without paying bribes, one cannot set up a medical college or even get permission to increase the number of seats in education institutions. The situation is far worse in government-run universities. Persons without required qualifications and competence are appointed Vice Chancellors on payment of bribes running into crores. “How do they earn this money back in an education institution?” I asked a well-informed editor of a Kannada newspaper. “Simple,” he said. “The VC gets a commission from construction contracts and purchases for the university. Often, contractors and suppliers are asked to jack up prices, so the incremental commission is shared with higher authorities, including ministers. Even lecturers and professors have to pay bribes to be recruited in government colleges.” Other states in India also have a similar problem. Is it any wonder, then, that the standards of education in our public universities, where millions of students from poor and disadvantaged backgrounds study, are rock bottom? How does China fare in this regard? I got to know some broad facts from a friend, an Indian who has been teaching at a technology university in southern China. He said: “After completing my Ph D from another university, I have been teaching here for the past 20 years. I have witnessed a dramatic improvement under every parameter of the university education system in China. They now aspire to be the best in the world.” According to him, corruption had crept into the education sector in China after it opened up its economy to reforms and foreign investment in the early 1980s. As GDP began to grow at double-digit speed, consumerism boomed and people wanted to get rich quickly. There was fierce competition among students to enter good universities and land high-paying jobs. “Bribery manifested itself in the form of students giving expensive gifts to teachers in expectation of high marks in exams. There was also some degree of corruption in…