EducationWorld May 04

Masters of Illusion — The World Bank and the Poverty of Nations by Catherine Caufield; Macmillan; Price: Rs.280; 432 pp This is one of the most important books written in recent years. Though first published in 1997, Masters of Illusion — The World Bank and the Poverty of Nations has received scant attention in the Indian media. Which is rather surprising because the machinations, motivations and hard currency loan disbursements of the 6,000 men and women who work in the World Bank group of institutions are incrementally shaping the destinies of over 4.5 billion people in the developing nations of the third world. Moreover the acts of omission or commission of the World Bank are of vital importance to Indians in particular. For the simple reason that India is its largest client and borrower. It’s a painful truth which nationalists will be loathe to admit. Given the hare-brained communist-inspired socio-economic experimentation of post-independence India, the nation would have dissolved into chaos and anarchy but for the steady and continuous disbursement of long-term loans to this country by World Bank institutions. The subject or quantum of contemporary India’s massive foreign debt estimated at $100 billion (Rs.45,000 crore) is seldom discussed and debates about the deployment of this huge annual inflow of foreign aid are few and far between. But it’s an indicator of the nation’s international credit rating that over $50 billion of the country’s foreign debt is owing to the International Development Authority (IDA), the soft-lending affiliate of the World Bank which provides long-term interest free loans (charging only an administrative fee of 0.75 percent) to countries whose credit ratings render them ineligible for loans from commercial banks. The World Bank Group of institutions with its head office in 1818 H Street, Washington DC (the US is the largest shareholder/ subscriber to the capital of the Bank (17 percent)) comprises the International Bank of Reconstruction & Development (the formal name of the World Bank), IDA, the International Finance Corporation (which lends to private sector corporates around the world) and MIGA (Multilateral Investment Guarantee Association — which protects foreign investment abroad). All told the World Bank has lent a massive aggregate sum estimated at $300 billion in its 57-year history mainly to the developing nations of the third world. But it’s important to note that the bank is a commercial lending institution, not a charity. On the basis of the committed (not fully subscribed) capital contributed by over 100 nations around the world — with the major commitments made by the US and other industrial nations — it raises money by issuing its blue-chip, relatively high-interest bonds which are purchased by private banks, mutual and pension funds in the industrial OECD countries. These proceeds are lent for projects and programmes (approved and evaluated by the bank’s experts) in developing nations. Conceptualised during the final years of World War II as an institution to establish a stabilisation fund to maintain the equilibrium of foreign exchange rates by lending to nations with acute balance of payments problems and…

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The enduring charm of Kolkata and its environsFor the discerning Kolkata (aka Calcutta) remains a city with a glorious imperial past which retains its old-world flavour and Marxist coffee house cultureHowrah Bridge over the HooghlyIt‚s rare to encounter an informed individual who is neutral about Kolkata (formerly Calcutta), described as the ‚Ëœcity of dreadful night‚ by Rudyard Kipling, even before an estimated three million refugees from East Bengal flooded into the city after partition in 1947. With an officially estimated population of 14 million, Kolkata is India‚s most populous city and perhaps the most populous in the Commonwealth. Despite pervasive poverty and deprivation, its people are friendly and Bengali wit and intellect are renowned. Don‚t let the first impression of squalor put you off. There is a lot to be discovered in this city, and quite painlessly. The history of this justly famous metropolis stretches back to the 17th century ‚ to the time when the Mughal empire was in disarray and Europeans had arrived in the fabled east. In 1686, Job Charnock, chief of the East India Company‚s factory in Hooghly, looking for new sites, selected a group of three villages, Kalikata, Govindapur and Sutanuti ‚ where Armenian and Portuguese settlements were already established. A factory was constructed in Kalikata on August 24, 1690, and thus Calcutta was born. In 1698 a makeshift fort was built, which was easily stormed by Siraj ud Daula, the Nawab of Bengal in 1756. Most British inhabitants managed to escape but those captured were crammed into an underground cellar. Overnight, 113 of the 146 prisoners died of suffocation, and the tragedy went down in the history books as the infamous cruelty of the Black Hole of Calcutta. Early in 1757, the British recaptured Calcutta and made peace with the Nawab. A much stronger fort was built and the small factory site morphed into the capital of British India. By that time, the European population had swelled from a few hundred to 100,000 through the arrival of new ‚Ëœwriters‚, as East India Company employees were called, traders, soldiers, and what the administration termed “cargoes of females”.Things changed when Bengal became an important centre in the struggle for Indian independence, and the wary British moved the national capital to Delhi in 1911. With the partition of the Indian subcontinent, Calcutta was affected more than any other Indian city with significantly mixed Hindu and Muslim populations, and when the dividing line was drawn through them, the area was thrown into anarchy with thousands of refugees fleeing across the newly created borders. Calcutta, the centre of the jute-manufacturing and export industry became an apex without a base, whereas across the border in East Pakistan, jute grew in abundance, but without the infrastructure to process or export it. Fifty-seven years after partition, Kolkata is still suffering, presenting challenges that rival some of the world‚s most impover-ished cities. Up to 40 percent of the city‚s residents live in slums. Former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi declared Calcutta a lost cause…

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Over the past three years the Azim Premji Foundation and the Wipro Applying Thought in Schools programme have been playing pioneering roles in raising teaching standards in the school system by convening teachers’ workshops and school education upgradation seminars. Summiya Yasmeen reports A persistent and growing criticism of Indian industry is that despite it being the greatest user/ beneficiary of India’s education system, its captains and leaders tend to suffer a blind spot towards education. The phenomenon of India’s new generation of IT (information technology) millionaires endowing and enabling their alma maters is of very recent origin. And for mysterious reasons this welcome development has been nipped in the bud by Union human resource development minister Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi who recently issued a diktat that donations to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) — and presumably to all government-run education institutions — must be routed through the ministry’s Bharat Shiksha Kosh (trust). Unmysteriously the flow of donations into the ministry’s trust has dwindled to a trickle (see EW January cover story). But if education in general is a blind spot of Indian industry which costs it hundreds of crores annually in terms of in-house training of personnel (another blind spot of industry), school education is even more so. Industry leaders — and perhaps even the leading lights of academia — generally fail to make the connection between declining standards in the country’s 15,600 colleges and 311 universities and their feeder institutions: schools. Though typically, contemporary India boasts a sprinkling of high quality independent, traditional and new genre international schools, 90 percent of the nation’s primary and secondary schools are owned and managed by the Central and state governments and the overwhelming majority of them would not be classified as ‘schools’ in developed countries. These government schools whose number is estimated at over 750,000 across the country, have remained totally beyond the ken of Indian industry — and academia. Fortunately the picture is not entirely bleak. Several captains of Indian industry have — even if belatedly — made the academia-industry connection and are utilising their formidable skill-sets to address the problem of declining standards in Indian education. Among them encouragingly is IT tycoon and reportedly the world’s richest Indian Azim Premji (est. net worth: Rs.30,820 crore) who has diagnosed the vital importance of upgrading the quality of school education, particularly in the government sector. In 2000 he promoted the Azim Premji Foundation (annual budget: Rs.20 crore) which is committed to upgradation of academic standards in government schools especially in rural India. In 2001 Wipro Ltd launched its Wipro Applying Thought in Schools (Watis) programme to upgrade teaching/learning standards in urban schools. Over the past three years both these initiatives have acquired momentum and are playing a pioneering role in raising teaching standards in the school system by convening teachers’ workshops and school education upgradation seminars. On March 15, 60 knowledgeable educationists from across the country converged on the 10-acre hi-tech Bangalore campus of Wipro for Watis’ third all India seminar titled the ‘3rd Partners…

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Letter from London Slow death of science Despite the announcement made by Gordon Brown, chancellor of the exchequer, in this year’s March budget, that schools, universities and colleges across the UK will be given an extra £8.5 billion (Rs.68,850 crore) over the next three years, many universities are quietly closing academically heavyweight departments. Universities are discovering that to attract larger numbers of students they have to offer ‘fashionable’ courses at the expense of traditionally perceived dryer academic subjects. This shift towards popular courses makes disturbing reading when linked to departmental closures in academia. High profile controversial closures include chemistry at Kings College, London; East Asian studies, linguistics and European studies at Durham; and sociology, anthropology and philosophy at the University of Wales, Swansea. As university managements are forced to become more efficient in their usage of funds, they have had to become more transparent about how available resources are allocated. Departments, which shared resources in the past, now have to compete with each other, which means that successful departments, or those which ‘earn’ money from high student intakes, are able to spruce themselves up without having to share their good fortune. Thus unviable programmes have to be phased out. Probably the biggest losers in this situation are physics and chemistry departments. Comments Tajender Panesor, policy officer at the Institute of Physics: “There are only 51 universities in Britain offering first degrees in physics at present, which is a decline of over 30 percent since 1994.” She goes on to express a genuine fear that the current funding regime could see this number decline even further, seriously undermining the quality of undergraduate teaching in the few physics departments which manage to survive. There is a similar problem in chemistry. There are currently between 35 and 40 chemistry departments in British universities, but the Royal Society of Chemistry is predicting that at best 20 and at worst only six will remain open for teaching and research at the end of the next decade. The closure of the chemistry department of Kings College, London, has created particular anguish, as it is credited with developing crucial techniques which led to the discovery of DNA. To compensate for such closures, some universities are concentrating on offering a range of less demanding science-based courses. Paradoxically a government advisory body claims that thousands of students are wasting their time and money on “sexy” low-grade science degrees offering minimal employment potential. It accuses universities of shutting chemistry, physics and biology departments in favour of “more fashionable” options such as forensic science. Certainly in this field there are some strange anomalies. London South Bank University for example, is offering forensic science with marketing, media studies or tourism, and the University of Derby offers forensic studies with creative writing. These are obviously unashamed marketing ploys, which are serving to condemn serious scientific subjects to the sidelines, with the result that the country will soon find itself short of the hard science skills it needs. Spain Socialist government’s good start Spanish universities face…

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Artlab Madras, a Chennai-based training institute, is all set to launch a new concept in digital media education next month (June). Promoted by Sunny and Sharon Natrajan, the institute offers short-term digital communication and creative arts courses to graduate students of visual communications and fine arts in partnership with the College of Communications, University of Nations, Hawaii. With its first one-year course in digital media and communication in affiliation with the Swiss Institute of the College of Communications, already on offer, the new programmes aim to develop students’ creativity and artistic expression rather than technology skills which are the focus of existing courses in India. “We have been doing extensive market research since 2002 and have found that though India has skilled professionals in IT related services, we don’t have sufficient trained manpower in the area of digital communication. Our IT professionals lack the ability to integrate creativity into technology; this is why few films and entertainment projects are outsourced to India. If we are to tap the huge opportunities in digital media we need to develop a unique curriculum that is Indian in content and Western in technology,” says Sharon Natarajan, a computer engineering alumna of Pune University, who also runs her own advertising and an outsourcing agency in Chennai. The first batch of 30 students from all over the country, handpicked after evaluation of their creative skills, will be divided into two batches and will be instructed by three full-time resident faculty from the College of Communications, University of Nations and three full-time faculty from India besides globally renowned visiting faculty. “Our training methodology is unique in that we concentrate only on one module every month besides equipping every student with a computer,” says Natarajan of her dream venture. Six months of classroom activity will be followed by six months of internship coordinated by Artlab Madras at one of its centres executing outsourced digital projects in Chennai. “Interns will be handling real world projects, interacting with foreign customers and developing skills,” says Natarajan. Artlab’s hi-tech Rs.2.5 crore designer campus nearing completion on a two-acre plot facing the beach front in Thiruvanmiyur, simulates an artistic multimedia studio and is equipped with state-of-the art infrastructure. ” It’s time India moved away from doing back office jobs for America and Europe and developed an indigenous creative industry. We have a rich cultural heritage and diverse artistic tradition. In Artlab we want to draw out the creativity of our students for application in digital communication,” she says. With the Indian digital communication industry which has an annual revenue of Rs.2,475 crore expected to grow at the rate of 30 percent over the next three years (according to Andersen Consulting), Artlab’s novel academic venture has the potential to open many new and exciting career options for Indian youth. Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai) Maths missionary In the matter of posing mathematical conundrums or teaching multiplication and division of integers, Delhi-based Jose Paul has few equals. Despite his having entered the teacher’s fraternity 40 years ago and having attained…

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Your Counsellor RepliesI‚m a class XI student. I want to pursue a career in communications. Please advise. Nalini Sawant, PuneYou could enroll for a bachelors‚ degree in mass media and later for a Masters in communication studies/ mass communications. Or you could complete your graduation in any subject of your choice and sign up for a postgraduate programme in mass communication or communication studies. The University of Pune (www.unipune.e.met.in/dept/emrc) and AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi 110 025 are among the most well reputed institutions for study programmes in communications.I‚ll be graduating (BA economics) in 2005. What are the career options available to me other than MBA and IAS? Please provide information about the company secretary‚s course as well.Ashok Patel, AhmedabadYour economics degree qualifies you for a career in journalism, mass communications, advertising, chartered accountancy, company secretaryship, insurance and cost accountancy among others. A Masters in economics will qualify you to enter the Indian Economic Service after clearing the Economic Service Examination conducted by the Union Public Services Commission. A Masters will also facilitate entry as a management trainee into the corporate sector or into financial institutions which usually employ economists in research positions. Vis-ƒ -vis the company secretary‚s study programme, contact the Western India Regional Office of ICSI, No.13, Jolly Maker Chambers, II Nariman Point, Mumbai 400 021.I‚ll be completing my B.Com in 2004 after which I propose to write the UPSC exam. Please provide information about the exam and coaching classes too.Ravi Kolhatkar, NasikThe minimum eligibility criterion for writing the UPSC civil services exam is a bachelor‚s degree. Success in the UPSC examination is the prerequisite of entry into the IAS, IPS, among other all-India services. UPSC also conducts other examinations such as the Combined Defence Services Examination for entry into the army, navy and air force. For more information visit www.upsc.gov.in. Numerous study options are available to prepare for UPSC examinations. These include guides, correspondence courses, classroom coaching, etc. In Mumbai, coaching classes are conducted by the University of Mumbai and the State Institute of Administrative Careers.Can you suggest some reputed institutes where I could pursue a programme in mass media with specialisation in advertising? I graduate next year.Rekha Rao, BangaloreYou are eligible to enroll for a two-year Masters programme in advertising and communication management after graduation. Among the institutions offering this programme are: the Mudra Institute of Communications, Ahmedabad (MICA), Shela, Ahmedabad 380 058 (www.mica.India.net); Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies, V.L. Mehta Road, Vile Parle (W), Mumbai 400 056 (www.nmims.edu) and the Symbiosis Institute of Mass Communi-cation, Senapati Bapat Marg, Pune 411 004 (www.simc.edu) which offers a two-year postgrad diploma in communication management with specialisation in advertising/ public relations. Applicants to the highly rated MICA are shortlisted on the basis of CAT scores and are required to write an entrance test which assesses their analytical, divergent thinking and written communication skills. You could also consider applying for the postgrad advertising and public relations programme of the Indian Institute of Mass Communications, Aruna…

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With corporates becoming increasingly conscious of their social responsibilities and public image, the demand for qualified environment managers and advisors is steadily increasing The 7 percent plus growth of the Indian economy in the recently concluded year is not only raining a shower of capital and consumer goods and attracting investment from around the world, but has also brought in its train a plethora of environment despoliation problems. And with corporates becoming increasingly conscious of their social responsibilities and public image, it’s hardly surprising that the demand for professional environment managers and advisors is steadily increasing. Suddenly there is a rising demand for qualified personnel in environment research, education and management. Indeed career options in this field are multiplying rapidly. Currently most self-respecting companies boast environmental monitoring cells (EMCs), especially corporates classified as red and orange companies, (very polluting and less polluting respectively, according to the Environment Protection Act 1986). Moreover newly promoted and/ or proposed projects need to submit an environmental impact assessment certificate to the Union ministry of environment and forests, prior to initiating any major project or manufacturing unit. With EMCs required to conduct assessments on a number of fronts, ranging from town, water, sound, displacement of people to damage done by blasting, construction etc, every corporate requires a team of qualified environment scientists, engineers, social scientists, environmental lawyers etc, to safeguard their interests and promote business activities. This apart, EMCs also play an important part in helping corporates to acquire international certification which is required by a growing number of importer nations. While some companies employ EMCs for these processes, others outsource environment related tasks and problems to environmental consultants. With some of the really big names in environment management including AIC Watson Consultants and Ernst & Young setting up shop in India, career prospects for those with a passion for environment and ecology preservation are on the upswing. Unfortunately within India’s rigidly compartmentalised higher education system very few specialisation courses are available at the undergraduate level, though institutions such as Pune University and JNU, Delhi offer undergrad degree programmes in environmental science. At the postgrad level a larger number of varsities offer environment related courses, either within differing disciplines or in separate faculties. Some varsities such as Pune, Bangalore and JNU also offer a wide range of diploma courses in environment sciences. Inevitably given contemporary India’s abysmal basic literacy statistics, environment awareness is low. Comments Dr. Rashneh Pardiwala, a life sciences graduate of Mumbai’s famous St. Xavier’s College who pressed on to acquire a Masters in environmental resource management and a Ph D at the University of Edinburgh, UK, and founder-director of the Mumbai-based Centre for Environment Research and Education (CERE): “In Western countries where environment management is a big thing, there are numerous opportunities to specialise in the subject. But in India, awareness about the vital importance of this subject is sorely lacking. There are many students, who even though they are interested in the subject don’t know the options available to them. However, if awareness of…

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For me, infant nutrition is a very special subject because that’s how I became involved with this profession. It wasn’t a subject of my choice in college. In any case in those days besides courses in dietetics, not much else was available. Unless of course one wanted to study alternative medicine or naturopathy. Even today, study programmes in natural nutrition are not available in India. Getting back to my tryst with nutrition, it was the birth of my son in 1981 which triggered my interest in infant nutrition. Prior to that I was just a happy-go-lucky journalist living very much in the way I pleased and following my instinct vis-à-vis health and nutrition. It was with the birth of my son that for the first time I began thinking about nutrition, the best foods, how to raise my son and ensure a happy, healthy childhood for him. All that any mother would want. I also became more anxious and curious because I had a colicky child on my hands who could be restless, leaving me exhausted. It surprised me to learn that the antidote to colic which most doctors reflexively prescribed was gripe water, together with the homily that colic was part and parcel of the growth process. If a mother complained too much she was labelled fussy and stronger medicine was reluctantly prescribed. Meanwhile elders within the family would conjure up home remedies. So everyone would spend most of their time trying to alleviate my son’s obvious distress. Being one who never gives up I spent a lot of time going from one doctor to another. Finally one good doctor opined that the cause of colic was mother’s milk and advised a switch to soya milk. Even if this wasn’t an accurate diagnosis, it was some comfort that nothing other than his daily milk intake was the cause. I was now closer to seeing my son smile rather than cry. Around the same time, I was reading a wonderful book on the virtues of breastfeeding which prompted me to believe that my child couldn’t possibly be allergic to mother’s milk. Besides the many benefits of breastfeeding flowing to mother and child, it seemed the most natural way to nurse an infant. By sheer coincidence at the same time my father was reading Health for the Millions by Dr. Herbert Shelton. He drew my attention to Dr. Shelton’s contention that animal milk isn’t suitable for human consumption. Homo sapiens is the only species which consumes the milk of other animals. On the other hand mother’s milk is the standard nutrition during infancy across the animal kingdom. Further investigation prompted me to narrow down my suspicions to the animal milk I was consuming at the time as being the cause of my son’s colic. When following my instinct I stopped drinking any milk, I found that my son’s colic problem vanished into the blue because — as I discovered later — mother’s milk had suddenly become non-stressful for him. What I forgot to mention earlier is…

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Half a century after it started funding the massive expansion of post-independence India’s much-envied higher education system, the University Grants Commission is gearing to engineer a quality revolution within India’s down-at-heel colleges and universities. Dilip Thakore reports These days a visitor to the nondescript five-storey typically government-style headquarters of the University Grants Commission (UGC) sited on Delhi’s Zafar Shah Bahadur Marg — also known as the capital’s Fleet Street for the plethora of newspaper offices it hosts — is likely to be impressed by the flurry and buzz of activity on the premises. Fifty years after it was promoted with the mandate to provide development and maintenance grants to universities and colleges, to advise the Union and state governments and institutions of higher learning, and to make rules and regulations for the governance of independent India’s higher education system, the commission is making a new beginning under a new logo. Though the growing number of students fleeing abroad for higher education which costs an arm and leg quite obviously don’t have a high opinion of the quality of effort invested by the 650 educationists and bureaucrats employed in the commission, the Indian establishment evidently reposes great faith in the capability of UGC to raise standards in India’s 15,600 colleges and 311 universities to global levels. On December 28, 2002 when the commission kicked off its 12-month golden jubilee celebrations, prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee did the honours. Precisely a year later, the celebrations were concluded at a gala function inaugurated by President A.P.J. Kalam. Speaking on the occasion Kalam expressed “delight” upon being asked to formally conclude UGC’s golden jubilee year and commended the commission for having “contributed to the cause of higher education in post-independent (sic) India for the past five decades”, and for facilitating the growth of universities which have a “major responsibility in nation building through enriching science, engineering and technology and by providing value-based education to students to make them moral leaders”. Of course on such landmark ceremonial occasions it’s not only customary to congratulate institutions and their leaders but also to commend them. Therefore hardly anyone is likely to contradict the swift and faint praise President Kalam bestowed upon UGC in its golden jubilee year. Nevertheless some of the thousands of compliments and congratulations received by the UGC top brass during its golden jubilee year are warranted. During the past half century the number of colleges and universities across the country have multiplied from 565 and 25 in 1953 to 15,600 and 311 respectively in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2004. Simultaneously the number of students availing tertiary level education has risen from 0.23 million to 9.28 million while the number of faculty employed in higher education has zoomed from 15,000 to 4.62 lakh currently. According to a study of the well-known US-based consultancy firm, Goldman Sachs which is bullish about the sustained growth of the Indian economy in the 21st century, the reality that India produces over 2.5 million university graduates per year has heavily influenced its backing of…

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Conversion to nature worshipBittu SahgalThere are numerous and multiplying problems confronting teachers and school managements these days, what with all kinds of people including ministers, the Supreme Court and political parties presuming to prescribe how schools should be run, even as politicians try hard to indoctrinate kids early in life by forcing them to learn convenient interpretations of history. To this list of ill-conceived interventions add the brainwashing of children to believe that nature is of no use to humans, unless it is encashed. “The water is going waste into the sea” is a common litany of those seeking to build dams. “Economic ornithology” (meant to be the study of the economic benefits of protecting birds, such as their pest control and pollination services) is reduced to a bland study of profits earned by rearing chickens or ostriches. Moreover the government of India goes about propagating the calumny that nuclear reactors should be listed together with wind and solar power as an ‚Ëœalternate energy‚ source.I believe that children of the future need to look upon nature as a ‚Ëœfriend‚ and ‚Ëœsupporter‚, not an adversary to overcome. And towards this end, seemingly insignificant bits of information can go a long way in inculcating the right attitude and perspectives.For instance some three decades ago conversing with the late Kailash Sankhala, the then director of Project Tiger, I learned for the first time, that langur monkeys in the northern half of our subcontinent have their tails curled in a large ‚ËœC‚ bent over their backs. However in south India, their tails form a large ‚ËœS‚. Why? No one has quite been able to explain. But children smile when that piece of information is shared with them.I also learned from this amazing naturalist that the Hanuman langur possesses a three-chambered stomach which helps it to digest difficult-to-digest leaves that constitute its staple diet. Moreover evolution granted this species forward pointing eyes to judge distances, so that a leap from one tree to another becomes less life threatening. Colour vision and an acute sense of smell help langurs to judge when fruit hanging on a tree is ripe. Within troupes of langurs, ‚Ëœaunts‚ and young female sub-adults play surrogate mother to infants so that the real mother can feed without let or hindrance. And when a herd of chital deer wander by, the langur will not drift away, choosing instead to feed close to the deer, thus benefiting from one of the forest‚s most effective joint-predator alarm systems. And yes, they have a language of their own. Subtly varied alarm calls warn troupe members of threats from tigers, snakes or humans. Armed with long canines, more for fruit cutting than fighting, langurs use teeth to great advantage by baring them in an aggressive display designed to avoid physical conflict.There‚s more. An alpha male langur exercises mating rights over all troupe females in estrous, killing infants after driving away the dominant male of a newly taken over troupe. Langurs have light coloured fur, but their babies…

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Since its establishment in 1850, this pace-setting all-women’s college has evolved into one of America’s most famous and academically challenging liberal arts education institutions The recently released Hollywood movie Mona Lisa Smile, set in Wellesley College and featuring America’s sweetheart Julia Roberts, has somewhat annoyed the alumnae of this highly rated all-women’s college. The movie set in the 1950s stars Roberts as an avant-garde art history professor who invites the wrath of the college’s starchy management. Wellesley’s influential graduates who include senator Hillary Rodham Clinton are of the opinion thatMona Lisa Smile is too simplified and overstates its case. Because this two-hour feature film fails to mention that since its founding in 1850, Wellesley has evolved into America’s most famous, pace-setting and academically challenging liberal arts college. In 2003 the U.S. News & World Report ranked Wellesley fourth in the US among all liberal arts colleges and by far the No.1 women’s college.  Chartered in 1870, Wellesley was founded by Henry Fowle Durant to offer women equal opportunities in higher education and to “provide an excellent liberal arts education for women who will make a difference to the world”. It was the first women’s college to boast contemporary science labs. The Wellesley campus, strategically situated 12 miles from Boston, is home to 2,300 students. More than 50 colleges and universities are located within a 50-mile radius of Boston which inter alia is home to Harvard University, MIT and other Ivy League institutions which host a 250,000 strong popu-lation of America’s best and brightest varsity students. This exclusive private college grants bachelor’s degrees in the humanities, including Chinese, Japanese, and Russian languages; in the social sciences, including Africana studies, religion, and economics; in science and mathematics, including computer science. More than 15 inter-departmental majors are also available and students are free to design their own majors. Among college facilities are greenhouses with more than 1,000 plants; the Whitin Observatory; and a science centre that includes molecular biology, cognitive learning, laser electronics and optics laboratories. Moreover Wellesley students may register in co-operative programmes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in more than 20 disciplines. “We have a beautiful campus, an extraordinary faculty, dedicated staff, able and committed students, wonderful trustees, and a powerful alumnae network of women who are making a difference all over the world. Wellesley College has for 128 years been redefining what constitutes effective leadership by making it truer to women,” says Diana Chapman Walsh, former student (class of 1966) and incumbent president of Wellesley. Among many of Wellesley’s signal features is its unbroken succession of woman presidents. Campus facilities. Located a mere 12 miles west of Boston, Wellesley’s 500-acre campus of woodlands, hills, meadows, an arboretum, ponds, and miles of footpaths and fitness trails borders scenic Lake Waban. The 65 buildings on campus range in architectural style from Gothic to contemporary. The three primary classroom buildings are Founders Hall for the humanities, Pendleton Hall for the social sciences and arts, and the Science Center. Wellesley’s academic resources rival those of most front-rank American universities. This 129-year old…

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Founded in memory of one of independent India’s most prominent industrialists, SPSEC has built itself a formidable reputation which extends beyond the country’s leather goods capital  In the two decades since it admitted its first batch of students in 1982, the Sir Padampat Singhania Education Centre (SPSEC), Kanpur (pop. 4.3 million) has built itself a formidable reputation which extends beyond India’s leather goods capital. SPSEC was founded in memory of industrialist Sir Padmapat Singhania (1905-1979) of the JK Group of companies (annual sales revenue: Rs.2,077 crore) who in addition to his many distinctions was a signatory to the Constitution of India. This CBSE affiliated, co-educational school which offers kindergarten to class XII education to 2,800 students instructed by 150 teachers and is sited on a 10-acre campus, strives for excellence in five ‘missions’ viz, academics, personality development, physical education, disci-pline, innovation and creativity. The attainment of these missions for all students is through five major task forces which plan and execute the school’s activities. Not surprisingly SPSEC has received ISO 9001:2000 certification. “To achieve our larger goals of preparing conscien-tious and responsible citizens, we are developing confidence, discipline and leadership qualities in our students in a stress free education environment that makes use of innovative teaching methodologies,” says Manju Gupta, a psychology alumna of Meerut University, and principal of the school. At SPSEC the drive for education innovation has translated into a maths laboratory, an audio-visual room, reading clubs, a botanical garden and an astro environmental project christened the Navgriha Vatika. The latter replicates a concept used in wasteland management and involves planting of nine trees of Indian origin representing the nine planets. The spirit of innovation which pervades the school also manifests itself in some of its students who stumped visitors at a recent exhibition with biodegradable plastic made out of milk and electricity generated from potatoes! Moreover SPSEC is among the few schools across the country to be licensed by CBSE for teaching biotechnology. The school’s fully operational biotechnology lab equipped with centrifugation, pathological diagnosis, biochemical analysis, incubation, distillation, protein and DNA separation among other facilities has been well appreciated by educationists and scientists. Among them, Dr. Pushpangadan, director National Botanical Research Institute and winner of the Equator Initiative Prize who described his visit to the lab an “exhilarating experience”. In the quest for providing well-rounded, holistic education, participation in extra-curricular activities has been built into everyday education with a ‘zero period’ (for co-curricular activities) preceding classes everyday. Senior school English teacher Jyoti Das believes such overt encouragement of skills development offers a great opportunity to students to discover their potential. “Each child has innate life skills which also need to be developed. Excessive emphasis on academics often masks special abilities. But by acknowledging each child’s special talents we make school a happy experience for everyone,” she says. To this end classroom teaching is also assignment and project based and liberally supported by study tours and academic excursions. Economics teacher Shobhana Kaushik says this approach requires some conditioning of parental attitudes. “Parents…

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Widener library, Harvard University’s pride, is surely one of the most enduring memorials any mother has constructed for a lost child. As you climb its stairs, pass its imposing columns and enter the main door, you are poignantly reminded of this great institution’s origins. Eleanor Elkins Widener had the library constructed in 1915 in memory of her son, Harry Elkins Widener, who perished aboard the Titanic and was an enthusiastic book collector. The Widener is now one of the world’s great libraries, comparable to the Bodleian, the British Library or Bibilotheque National. I recently re-visited the Widener after a gap of three years. The library was originally constructed by one of America’s first African-American architects Julian Abeles, and has undergone a major renovation since I last visited it. Now it looks more expansive, and offers extraordinarily plush reading rooms full of natural light. While entering the Widener a week after the attack on the library of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute in Pune, it was difficult not to ruminate about what this great storehouse of knowledge represents. It certainly requires extraordinary ambition to create an institution which aspires to possess all thought that can be made available in print. Admittedly, it is an enterprise sustained by vast resources. Even so, the ambition itself is ennobling in more ways than one can list. Who knows for what purposes the library will be used? What ideological causes it will serve? What humanity it will inspire? What madness might its contents incite? Although immeasurably useful, a library cannot be instrumental to serve any specific purpose or cause. It insistently transcends all of them: a library will provide a refuge for Karl Marx, as much as for Aurobindo Ghosh. Entering a library like the Widener is always a thrilling and humbling experience. The visitor is likely to be excited by something on every second shelf, serendipity will lead you to books that you didn’t believe existed. And yet every minute you are likely to feel humble and inadequate. There are few institutions that can elevate and humble you at the same time. A great library is one of them. Libraries of this scale are not so much an act of human conceit as a wise insurance policy. Whatever the venality and barbarism of human beings at any given moment, whatever lapses of memory or sins of ignorance we fall prey to, so long as libraries survive there is hope. Even a few surviving copies of Plato and Aristotle could rescue Europe from the dark ages. This is perhaps why ancient kings, in India and elsewhere, ennobled themselves by patronising collections of books and manuscripts. Nor is it an accident that barbarians ransack libraries first. It is the surest way of erasing humanity itself: its memories, hopes, aspirations, achievements and even its errors. The Alexandrian fantasy, as it is known, after the great library founded by Ptolemy II in 286 BC in Alexandria, and which it is said took six months to burn, was perhaps the most extraordinary…

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Shloka Joshi (13) has just completed her class VII at Delhi’s Modern School and is taking a breather from the hectic regimen that she has been following everyday for the past five years. The only child of Capt. S.C. Joshi of the Indian Navy and services golf champion and Sangeeta, a former maths professor, the achievements of this swimming prodigy are already quite impressive. She has won a bronze medal in two National Swimming Championships and is the only girl in her age group to have won 64 gold medals in Delhi’s school swimming meets. Shloka has also bagged the individual championship trophy (Delhi) for the years 2001, 2002, and 2003 and has won the IPSC (Inter-Public School meet) three times already, winning 40 more trophies in all. Ever since she won her first bronze medal at the age of eight-and-a-half in the National Swimming Championship 2001, Shloka has gone from medals to more medals. “There aren’t that many girl swimmers in India,” she says explaining why the competition hasn’t been too strenuous to handle and why her rise to what she calls “the pinnacle of success” has been swift and smooth. “There are only two other students in Delhi that I have to compete with” one is from Sanskriti School and the other from Delhi Public School. At the national level, the best swimmers are from Karnataka and Maharashtra, where the competition is more intense.” Shloka’s favourite events are the 200m, 100m, and 50m butterfly, and the 1500m and 800m freestyle. But success has been bought by a strict training regimen. She’s up at 4 a.m daily to practice in Delhi’s olympic-size Talkatora Swimming Pool Complex for 90 minutes, and then returns to the pool after school for another 120 minutes of practice. “There’s always room for improvement. I believe in following the 3Ds: dedication, devotion, and determination. Achievement is history, success is the future,” she states with a maturity beyond her years. Right now Shloka’s sights are set on the 2004 nationals. “I certainly add to my medals tally,” she says optimistically. “But my real objective is to qualify for the Asian Games team two years from now,” she says, while readily admitting that maintaining this cracking pace requires home and parental support. But burning up the swimming pool is only one facet of Delhi’s young mermaid. Simultaneously Shloka has been a student of Bharat Natyam at the Shriram Bharatiya Kala Kendra for the past six years, is well-versed in Hindustani vocal music, plays the piano, paints, and is a stage actress. And despite these distractions she has been averaging 85-90 percent in academics. Some curriculum vitae! Meenakshi Venkat (New Delhi)

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London Metropolitan University (lmu) headquartered in central London which established its India office in New Delhi in 2001, recently inaugurated its second India office in Chennai. LMU’s Chennai office offers support services relating to admissions, application processes, accommodation, visa, etc to students signing up for its study programmes, in conjunction with the British Council, Chennai. Established following a merger between London Guildhall University and the University of North London, LMU has two campuses — the City campus in the heart of London, and the London North campus in Islington. With a student strength of 32,000 instructed by a faculty of 4,000, LMU is one of the leading providers of undergrad, postgrad, professional and vocational education and training in Britain boasting an international student community of over 4,000 students from 147 countries. The university’s extensive range of study programmes includes architecture, art and design; business and management; chemistry and pharmaceutical sciences; computing, electronics and communications engineering; health studies; law; mass communications; multimedia technology; nutrition; polymer technology; psychology; sports science; silversmithy and hospitality management, among others. For admission students must have an English language qualification (IELTS or TOEFL) or more than 65 percent in English in Plus Two. Such students can enroll for full time courses in September and February during the academic year. “Moreover international students with the appropriate stamp in their passports can work in the UK for 20 hours per week during term and acquire workplace experience by way of internships and placements,” says an LMU spokesperson. Dorothy Hodgkin Postgraduate Awards applications invited More than 20 front-rank universities including Cambridge, Oxford and Cardiff, Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, University College of London, London School of Economics among others, are participating in the Dorothy Hodgkin Postgraduate Awards (DHPA) scheme. This fully funded postgraduate scholarship scheme will allow outstanding graduate students from India (and China, Hong Kong, Russia and the developing world) to study for a Ph D in excellent research environments in the UK. DHPA is open to the best science, engineering, medicine, social sciences and technology students. Approximately 130 scholarships will be awarded in the first year (commencing October 2004) with the number increasing in subsequent years. The participating universities are among the best for research in Britain with all being rated 5 or 5* for research activity under the UK’s Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). A complete list of participating universities and the number of DHPA scholarships awarded by each is available at http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/hodgkin/uni_list.asp. “The overriding criterion of the scheme is excellence, and DHPA scholars should be the ‘best of the best’. Interested students should contact universities of their choice directly at http://www.reuk.ac.uk/hodgkin/uni_contacts.asp. Awardees will be selected in accordance with each university’s own postgraduate admission requirements. However selected candidates are expected to hold the equivalent of a British first class honours degree from a prestigious academic institution. DHPA will fund up to a maximum of £75,000 (Rs.60 lakh) per student over a period of three to four years, to cover fees and maintenance,” says Amrita Sadarangani, science and technology advisor…

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Twin leakage scam Once considered among the most prestigious universities in India, boasting illustrious alumni like B.R. Ambedkar and Nani Palkhivala, Bombay University, aka University of Mumbai (est.1857), has witnessed its reputation taking a serious hammering of late. While the past decade has witnessed scandals aplenty reeking of malpractice and financial shenanigans, the university experienced possibly its bleakest moments this year on March 31, when a final year B.Com paper was leaked for the second time in two weeks, outraging 64,000 long suffering commerce students and the entire academic community. The first leak came to light on March 17, when Dr. Madhav Welling, principal of Mumbai’s Mithibai College received a faxed copy of the financial accounting and audit paper, an hour before the exam was to begin. The faxed question paper turned out to be identical to the one lying sealed in Welling’s office. By the time Welling faxed the paper to Bombay University vice-chancellor B.L. Mungekar and a decision was taken to cancel the exam, students in most of the 157 centres in the Mumbai and Konkan divisions were already writing it. In fact some centres were only informed of the exam cancell-ation after students had completed writing the paper. Following indignant outcry, a case was registered under s. 380 of the Indian Penal Code and the exam was rescheduled for March 31. However, once again on the eve of the exam, photocopies of the new question paper were being hawked at around 11 p.m for sums ranging between Rs.4,000-7,000. Mumbai’s afternoon daily Mid Day managed to purchase a copy of the question paper at 2.00 a.m, with the result that Mungekar received yet another faxed copy of a leaked question paper, thankfully this time before students had begun to write the exam. Even as a fresh date for the exam was pending announcement, Mumbai police arrested a student, who identified Prakash Nagariya a lecturer in the city’s Nagrik Shikshan Sanstha’s College of Commerce and Economics (NSS) as the source of the paper leak. Nagariya had been appointed by the college’s principal S.B. Sutar, as chief conductor of examinations at the college. Under interrogation, Nagariya confessed that he had leaked the paper for monetary consideration. He was arrested on April 4 together with his nephew, Suraj alias Achal Pradip Gupta, a second year student of Mithibai College. Principal Sutar was also detained for questioning. “The university authorises only the principal to conduct examinations. It is surprising how the principal delegated the power to conduct examinations,” additional commissioner of police S.M. Sayyed told the press. Meanwhile, the exam was rescheduled for the third time and on April 8 question papers were sent to colleges in sealed trunks escorted by Bombay University security personnel. The trunks were opened just 20 minutes before the exam and the papers distributed amidst tight security. This time the examination was written without interruption by grateful students. However, the troubles of NSS College are far from over. Apart from the entire management having fallen under suspicion for being involved…

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This is to thank you for many things. Firstly, for publishing my viewpoint in your cover story ‘Joshi’s IIM grab angers middle class India’ (EW March). Secondly, for giving attention to education through your excellent magazine. Education is the most backward sector among the organised sectors. It has refused to change, still sticking to the organisation model and culture created 100 years ago. Thirdly, for your entrepreneurial venture. Very few journalists have done well as entrepreneurs. After your cover story was written, Dr. Joshi asserted on television that he knew more about education than Narayana Murthy. Nobody doubts it. But knowing about education is quite distinct from knowing about the ‘management of education’. None of his colleagues know much about the ministries they are in charge of — finance, commerce, industry, IT, telephony, transport, disinvestment, etc. Yet all of them are doing extremely well in managing their ministries. In my opinion, the HRD ministry should not subsidise IIM students who can afford to pay high fees, but should give scholarships to all poor students, including those in the other 800 management institutes across the country. Seven hundred of them provide low quality inputs, with low quality faculty, and yet are charging fees of Rs.1-2 lakh per year. The ministry should help these institutes to upgrade their faculties through the IIMs, whose main function ought to be development of faculty of other institutions. The IIMs are now producing graduates who enter already well-managed corporations, where their marginal productivity is low. Meanwhile, other than business, all sectors of the economy are in bad shape due to poor management inputs. The IIMs ought to help them to upgrade their management staff and managerial competence. N.S. Ramaswamy Bangalore Thoroughly exposed I have been following the IIM fee cut controversy provoked by Union HRD minister Murli Manohar Joshi in the media including EducationWorld with close interest. You deserve the congratulations of the generally confused public for clarifying the issues at stake in your cover story ‘Joshi’s IIM grab angers middle class India’ (EW March) and your subsequent follow up reports and editorials on this issue. In your latest (April) issue, Rajiv Desai has thoroughly exposed Dr. Joshi’s “moffusil mindset” which has prompted him to foolishly subsidise IIM students whose financial riches are assured. Similarly in your editorial in the April issue you have also exposed the hypocrisy of Chief Justice Khare of the Supreme Court who is very concerned about the access of poor students to the IIMs but is supremely unconcerned about the access of the poor to the country’s utterly inaccessible courts of justice. Asha Seth Mumbai Curious paradox Appropos the fierce battle between the IIMs and the Union HRD ministry on the fee reduction issue, it is relevant to look at what is happening in other countries on the issue of funding higher education. The recent parliamentary debates in the UK signpost the way in which govern-ments are combating increasing pressure to fund higher education given the macro economic thrust to cut taxes and reduce public expenditure to control fiscal…

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The vital disconnect between Indian industry and Indian education is being belatedly highlighted by the prolix fees subsidisation battle between the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and the Union ministry of human resource development. Despite the faculty and particularly students, who actually assume the fee payment burden being stridently opposed to the 80 percent reduction in the tuition-cum-residence fees, business leaders on the governing boards of the IIMs — long accustomed to genuflecting before government — have recommended acceptance of the fees slash order of February 5 even though it is painfully obvious that lower fee incomes will increase the dependence of these highly-rated B-schools upon government handouts and whittle down their autonomy.  But then until the recent row over IIM fees (and IIT donations) corporate India has never bothered to address the reality that university and college fees have been virtually frozen for half a century resulting in the nation’s institutions of higher education being dumbed down to an unimaginable degree by interfering politicians who have converted them into their happy hunting grounds.  Unfortunately lack of sequential logic capability and fudging of vital issues is a common failing of post-independence India’s elites who constitute the Indian establishment. Therefore it’s hardly surprising that the political class as a whole has exhibited a similar disconnect, a blindspot which is likely to cost it heavily in the forthcoming general election: rural development.  It is — or should be — common knowledge that almost 70 percent of the nation’s population lives in rural India. Yet the liberalisation and deregulation of the Indian economy which began in the early 1980s and received a massive boost in 1991 has — it is now painfully evident — almost completely bypassed the rural economy. Consequently, deprived of infrastucture, affordable transport, warehousing, cold chain storage facilities, organised markets and/ or a downstream food processing industry, rural India has remained a stagnant backwater of the Indian economy. Supposedly astute politicians cutting across all major parties have failed to appreciate the importance of giving priority to the needs and wants of this chronically neglected majority. Hence the phenomenon known as the anti-incumbency factor.  And this time around as well the anti-incumbency factor is likely to topple several state governments which have failed and neglected to extend the logic of economic liberalisation and deregulation to their rural backyards where licence-permit raj and institutional corruption keeps the majority of the population mired in poverty and misery. The rising incidence of farmer suicides in reputedly progressive states such as Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh should have served as a warning to their ruling parties. But disregard of this obvious logic of democratic politics is likely to extract a heavy price from the political class in assembly elections in particular.  Reducing slaughter on the roads  The declaration of world health day (april 7) as road Safety Day by the Geneva-based World Health Organisation (WHO) is an overdue initiative to focus public opinion upon a phenomenon which is assuming the proportions of a global epidemic. According…

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Everyone knows that it exists at the public expense; but it’s difficult to ascertain what exactly the Delhi-based University Grants Commission (UGC)does, apart from doling out obviously inadequate grants to colleges and universities if their shabby, crumbling premises and labs and libraries are any indication. Therefore the golden jubilee celebrations of the commission which concluded on December 28 last year, provided a good opportunity to investigate the range and scale of operations of this shadowy organisation which plays a critically important role in the growth and development of the vitally important higher education sector.  Despite public opinion veering towards the Central and state governments according top priority to primary and elementary education during the past two decades in particular, it’s undeniable that provision of qualitative higher education is also vital if industry and agriculture is to ever become globally competitive. Therefore the achievement of UGC in presiding over, if not engineering, the growth of post-independence India’s tertiary education system which has expanded from 565 colleges and 25 universities in 1953 to 15,600 colleges and 311 universities which host a student population of 9.28 million needs to be acknowledged and commended.  However it’s also undeniable that the amazing growth of India’s higher education system which is the envy of developing nations, has been achieved at the expense of quality. Barring a few colleges and a handful of special purpose and directly subsidised (by the Central government bypassing UGC) institutions such as the IIMs, IITs, the Indian Institute of Science etc, the great majority of the nation’s colleges and universities dispense higher education of embarrassingly poor quality. It is this facet of the country’s higher education system which the leadership and top brass of UGC has resolved to correct and polish as the commission takes fresh guard and starts a new innings half a century after it was promoted to consolidate and build the newly independent nation’s tertiary education system.  But even as it begins its new mission, the leadership of the commission would be well-advised to establish a public relations department to facilitate its business. While writing this month’s cover story, I was appalled by the poor communication and response skills of this important apex institution. A rain of phone calls, faxes and e-mails to the commission’s Delhi office for elementary statistical information and facts clarification drew nil response. If this is the attitude of the commission (whose 650 employees incur an annual expenditure of Rs.18.57 crore) towards a financially disinterested party such as EducationWorld, I shudder to imagine the short shrift and rudeness funds-soliciting academics have to suffer from the commission.  On the other hand no such problems relating to provision of access and information were experienced by our tireless assistant editor Summiya Yasmeen who has focused a spotlight on the vitally important intervention of infotech major Wipro Corporation and its reclusive billionaire Azim Premji, in school education. It’s a well-defined and serious corporate social responsibility initiative from which Indian industry — which alas, is incrementally exhibiting the ugly face…

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