Single by choice: Happily unmarried women – Kalpana Sharma Women Limited; Rs.275; Pages 145 To be single by choice is not seen as choice. A few women I knew were kept single by their fathers so that the salary they brought home could provide for the son’s education. Others were promoted to the status of sons providing for siblings’ marriages and the welfare of their parents first with pride, then confusion and later resignation. Some of these women married late in life, found husbands who valued them and provided the tender care and respect that fall through a gap in parental homes. I remember admiring one scientist who is single until she said in a matter-of-fact tone that may be single women are those not lucky enough to find the right partner. I remember I was shocked at the clay feet of my idol. On the other hand, for many women marriage is also an escape from parental homes which are often not as ideal as they are made out to be. I also remember arguing at one point that ideally a woman should, like Draupadi, have five husbands — one to read and argue with, one to travel with, one to raise children and mind parents with, one to dream and star gaze with and one just to go to bed with! To be single by choice is a luxury and also a question of class, even if the precise moment of choice seems hazy. But to have a family that respects your work, your will and your capacity to stand on your own feet is a great thing. In this very interesting book, Kalpana Sharma has put together a rich collection of extraordinary women who speak of their journeys and choices so casually, that it’s breathtaking. This compendium highlights that supportive parents and a rewarding professional life provide the social capital that independent women need. The title puts paid to the vulgar jokes that groups of lusty single men ‘bachelors’ et al shower on ‘old maids’ picking at their grey hair and warts waiting listlessly for a man to appear on their bleak horizon. The reflection that such a question raises is priceless. Sharma points out that the book is not a sociological survey but told from a perspective of single women raising questions about the institution of marriage, patriarchy, subservience, independence and equality. After writing about single women, all remarkable, all famous, who had survived the loss of long-time partners and continued to build the rest of their lives brick by brick burying their grief and transforming their world, reading this collection was in a sense like walking through the looking glass, and again perhaps not. The assumptions made about single women’s needs, unmarried or widowed, have a striking similarity unless there is strong family support. To marry, or not to marry, that’s the question. Whether to take arms against the sea of family and struggle with its endless demands and survive as a human being, or to…
The Anarchy: The relentless rise of the East India Company – William Dalrymple Bloomsbury; Rs.511; Pages 397 If there is a deep antagonism to capitalism within the collective psyche of Indians, it can be traced back to the corporate excess, exploitation and pillage of this landmass by the London-based East India Company (EIC) — undoubtedly the most powerful multinational in world history — in the last and fading years of the Mughal Empire. The rise of EIC, which received a wide-ranging royal charter from Queen Elizabeth I for “trade to the East Indies” on December 31, 1600, into the mightiest corporation in global history that in its heyday commanded an army of 200,000 men and ruled over 300 million Indians — “a state in the guise of a merchant”— is brilliantly recounted in this page-turning historical narrative. It reads like a novel, and is certain to prompt right-thinking citizens towards the conclusion that we have not learned sufficient lessons from the mercenary and mendacious rule of the EIC and its successor, the British Crown. They ruled for almost 200 years over India which until the 18th century was the world’s richest and most prosperous region after imperial China. It’s important to note that the British arrived in India not as marauding conquerors but as humble petitioners anxious to trade with Mughal India “which was producing about a quarter of global manufacturing… and in many ways was the world’s industrial powerhouse and the world’s leader in manufactured textiles,” writes William Dalrymple, the widely read Indophile author who has written over a dozen deeply-researched historical narratives of Mughal India: White Mughals (2002), The Last Mughal (2006), Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India (2009), City of Djinns (1993) among other tomes. The merchants of EIC came to India merely to trade in commodities — fine muslin, silk, indigo and spices — load their ships and sell these luxuries back home profitably. The first “man of quality” sent by King James I of England to petition Emperor Jehangir for grant of a trading licence to the company was Sir Thomas Roe who arrived in India in 1615, but was given short shrift by the great Mughal. Nevertheless, Roe stuck around for three years living in slummy conditions before he was given permission to build a factory in Surat, Gujarat. That was the start of a Mughal-EIC relationship during which the Brits learned to do business in India. “Over the next 200 years, it (the company) would slowly learn to operate skilfully within the Mughal system, and do so in the Mughal idiom, with its officials learning good Persian, correct court etiquette, the art of bribing the right official and in time out-manoeuvring all their rivals — Portugese, Dutch and French — for imperial favour,” writes Dalrymple. Although in recent times several well-researched and anguished accounts of British atrocities in the Indian subcontinent have been written — notably An Era of Darkness by politician-writer Shashi Tharoor — it’s also important to bear…
EducationWorld’s first cover story of 2020 celebrated the newly-promoted Krea University (KU), peninsular India’s first American Ivy league style liberal arts varsity sited in Sri City, Andhra Pradesh, a two-hour drive from Chennai. KU’s south Indian promoter-trustees — perhaps miffed that India’s first Ivy League model private universities (Ashoka, Jindal Global, Bennett) have sprung up in the uncivilised north — have reportedly raised a massive Rs.750 crore endowment corpus for the first liberal arts centred university of the south. This enterprise of great pith and moment greatly enthused your editor who although not quite in the pink, forthwith undertook a testing five-hour air and traffic-choked road journey to Sri City to write up an “over-generous endorsement” (according to a critic) cover feature highlighting the pains and attention to detail the KU management has taken to establish south India’s first liberal arts varsity. Although somewhat crass, in the Indian context it’s germane to declare that the entire expedition was funded — except for spartan on-campus board and lodging — by EW. In the circumstances, your editors are shocked and dismayed that despite golden opinions showered on KU, we have not received any feedback, let alone appreciation, from any of the dozen-plus new varsity’s Oxford, Harvard-educated faculty, except from vice chancellor Dr. Sunder Ramaswamy to the effect that his hospitalised mother had appreciated our cover feature, and a complaint protesting a data error from the director of communications. Perhaps in this age of bad manners and ingratitude, this is normative. However, almost all the stellar faculty interviewed for our cover story emphasised that teaching life skills and communication was a unique feature of KU’s specially designed interwoven arts and sciences curriculum. Surely, that includes elementary good manners. A poor start off the blocks.
In mid-February four men in white linen attire walked into a liquor shop in the central business district of south Mumbai and demanded a list of documents and licences from the owner. After examining them, they highlighted several acts of omission and commission of proprietor Ashok Patel and demanded a bribe of Rs.7 lakh to overlook and regularise them. Except as reported by a Times of India correspondent (February 20), this time these faux government officials had targeted the wrong man. Patel is well-versed in trapping such extortionists. He locked the doors of his retail store to prevent their escape and called the police. Thus far this gutsy businessman has trapped 121 extortionists including a police inspector and several sales-tax officials. Although inspector raj extortion, in effect informal taxation, is a cross which long-suffering MSMEs (micro, small and medium enterprises) businessmen routinely bear, only rarely is it reported in the media. One of the most egregious instances of such extortion was reported several years ago when Laloo Prasad Yadav — now languishing unlamented in prison for corruption — was chief minister of the benighted Hindi heartland state of Bihar (pop.105 million). On the occasion of the wedding of one of his nine children, his goons drove away with several cars from a Tata Motors showroom and returned them after the big fat Indian wedding of the daughter of this self-styled champion of the poor was concluded. In drawing rooms across the country such anecdotal narratives of extortion and plunder of struggling businessmen are routine, with the law, order and justice systems designed by the socialist dispensation reduced to a cruel joke. Last September the BJP/NDA 2.0 government at the Centre decreed a Rs.1.45 lakh crore corporate income-tax cut to incentivise the country’s businessmen to expand capacity and promote greenfield enterprises. The government seems unaware that since 2014, forsaking the 1.3 billion Indian marketplace, 23,000 dollar millionaires have migrated to other countries where businessmen and entrepreneurs are appreciated for tax generation and jobs creation. Hon’ble PM, FM and HM, wake up! Ease of doing business is all about maintenance of law and order and justice delivery, not tax incentives.
The unease of doing business in contemporary India is highlighted by the unfortunate experience of go-getting IIM-A alum Shantanu Prakash who spearheaded the digitisation of Indian education through Educomp Solutions Ltd (ESL), a company he promoted in 1988, and which for quite a while was the darling of the stock market when its Rs.10 paid up equity share was quoted at over Rs.5,000 on the bourses. On February 11, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) registered bank fraud cases against Prakash and directors of ESL and associated companies for allegedly defrauding the State Bank of India and a consortium of 12 banks which had loaned the company Rs.1,955 crore. Yet as every informed individual in Indian education is aware, fraud has been perpetrated against Prakash rather than by him. ESL pioneered the digital revolution in Indian K-12 education by installing computer labs/ Smart Classrooms in more than 35,000 government schools across the country. But typically state governments inordinately delayed and/or defaulted payment, forcing the company to borrow over Rs.275 crore from SBI and other banks at extortionate interest rates of 16 percent-plus which is normative in public sector banks, reportedly nationalised in the public interest way back in 1969. Moreover, more than 6,000 private schools have defaulted and/or delayed paying the company the quarterly instalments they had contracted to pay, forcing the company into bankruptcy. The law’s legendary delay — the judicial backlog in India’s over-burdened courts is 33 million cases — and the requirement to pay court fees have bankrupted thousands of business enterprises, including ESL. According to the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business index, India is ranked #164 under the parameter of enforceability of contracts. Yet another visionary entrepreneur humbled by the insolence of office and the law’s delay.
The death of Anucha Thasako was supposed to change everything. After several sharp blows to the head during a Thai boxing bout in 2018, the scrawny 13-year-old fell to the floor, unconscious. The referee rushed to his side, to no avail. There was no doctor in attendance. Anucha died soon afterwards from brain haemorrhage. He had been boxing since the age of eight, and had fought 170 fights. The footage of the deadly bout, which circulated widely on social media, stirred uproar. The government, which had anyway been considering restrictions on child boxing, pledged to rush through a Bill to ban children under 12 from participating in formal competitions, and to oblige those between 12-15 to wear protective headgear. But the plan quickly lost steam. Participants and fans protested loudly, arguing that the only way to prepare for a career in Thai boxing or muaythai, which dates to at least the 18th century, is to start young. Eliminate child boxing, they argued, and the whole sport would atrophy. The government no longer talks of tightening the rules for young boxers. Gongsak Yodmani, the head of the Sports Authority of Thailand, describes child boxing as standard practice. The authority’s official tally shows only 635 boxers below the age of 15, although others put the number of children who train and compete informally as high as 100,000. For some children, boxing is a route out of poverty. Those participating in public fights earn 300-500 baht (Rs.700-1,100) per bout when they are starting out, says Samart Payakaroon of the Muay Thai Naiyhanomtom Association, a lobby group. Professional boxers can earn thousands of dollars a match. Muaythai “is a very honourable way to escape poverty”, says Chatri Sityodtong, the founder of One Championship, a martial-arts promoter. But doctors say that blows to the head from “the art of eight limbs”, which involves punching, kicking, kneeing and elbowing, may stunt children’s development and increase the risk of Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s. A study from Mahidol University found that boxers under the age of 15 had lower IQs than average; those who had been fighting the longest were furthest behind. The study’s lead author, Jiraporn Laothamatas, considers putting children in the ring a form of child abuse. One force helping sustain the sport, underage bouts included, is tourism. The Tourism Authority of Thailand energetically promotes muaythai. Foreigners tend to snap up the most expensive seats in the biggest stadiums, looking for a slice of Thai life. Many may not realise how young some of the fighters they are watching are — although the weight categories should give them an inkling. Anucha was competing in the under-41 kg division. (Excerpted and adapted from The Economist and Times Higher Education)
One of Russia’s leading universities has banned its academics and students from identifying their institutional position when making public political statements. This ban is being interpreted as a further erosion of academic freedom in the country. Critics claim that Moscow’s Higher School of Economics (HSE), known for its relatively liberal leanings, has clamped down on dissent in response to its students’ involvement in anti-government protests last summer. On January 25, HSE’s academic council approved new rules which state that “if someone is engaged in political activities, they must do so in the capacity as a private person and not a university employee or student”, according to a university summary of the regulations. “These rules are formulated in such a way to censor statements by students and academics,” says Armen Aramyan, a Ph D student and editor at student publication Doxa. The new rules mean that if academics or students want to engage in politics — go on demonstrations, publicly support a politician or help with political events — they are now forbidden from identifying themselves as being affiliated with the university. “In practice, this rule means political activism is permissible only outside the university,” says Andrey Lavrov, the HSE’s director for public relations. Instead, academics will be allowed to reveal their job titles only when they stick to ‘analysis’ — in newspaper columns, for example — of their own field of expertise, he explains. HSE has defended the changes, arguing that they have some parallels with rules at US universities. Tufts University, USA, for example, has a policy where faculty listed as supporters of a politician or policy “should be without mention of institutional affiliation, or with a disclaimer indicating that their actions and statements are their own and not those of the university”. Yaroslav Kuzminov, HSE’s rector, says academics and students “should behave in a way that is not harmful to the university”. “That’s why our professional opinions should sound more like those of professors speaking rather than like kitchen arguments, which is not uncommon on the Internet,” he argues, defending the changes. But critics interpret the restrictions as an “act of reprisal” for HSE students’ involvement in protests last summer against the exclusion of opposition candidates from Moscow city elections, at which police arrested more than 1,000 demonstrators.
A leading German university has been plunged into scandal after it emerged that it had signed a contract binding it to abide by Chinese law while accepting hundreds of thousands of euros from China to set up a professorship to establish a Chinese teacher training programme. German lawmakers have criticised the Free University of Berlin (FU) over the terms, which critics fear give the Chinese government leverage to prevent teaching about subjects such as the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and Tibet. The contract, obtained by the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel, allows the Chinese side to reduce or halt funding if any element of the programme contravenes Chinese law. Other clauses also place FU at the mercy of political pressure from China, argue critics. Each year, Hanban — the agency that runs controversial Confucius Institutes in Western universities and is the contractual partner of FU — is allowed to revoke the agreement at its discretion, according to Tagesspiegel. If FU wants to end the agreement, however, the conditions are more onerous. Pressure had been growing on FU even before these latest revelations. On January 20, a group of FU alumni signed a joint letter expressing grave concerns about the university’s academic independence. This arrangement is “untenable”, says the letter because it means that it is impossible to rule out Chinese Communist Party influence over teaching content at FU. One signatory, David Missal, a Sinologist expelled from China in 2018, says the only acceptable way forward now is to cancel the contract. Critics have also voiced concerns about the language FU has used to defend the agreement. In a response to Tagesspiegel, the university said that forbidden topics in China, such as the “incidents of 1989”, would still be included in teaching. Some considered such terms to be an overly detached and neutral way of describing the killing of demonstrators.
Like any hotbed of scholarly activity, the University of California (UC) is no stranger to rows. Recently a debate over the use of SATS and ACTS, tests used in college admissions, has spilled out from campus into the courtroom. In December, a lawsuit denouncing UC’s use of the tests was filed in the Alameda County court. On February 3, a commission reviewing admission procedures recommended that UC should resist calls to abandon tests. More than 1,000 colleges across America have made submitting test scores optional for many students, though hardly any are completely “test blind”. UC is by far the largest institution to consider abandoning them. UC’s size (it has about 220,000 undergraduates) and prestige means others will watch what it does carefully. First administered in 1926, SATS have faced criticism for favouring the wealthy since the 1940s — an irony, since they were originally adopted by Harvard to expand its intake beyond the boarding schools of the north-east. While the College Board, which owns SATS, has worked hard to eliminate egregious advantages for children from wealthy families — gone are the questions about oarsmen and regattas — there has been a persistent correlation between test scores and socio-economic status and race. Academics have reached no consensus on how well the tests predict student success at university. Most agree on two things: that high-school grade point average (HSGPA) is the best predictor of college success and that tests, when combined with grade averages, make predictions more accurate. How much tests add is disputed. The College Board claims that the additional predictive power offered by the SATS is significant. This controversy goes to the heart of an age-old question. Should universities consider themselves primarily as centres of academic excellence, and therefore strive to accept the students most likely to excel academically? Or should they accept a broader mission to improve society, which could mean sacrificing some academic excellence in the pursuit of a different definition of equality? The plaintiffs’ arguments imply that no amount of predictive validity justifies the use of the tests in admissions. They allege that UC’s use of tests that are “demonstrably discriminatory” against “talented and qualified students” from poor families, under-represented minorities and students with disabilities, is illegal under California law. “Use of the SAT and ACT is not just indefensible policy,” argues Mark Rosenbaum, counsel for the plaintiffs; “it is illegal wealth- and race-discrimination.” In January 2019, long before the lawsuit, UC commissioned a task force to review its admissions procedures. It found that the tests are as good as or better than high-school grades at predicting student outcomes. For under-represented minority students, youth from poor families and students who were the first in their family to go to college, tests are better predictors of success, as measured by subsequent undergraduate grades. It concluded that the tests are not the main culprit. Three-quarters of the opportunity gap is attributed to factors that precede admission, most notably failure to complete required courses in higher secondary education. Far from…
It is a scary time to be ill in Wuhan. The city has one-third of all confirmed infections by the coronavirus and three-quarters of the deaths caused by it. People there are barred from travelling elsewhere (similar rules apply across Hubei, a Syria-sized province of which Wuhan is the capital). Since late January, military medics have been piling into the city. Soldiers are helping enforce its cordons. The army’s growing presence reassures many people, says a resident. But some find it unnerving. The government has spent lavishly on infrastructure, but its investment in healthcare has failed to keep up. China says it has about 2.6 doctors for every 1,000 people (cf. India’s 0.7). But the World Health Organisation says half of China’s doctors don’t have a bachelor’s degree. Among those in villages and small towns, only 10-15 percent do. Some practise traditional Chinese medicine, a form of treatment that has government approval but little scientific basis (stocks of an oral liquid based on such medicine have been flying off shelves since a recent report by Xinhua, an official news agency, claimed that it can “suppress” the virus). There is also an acute shortage of nurses. The average in rich countries is three per doctor. In China it is only one. China’s investment in healthcare has mostly gone to big hospitals in cities. Wuhan has about half of Hubei’s best medical facilities, but only about one-fifth of the province’s population. As in India, far less attention has been paid to primary health clinics, which in more developed systems handle minor ailments and escalate the rest to specialists. Only about 5 percent of China’s registered doctors serve as general practitioners. The average in the OECD, a club mostly of rich countries, is 23 percent. After Wuhan imposed a lockdown in late January, panicky residents converged on large hospitals seeking reassurance. The queues would have promoted cross-infection, says Xi Chen of Yale University. Public anger about healthcare, including the gouging of patients by hospitals, has triggered occasional violence against doctors. In late January, a man attacked medical staff in Wuhan after his father-in-law died from the virus. But the system’s public image may have improved during the current crisis. Many people praise doctors’ willingness to join the fight in Hubei, despite high rates of infection among medical workers there. They will need such support in the struggle ahead.
At the first-ever celebration of budget private schools (BPS) staged in Mumbai on February 26, 400 promoters, trustees and principals of India’s most admired BPS congregated to celebrate the Top 300 rated and ranked in the EW India Budget Private School Rankings 2020 published last month – Summiya Yasmeen Promoters and principals of India’s most admired Budget Private Schools (BPS) — low-cost affordably priced primary-secondaries which provide the country’s aspirational lower middle and working classes alternatives to dysfunctional government schools — were awarded and felicitated at the inaugural EducationWorld India Budget Private School Rankings Awards 2020. At this first-ever celebration of BPS — routinely demonised by government, academia and media for allegedly ‘exploiting’ gullible, aspirational parents — staged at the upscale Hotel Sahara Star, Mumbai, on February 26 — 400 BPS promoters, trustees and principals of India’s top-ranked budget private schools congregated to celebrate the Top 300 BPS rated on 11 parameters of affordable education and ranked in the EW India Budget Private School Rankings 2020 published last month (February). This rankings survey was conducted by the Delhi-based market research and opinion polls company Centre for Forecasting and Research (C fore) Pvt. Ltd which interviewed 2,548 parents with children in BPS, principals and teachers countrywide. Welcoming delegates from 80 cities/towns across India, Dilip Thakore, publisher/editor of EducationWorld, described the awards event as “historic and the first felicitation of BPS which provide the world’s most competitively priced private school education to children of low-income households”. “However, because they offer educationally under-served sections of society an alternative to dysfunctional government schools, BPS suffer official discrimination and harassment. For instance, under s.19 of the RTE Act, 2009, BPS, which fail to comply with stringent infrastructure norms — government schools are exempt — can be forcibly shut down. But in EducationWorld, we believe that the best among the country’s 400,000 BPS which have a massive aggregate enrolment of 60 million children, are serving an important nation-building purpose by providing relatively good quality — including English language — education to low-income households across the country. Therefore, they need to be awarded and rewarded,” said Thakore. Likewise, Dr. Kulbhushan Sharma, president of the National Independent Schools Alliance (NISA), which has a membership of 60,000 BPS countrywide, lauded budget private schools for persisting with providing good quality education to bottom-of-pyramid households notwithstanding official harrassment. “Despite a rising number of parents exercising their choice in favour of BPS, Central and state governments have forcibly shut down over 20,000 BPS across the country. However, we are determined to exercise our fundamental right to engage in the vocation of education which has been upheld by the Supreme Court of India. Under the NISA banner we will continue to demand due recognition to BPS as legitimate education providers and architects of the country’s future. We thank EducationWorld and event sponsor LEAD School for hosting this historic first-ever awards event to celebrate India’s budget private schools,” said Sharma. The welcome addresses were followed by enlightening lectures delivered by nationally reputed K-12 leaders.…
-Anjum Babukhan Every parent and educator ponders over these questions: How can our children get smarter? What is that we can do to stimulate brilliance within our children and boost their creativity and critical thinking skills? If we believe the brain is the body’s central processing unit, then brain compatible learning (BCL) may be the solution to expand children’s learning bandwidth. Neuron hub. Despite rapid and mind-boggling technological advancements and the advent of artificial intelligence, nothing can compete with the dynamism of the human brain. The brain is the crown jewel and CPU of the human body that differentiates homo sapiens from all other animal species. It’s incredible that we can think about our own thinking. Thanks to the neurosciences, we can learn about how we learn. Brain-compatible learning (BCL) is an impressive interdisciplinary science that combines psychology, neuroscience and education. BCL influences not just pedagogy but educators to integrate information technology, art and physical education to boost the learning outcomes of students. The science of how the brain learns best is a revolution which has the potential to transform teaching-learning around the world. Right ‘software’ for digital natives. How do we effectively teach GenXers who are continuously and mesmerisingly engaged with digital gadgets? Beginning from early childhood, children are exposed to digital stimuli and find it difficult to engage with old school pedagogies preferred by digital immigrants (i.e, parents and teachers). In this scenario, it is a huge challenge for an adult teacher or parent to compete with multi-media stimulators, gaming and instant feedback loops. How do we effectively engage a digital native in school or at home? How do we use the same hardware (students’ minds) but offer a different, more updated programme for learning (software)? Built-in native capability. Given changing teaching-learning dynamics, educators and parents are becoming aware that hard research, backed with science equips us with the intellectual wherewithal to buttress best practices, especially the ones we knew worked, but were hard to prove. Through BCL we can make the new 3R’s — research, reflection and renewal — fundamental to learning and as important as the old school 3Rs (reading, ’riting & ’rithmetic). When educators and parents shift to using brain stimulating pedagogies backed by neuroscience research and validity, everyone benefits, especially children/students. Processing information flow. Learning occurs across multiple brain pathways that receive and coordinate simultaneous inputs. The human brain processes sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and tactile sensations all at once. Experiences that engage all of the physical senses — walking through a museum or practicing a new skill or art, visiting a novel event — stimulate the growth of numerous dendrites and enhance learning by association. Technically or more accurately electro-chemically, information transfer occurs through cell (neurons) transfer. Neurons that fire together, wire together! When stimulated, brain cells grow branch-like extensions known as dendrites which have extended legs called axons that subdivide and connect to other dendrites. Therefore, sensorial experiences, emotional connections and motor movements help to embed information in various neural pathways that…
Against the backdrop of gathering clouds of gloom and despair that have blanketed the economy, the best option of the finance minister was to batten down the hatches, cut unproductive expenditure and invest in developing the country’s abundant and high-potential human capital. Unfortunately, this option wasn’t availed – Dilip Thakore On February 1, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman delivered the longest-ever budget speech while presenting the first Union Budget 2020-21 of the BJP/NDA 2.0 government that was re-elected to power at the Centre with a two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha last summer. It was a spirited and comprehensive address to Parliament and the nation against the backdrop of gathering clouds of gloom and despair which have suddenly blanketed the until recently high performance Indian economy. Towards the end of her marathon 161-minutes address, Sitharaman was obliged to cut her speech short as she suffered a sharp loss of blood sugar (hypoglycemia). The dizziness, shakiness and arrhythmia the finance minister experienced is somewhat symptomatic of the condition of the Indian economy. But rather than sugar candy — a short-term palliative — the finance minister ingested to recover her spirits, the Union Budget required imagination, innovation and courage to break with business-as-usual practices and precepts. Unfortunately, there’s little evidence of these virtues in the Union Budget 2020-21. “I am mindful of presenting the Budget in the backdrop of two cross-cutting developments: (a) proliferation of technologies, specially analytics, machine learning, robotics, bioinformatics and artificial intelligence; and (b) the number of people in the productive age group, i.e, 15-65 years in India being at its highest. This combination is special to contemporary India. Across the world, if there is a shrinking of globalisation, equally there is a debate on the efficacy of monetary policy too. The efforts we have made in the past five years and the energy, enthusiasm and the innovation of our youth are the ignition required to push forward. The Indian spirit of entrepreneurship which has weathered several storms over the centuries inspires and motivates us. We recognise the need to support and further energise this spirit,” said Sitharaman, in her analysis of the global economic scenario. The self-congratulatory reference to the “efforts we have made in the past”, glosses over the pathetic current condition of the Indian economy. Despite the scandals-tainted predecessor Congress-led UPA government’s rule at the Centre (2004-14), the Indian economy clocked an average annual GDP growth rate of 8 percent. But the BJP/NDA government’s big bloomers — demonetisation (2016), injection of populist sentiment in the landmark Goods & Services Tax (GST) introduced in July 2017, neglect of law and order and reluctance to encourage the “Indian spirit of entrepreneurship” during its first term (2014-19) — have driven the high performing Indian economy to the edge. “All budget speeches are made in particular economic contexts… The economic context for the present budget included the sharp slowdown of economic growth over the past two years, the worst unemployment/ underemployment situation in nearly 50 years, seven stagnant years of exports, declining investment…
Founded 120 years ago by American steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie, who donated 90 percent of his vast fortune to charities and foundations, CMU is one of the world’s most admired institutions of higher ed and research. Founded in 1900 as Carnegie Technical Schools by steel tycoon and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), who during the last 18 years of his life donated 90 percent of his fortune ($350 million or $65 billion (Rs.461,500 crore) at current value) to charities and foundations, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) has developed into one of the world’s most admired institutions of higher education and research. In the Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2020, CMU is ranked #27 and among the global Top 50 in the QS World University Rankings 2020. The US News & World Report in its America’s Best Colleges 2020 league table ranks this 120-year-old varsity among America’s Top 20 with its computer science faculty ranked #1 and undergraduate business and engineering schools ranked #5 and #6 respectively. Located on a 140-acre campus in the steel town of Pittsburgh, CMU’s seven schools and colleges — engineering, arts, computer science, humanities and social sciences, science, business, and information systems and public policy — provide undergraduate, postgrad and doctoral programmes to 14,500 students from 100 countries, mentored by 1,300 faculty. Moreover, the university hosts more than 100 research centres and institutes including the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, Robotics Institute, Human-Computer Interaction Institute and Language Technologies Institute. The CMU alumni roll call features the late John Nash (1994 Nobel prize winner for economics); James Gosling, inventor of programming language Java; Andreas Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems and Charles Geschke, co-founder of Adobe Systems. Pittsburgh. Sited at the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers in Pennsylvania state, Pittsburgh (pop.306,000) is famously known as America’s steel city for its 300-plus steel-related businesses. Aka the city of bridges — more than 440 — it’s a major hub of the manufacturing, IT and healthcare industries and hosts eight Fortune 500 companies and six of the Top 300 law firms in the US. Pittsburgh also hosts over 25 colleges and universities including University of Pittsburgh and Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and is ranked among the country’s Top 25 college cities by finance website WalletHub. The second largest city of Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia), Pittsburgh is student-friendly with a good public transportation system, numerous restaurants, shops, parks, malls, coffee shops, pubs and cinemas. The city experiences four distinct seasons: winters are cold, cloudy with moderate snowfall; spring and fall (autumn) are generally mild with moderate sunshine and summers are warm to hot and humid. Winter temperatures average -3oC and summer 28oC. Campus facilities. Sited 5 km from downtown Pittsburgh in the Oakland and Squirrel Hill neighbourhoods, the 140-acre CMU campus is a combination of beaux-arts i.e, neoclassical, and international styles of architecture. Prominent among the campus’ 80 buildings are the Cohon University Centre, Purnell Centre for theatre and drama and Posner Hall for business studies. Distinctive campus landmarks include The Cut, a…
During the past 45 years since it admitted its first batch of students, the reputation of this K-12 school, with 5,240 students and 169 teachers on its muster rolls, has spread beyond the steel city. – Baishali Mukherjee Sited on an eight-acre campus in Durgapur (pop.581,000), West Bengal’s steel city, Dayanand Anglo Vedic Model School (DAVMS, estb.1975) is an ISO 9001:2015-certified CBSE-affiliated co-ed day school well reputed for providing nationally benchmarked K-12 education to its 5,240 students mentored by 169 teachers. During the past 45 years since it admitted its first batch, this school’s reputation has spread wide. DAVMS has been conferred the International School Award of the British Council for three consecutive terms (2010-2013, 2014-2017 and 2018-2021) and is listed among the ‘Future 50 Schools Shaping Success’ in India by Fortune magazine (2016-2018). Moreover, it was conferred the Best in Academics (CBSE) and Best in Co-curricular awards in 2014 and 2012 respectively by the Telegraph Education Foundation, Kolkata. DAVMS is a constituent institution of the nationwide DAV schools chain, founded in 1886 by Mahatma Hansraj (1864-1938), a disciple of Arya Samaj founder, Swami Dayanand, and proclaimed the largest non-government education society of India. The DAV society (estb.1886) runs 900 schools countrywide (including 20 in West Bengal), 75 colleges and a university. In 1975, Dr. D. Pal, former chief medical officer of the Durgapur Steel Plant, signed up with the DAV College Managing Committee to promote DAVMS with the objective of providing “quality English-medium education” to children of Durgapur, the third most-populous city of West Bengal after Kolkata and Asansol. The school, managed by the DAV College Management Committee (CMC), admitted its first batch of 39 students and three teachers in 1975. Credit for the excellent public notices, awards and encomiums that DAVMS has received over the past 45 years is universally given to the CMC’s commitment to delivery of a balanced blend of contemporary pedagogies, academic rigour and values-based education. “In DAVMS, we provide modern education rooted in Indian values at affordable price. Our curriculum and pedagogies encourage children to develop critical thinking, creativity, problem-solving and knowledge application skills as well as character development. The DAV model of holistic K-12 education stimulates the mental, physical, social and emotional development of children,” says Papiya Mukherjee, principal of the school. An alumna of Ranchi University and a committed DAV educationist, Mukherjee started her career in 1995 in the DAV Public School, Hehal (Jharkhand) and DAV School, Bistupur (Jamshedpur), before she was appointed principal of DAVMS, Durgapur in 2008. Mukherjee believes this school’s excellent reputation in Durgapur and West Bengal is attributable to CMC’s high emphasis on training and development of DAVMS’ 169 teachers, enabling them to deliver a mix of traditional and experiential pedagogies to boost children’s learning outcomes. In 2019, 177 of the 326 students who wrote the class X CBSE exam, averaged 90 percent-plus. Ditto 182 of 454 who wrote the class XII board exam. Moreover, 80 students cleared the IIT-JEE Mains and 20 the NEET exams. And for…
Jaisal Singh Bhati (15) aka Kanha’s Mowgli — the boy-protagonist of the popular Jungle Book (1894) by Rudyard Kipling — is no ordinary teen. Raised in Madhya Pradesh’s famous Kanha Tiger Reserve (formerly Kanha National Park), Jaisal has an important message for the world: Live and let live! The only child of Tarun and Dimple Bhati, managers of the Kanha Jungle Lodge — owned by his uncle Amit Sankhala — sited on the edge of the eponymous Tiger Reserve, Jaisal is also the great-grandson of the late Kailash Sankhala, the first director of the Union government’s Project Tiger initiated by then prime minister Indira Gandhi, to protect this magnificent endangered species. Home-schooled by his mother until age 10, young Jaisal spent his early childhood in close communion with the 940 sq. km forest and the 1,009 sq. km buffer zone declared a Tiger Reserve in 1973. Currently, he is a class X student of the Cambridge International (UK)-affiliated Bodhi International School, Jodhpur (BIS). “I was barely a year old when I went on my first safari. After that, I spent my childhood exploring the jungle tracks of Kanha which was notified as a national park in 1955 and declared a Tiger Reserve 47 years ago. I made many friends among the native Baiga and Gond tribals who are skilled wood growers and hunters-gatherers,” recalls Jaisal. Jaisal’s life changed drastically after moving to Jodhpur in 2015 where he lives with his grandparents. “When I was sent to BIS five years ago, I felt like a fish out of water. But in school, I was encouraged to become an ambassador of ecology preservation and wildlife protection,” he says. In 2019, this teenager was featured in the Discovery channel documentary Tigerland which detailed how four generations of the Sankhala family have contributed to tiger conservation. Presently in the middle of his class X exam, Jaisal has a clear road map for his future trajectory. “After my Plus Two, I want to qualify as a forest ranger of the Central government and carry on the legacy of my great grandfather. It is because of him that the Kanha Tiger Reserve is a live forest in which tigers still roam free,” he says. Evidently, there’s hope for the royal Kanha tiger, the star attraction of the sanctuary. Paromita Sengupta (Bangalore)
2019 ended on a more than cheerful note for Kolkata-based rising table tennis star Krittwika Sinha Roy (26), currently ranked India #4. In December, at the 13th South Asian Games staged in Kathmandu (Nepal), she won the singles final besting Sri Lanka’s Erandi Waruswithana in straight games. Earlier in July (2019), Krittwika teamed up with Pooja Sahasrabuddhe to win gold in the women’s doubles tournament of the Commonwealth championship staged in Cuttack (Odisha). For her achievements she was conferred the Khelasree award 2019 by West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee in January. The younger child of Deputy Superintendent of Police Sandip Kr. Sinha Roy and homemaker Anindita, and an English graduate of Calcutta University employed with the public sector Indian Oil Corporation, Krittwika started playing table tennis at age six at the Children’s Little Theatre Academy, Kolkata, under the tutelage of coach Rabi Chatterjee. To date, her medals tally is 151 of which five gold and two bronze have been won abroad. Over the past two decades as she moved up the West Bengal and national rankings, Krittwika has been trained and mentored by some of the state’s most respected coaches including Arup Basak, Souvik Basu Roy and Indranath Bhattacharya. Currently, she trains at the Jadavpur Sanskriti Sandhya mentored by Soumyadip Roy and Poulomi Ghatak, both Arjuna awardees and former national table tennis players turned coaches. Unsurprisingly, her professional coaches have prescribed a stringent training and practice regimen for her to develop agility and stamina. Krittwika’s daily schedule includes an hour’s outdoor fitness exercises in the morning followed by 2-3 hours of practice and an hour in the gym, with the practice session resuming in the evening for 2-3 hours. “Part of my routine includes watching match recordings of my idol and world #1 woman player Ding Ning,” she says. Like most aspirational athletes, Krittwika’s dream is to represent India at this year’s Tokyo Olympic Games. “I know how tough the competition is and appreciate the problem of the selectors. Meanwhile, I am preparing intensively for a world tour which includes participation in the ITTF Challenge Plus, Portugal Open and ITTF Hungary Open tournaments,” she says. Wind beneath your wings! Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)
Noida, February 21. Sampark Foundation’s Sampark Smart Shala programme — a disruptive, inclusive programme to transform the learning outcomes for millions of children — has been selected one of the Top 100 entries of the prestigious John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation 100 & Change Competition. The winner to be selected from among the Top 100 will win a single $100-million (Rs.71 crore) grant. “We are proud to be included among the Top 100 in the 100 & Change competition. Poor learning outcomes of children is one of the biggest problems confronting the education system in India, and we are committed to solving this problem through our frugal, tech-driven interventions. We have already transformed learning outcomes for 7 million children in six states across the country, and are well on our way to reaching 20 million children in the coming years,” says Vineet Nayar, founder chairman, Sampark Foundation. Pramerica Awards winners Gurgaon, February 24. The 10th Annual Pramerica Spirit of Community Awards, hosted by Pramerica Life Insurance Ltd — a joint venture of the US-based Prudential Financial and DHFL Investments (India) — felicitated 30 school students for extraordinary achievement in community service. These finalists were selected from 3,200 applications received from a nationwide search for the country’s top student volunteers. Top honours in the individual category were awarded to Aranyo Ray, a class XI student of Kalyani Public School, Kolkata, for inventing safe pesticides to help jute and soyabean farmers defend their crops from pests and fungal diseases, and to Vaishnavi Pandey, a class X student of the Tagore International School, Delhi, for her project to support acid attack survivors and ensure equal opportunities for them in society. Both winners were presented with a gold medallion, certificates of excellence, a cash prize of Rs.50,000 each and a return trip to Washington D.C. Addressing the finalists, Anoop Pabby, MD & CEO, Pramerica Life Insurance said: “You have taken the initiative to find causes to support and have not let age come in the way of your contribution. Each of you has done an outstanding job that has impacted the lives of many.” Atria U’s hydroponics monitor Bangalore, february 25. Students of Atria University, Bangalore have designed a Hydroponics Monitor, an IoT-based device to support plant life and nutrient supplements. Hydroponics is a farming technique for growing plant life in water and nutrients without soil. This method of farming promises greater yields than soil-based agriculture and also reduces pesticides usage. The Hydroponics Monitor can be set up in workplaces or at home. “One can grow farm produce closest to point of consumption, eliminating storage and transport costs while harvesting nutrient-rich horticulture produce without harmful pesticides. In Atria University, we plan to set up a hydroponics farm to prove that the agri-produce required for our hostels and students can be grown right here by utilising our unutilised spaces,” said Kaushik Raju, director, Atria University. Mindler introduces SaaS New Delhi, February 20. The Delhi-based Mindler Education Pvt. Ltd, a comprehensive career guidance and…
Bhuj, February 14. Over 60 girl students of the Shree Sahajanand Girls Institute (SSGI) — an all-women’s college which offers undergrad and postgrad courses — in Gujarat’s Kutch district, were reportedly forced to strip by college hostel authorities to check for menstrual blood. Darshana Dholakia, vice chancellor of the Krantiguru Shyamji Krishna Verma Kutch University with which SSGI is affiliated, has constituted a committee to probe the incident. “The hostel has a rule requiring menstruating girls to dine separately from other students. However, some menstruating girls broke this rule. When the matter reached the college authorities, some of the girls (sic) voluntarily allowed a woman employee to check them. The girls have told me they apologised to the authorities for breaking hostel rules. They also told me they were not threatened and admitted it was their fault,” said Dholakia. West Bengal In-school lockers scheme Kolkata, February 6. The West Bengal government has finalised plans to provide locker facilities in all state government primaries. The proposed lockers will ease the daily burden of 15 million students who will be able to store their books and stationery in school without having to carry them to and from home every day, said Partha Chatterjee, the state’s education minister, who clarified that aided schools won’t be provided government-funded lockers “for the time-being because of funds constraints”. Government school principals have widely welcomed this initiative. “Although we haven’t received any official communication in this connection, the provision of in-school lockers will come as a huge relief to the students’ community statewide,” says Parimal Bhattacharya, the headmaster of Jadavpur Vidyapith, a state government school in Kolkata. Delhi Children’s hygiene initiative New Delhi, February 23. Twelve schools of the Guru Harkishan Public Trust based in the national capital managed by the Delhi Sikh Gurudwara Management Committee (DSGMC) which have an aggregate enrolment of 20,000 students, will soon host robots christened Pepe, to encourage students to adopt good hygiene practices. “The robots have been developed by University of Glasgow, UK researchers in collaboration with Karnataka’s Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham University,” said Manjinder Singh Sirsa, committee president, addressing the media in Delhi. “Pepe robots which cost a modest Rs.7,000 each will be mounted on the walls above hand washing stations in wash rooms to exhort 20,000 children to wash their hands carefully,” says Sirsa. Bihar POCSO school cells Patna, February 23. POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) cells to hear complaints of sexual misconduct and exploitation of children, will be established statewide, says Kiran Kumari, special project officer, Bihar Education Project Council (BEPC). Addressing a media conference in Patna, Kumari said BEPC has issued a directive to all district education officers to set up POCSO cells in schools and include senior students as members. “These cells will report to committees headed by headmasters in all schools which will investigate complaints and take necessary action, according to provisions of the POCSO Act,” she said. In the first phase, the cells will be established in secondary schools, and later replicated in…
“India’s learning outcomes remain stubbornly low. Quality concerns around education are seldom viewed as a political priority. But these concerns cannot be ignored for much longer, especially in light of India’s human capital crisis, reflected in unemployment statistics.” Rohan Sandhu of the Harvard Kennedy School on why India needs a new education paradigm (Business Line, February 4) “70 years into the Republic, it is time to give autonomy to private schools. The 1991 reforms gave freedom to industry but not to our schools, who are still groaning under the burden of licence raj. Despite all this, however, the contribution of private schools to the rise of India is incalculable. Their alumni fill the top ranks of professions, civil services and business.” Gurcharan Das, author & columnist, in an essay titled ‘India is free, its schools are not’ (Times of India, February 6) “Modi government needs to come up with a far bolder roadmap and big-ticket reforms to put the economy back on the fast track if it has to achieve its $5 trillion goal by 2024. A policy of gradualism will not work as reforms need to be done pronto.” Raj Chengappa, well-known journalist, on the Union Budget 2020-21 (India Today, February 17) “Fears that the party will split if the Nehru-Gandhi family steps aside is a poor argument against intra-party reform and it reflects the self-interest of an old guard that is out of ideas and energy.” Editorial on why the Congress party must end Nehru-Gandhi family dominance (Business Standard, February 25) “India is descending into a night of dread and despair… The idea is to carpet bomb the Indian republic as we know it, and replace it with a regime that thrives on cruelty, fear, division and violence.” Pratap Bhanu Mehta, former vice chancellor of Ashoka University, commenting on the recent Delhi riots (Indian Express, February 29)
After sustained criticism from academics and educationists, Tamil Nadu’s AIADMK government has revoked its decision of last September (2019) to conduct public exams for children in classes V and VIII. An estimated 200,000 students statewide in the ten-13 years age group were preparing to write board exams in March-April. In a statement issued on February 4, following a cabinet meeting held the previous day, K.A. Sengottaiyan, minister for school education said: “The government has taken all this (public representations) into consideration and has cancelled the government order to conduct public examinations for classes V and VIII. The existing system of exams will continue.” He added that the normative annual exams administered by school managements will be administered as usual. This withdrawal order is applicable to 45,614 state government, government-aided and 12,419 private schools affiliated with the Tamil Nadu State Board of School Education. “Parents are heaving a sigh of relief as the state government has withdrawn its decision of conducting board exams for classes V and VIII. Board exams for this age group would have further promoted rote learning culture in primary education. The introduction of rote learning for children from the early years kills all creativity and takes the joy of learning out of millions of children from early childhood. At least pre-teen children should be spared the rigours of cramming for board exams. All right-thinking people welcome the state government’s cancellation of classes V and VIII board exams,” says N. Veeraperuman, general secretary of the Chennai-based Parents’ Welfare Association. The back story of the almost five-year-old AIADMK government introducing board exams in primary/elementary (classes I-VIII) schools is the provision in several liberal sections of the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, legislated by the Congress-led UPA-II government at the Centre in 2009, which became operational on April 2010. Under s.30, all board examinations for children in elementary education are proscribed and s.16 mandates that “no child admitted in a school shall be held back or expelled from school until completion of elementary education”. Although at the time, the liberal intent of these provisions of the RTE Act was widely welcomed by educationists, the continuous comprehensive evaluation (CCE) testing formula proposed in lieu of examinations has been a comprehensive failure and generated a chorus of demands for introduction of testing in elementary education and revocation of the no-detention (s.16) policy as too many unprepared students were entering secondary education. Therefore in February last year, the BJP government at the Centre re-introduced class VIII exams and revoked the no-detention provision (s.16) in Central government schools. Last September, Tamil Nadu’s AIADMK government (which is pro-BJP) followed suit and introduced class V and VIII board exams. “The AIADMK government’s decision to introduce two board exams in elementary education was a major over-reaction. Even the website of the Union ministry of human resource development admits that there are no studies to prove that board exams improve children’s learning outcomes. Contemporary education is not about passing exams but developing students’…
With West Bengal’s legislative assembly elections scheduled for the summer of 2021, the municipal elections to be held next month (April) — the exact dates are yet to be finalised — in 110 cities and towns including Kolkata, will be an acid test for the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) government of the state. In 2011 and again in 2016, TMC famously routed the CPM (Communist Party of India-Marxist), that (mis) ruled the state (pop.91 million) continuously for 34 years (1977-2011). The municipal elections are crucial for the TMC as the party needs to prove it has recovered ground lost to the BJP in General Election 2019 when BJP won 18 of Bengal’s 42 Lok Sabha seats, giving a big jolt to the TMC whose representation in the Lok Sabha in Delhi dropped from 34 to 22. According to Mukul Roy, a BJP strategist and one of the architects of the party’s rise in Bengal (earlier a TMC member), the municipal polls are a “mini general election”, and the next stage of the party’s Mission Bengal is to overthrow chief minister Mamata Banerjee’s government in the 2021 assembly election. But, the party’s job in West Bengal has been made more difficult by the BJP leadership in Delhi. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee and TMC workers have organised massive protest rallies against the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019 (CAA) which is widely perceived as discriminatory against India’s 200 million Muslim community. Although municipal elections are usually fought over local issues, this time the CAA and the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) may be a big issue in the forthcoming municipal elections. Statewide protests against the CAA which grants fast-track citizenship to religiously persecuted Hindus of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh but excludes persecuted Muslim sects, have struck a resonant chord in college and university campuses in West Bengal which has a long tradition of students politics and activism. There are several other good auguries for TMC. The state’s Budget 2020-21 presented to the legislative assembly by finance minister Amit Mitra on February 4, has pleased West Bengal’s small but influential middle class. The allocation of Rs.37,059 crore for education is 12.3 percent higher than in 2019-20, and includes Rs.4,566 crore (15 percent increase) for higher education. Also after a series of spats since he was appointed governor of West Bengal by the BJP/NDA government at the Centre in July last year, Jagdeep Dhankar has had several cordial meetings with TMC leaders. However, recent developments in Presidency and Jadavpur universities — Bengal’s showpiece nationally ranked varsities funded by the state government — have blighted the TMC horizon. On February 3, students of Presidency University (estb.1817) who have been protesting snail-paced completion of work in the Hindu Hostel since last year, gheraoed vice chancellor Anuradha Lohia and 40 heads of departments and other officials for 31 hours. The Hindu Hostel building, sited adjacent to the university, was shut down for repairs in July 2015 with students shifted to rented accommodation at New Town as a makeshift…
Private independent schools in Maharashtra which have dutifully admitted poor children in their neighbourhoods into primary/elementary school (classes I-VIII) under s.12 (1) (c) of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, say that the state government owes them Rs.900 crore. Under this provision, private (non-minority) schools are obliged to reserve 25 percent of capacity in class I for poor children in their neighbourhoods and retain them — free-of-charge — until completion of elementary education (class VIII). Under s.12 (2) of the RTE Act, to compensate private schools that admit poor students selected under the state/municipal government’s lottery system, the state government is obliged to partially reimburse them the expense towards educating students admitted under s.12 (1) (c) by paying them the equivalent of per-child expense it incurs in its own government schools. Over 70 percent of Maharashtra’s 11,000 independent schools — including 8,000 budget private, i.e, low-cost affordable schools — say they have either not received any reimbursement or have been paid partial dues by the state government’s school education department for the academic years 2017-18 and 2018-19. The Maharashtra state government spends Rs.17,670 per student per year in public (government) schools. Therefore, even under the iniquitous s.12 (2) formula, the state government would need to budget Rs.1,136 crore annually for children from 80,000 poor households admitted into class I of private independent schools, and for children admitted in previous years and retained until completion of class VIII. However, this amount calculated by the Pune/Aurangabad-based Independent English Schools Association (IESA, estb. 2014) is contested by the education ministry. According to a ministry spokesperson, the annual payout of the state government under s.12 (2) is Rs.150-180 crore and the pending reimbursement amount is Rs.336 crore of which half was reimbursed for the year 2018-19 and another Rs.90 crore was paid in February this year. Education ministry officials attribute the huge discrepancy between the two calculuses to private school managements unable to provide proof of s.12 (1) (c) admissions and compliance with the provisions of s.19 (which prescribes minimal infrastructure norms from which iniquitously, government schools are exempt), under rules written by the state government. IESA and associations representing 14,000 budget private schools (BPS) across the state have repeatedly petitioned the courts to direct the government to pay them their s.12 (2) reimbursement dues. On February 12, 2019, the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay high court passed an order directing the state government to clear these dues. But neither the previous BJP/Sena nor its successor Shiv Sena-Congress-NCP Maharashtra Aghadi coalition have complied with the high court order. The huge discrepancy between the amount claimed by private schools as pending dues under s.12 (2) and the government estimate, is also the outcome of numerous independent (including BPS) schools having admitted poor neighbourhood children into pre-primary classes. Under a proviso embedded in s.12 (1) (c), schools dispensing pre-primary education are obliged to start earlier and reserve 25 percent capacity in preschools for poor neighbourhood children. In 2012, the state…
Two years ago, a school health Programme (SHP) was launched as a joint initiative of the Union HRD and health and family welfare ministries under the Ayushman Bharat aka PM-JAY — national health programme — of the Central government. PM-JAY enables specified rural and urban poor families to obtain cashless medical treatment of up to Rs.5 lakh in 18,000 empanelled hospitals countrywide. On February 12, a National Resource Group of 40 adolescence experts was announced and a curriculum on the subject for teachers was released under SHP’s Health and Wellness Ambassadors initiative. SHP’s objective is to generate preventive health and wellness awareness among school-going children in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG-3) of the United Nations through promotion of hygiene and healthy practices within schools. In the first phase, selected teachers will be appointed Health and Wellness Ambassadors (HWAs) in government upper primary, secondary and senior secondary schools of 117 most backward districts (out of the country’s 640 districts). They will be supported by two Health and Wellness Messengers (HWMs) selected by school managements from among students. Together, they will propagate awareness of adolescent or sex education which will make its debut in K-12 education in India through this initiative. The subject of sex education has been bundled together with other health issues such as prevention of substance abuse and violence, road safety, nutrition, meditation and yoga to make this initiative acceptable to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological mentor of the BJP, that calls all the shots in the BJP/NDA alliance government at the Centre. It has been under pressure from academics and intellectuals to introduce sex education in secondary and even upper primary education. SHP is the Central government’s overdue response to the pressing demand for introducing sex education in schools. The bundling of related issues such as drugs and substance abuse and juvenile crimes and violence as well as general health awareness is not only good politics, but logical contemporisation of sex education. Under SHP, two teachers — male and female with good communication skills — will be designated HWAs to conduct weekly hour-long age-appropriate informative, sex and related education in-school sessions. HWMs will support them. The introduction of sex education into school curriculums is long overdue because sex crimes against innocent and vulnerable children have spread from the decadent West and have become endemic in contemporary India. According to the US-based National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children, India accounts for the maximum number of child sexual abuse imagery worldwide with 25,000 images or videos uploaded in the past five months with Delhi topping the India list. Moreover according to latest data published by the National Crime Records Bureau, the number of cases filed for crimes against children increased from 1.06 lakh in 2016 to 1.29 lakh in 2017. “The alarming number of nearly 130,000 cases in 2017 indicates that every day, 350 crimes are committed against children in India,” says a report of the Delhi-based CRY (Child Rights & You). This menace, and…
Thank you for publishing the inaugural EW India Budget Private School Rankings 2020 (EW February). I believe rankings are one of the most effective ways to encourage healthy competition in any sector as well as help consumers to make informed decisions. Where there is competition, there is excellence. In the education sector, EducationWorld is doing a great job of encouraging competition and therefore excellence across all categories of schools — from elite to budget — through field-based ranking surveys. Your latest BPS rankings will enable parents of low and middle-income households to make informed choices for their children’s education and also raise the quality of education provided in affordable schools. Nandita Pandit Delhi Wrong focus I am a regular reader of EducationWorld and have been closely following your annual rankings of schools, preschools and higher education institutions. Congratulations for publishing the inaugural EW India Budget Private School Rankings 2020. BPS deserve appreciation and recognition. As you write in your letter from the editor, BPS are working in the public interest by providing children from low-income households an alternative to dysfunctional government schools. State education departments should cease and desist from harassing them and instead focus their attention on improving the poor quality of education provided by government schools. Poonam Baliga Mangalore Commendable effort Congratulations for successfully staging the 10th EW Early Childhood Education National Conference 2020 in Mumbai (Special Report, EW February). It is a commendable effort to bring together nationally renowned education experts and edupreneurs on one platform to discuss and debate early childhood education. The commitment of the award-winning preschools and their promoters, principals and teachers is inspirational. I was also pleased to read that the National Education Policy 2019 draft has given top priority to providing all of India’s children early childhood care and education. Sheela Sapre Pune Outrageous State terror My sincere thanks to Sudheendra Kulkarni for his insightful essay ‘Alarming State violence against universities’ (EW February). Multiple attacks on university students in the span of just one month makes one believe that the State machinery has unleashed a reign of terror on the students community. Reports and images of students being attacked by masked goons armed with rods and sticks in Jawaharlal Nehru University with police turning a blind eye are disturbing and unacceptable. I agree with the author that these attacks have outraged the nation and severely dented India’s reputation globally. It’s the government’s duty to ensure safety of its citizens, especially young students. Bhuvanesh Prasad Delhi Rising public anger I enjoyed reading your Postscript ‘Moving finger writes’ (EW February). The BJP came to power in 2014 promising economic development, jobs and corruption-free governance. Six years on, economic growth has nosedived; unemployment is the highest in four decades, and there are mass agitations across the country against the Citizenship Amendment Act. There is rising public anger against the government for not focusing sufficient attention on reviving the economy and jobs creation. The victory of AAP in Delhi is a sign that people want development,…
The eruption of the coronavirus (Covid 19) epidemic in China’s Hubei province with Wuhan (pop.11 million) as its epicentre — which threatens to mutate into a global pandemic — and the efforts of the Central and provincial governments of the neighbouring People’s Republic of China (PRC), have important lessons to offer government and civil society in India. For one, despite the deadly virus which is resistant to all extant antibiotics and medication having claimed 2,746 lives in China and 51 abroad, indications are that the spread of the epidemic has been successfully contained. For this, the PRC government notwithstanding its initial laxity in acknowledging the first signals of the epidemic, has to be congratulated. Given PRC’s massive population (1.40 billion) and even of Hubei province (58 million), restricting the fatalities to 2,746 (at the time of writing) and 78,596 suspected cases, is indicative of rapid reaction and competent disaster management. For India’s Central and state governments and civil society, the outbreak of this deadly disease in our neighbour nation should serve as a timely wake-up call. It’s dreadful to imagine the chaos and pandemonium that would be precipitated if Covid 19 or a similar life-threatening virus-borne disease was to break out in India, especially in any of the country’s over-crowded metropolitan cities. For one, it’s well-documented that in all the major metros, 40-60 percent of inhabitants live in fetid slum shacks, severely under-served by way of piped water and modern sanitation. Viral contagions can spread and surge rapidly in these conditions. And from slums to more upscale homes in India’s poorly planned cities, the distance these contagions have to travel is very small. Ill planned and serviced cities apart — there is a shortage of 23 million homes in contemporary India — the public health infrastructure is pathetically inadequate. The doctor-people ratio in 21st century India is a mere 0.6:1,000 as against 1.49:1,000 in PRC and the ratio of hospital beds 0.7:1,000 (2011) cf. 4.2:1,000 people in PRC (2012). Moreover, annual expenditure of the government (Centre plus states) on health since independence has averaged less than 2 percent of GDP cf. the global average of 10 percent and 10-17 percent that’s normative in developed OECD countries. In the Union Budget 2020-21, the provision for public health is Rs.69,234 crore, a mere 0.30 percent of GDP. In this connection, it should be borne in mind that the Black Death influenza virus took a toll of 200 million lives in the 14th century in Europe and Spanish flu caused 30 million deaths in Europe between the two world wars. The point to note is that these virus-borne pandemics haven’t afflicted Europe for almost a century. That’s because governments and civil society learned the lessons of these destructive epidemics and took preventive measures — built well-planned cities, augmented housing stock, improved water and sanitation, and constructed public health infrastructure. Contemporary India is dangerously vulnerable to this or the next health pandemic.
The stunning victory of the aam Aadmi (Common Man) Party (AAP) in the Delhi state election last month has changed the national political discourse. For the better. Development — especially human capital development — is on the national agenda for the first time. The sheer scale of the AAP victory — it won 62 of the 70 seats in the Delhi legislative assembly — has stunned political pundits, the chattering classes and not least, the haughty leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It boggles the mind that less than nine months ago in General Election 2019, the BJP swept to power in New Delhi for a second term with a two-thirds majority in the Lok Sabha. AAP’s victory in Delhi is of historic significance because the party’s leadership fought its election campaign entirely on development issues — water, health, improved public transport (including free bus travel for women), electricity and very importantly, improved education in state government schools. The party’s election manifesto and campaign highlighted that the AAP government’s allocation for education at 25 percent of its total budgetary outlay, is the highest among all the states of the Indian Union. Moreover, the party’s election campaign on television and the media focused on infrastructure upgradation, sending government school teachers for training to top universities and B-schools in India and abroad, and the fact that three Delhi state schools are ranked among India’s Top 10 government schools and that one of them (Rajkiya Pratibha Vikas Vidyalaya) is ranked above all the Kendriya Vidyalaya schools of the Central government in the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings 2019-20 published last September. On the other hand, the BJP’s campaign focused on macro issues such as the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and an all-India National Register of Citizens (NRC) directed at the country’s Muslim community. Clearly, development issues triumphed and BJP’s regressive, negative campaign blew up in its face. But while there is cause for celebration that the AAP leadership has demonstrated that education and health of generation next are election winning issues, a word of warning is warranted against venturing down the broad and easy road to populist socialism. To win its huge mandate, the AAP leadership showered the people of Delhi with numerous freebies (bus rides) and subsidies (water, electricity, food) valued at Rs.2,500 crore. As the Economic Survey 2020 belatedly acknowledges, post-independence India’s “dalliance with socialism” was an “aberration” and completely against the millennia-old free market and private enterprise traditions of the subcontinent. Neta-babu socialism and a huge burden of unmerited subsidies have ruined the high-potential Indian economy. The AAP leadership needs to resist the temptation to venture down the slippery socialism road.
No country worldwide makes as great a fuss about government budgets as much as we do in India. While state government budgets which should be given more thorough examination receive cursory attention, the Union budget of the Central government attracts banner headlines and invites reams of expert comment from academics, economists, businessmen and journalists in the audio-visual and print media. Unfortunately most of these analyses are reminiscent of the attempt of the legendary seven blind men of Hindoostan to picturise an elephant using their sense of touch. There’s insufficient awareness within the commentariat that the standard 800-word essay can’t summarise a 161-minute budget presentation address of 147 paragraphs and 18,000 words. That’s why despite the media overkill of Union Budget 2020-21, the public interest demands detailed long form examination of the compulsions and constraints of Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman who had the formidable task of raising resources at a time when the high-potential Indian economy is experiencing a severe downturn. The annual rate of GDP growth has dipped below 5 percent, unemployment is at its highest in decades, investor sentiment is depressed, stock market indices are plumbing new depths, exports growth is almost nil and maintenance of law and order is under severe strain countrywide. It’s against this grim backdrop that your editors have evaluated Budget 2020-21 from the perspective of developing the country’s human capital — the only factor endowment the Indian economy has in abundance — that offers a way out of the shallows and misery in which the economy has been floundering for the past seven decades after independence. The differentiating feature of our detailed cover story in this spring issue is that while we lament the grossly inadequate provision made in Budget 2020-21 for human capital development, i.e, public education and healthcare, we have analysed the budget holistically and suggest ways and means to slash unproductive revenue expenditure and mobilise resources for investment in developing the country’s high-potential human capital. In our opinion, there’s considerable room for reducing establishment, defence, subsidies expenditure and raising additional resources for investment in human capital development. Hard times call for belt-tightening and radical restructuring initiatives in the larger public interest. The era of business as usual is over. That’s the principal message of our cover story in this issue. On February 26, acknowledging the important contribution of the country’s estimated 400,000 routinely vilified budget private schools (BPS) schooling 60 million children countrywide, we awarded and celebrated the best among them as per their rankings in the inaugural EducationWorld India BPS Rankings 2020 published in early February. This celebratory event staged in Mumbai provoked unprecedented enthusiasm. Check out the pictorial essay of the awards event in this news and comments-packed issue of India’s indisputably #1 education publication.
India’s unsung ECCE pioneers
In an era when educationists — including early childhood educators — are rightly encouraged to think and act ‘glocal’, i.e, global and local, it’s equally important to realise that at the formative age of 0-6 years, education rooted in a child’s mother tongue and local culture has a lasting impact on the cognitive and socio-emotional development of youngest children. Therefore, while it’s important to know about the seminal contributions of European early childhood educators such as Friedrich Froebel, Maria Montessori and Rudolf Steiner, it’s equally important for ECCE (early childhood care and education) providers in India to be aware of the education philosophy and work of indigenous pioneers who drew upon best practices from around the world and adapted them to local conditions. Four pioneer Indians who made a significant impact on early childhood education and from whom all educators need to learn are: Gijubhai Badheka (1885-1939), Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941), Tarabai Modak (1892-1973), Anutai Wagh (1910-1992) and Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948). A creative disruptor, Gijubhai introduced several innovative child-friendly practices into ECCE. Among them: teachers greeting children instead of the other way round; encouraging child-crafted plays/concerts; according children respect and freedom to voice their opinions; banning corporal punishment in schools and educating parents about its negative consequences. Another great ECCE educator was Tarabai Modak, a social worker of Maharashtra. Inspired by Gijubhai’s experiments in early childhood education, she began working with him in Bal Mandir, a preschool in Bhavnagar. Together they also started India’s first training college for pre-primary teachers, way back in 1925. Sadly almost a century later, India does not have a formal early childhood teacher training programme similar to the B.Ed study programme. In 1936, following criticism that ECCE being provided was for “rich children”, Tarabai started the Shishu Vihar Kendra in Bombay. In 1945, she moved to Bordi, a tribal area of Maharashtra, where she founded a Gram Bal Shiksha Kendra (pre-primary). Indeed Tarabai Modak should be credited with having pioneered the concept of balwadis — preschools for youngest children. In Bordi, she experimented with two types of preschools — central and angan balwadis. Central balwadis were run for five hours with children brought from their homes to preschools. Conversely, angan balwadis were conducted in courtyards of homes by teachers who sang ballads and conceptualised games to teach children hygiene, language etc. Together with Anutai Wagh, she developed an indigenous curriculum using low-cost teaching aids. The idea of anganwadis promoted under the ICDS scheme has been drawn largely from Tarabai’s work. Another great stalwart of pre-independence India’s cultural renaissance who was an ECCE proponent, was poet-writer Rabindranath Tagore, also a great admirer of Dr. Maria Montessori’s ECCE philosophy and pedagogy. In 1929 when the first International Montessori Congress was organised in Denmark, Tagore travelled to that country to attend it where he also met the famous Swiss educationist Jean Piaget. In 1940 when Dr. Montessori visited India, Tagore welcomed her warmly and learning from her, began propagating education for youngest children through music and play. Moreover, almost…