Kolkata-based Kunal Vora is the founder-director & CEO of SHRM (Hindi for ‘hard-work’) Biotechnologies Pvt. Ltd (estb.2006), a training and skills development company which offers students — undergrads to doctorate scholars — short-term study programmes in biotechnology, pharmacy & life sciences and provides research, incubation and placement assistance. SHRM Biotech is also the sole company in Eastern India to be accredited by the LSSSDC (Life Sciences Sector Skill Development Council) of the Union government’s National Skills Development Corporation (NSDC). The company owns two modern research and development lab facilities in Kolkata’s Madhyamgram and Garia suburbs supported by highlyqualified faculty and industry experts. Thus far, SHRM Biotech has certified 6,000 students of reputed higher education institutions including the IITs, NITs, SRM, Amity, VIT among otheruniversities and foreign students from Bangladesh, Tanzania, Nigeria and Nepal. Newspeg. In the wake of the global Covid-19 outbreak and subsequent nationwide lockdown of education institutions and industry, the company has switched to online learning since April 1 to ensure learning continuity. Leveraging digital learning platforms such as Google Hangout and Zoom, it has expanded its online menu to include bioinformatics, computational biology, data science, molecular biology and drug design, protein modeling, proteomics and genomics among other courses. History. A business management alum of Bangalore University and the International School of Business and Media, Kolkata, Vora began his career in 2003 acquiring experience in several multinational companies (American Online, Ocwen Financial Corp) before going solo. In 2006, Vora invested Rs.25 lakh from his savings and contributions from friends and family to promote SHRM Biotech. Direct talk. “During my internship with Ernst & Young and my MBA study programme, I became aware of the fast growth of India’s booming biotech industry and its rising demand for skilled professionals. I saw this as a business opportunity and the idea of promoting SHRM Biotech to prepare and skill students for this sunrise industry was born,” says Kunal Vora. Training fees range between Rs.10,000-70,000. Future plans. Dismayed by the severe lack of preparedness of state governments and hospitals to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, Vora has ideated and designed online courses for frontline and healthcare workers, paramedics, and lab technicians to collect sample swabs and real time-polymerase chain reactions (RT-PCR) training. “Skills training enterprises need to become responsive to changing market need to survive,” says Vora. Moreover, SHRM Biotech is starting online programmes in May and June for secondary school students to explore career opportunities in the life sciences. Baishali Mukherjee (Kolkata)
Former India basketball star Kunal Maria is founder and CEO of the Corvuss American Academy (Corvuss, estb.2018), a trail-blazing, sports-focused co-ed residential school for children in the 11-17 years age group sited in Karjat, a two-hour drive from Mumbai. It s set to provide highly professional training in seven sports — basketball, cricket, football, squash, swimming, tennis and track and field games. To this end, the academy has signed collaboration agreements with seven elite sports partners including the Las Vegas-based IMPACT Basketball and UK-based Manchester City Football School, affiliated with the Manchester City premier league football team. Newspeg. In September, Corvuss will welcome its first cohort of 150 students on the academy’s 44-acre thoroughly modern campus. Academically, Corvuss offers the US core middle school curriculum (classes VI-VIII) followed by four years of the American high school curriculum culminating in the high school diploma. Corvuss is accredited by the US-based AdvancedEd and National College Athletic Association (NCAA) which lists 1,098 top-ranked American colleges as members. Corvuss’ US high school diploma has also been approved by the Delhi-based Association of Indian Universities. History. A graduate of Government Law College, Mumbai, Maria represented Maharashtra and India in numerous national and international basketball tournaments. In 2014 he was awarded a postgrad degree in sports, media and entertainment law by Georgetown University, USA followed by a second Masters in sports business by New York University. Subsequently, he worked with a New York-based law firm where he represented star athletes. Direct talk. Shuttling between the US and India, Kunal Maria set his sights on establishing a primary-secondary institution modelled on American schools which have successfully integrated sports and academics. “Most children in India are obliged to choose between academic and sports education after class VIII. This is why despite its large 1.3 billion population, India has a small pool of globally competitive sportspersons. Corvuss is founded on the belief that academic and sports excellence is not mutually exclusive. While Corvuss is sports focused, good academic scores are important to pursue a college education. In high school — classes IX-XII — we offer the AP (Advanced placement) programme of the College Board and prepare students for the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) and/or American College Testing (ACT). Simultaneously, our curriculum ensures that all children play several sports in their primary years and specialise in one after class VIII. Once they choose their most preferred sport, they are rigorously trained to achieve global standards,” says Maria who has funded this unique sports-centred school through subscriptions from likeminded family members, friends and private investors. Dipta Joshi (Mumbai)
Math prodigy Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash Jonnalagadda (20) is a final year B.Sc student of Delhi’s top-ranked St. Stephen’s College. He is also founder of Exploring Infinities (EI, estb.2018), a proprietary firm promoted to boost children’s cognitive development and popularise speed mental arithmetics and games through workshops and year-long courses in schools. Newspeg. EI is offering gamified learning modules on mobile apps to enhance cognitive abilities such as memory, sensory precision and mental computation skills. It is all set to roll out its first gaming app, which NBPJ says will banish maths phobia of class I-XII students. The app’s design is the outcome of data and feedback from students of several government and private schools with which the firm has been interacting over the past three years. History. The first son of Hyderabad based couple J. Srinivas (a food processing company promoter) and J. Hema Shiva Parvathi (a businesswoman), NBPJ suffered an accident when he was five, in which he sustained severe head injuries and was bed-ridden for almost a year. During his convalescence, his doting parents introduced arithmetic puzzles and mental exercises to distract him and ease his pain. Soon Neelakantha Bhanu Prakash Jonnalagadda developed a passion for complex mathematical calculations. At age 12, he was crowned national math champion in Bangalore (2011) and Pune (2012). The following year he won an Arithmetic Prodigy Championship 2013 in Singapore, and went on to break five math world records and 50 Limca Book of Records in mental math racing past math maestros like Scott Flansburg and Shakuntala Devi. While a student of the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan Public School, Hyderabad, young NBPJ began conducting math learning classes for students and corporate executives. At age 15, he co-founded Iscreamers Frozen Kingdom, an ice-cream startup. “Mathematics is an exact science which greatly speeds mental growth. Regular practice greatly improves decision-making skills, efficiency and memory. Arithmetic exercise is the key to unlock the infinite potential of the brain,” says this maths wunderkind. Direct talk. “I founded Exploring Infinities in 2018 by conducting workshops and courses in schools. In 2019, as an outreach project in 25 government schools of Telangana, EI helped 10,000 students to get over their math phobia. Soon we were invited by private schools for longer engagements. We believe that improvement in arithmetic skills translates into enhanced cognitive development. Now EI is ready to launch an arithmetic gaming app to develop math skills of all school students. The app hosts a repository of offline exercises and games to make maths learning an enjoyable pastime,” says NBPJ who is intensifying his research on the connection between arithmetic and child cognition. Future plans. Scheduled to graduate next year, NBPJ has big plans for scaling his “social enterprise”. “I plan to scale up the operations of EI because India has an ancient tradition of maths learning and development. Unfortunately, because of misguided drill-and-skill pedagogies, math anxiety has become pervasive in children. I want to enable India’s children to rediscover their inherent but suppressed love of learning maths,” says this earnest and…
Copenhagen-born Allan Kjaer Andersen is the Bangalore-based director of the new age K-12 Chaman Bhartiya School (CBS) — the first education initiative of the Gurgaon-based real estate heavyweight Bhartiya Group (annual revenue: Rs.1,300 crore). Construction of two of the three integrated complexes of the state-of- the-art Bhartiya City sited on a 125-acre estate in suburban Bangalore is finished. On full completion of Bhartiya City its population is estimated to reach 30,000. Newspeg. CBS is all set to admit its first batch of KG-class V children on June 29, subject to the current Covid-19 national lockdown being lifted. History. A public administration, Danish language and literature, business management and history alumnus of the University of Southern Denmark, Copenhagen Business School and Roskilde University (Denmark), Andersen began his career in 1974 as a teacher of Danish language and literature at Tietgenskolen, a vocational business school in Odense. This was followed by stints in senior administrative positions in Danish youth education institutions including business schools, a social and healthcare school and several gymnasiums (higher secondary schools). In the new millennium Andersen was appointed founder-principal of the government-run Orestad Gymnasium School, Copenhagen. Since then over the past 15 years, Orestad — defined by its circular staircases, open learning spaces, fully digitalized teaching material and advanced pedagogies — has evolved into the world’s 15 most innovative schools according to the US-based website Business Insider. Andersen is also the founder of the Roskilde-based Global Schools Alliance (GSA) — a select group of 15 innovative member schools from nine countries. In May 2018, Andersen was invited by the Bhartiya Group chairman Snehdeep Aggarwal to conceptualise and establish a globally comparable K-12 school in Bhartiya City with the brief to “transform Indian education”. Confident that his wide experience enables him to discharge this brief, Andersen translocated to India. Direct talk. “The prime objective of CBS is to prepare children for leadership positions in the uncertain and complex world of the future. Combining the best of Indian and Scandinavian education, our We Lead curriculum is concentrated on making learning joyful and stimulating without compromising academic rigour. We believe this is best done through projects and play-based pedagogies. To this end, we have partnered with LEGO Education to develop academic competencies through play. Moreover, CBS’ learning ecosystem is developed by Apple Education Solutions Provider and teachers are given digital professional development by Apple-certified trainers,” says Andersen. Future plans. Andersen has ambitious plans to internationalise CBS through its induction into the Global Schools Alliance. “We plan to leverage this network and introduce international exchange programmes and internships for our students. Moreover, member schools also benefit from professional development programmes, international workshops and teaching fellowships of GSA,” adds Andersen. According to a recent study by Universitas 21 (U21), Denmark has the world’s fourth best higher education system because it is supported by a strong and carefully designed K-12 school system. The chances of Andersen discharging his brief to transform K-12 education in India are good! Paromita Sengupta (Bangalore)
It’s official resurgent British Raj at The Doon School (TDS estb.1935), routinely ranked India’s #1 boys boarding school in the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR), is over. After two expat Britons of no special distinction were successively appointed headmasters of this vintage boys boarding school promoted in pre-independence India by Calcutta barrister Satish Ranjan Das — because the best boarding schools promoted by our erstwhile masters were squeamish about native boys sharing dorms with their progeny — this time round native-born Dr. Jagpreet Singh, principal of the Punjab Public School, Nabha, will take charge as the new headmaster of TDS on July 5. As reported by your editor on this page (https://www. educationworld.in/unlamented-exit) two months ago, the chance of another expat being appointed headmaster was negligible after the previous incumbent of the well-furbished Headmaster’s Lodge, Mathew Raggett was fired by the TDS board of governors in February before the end of his contractual term. Raggett’s initiative to transform TDS into a wholly international school affiliated with the offshore Cambridge International (UK) and International Baccalaureate (Geneva) examination boards, reportedly shook up the somnolent board of this institution born out of nationalist impulses. The consensus within the small minority of monitors of India’s globally comparable private independent schools is that Dr. Singh, a former vice principal of the blue-chip Mayo College, Ajmer who after being appointed principal of PPS, Nabha, in 2011 rapidly transformed it into an EW India Top 10 and #1 co-ed boarding school of Punjab, is a great improvement on his expat predecessors. Meanwhile sheepish members of the The Doon School governing board have advised your inquisitive correspondent that the short-lived return of the British Raj to India’s most admired boarding school is an interregnum best forgotten.
$2 trillion (Rs.151 lakh crore). That’s the sum that the much-maligned (and not without cause) President Donald Trump has budgeted to compensate ruined small businesses and citizens rendered unemployed in America following the national economic lockdown in the wake of the Covid-19 crisis. This staggering figure is equivalent to two-thirds of India’s 2020-21 GDP and aggregates 10 percent of America’s GDP. Against this, the total provision made by the BJP government at the Centre for compensating industry, agriculture and service sectors and hundreds of million jobless who have suffered during the drastic eight week countrywide lockdown on account of the pandemic, aggregates a mere Rs.3.2 lakh crore, equivalent to 1.4 percent of GDP. Appeals made by respected public intellectuals to raise the relief amount to at least 5 percent of GDP have been ignored. Ditto your editor’s detailed inflation-proof proposal to make immediate direct transfer of Rs. 4,444 per month for the next 12 months into the bank accounts of 150 million poorest households countrywide, which requires an outlay equivalent to 3.52 percent of GDP (Rs. 8 lakh crore). The country’s supine citizens and the media in particular, need to question the Central government’s excessively cautious response to the Coronavirus pandemic. America which has suffered 77,000 fatalities, and Italy 30,200 have relaxed their lockdown restrictions to restart the engines of their economies. It’s also noteworthy that Sweden didn’t lockdown at all, budgeting 4,000 deaths (double the number in annual influenza outbreaks). In a nation where 90 percent of the population is employed in the informal low-income and daily wage economy, a prolonged eight-week nationwide lockdown defies all common sense. America has a population of 300 million and Italy 40 million, yet despite huge fatalities, these countries are back at work. India has a population of 1.3 billion and 2,000 Covid-19 fatalities. Yet several state governments have extended the lockdown period. In a country where 9 million people die annually from environmental pollution, tuberculosis, chronic malnutrition and diahorrea, how justifiable is it immiserise over 1 billion citizens to save a few thousand? There is a thin line between commendable official caution and cowardice. This line has been crossed.
Universities at the Crossroads; Andre Beteille Oxford University Press; Rs.423; Pages 216 Currently chancellor of North Eastern Hill University, Shillong, and formerly professor of sociology at the Delhi School of Economics, Belgium-born, naturalised Indian Dr. Andre Beteille is a prolific writer who has addressed questions of inequality, power, social class, family, the disciplines of sociology and social anthropology, and a whole range of issues, too vast to enumerate. The array of issues he has sought to understand and his commitment as a writer, stem from his unfailing dedication to his profession as a sociologist, teacher and author. His new book on the university is therefore a welcome addition to the existing corpus of his work as, apart from articles in different journals, he has not explicitly addressed the problems of education in any single compendium. This book is a collection of convocation addresses and lectures that he has delivered on the broad theme of education, and the university in particular, at different forums in India. The single most important point Beteille makes and continuously reiterates, pertains to the increasing demand for social inclusion in higher education. This is no doubt essential in a democratic society but in the interest of teaching and research, Andre Beteille is concerned about the need for a university to simultaneously be academically discriminating. This is the most striking argument Beteille makes throughout the book. He is careful to point out that there is a need to distinguish between, as he puts it, unwarranted exclusion on social grounds, and justifiable discrimination on academic grounds. While Andre Beteille supports all forms of social inclusion in higher education, his plea is to keep merit, ability and performance uppermost in all academic decisions. They must not be overtaken by ideology or other values that serve to undermine academic excellence. As Beteille knows very well, the point however is that academic competence is largely an outcome of social and cultural capital. Those with cultural and social capital are the few who benefit from academic pursuits in higher education. The problem is complex and difficult to resolve. If social inclusion in higher education must prevail, there will necessarily be a lowering of academic standards to accommodate those who have thus far been deprived of higher education. Without the social and cultural capital so essential to their participation in an active and challenging academic life, they will be severely disadvantaged if they are expected to meet standards that will further exclude them. What’s the way out of this conundrum? It seems to me that the university has a serious responsibility to combine social inclusion with strenuous efforts to develop the linguistic, technical and academic skills of students without the social and cultural capital whom it admits into its portals, rather than lower prevailing standards for reasons of political correctness and/or lethargy and lack of initiative. Without addressing this conundrum directly, Beteille is optimistic that Indian academia will overcome social exclusion. He cites Europe and China as examples of change and expresses hope that it will become possible…
Talking to Strangers – Malcolm Gladwell Allen Lane; Rs.799; Pages 386 How are the world’s greatest liars, frauds and megalomaniacs able to inflict lasting damage upon their societies and the world without highly trained and intelligent experts and watchdogs being able to see through them and stop them in time? That’s the subject of the latest investigation — deftly weaving history, psychology and sociology — conducted by Malcolm Gladwell, features writer of the New Yorker. Since he wrote his first bestseller Tipping Point in 2000, Gladwell has acquired a global reputation with his best-selling non-fiction: Blink (2005), Outliers (2008), What the Dog Saw (2009), David and Goliath (2013) among others. All of them have topped the New York Times bestsellers list and have won him million dollar advances from publishers in the US. The objective of Gladwell’s latest oeuvre is to demonstrate that when strangers talk to each other, a false word here or there can lead to disastrous consequences, and conversely even when people communicate with familiar individuals they often fail to read their character or malign intent. Drawing from contemporary newspaper headlines, history, the murky world of espionage and famous legal cases, the author makes the case that even the most well-educated and trained professionals whose job is to detect crime and criminals, fail miserably and default to truth, i.e, give malfeasants the benefit of doubt. And if at all bigtime crooks and swindlers are outed and brought to book, it’s because a contrarian, ‘holy fool’ in Russian folklore — often “a social misfit, eccentric, off-putting and sometimes even crazy” non-establishment outcast — blurts out an inconvenient truth or question. Much like the little boy who said the emperor had no clothes. To illustrate his contention that the vast majority of people can’t adequately read strangers or even acquaintances, the author draws upon a series of fascinating examples from ancient and 20th century history. In 1519, the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes became the first European to hit land in Mexico and met with King Montezuma II, ruler of the Aztec empire, a civilisation far in advance of 16th century Europe. Neither spoke each other’s language and relied on inexpert translators. The upshot was that when the king uttered an honorific for Cortez, it was translated into the former accepting Cortez as a god. And later when Montezuma didn’t accord him the respect due to God, Cortes had him murdered, and war broke out resulting in the devastation of the Aztec civilisation through armed conflict and diseases that unwashed Europeans brought with them. This encounter also flagged off the European conquest of India and Africa and changed the course of world history. Four centuries later, at a time when the global power of the British empire was threatened by Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, prime minister Neville Chamberlain took his first flight abroad to meet with the German dictator. Although there was a mountain of evidence, including his book Mein Kampf in which Hitler had written of his intent to conquer Europe, exterminate Jews, and…
Iconoclastic Republic TV anchor Arnab Goswami is the man every well-mannered or aspirationally genteel middle class individual, deplores. But the meteoric rise in the viewership of this relatively new (2017) English news channel tells another story. Ab initio Arnab Goswami transformed Republic TV’s 9 0’clock news hour into a nightly slugfest in which prominent public figures are let loose to rage, rant and outshout each other with Goswami who controls the main microphone (and mute button) at the head of the pack. Although an ill-advised reaction of Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi to file a dozen criminal defamation and other charges in multiple cities — a clear case of vexatious litigation — prompted the Supreme Court to dismiss all except one has been interpreted by Goswami as a triumph, it’s likely to prove a pyrrhic victory. Without any proof, Goswami has accused Sonia Gandhi of commissioning a violent criminal attack on him by two Congress party workers on the night of April 22. This unsubstantiated accusation made on Republic TV’s national peak hour broadcast of April 23 was supplemented with references to Sonia Gandhi’s Italian roots and innuendos of Mafia connections. Unsurprisingly, Mrs. Gandhi has initiated legal proceedings against him under several sections of the Indian Penal Code which is likely to cost Goswami dear. This reckless self-styled journalist seems quite clueless about the laws of civil and criminal defamation, the basics of which every self-respecting journalist should be cognizant. This rumbustious newscaster with a tinge of megalomania, has shot himself in the foot.
India’s education system and higher education institutions in particular, have suffered a severe setback because of the national lockdown declared from March 25 following the outbreak of the novel Coronavirus aka Covid-19 pandemic. With prospects of a reversion to the status quo ante uncertain in the near future, universities and higher education institutions worldwide are taking recourse to online learning in a big way. The crisis has precipitated a paradigm shift in consumer behaviour from face-to-face to online education. However as universities, faculty and students switch to online learning en masse, one needs to pose the question whether India’s Internet infrastructure is ready for this paradigm shift. In April 2020, QS IGAUGE — the India subsidiary of the London-based Quacquarelli Symonds (publisher of the globally-respected annual QS World University Rankings league tables) conducted a nationwide survey to assess consumer satisfaction with existing Internet service providers. A total of 7,594 students across the country responded to the online survey questionnaire — 62.16 percent male, 37.82 percent female and 0.02 percent transgender. The respondents were heterogeneous in terms of their age group with 74.33 percent in the 18-22 age group, 18.32 percent aged 22-27 years, 4.91 percent 16-18 and 2.43 percent aged above 27. Moreover, 81.03 percent of the respondents were undergraduates and 18.36 percent postgraduates The QS IGAUGE Further Academic Interest Report (FAIR) 2020 reveals the extent to which India is ready in terms of infrastructure to meaningfully scale online learning. The FAIR study indicates that to use the Internet at home, 72.60 percent of respondents used a mobile hotspot (i.e, connecting a wi-fi enabled electronic device to the phone’s Internet), 15.87 percent used home broadband (a high-speed communications system that links computers to the Internet using a cable, DSL or satellite modem hooked up to an Internet service provider), 9.68 percent used a wi-fi dongle (a pocket-size device that connects to smart phones, tablets or laptops and allows access to the Internet) and 1.85 percent had poor or nil internet connectivity. Notably, 22 percent of respondents used multiple connectivity devices. Of the 7,594 respondents, 38.12 percent used the Jio platform, 28.25 percent Airtel, 14.82 percent Vodafone, 10.59 percent BSNL, 3.24 percent ACT, 3.16 percent Idea, 1.29 percent Hathway, 0.53 percent BBNL with 4.64 percent connected through other service providers. The final segment of the FAIR survey focuses on connectivity quality. The responses reveal that among home broadband users 3.02 percent suffered cable cuts, 53.42 percent reported poor connectivity, 11.47 percent power supply problems and 32.09 percent reported prolonged buffering for data access. Among mobile hotspot users, 40.18 reported poor audio connectivity, 3.19 percent power supply problems and 56.63 percent reported delayed access to data. Among respondents who experienced inadequate access to the Internet and used no particular provider, 53.49 percent reported poor connectivity, and 46.51 percent experienced signal (data access) issues. Among wi-fi dongle users, 43.30 percent complained of poor connectivity, 9.23 percent reported power cuts and 47.47 percent signal issues. This data clearly indicates that the majority of Internet…
Udaipur-based recycled waste proponent Nidhi Kalal (17) could well revolutionise road construction countrywide with her innovative solution. Nidhi is a class XII student of Udaipur’s CBSE and Cambridge International (UK)-affiliated Heritage Girls School (HGS) — ranked among the country’s Top 10 girls boarding schools in the latest EW India School Rankings 2019-20. Last October (2019) Nidhi supervised the building of a 1-metre stretch of road within the HGS campus using a layer of marble slurry, plastic and fly ash among other waste material, found in abundance in Rajasthan. Recently the Union ministry of road transport and highways acknowledged her solution as valuable and is investigating further. The elder of two children of businessman Suresh Chandra Kalal and government school teacher Susheela, Nidhi became interested in waste recycling when she was a class III student eight years ago. “Observing road construction activity near the school when I was in class III, I conceived the idea of building roads with underlying layers of abundant plastic waste, when my class teacher raised the subject of plastic pollution worldwide,” she recalls. At a later stage Nidhi’s attention was drawn to the ‘white hills’ surrounding Udaipur, which she discovered was a white film of non-biodegradable marble slurry waste — 5-6 million tonnes of which are generated annually from 4,000 marble mines statewide — and the idea of using waste materials in road building projects took shape. “I owe immense gratitude to our principal Tulsi Bhatia and my father for funding my trial project which cost Rs.17,000,” acknowledges Nidhi. Set on a career in the IAS, Nidhi is currently in her native Dungarpur village after completing her class XII CBSE exams, and is waiting for the nationwide Covid-19 lockdown to end. “Although I am among the lucky ones to finish board exams, it’s difficult to tell when education institutions will reopen in these uncertain times. Meanwhile, I am in the process of filing a patent for my low-cost process invention which will help clear our dumping yards and keep the environment clean. Next on my agenda is a river-cleaning project,” enthuses Nidhi. Way to go, Sis! Akhila Damodaran (Bangalore)
Challenging the coronavirus outbreak which has taken over 210,000 lives worldwide, a team of engineering undergrad students — Prabin Kumar Das, Vaishnavi Gupta and Vinay Kumar of the Jalandhar-based Lovely Professional University (LPU, estb.2005) — has developed a smart dustbin christened Ally, for use in hospitals and medical centres. Conceptualised and developed under the aegis of LPU’s special endowment fund of $1 million (Rs.7.5 crore) to fight Covid-19, Ally moves along predetermined paths in a controlled environment. The smart dustbin makes contact-less collections by opening its lid/flap on voice command. Moreover, its sensors gauge its brim level and dispose waste automatically, readying it for reuse. “We developed a ready-to-go prototype of Ally and successfully conducted trials in the university’s innovation lab after a full month of continuous refinement and improvements. The prototype, which costs Rs.20,000, is 3 ft. tall, 1.5 ft. wide and weighs almost 5 kg. We used sun boards as the basic material to build the outer structure and engaged Python, openCV, Embedded C software to improve Ally’s performance. For movement, we installed a motor and two front wheels that move in all four directions and an Omni wheel for rotation,” explains Prabin, spokesperson of the team. “During all phases of product development, we were closely monitored and mentored by Dr. Lovi Raj Gupta, Dr. Rajesh Singh and Dr. Anita Gehlot,” he adds in a tribute to LPU faculty. Currently, an LPU task force is looking for corporate partners to mass produce the prototype, with Ally expected to become 25 percent cheaper after commercialisation. The final product is expected to be ready for deployment within two months of factory production. “Ally’s task of collecting waste in quarantined areas without human contact can save lives of thousands of frontline workers battling the Covid-19 pandemic. Safety and cleanliness was always Ally’s core purpose. We are hopeful it will be commercialised soon and save millions of lives of medical personnel,” says Pranav, a sentiment echoed by team members Vaishnavi and Vinay. Wind in your sails! Paromita Sengupta (Bangalore)
“I don’t want people to say ‘Oh, environmentalists are celebrating this lockdown.’ We are not. This is not the solution. But whatever the new normal is post-Covid-19, we have to make sure we take this breath of fresh air and think about the serious efforts we need to deal with pollution in Delhi.” Sunita Narain, director of the Centre for Science and Environment, on nature reclaiming itself during the lockdown ( The Guardian, April 11) “The world has been put in a Great Lockdown. The magnitude and speed of collapse in activity that has followed is unlike anything experienced in our lifetimes.” Gita Gopinath, chief economist, international Monetary Fund on the economic crisis triggered by the covid-19 epidemic ( The New York Times, April 14) “Compassion might be about looking at people’s hearts. Real solidarity is about following where the money and power flows. The migrant labour and the unemployed, whose quiescence we seem to take too much for granted, will be demanding their rights; not our mercy.” Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, former vice chancellor of Ashoka University, on the migrant labour crisis (Indian Express, April 18) “To my mind, the Modi government’s redesign of New Delhi brings to mind not so much living Communist autocrats as it does some dead African despots. It is the sort of vanity project, designed to perpetuate the ruler’s immortality, that Felix Houphouet-Boigny of the Ivory Coast and Jean Bédel-Bokassa of the Central African Republic once inflicted on their own countries.” Ramchandra Guha, historian-author, on the proposed central Vista redesign project (TheWire.in, April 19) “The lockdown has come as a blessing in disguise for universities in India. The fear of poor quality of online teaching and teachers’ hesitation to use online portals has now completely disappeared.” P.B. Sharma, vice chancellor of Amity University, Gurgaon, on the switch to online education (Hindu BusinessLine, April 24)
Private unaided aka independent, schools across Maharashtra are up in arms against a directive of the state’s Shiv Sena-led tri-party Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government to waive school fees for the first quarter of the academic year 2020-21, because of the loss of income of the parents community following the nationwide lockdown of industry and business in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. In Maharashtra, school fees are paid quarterly and collected in advance. But a large number of parents haven’t paid school fees for the quarter April-June. Managements of the state’s 22,477 private unaided schools, overwhelmingly preferred by the middle class, warn that they won’t be able to pay the emoluments of 80,000 teachers and other support staff. The Maharashtra English School Trustees Association (MESTA, estb.2014), which has a membership of 18,000 budget (affordable) private schools in 37 districts statewide, has written to the education minister Varsha Gaikwad calling for urgent withdrawal of the directive. Schools in Maharashtra have been shut down since March 14 — much before the nationwide lockdown from March 25 decreed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. On March 30, a government resolution (GR) asked Maharashtra schools to refrain from demanding first quarter fees and directed them to “inform parents about a payment schedule once school reopens”. Showing further leniency towards parents who make up the large middle-class electorate, the minister instructed parents to complain to district education officers against schools demanding fees. Private school promoters and particularly managements of upmarket schools affiliated with the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE) and Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) are especially indignant because they have pulled out all stops to adhere to the academic calendar by switching to online classes at considerable expense to train teachers to use digital media to prepare lesson plans, conduct online classes, design homework assessments and even interact with parents virtually after school hours. It is also pertinent to note that unlike government schools that begin their academic year in June, CBSE and CISCE schools follow academic calendars ending March. Their fees for the first quarter and/or first semester became due on April 1. Comments Raghav Podar, chairman of Podar Education, “In light of many state government orders not to collect school fees during the lockdown, it has become an onerous task to meet institutional expenses. Most of a school’s expenses are fixed. Salaries for example, have to be paid whether or not the school building is open. Moreover, many schools have conducted online classes with overwhelming success and appreciation of students and parents. It is not fair that the education fraternity that is working hard in this difficult time, is deprived of tuition fees which goes directly into meeting teachers’ salaries.” A recent order by the Delhi High Court has correctly pointed out that “money does not grow on trees, and unaided schools, who receive no funds from the government, are entirely dependent on fees, to defray their daily expenses. We, therefore, find that in allowing unaided schools to charge tuition fees,…
Although India’s top-ranked private B-schools can’t be blamed entirely given the tight policy framework within which they ave had to operate, the country has paid a heavy price for poor quality business management education – Dilip Thakore If one takes post-independence India’s unimpressive national development record — for over 40 years until India’s notorious neta-babu controlled licence-permit-quota economy was substantially dismantled in 1991, annual GDP growth averaged a mere 3.5 percent or 1.3 percent per capita after adjusting for runaway population growth — no country needs high quality organisation and business management education as much. Even currently, the annual rate of GDP growth, which briefly averaged 7 percent in the first decade of the new millennium, has dropped to 5 percent in this resources rich country gifted with a naturally entrepreneurial population. In sharp contrast, the annual GDP growth rate in the neighbouring People’s Republic of China (PRC) — which is also endowed with a naturally entrepreneurial population — averaged 10 percent per year between 1978-2010 and 8 percent since, despite continuous interference by officials and cadres of the 100 million-strong Communist Party of China. If PRC had been a free enterprise economy like breakaway Taiwan, it’s quite possible that its GDP ($14 trillion) would have surpassed the massive GDP of USA ($21 trillion). Against this India’s GDP which was on a par with PRC in 1978, is a mere $3 trillion (Rs.227 lakh crore). Although they can’t be blamed entirely, given the government policy framework within which they have had to operate (India’s famous Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are promoted and governed by the Central government), the country has had to pay a heavy price for poor quality business management education. “The collective track record of India’s reportedly 5,500 B-schools is disappointing. Their focus has been on the tactical aspects of business management within a meekly accepted framework. Their contribution to ideating productive economic and business policies has been negligible. They have conspicuously failed to gift the country with great, visionary and risk-taking entrepreneurs such as G.D. Birla, Walchand Hirachand, J. N & J.R.D Tata who built great manufacturing enterprises unfortunately stunted by post-independence India’s foolish embrace of socialism. Barring a few exceptions in the 1990s, most B-school alumni have become civil servants of the private sector. Although they have done relatively well in finance and consulting, India’s B-school graduates have shown marked reluctance to dirty their hands in manufacturing industries. They are adept at producing power point presentations rather than products,” says Jaitirth (‘Jerry’) Rao in a scathing indictment of India’s B-schools. A former Citibank (India) CEO, Rao transformed into an entrepreneur and promoted the well-known IT services company Mphasis Ltd (estb.1998) and later, two affordable housing companies — VBHC Value Homes Pvt. Ltd (2008) and Home First Finance Co. India Ltd (2010). Himself an IIM-Ahmedabad graduate his latest contribution to society is The Indian Conservative — A History of Right-Wing Thought (2019). According to Guarav Singh, a Gurgaon-based senior manager in the well-known consultancy firm Ernst & Young, 3,500-plus…
Widespread protests by school managements and an online petition demanding public support for private school teachers which attracted over 26,700 signatures, has compelled the state government to amend a March 30 circular of the department of public instruction (DPI) to private schools to desist from collecting pupils’ tuition fees “until further orders”. Under a second DPI circular dated April 23, private school managements are advised that they may collect fees for the quarter April-June from “parents who can afford”, through the online mode. Although the modified April 23 circular has assuaged some indignation of managements of Karnataka’s 20,000 recognised private primary-secondary schools which host 46 percent of the state’s 10 million school-going children, there is still considerable dissatisfaction with the second circular. For one, it directs schools to collect tuition fees from parents who can afford to pay leaving it to the discretion of parents. “Parents who are economically sound and can pay the fees shall come forward to remit the fees in installments, according to their capacity,” states a government order signed by S. Suresh Kumar, primary-secondary education minster of the state’s BJP government which was sworn into office in controversial circumstances last August. Moreover, the order further states that fees remitted by parents should be utilised on a priority basis to disburse salaries to teachers and support staff. Secondly, to maintain clustering and social distancing norms mandated by the national lockdown following outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, it has ordered online payment of tuition fees. These hasty new directives have created a new set of problems for beleaguered private schools. According to D. Shashi Kumar, the energetic president of the Associated Managements of Primary & Secondary Schools in Karnataka (KAMS, estb.1988) which has a membership of 2,000, mainly affordable budget private schools statewide, barely 2-3 percent of parents of KAMS member schools have voluntarily “come forward” to pay their contracted school fees. Even within this minority, a substantial number complain that they don’t have the infrastructure and/or capability to make online payments of tuition fees. “All schools know the socio-economic profile of their parents quite well. Therefore, the question of affordability should be a bilateral matter between school managements and parents. As it is, most of our member schools collect school fees monthly. I’m sure school managements can give parents who have been genuinely hit by the national lockdown deferred payment plans or waive the fee altogether in some cases,” says Shashi Kumar. Shashi Kumar is especially outraged by the magnanimity of the state government circular which gives parents the option to pay contracted school fees at their discretion while maintaining a conspicuous silence on the matter of reimbursing the sum of Rs.1,200 crore owing to private schools which has been pending for three years. Under s.12 (1) (c) of the landmark Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (aka RTE) Act, 2009, all except minority primary schools are obliged to reserve 25 percent of capacity in class I for children from poor households in their neighbourhood and retain them until class VIII. The…
With the Covid-19 pandemic and national lockdown forcing the mass closure of education institutions, several state governments have issued circulars directing private school managements not to collect tuition fees during the lockdown period. These circulars have jeopardized the financial stability of the country’s 375,000 private independent (unaided) K-12 schools, especially the estimated 400,000 budget private schools (BPS) countrywide, and endangered the employment of 7 million teachers. With parents withholding March-April tuition fees, a multiplying number of private schools are experiencing a severe cash flow problem and are unable to pay teachers’ salaries. Several private school associations (NISA, FICCI Arise, Society for Unaided Private Schools of Rajasthan etc) have made representations to state governments and the Union HRD ministry protesting these fee circulars on grounds that they are ill-considered and violative of the fundamental right of private school managements to engage in the vocation of education. Given below an infographic depicting the severity of the fee collection directives in 22 states countrywide:
In March, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee was riding a wave of popularity for her deft management of the Covid-19 pandemic sweeping the country, which has provoked a national lockdown of business and leisure activity from March 25 to May 16. On April 28, West Bengal reported a mere 649 Covid positive cases, 105 cured and 20 fatalities against 33,050, 8,325 and 1,074 nationally. Inevitably, these rosy — perhaps too rosy — statistics have generated a political storm in the state with a population of 91 million. The BJP, which has latterly emerged as the main opposition party of West Bengal, has orchestrated a massive social media campaign alleging that the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) government has allowed dilution of lockdown and quarantine norms in Muslim-dominated areas of the state, placing the entire population of Bengal at risk. In particular, the BJP accuses the state government of “not conducting sufficient testing in West Bengal against the national average of 198 per million,” alleges Babul Supriyo, minister of state for environment, forest and climate change in the Union government at the Centre. Moreover, BJP state president Dilip Ghosh accuses Mamata Banerjee and her government of suppressing Covid-19 positive cases in West Bengal and fatalities and misusing the public distribution system (PBS) to support TMC sympathisers and supporters. Banerjee’s discomfiture has been exacerbated with some government doctors and health workers of West Bengal alleging that they are being forced to fight the Covid-19 pandemic without adequate PPE (personal protection equipment) including masks and gloves, and to certify Covid deaths as other causes. Reacting to these allegations, Banerjee has constituted a five-member committee of reportedly TMC-friendly bureaucrats and doctors, to endorse the state government’s Covid-19 data and refute poor working conditions allegations. Sensing a political opportunity, West Bengal’s governor Jagdeep Dhankhar, a hand-picked, selected appointee of the BJP government at the Centre, reportedly invited an inter- ministerial central team (IMCT) to assess the state government’s management of the pandemic at ground level. This generated a major Centre-state protocol row as according to Banerjee, prior intimation of the IMCT visit should have been given to the state government. However, after a state government order confining the IMCT team to its hotel, it was allowed to conduct a four-day investigation. With the Union ministry of home affairs under BJP’s master election strategist Amit Shah closely monitoring West Bengal (which goes to the polls next summer) following the IMCT report, chief minister Banerjee is evidently jittery. The TMC has roped in the widely reputed Prashant Kishor, also a master election strategist who formerly worked with the BJP and Congress, to take charge of TMC’s social media platform to counter the BJP’s anti-TMC campaign. Since then, apart from highlighting the relative success of the TMC in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic, the state government is also advertising initiatives taken to ensure continuation of classes in K-12 education. Unlike several state governments which have generated controversy by directing private schools to refrain from collecting school fees, in an April 25 message to West Bengal’s 1,200…
The rapid countrywide spread of the Coronavirus pandemic and subsequent national lockdown of all education institutions from Kg-Ph D has disrupted the academic year 2019-20 which was drawing to a close for 1.5 million schools (including CBSE, CISCE) Final assessments as well as various entrance examinations conducted by the NTA (National Testing Agency) have been postponed. Simultaneously, the second semester of universities was in full swing with more than 60 percent of academic transaction completed and apprenticeships and project assignments having commenced. Therefore, the out-of-the-blue national lockdown started in mid- March has resulted in delays in completion of school board examinations, evaluation and certification. The postponement of the class XII school-leaving exams in particular, is delaying admission processes of colleges and other higher education institutions (HEIs) across the country even as the latter are in the thick of switching from conventional classroom lectures pedagogies to digital online learning systems and processes. Against this backdrop of a comprehensive disruption of the academic calendar in school and higher education, governments, exam boards and regulators have been burning the midnight oil to manage this unprecedented situation to ensure that the current academic year is saved and the next year gets off to a smooth start. The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), the largest pan-India exams board with 22,145 affiliated schools countrywide, had already completed two-thirds of its school-leaving class X and XII exams when the Central government order to shut down all education institutions with immediate effect was issued on March 18. On April 1, CBSE issued a circular to all affiliated schools to promote classes I-VIII students to the next higher class and promote class IX and XI students on the basis of their term exam scores. The remaining 29 board exams — 11 for class XII students and 18 for class X students — will be held during the period July 1-15. In the case of the Delhi-based Council for Indian School Certificate Examinations (CISCE), six subject exams for class X ICSE and eight for class XII ISC students are ending. In a circular dated May 1 to affiliated schools, the CISCE board says that eight days preparation time will be given to students after the date is announced post lockdown 3.0. Inevitably, the delay of CBSE, CISCE (and 29 state exam boards) exams has disrupted the calendar of 39,931 undergrad colleges which admit students on the basis of these scores with toppers having the option of admission into top-ranked colleges of their choice. After the CBSE, CISCE and state boards are finally held, their answer papers have to be evaluated, scored and school-leaving certificates issued, a process normally spread over three months. Therefore, anticipating delay in completion of this process, UGC has recommended postponing start of the new academic year to September 1, 2020 (cf. July 2020). In a set of guidelines issued on April 29, UGC says: “Admission to the undergraduate and postgrad programmes for the session 2020- 21 may (i.e, should) be completed by 31.08.2020. If necessity arises, provisional admissions may…
Bhubaneswar, April 3. In collaboration with the UN Children’s Emergency Fund, the Odisha government has launched an online mo protiva (‘my talent’) competition for children in the 5-18 years age group to keep them engaged at home during the emergency Covid-19 nationwide lockdown. Children’s entries under separate age categories are invited in painting, slogans writing, short stories, poetry and poster design competitions based on two themes — ‘being at home during lockdown’ and ‘my responsibility as a young citizen during Covid-19’. Details of the online competition are available on www.sportsodisha.gov. in/www.wcdodisha.gov.in. Tripura digital learning initiative Agartala, April 19. With the academic calendar disrupted and board exams suspended because of the national lockdown following the outbreak of the corona pandemic, education minister Ratan Lal Nath announced the automatic promotion of classes I-IX and XI students to the next higher class. Simultaneously he announced the launch of virtual classes for government school students. Online classes for all government school students up to class XII have been introduced via 14 local cable channels, the minister said, adding that pre-recorded classroom lectures are available on Youtube under the title of Tripura Shiksha Bandhu. Meanwhile evaluation of answer papers of class X and XII students who have completed the schoolleaving exams of the Tripura Board of Secondary Education, will start on April 24 in 13 high security centres, he added. Haryana mental health helpline Chandigarh, April 9. Haryana’s higher education ministry launched a 24×7 helpline number for students experiencing postCovid stress and mental health issues. Over 180 psychology teachers will counsel students through the ministry’s helpline. Launching the helpline from his residence in Jagadhri through video conferencing, education minister Kanwar Pal said the service was started as “a guiding agent” for the state’s 350,000 students in higher education. “Most are from lower-middle class and economically underprivileged households and cannot afford private psychiatric counseling,” he explained. Delhi CBSE’s new subjects New Delhi, April 7. The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) will introduce three new elective subjects — design thinking, physical activ ity training and artificial intelligence — for class XI students from the academic year starting June. This was announced by Biswajit Saha, director, training and skill education, CBSE, at a press conference. “The objective is to make new generation students more creative, innovative and physically fit, to keep pace with the global developments and requirements of 21st century workplaces,” said Saha. Rajasthan digital learning task force Jaipur, April 10. Governor Kalraj Mishra has constituted a task force to prepare a roadmap for digital learning in the higher education sector following the national lockdown declared on March 24. “The task force chaired by the governor’s secretary Subir Kumar will hold online meetings and prepare a roadmap for examinations, results and the schedule of the new academic year,” according to a Raj Bhavan press release. Chhattisgarh doorstep education initiative Raipur, April 7. Chief minister Bhupesh Baghel inaugurated an online Hindi medium ‘education at your doorstep’ initiative of the state government to ensure learning continuity of children in…
Rohit Bhat, CEO, Children’s Academy Group of Schools With three campuses in Mumbai’s northern suburbs of Kandivali and Malad, the Children’s Academy Group of Schools (CAGS, estb.1970) is in the vanguard of the digital technologies-driven education revolution. The group led by CEO Rohit Bhat is providing engaging and personalised online learning to 8,500 nursery to class-X students. Teacher training. To ensure continuity of the teaching-learning process, Bhat has initiated training sessions for the group’s 450 teachers through the Zoom video conferencing app. Teachers are acquiring proficiency in using digital tools such as Screencastify, Screencast-o-Matic, Screen Recorder and Mobizen. Community engagement. The CAGS official website and Facebook page is regularly updated with useful information on Covid-19 and school counsellors are available for consultation, not only for the group’s teachers and students, but also the general public. Online assessment. The group is preparing to roll out online assessments in June. “CAGS has partnered with MICM Net Solutions to prepare robust real-time assessment software for objective and subjective questions assessment,” says Bhat. “This has been a great learning experience for our entire school fraternity. It has driven us to ideate innovative solutions to ensure continuity of learning for students. The rich repository of video lessons created during the lockdown period will be useful and beneficial for students who miss classes because of sports and cocurricular pursuits,” adds Bhat. Shishir Jaipuria, Chairman, Seth Anandram Jaipuria Group With a network of 12 K-12 schools, five preschools and two business schools in north India, the Seth Anandram Jaipuria Group of Education Institutions (SAJGEI) is in the forefront of the switch to online education precipitated by the Covid-19 pandemic crisis and national lockdown. Under the inspiring leadership of Shishir Jaipuria, chairman of SAJGEI, group teachers and staff have designed engaging online curriculums to ensure smooth transition of the teaching-learning process to digital online platforms. “At SAJGEI we believe in transforming the Covid-19 adversity into an opportunity to prepare our teachers and students for the online world. Over the past two months our teachers and students have embraced new pedagogies such as flipped classrooms and blended learning,” says Jaipuria. Among the several initiatives launched by SAJGEI: Virtual classes. The online curriculums of the Seth Anandram Jaipuria Schools (SAJS) offer a blend of scholastic and co-scholastic learning including arts, dance, yoga, meditation and sports. Conducted through the Zoom video conferencing app and Microsoft Teams virtual collaboration platform, online classes have been enthusiastically welcomed by students and parents. Teacher training. SAJS teachers are provided regular training in using digital platforms and learning the nuances of online teaching-learning. “Within a short time period our teachers have quickly mastered digital technologies and new pedagogical techniques to ensure continuity of the knowledge delivery process,” says Jaipuria. Blended learning. The schools follow an optimal blend of synchronous and asynchronous learning wherein students benefit from real-time online interaction and have the flexibility to access off-line recorded presentations, videos, group projects and collaborative assignments. Social Emotional Learning. Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) is a special focus area of…
With an estimated 32 percent of the country’s students in higher education enrolled in government universities, the annual EW India Higher Education Rankings 2020-21 has introduced separate league tables rating the country’s 150 most reputed government universities – Summiya Yasmeen Although since the dawn of the new millennium when several state governments began liberally legislating promotion of private universities, the country’s 513 publicly-funded government universities have lost their sheen, they still dominate India’s higher education system. According to the Delhi-based University Grants Commission (UGC) data (2020), currently 409 state and 50 Central government, 127 deemed (government and private) and 349 private varsities are providing higher education countrywide. Within the public higher education system, the 50 Central universities (budget: Rs.7,463.26 crore in 2020-21) and deemed universities are top of the tree followed by 409 state government varsities. Once reputed for their high academic quality and excellent faculty, the majority of India’s 409 state universities are in a shambles ruined by meddling rustic politicians, over-the-top caste-based selection of faculty and students, and over-subsidisation of tuition fees. Yet, since an estimated 32 percent of the country’s 37.4 million students in higher education are enrolled in government universities, this year the annual EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings 2020-21, which hitherto ranked private universities, has introduced separate league tables rating the country’s 150 most reputed government varsities under ten parameters of higher education excellence and ranks them inter se. To conduct the EW India Government University Rankings 2020-21, over 150 field personnel of the highlyreputed Delhi-based market research and opinion polls company, Centre for Forecasting & Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore), interviewed 4,168 sample respondents comprising 2,214 faculty and 1,126 final year students of 162 universities, and 828 industry representatives in 25 cities countrywide. They were persuaded to award public universities they are familiar with, scores of 1-300 on ten parameters of higher education excellence, viz, faculty competence, faculty welfare & development, research and innovation, curriculum and pedagogy, industry interface, placements, infrastructure, internationalism, leadership/governance and range and diversity of study programmes offered. Higher weightage is given to the critical parameters of faculty competence (150), research and innovation (300) and infrastructure (150). “This year’s rankings league table is based on a mix of factual objective criteria and perceptions of knowledgeable sample respondents. Objective data has been culled from papers published by faculty in refereed journals and number of citations was obtained from secondary sources including the Scopus index. Twenty percent weightage is given to publications and citations in refereed journals worldwide,” says Premchand Palety, founder- CEO of C fore. Unsurprisingly, the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISc, estb.1909) is ranked the country’s #1 higher education institution in the EW Government University Rankings 2020-21, with top scores under seven of the ten parameters of higher education excellence including research and innovation, given highest weightage (300), in the survey. Promoted in 1909 through a generous land grant from pioneer industrialist J.N. Tata who founded the Mumbai-based Tata business empire, IISc with an enrolment of 4,200 students, including 2,750 doctoral students, mentored by 500…
The silver lining of the Covid-19 crisis and the susbequent lockdown of all education institutions from KG to Ph D is that it has stimulated innovative ICT solutions to ensure continuity of teaching-learning. Here’s how several randomly selected institutional managements are responding to the Covid-19 challenge. Anchorwala Education Academy, Mumbai Among the first schools in Mumbai to introduce virtual learning solutions following outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Anchorwala Education Academy (AEA) has drawn upon the expertise of its faculty in leveraging digital technologies to deliver quality online learning in several innovative ways. Staff orientation and training. AEA managers and teachers were familiarised with online pedagogies through an intensive one-week workshop. In particular, teachers were trained to use Zoom for conducting online classes and creating digital resources. An orientation session on using Zoom was conducted also for parents. Online classes. Daily online classes are being conducted according to time-tables and attendance musters are being marked. A one-point contact for resolving technical glitches and communication issues was shared with parents and teachers. Virtual classes went live in end-March after digital resources, including class and practice work and projects, were posted online. “We have received positive feedback from students and parents for our online classes. There is growing appreciation among all stakeholders that AEA staff and management have quickly introduced a smooth switch to online learning in these challenging times,” says Shilpa Kenia, secretary, AEA. Mount Litera Zee School, Amritsar Mount Litera Zee School, Amritsar (MLZSA) has steadily introduced new technologies in teaching learning over the past decade. After the nationwide lockdown was announced on March 24, the management and staff have smoothly transformed MLZSA into an engaging virtual school. Innovative initiatives taken by the management to ensure teaching learning continuity include utilisation of e-learning tools such as Skype, Google Meet and Google Classroom specifically designed for teachers and students, and teachers’ training in e-tools usage. The school’s in-house IT specialists and Microsoft Google master trainers have formulated e-learning schedules for each class, allotment and submission of assignments and disbursal of students’ work completed through Google Classroom and other e-learning resources installed in every classroom. “Our parents and students have been very supportive. None of our students has missed even one online virtual class. All of them are very enthusiastic about online learning and regular about completing their assignments. Our switch to online learning has been quick and successful,” says Manjot Dhillon, director, MLZSA. Sat Paul Mittal School, Ludhiana The management of Sat Paul Mittal School, Ludhiana (SPMS) — a Microsoft Showcase school — is committed to providing all students virtual learning amid the ongoing nationwide lockdown through its Remote Learning Work Plan (RLWP). The plan is being implemented through: Student orientation. A detailed roadmap outlining RLWP and expected outcomes has been sent to all students. Virtual classrooms. SPMS teachers are leveraging MS Teams, Flipgrid, Wakelet, OneNote and Office 365 programmes to create and share e-learning resources with students. Software suites used include Presenter, eWhite Board, Screencast-o-Matic, and Wondershare Filmora to enrich teaching-learning…
Congratulations for your pioneer initiative of ranking the country’s autonomous and non autonomous colleges separately (EW April). As you rightly argue, autonomous colleges are a class apart and need to be ranked separately. Nevertheless, I’m baffled that some of India’s routinely top-ranked colleges sited in the national capital — St. Stephen’s, Miranda, Sri Ram College of Commerce — have not yet been granted academic and administrative autonomy under UGC’s archaic rules and regulations. These colleges with excellent track records — “tied to the apron strings of Delhi University” — should be awarded autonomy immediately. Maria Gonsalves, Mumbai Classification error Re the EW Private Autonomous Colleges Rankings 2020-21, Kohima Science College is ranked in the category of private autonomous colleges at #75 with a total score of 473. The fact of the matter is that ours is a government autonomous college with a NAAC CGPA score of 3.42 under administration of the department of higher education, government of Nagaland. This categorisation mistake has created utter confusion in the public and amongst all the stakeholders in the state. Therefore, I request you to correct this error at the earliest. Dr. Lily Sema Principal, Kohima Science College, Jotsoma Kohima Science College has been reclassified and ranked #12 in the Government Autonomous Colleges Rankings league table published online (see www.educationworld. in) — Editor Methodology query My heartfelt congratulations to you for ranking the country’s autonomous colleges separately. I sincerely appreciate your efforts to include Vimala College, Thrissur in your private autonomous colleges league table. We are happy that our college has been ranked #58 nationwide and #11 in Kerala. However, I am unsure about the process and variables used to arrive at the rankings. Our college did not submit any documents nor was any verification done from your side. Please enlighten me on your methodology of data collection and verification, and the data source. Lims Thomas Faculty, Department of Social Work, Vimala College (Autonomous), Thrissur As detailed in our cover story, the EW India Private Autonomous Colleges Rankings 2020-21 is based on perceptual scores awarded on five parameters of higher education excellence by 4,813 sample respondents including college/university faculty and final year college students who rated India’s Top 500 colleges — private autonomous, government autonomous and non autonomous. The data source is the UGC list of approved autonomous colleges as on 28.06.2019 (see p.32 EW April) — Editor Top rank stimulus IT WAS a pleasure to read that Maharaja’s College, Ernakulam is ranked #1 in the EW Government Autonomous College Rankings 2020-21 (EW April). We are highly motivated by this recognition. It will surely inspire us to work harder to maintain our top rank. Dr. K. Jayakumar Special Grade Principal Maharaja’s College, Ernakulam Glaring omission YOUR EW Higher Education Rankings 2020-21 makes no sense if you ignore and don’t rank universities that provide world-class commerce education. Bangalore hosts excellent private universities — Christ and Jain universities which provide the best commerce education. They are not in your league tables. If you want to educate people…
Ab initio, your editors have accorded special importance to private institutions of higher learning. We believe private universities with investment and reputations to lose, are more likely to provide rigorous, globally benchmarked academic, research and life skills education In recent years privately promoted universities, particularly new genre, globally benchmarked liberal arts and sciences undergrad colleges modelled on America’s famous Ivy League institutions, have captured the imagination of the country’s aspirational post-liberalisation middle and upper class. The steadily rising number of unemployed graduates holding devalued degrees of government — especially state government — universities notorious for their crumbling infrastructure and obsolete syllabuses and curriculums, has created acute awareness of the value of real rather than ritual education dispensed by the majority of government institutions of higher education tightly controlled by generalist bureaucrats out of touch with the requirements of Indian industry and business. Therefore ever since EducationWorld (estb. 1999) started publishing its annual EW India Higher Education Rankings in 2013, your editors have accorded special importance to private institutions of higher learning. We believe that academically and financially autonomous standalone privately-promoted higher education institutions with investment and reputations to lose, are more likely to provide rigorous, globally benchmarked academic, research and life skills education. This not to say that your editors are indifferent to government colleges and universities. Some public higher ed institutions promoted at taxpayers’ expense by the Central and state governments also make a substantial contribution to national progress and development. However they are hamstrung by numerous social and community goals that tend to dilute their academic excellence objective. Therefore to avoid apples and oranges type comparisons, we believe that the public interest — and the interest of parents and school-leaving students in particular — would be better served if public and private institutions of education are ranked separately. This is the distinction we make in our annual EducationWorld India School Rankings — the world’s largest and most comprehensive schools annual survey — published every September. Now after several years of chopping and changing, we have resolved to follow a similar path while rating and ranking India’s most respected institutions of higher learning. Last month (April) we published league tables ranking India’s most respected private autonomous, government autonomous, Top 100 non autonomous and Top 100 private engineering colleges. In this issue we present discrete league tables ranking the country’s Top 150 most reputed private universities, Top 150 government universities and Top 100 B-schools. To conduct the EW India Private University Rankings 2020-21 survey, over 150 field personnel of the highly-reputed Delhi-based market research and opinion polls company Centre for Forecasting & Research Pvt. Ltd (C fore, stb.2000), interviewed 4,168 sample respondents comprising 2,214 faculty and 1,126 final year students of 162 universities, and 828 industry representatives in 25 cities countrywide. They were requested to award private universities they are familiar with, scores of 1-300 on ten parameters of higher education excellence, viz, faculty competence faculty welfare & development, research and innovation, curriculum and pedagogy, industry interface, placements, infrastructure, internationalism, leadership/governance…
Against the backdrop of none of India’s 935 universities ranked among the Top 200 of the authoritative Times Higher Education World University Rankings, we present league tables ranking the country’s best private and government universities separately – Dilip Thakore Notwithstanding incrementally futile protests and grumbling of left leaning academics busily engaged in dispensing obsolete pedagogies and fixed curriculums in India’s ivory tower public universities, there is a discernible national mood swing in favour of privately provided higher education. Seven decades after enactment of the University Grants Commission (UGC) Act, 1956, which invested wide Big Brother powers of control and command over university education in the commission, it’s becoming increasingly clear that huge bureaucracies of the UGC and Union human resource development (HRD) ministry which in turn have spawned an alphabet soup of higher education regulatory bodies — AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education), NAAC (National Assessment and Accreditation Council), NBA (National Board of Accreditation), MCI (Medical Council of India) — among others, have ruined rather than enabled, post-independence India’s 50 Central and 409 state government universities. Instead of maturing into buzzing centres of higher learning, innovation and research, they have transformed into comfortable watering holes for well-connected kith and kin of the powerful 20 million-strong neta-babu brotherhood, which under the cover of egalitarian socialist rhetoric, has acquired an iron grip over all socio-economic activities, including higher education. Of contemporary India’s 39,931 undergrad colleges, a mere 747 have been grudgingly conferred academic autonomy by UGC. And that too after the dawn of the new millennium. Meanwhile the syllabuses, curriculums and admission processes of the country’s Central and state universities are prescribed by UGC and AICTE. In the circumstances, it’s unsurprising that there’s no significant entry of Indian universities, some established almost 200 years ago, in the global Top 200 World University Rankings (WUR) league tables of the authoritative London-based rating agencies Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) and Times Higher Education. This year only three Indian universities — IIT-Bombay (#152), IIT-Delhi #182 and the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore (IISc, estb.1909) at #184 — featured in the QS Top 200 (cf. China’s seven). In the latest THE WUR, the highest ranked Indian university is IISc and IIT-Ropar in the #301-350 band. Another half a dozen are ranked in lower bands. Although in 1949 when communist party rule began in China, India’s universities were among the most well-reputed in Asia, in THE WUR 2020, the People’s Republic has seven ranked in the Top 200. This depressing deficit in the higher education system controlled and confined by the Central government and its entrenched handmaiden supervisory agencies has survived the reform recommendations of several high powered committees and commissions including the Yash Pal (1993), T.S.R. Subramanian (2016) and Kasturirangan (2019) committees — the recommendations of the latter are under prolonged consideration of the HRD ministry. Therefore the mushrooming of a host of privately promoted, academically and financially autonomous universities enabled by state government legislation (education is a concurrent subject under the Constitution) is heaven sent for India’s…
A grave injustice to which the intelligentsia and great Indian middle class are helpless spectators, if not complicit, is spreading across the country in the wake of the novel Coronavirus, aka Covid-19 pandemic. The impact on the livelihoods of an estimated 100 million migrant labour citizens has been the harshest ever since the stringent nationwide lockdown was imposed on March 25 for six weeks to prevent the spread of the pandemic, for which an antidote has not yet been discovered. If we assume that each migrant worker obliged to seek low-wage employment far from home — because leaders of newly independent India adopted a nihilistic economic development model and persisted with it for over four decades — has four dependents, over 400 million of India’s 1.3 billion people are in danger of death by malnutrition and associated maladies, including mental derangement and suicide. Stranded migrant labour, it’s pertinent to record, were given a mere four hours’ notice before the national lockdown was imposed to prevent transmission of the Covid-19 contagion. Grounded at their work sites, unable to get back to their village homes due to suspension of public transport, millions of them started out on foot to reach homes hundreds of miles away. Such is the faith of the country’s poorest and weakest in government assurances pertaining to their welfare. To be sure, the Centre and states have taken some initiatives to provide accommodation and food to stranded migrant workers. The Union government’s first relief package of Rs.1.7 lakh crore and second package of Rs.1 lakh crore for banks and finance companies aggregates a mere 1.18 percent of GDP. On the other hand the US, France, UK and several other countries have allocated near 10-15 percent of GDP to compensate their citizens for loss of livelihoods. It’s not as though India, now a middle income economy, lacks the resources to provide meaningful relief to the vulnerable majority devastated by the Covid virus. Your editor has been repeatedly advising the Central government to borrow a sum of Rs.8 lakh crore (3.52 percent of GDP) from the RBI and immediately deposit Rs.4,444 per month by way of direct benefit transfers into the bank accounts of the country’s 150 million poorest households, for the next 12 months. This sum can be returned by the Union government to RBI by raising an additional Rs.8 lakh crore in the Union budget 2021-22. However it has not received any support. Your editor’s guess is this proposal has not gained traction because it envisages additional (modest) taxation of the middle class by way of slashing non-merit subsidies, reducing establishment and defence expenditure, fire sale of public sector enterprises and a mere Rs.1,000 modest flat tax on all income tax assesses. Clearly this package is unacceptable to the upper middle class which runs the country and has cornered all the gains accruing from independence from foreign rule seven decades ago. The Covid 19 crisis offers India’s cruel middle and upper classes which include the intelligentsia and academy, an opportunity…
As far back as I can remember, India’s higher education sector has been a big disappointment. The quality of human resource finished by the country’s institutions of higher education is woeful. This is especially true of liberal arts and humanities graduates certified by the great majority of India’s 935 universities. It would not be inaccurate to state that the overwhelming majority of them, even postgrads, are deficient in linear thinking, logical reasoning, basic research, and communication and presentation skills. I’m aware this sounds like intellectual snobbery, and I apologise for it. But as founding editor of three pioneer sui generis print magazines (Business India, Businessworld and EducationWorld) I have suffered frustration and deep anguish because of poor quality of human resources recklessly certified by even top-ranked Indian — and sometimes foreign — universities. Unfortunately the normative Bollywood portrayal of colleges and universities as great places to ridicule authority, bunk classes, and harass women students into romantic liaisons, rather than great places to study, is substantially true to life. Curiously, higher learning is widely regarded as an extension of school education rather than a transition into adulthood, self-discipline and self-governance. Such infantalisation of adults in higher education is also a contributory cause of inadequately developed graduates certified as work-ready by post-independence India’s higher education institutions. Therefore they seldom find mention in the league tables of the world’s Top 200-300 universities published annually by the London-based university ranking agencies QS and Times Higher Education. Against this dismal backdrop, the emergence in post-liberalisation India of new genre multidisciplinary private universities, some of them modelled on premier Ivy league institutions of America, has come as a stream of reviving oxygen for your editors, and India’s 200 million-strong aspirational middle class as well. They provide first-world education at prices that are a fraction of fees levied by tertiary institutions in the US, UK and Commonwealth countries. Therefore we have been rating and ranking them separately for the past few years. Last month (April) despite the constraints posed by the Corona 2.0 lockdown, we published detailed league tables of the country’s top private autonomous, government autonomous, Top 100 non-autonomous undergrad colleges, plus Top 100 private engineering colleges. If for disruption of postal and courier services your print copy of EW didn’t reach you, visit our upgraded website (www.educationworld.in) to read the detailed April issue. This issue ranking the country’s Top 300 private and government universities and Top 100 private B-schools, completes the EducationWorld India Higher Education Rankings 2020-21 survey — the most comprehensive in the history of Indian education. Readers, particularly school-leavers are advised to study these league tables carefully. They could deeply influence your higher education and livelihood choices, and indeed life.
The emergence of peninsular Mumbai — the finance and commerce capital of India — as the most afflicted hotspot of the Covid-19 pandemic is the outcome of decades of civic planning neglect and unchecked avarice. Mumbai’s condition is indeed precarious. Of the total number of 81,970 reported Covid-19 positive cases countrywide, it has reported 16,579, and of the total reported number (2,649) of fatalities nationwide, Mumbai has reported 621 (May 15). However the megpolis’ grim condition was a prophecy foretold. The obvious solution to decongest the maximum city (20 million) was to build a road and rail bridge (s) to the India mainland, a mere 8 miles (14 km) as the crow flies. This proposal which envisaged a multi-purpose bridge from Sewree in the Bombay dockland area to make landfall in New Bombay (aka Navi Mumbai region) on the mainland was first mooted in the 1970s when CIDCO (City Development Corporation), a public-private civic planning organisation, was promoted to examine the proposal. However Cidco’s brief to connect Mumbai’s dockland area with the Indian mainland was opposed ab initio by the get-rich-quick interests of the city’s politician-builder nexus. Instead Cidco — now a Maharashtra state government company — was commissioned to connect the northeastern suburbs of the city with Thane in the north of the mainland through a modest 1.8 km expressway across a narrow creek. Meanwhile the number of officially acknowledged slum habitations have also multiplied and currently over 40 percent of the city’s population — even some corporate executives — live in inhuman conditions, acutely experiencing appalling air, water and sanitary pollution even as Dharavi (pop. 1 million plus) — as television news anchors routinely intone with a hint of pride — has grown into Asia’s largest slum habitation, and latterly a Covid-19 hotspot. The silver lining to the dark Covid-19 cloud looming over Mumbai is that work on building the Mumbai Trans Harbour Link began on January 20 when the first girder was installed. But before that four attempts of fullscale bids to build the bridge beginning in 2004, were sabotaged by the realtor-politician lobby which fears a crash in Mumbai’s sky-high property prices. Originally scheduled for completion in 2019, and being constructed by Larsen & Toubro, IHI (Japan), Daewoo Corp (Korea) and Tata Projects, the new 21.8 km six-lane steel motor way toll bridge is scheduled for completion in 2022. Unfortunately, although it will make Mumbai a better place in the future, it’s come too late to save the maximum city from the ravages of Covid-19.
Society needs moral repair & healing
The enormity of the corona pandemic crisis demands that we rise above current stereotypes and perceptions. This transformation has to occur in two forms. We have to acknowledge that the Corona crisis has unearthed much deeper and fundamental problems. The first is a crisis of imagination and cerebration. The stereotypes used to evaluate the crisis at the policy level have become obvious and predictable. It highlights the need to view India as a knowledge society and make experiments in pedagogy part of the democratic and cognitive imagination. A philosopher friend of mine suggested three examples, beginning with something playful. We need a graphic novel of the epidemic to help us visualise key moments of decision making. Second, we need to make future studies a part of everyday pedagogies. Futures, as cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead and peace research scientist Johan Galtung have suggested, should be taught in schools, so that scenario building gaming exercises, heuristics and systems connectivity become intrinsic to the way in which all students learn. My friend added that we also need to rethink the city as a continuous learning system, the way Patrick Geddes and other sociologists have suggested. We have to rethink the city with every catastrophe. Our incumbent politicians and policy wonks seem to have forgotten the migrant and informal economy, with devastating consequences. They have to go beyond poverty to understand vulnerability. Indian society owes an apology to our migrants if it has to recover as a democratic imagination. Moreover, there’s need to look beyond society and the city as learning organisations, at questions of time and memory. Within a few weeks after a crisis, society goes back to old ways and habits. We will pretend the Corona crisis never happened. The need is not for monuments or memorials. It’s for feedback of mnemonics so that we can start correcting errors. Such transformation requires a new idea of economics. It is time to disembed economies the way anthropologist Karl Polayni suggested: disaggregate the formal economy into sub-sets such as the informal, tribal and crafts economies and use systems theory to create differing connectivities between parts and whole. The deficiency of latter day economics is that the whole is less than the sum of its parts. The pandemic has demanded that people learn to work at home. But no one except architect Gautam Bhatia has suggested differentiation between house and home, between a residence and productivity and conviviality of the family that stays within. As many anthropologists have suggested, there’s need to venture beyond the linearity of timetables. Progressive societies have to be open to the idea of multiple life cycles to avoid confusing old age with obsolescence. Both healthcare and democracy need revolutions in philosophy and the social sciences. The tragedy is general acceptance that all that a crisis demands is a return to normalcy, when the old normalcy won’t be available. The silver lining of the Coronavirus pandemic and the prolonged national lockdown, is rising awareness that Indian democracy has to go beyond the…