EducationWorld October 17

An alumna of IIT-Delhi and IIM-Calcutta, Ramya Venkataraman is founder and CEO of Centre for Teacher Accreditation (CENTA), promoted to recognise teaching excellence and create career pathways for teaching professionals. Excerpts from an interview: After a distinguished career in management consulting and also establishing the education practice of McKinsey & Co, you left to promote CENTA in 2014. What were the prime factors which prompted this career switch?  When I was close to completing ten years in McKinsey, having played voluntary roles with education organisations, I wanted to commit myself full-time to improving the quality of K-12 education in India. So, I jumped at the chance to set up McKinsey’s India education practice, thanks to the support of our managing director and other colleagues. The six years of on-the-ground experience building the practice at McKinsey from 2009 to 2014 gave me a deeper understanding of the complex and intertwined issues in this sector. Finally, I started believing that one of the most important missing pieces is positive recognition, rewards and career opportunities for teachers — the most important determinant for improving K-12 education. That led to the idea of CENTA and I finally left McKinsey in end 2014 to promote this organisation.  How satisfied are you with the growth and development of CENTA?  CENTA’s growth and national reach, in less than three years, has been beyond all expectations. I am very grateful to the teachers, principals, school managements, governments, other education organisations and media who have enabled our growth and development. CENTA is now a community of 15,000-plus teachers in 500 cities/towns/villages, serving in more than 1,000 schools. Since then the Development Bank of Singapore and National University of Singapore have ranked CENTA among the Top 60 social enterprises of Asia; CENTA has been a member institution of a global alliance of teacher developers alongside Harvard GSE, NIE Singapore, University of Finland and others. Moreover, CENTA is a knowledge partner of NITI Aayog.  If I am right, CENTA isn’t in the teacher training and development business. What exactly is your business model?  You are right. CENTA doesn’t provide teacher training. We provide independent certification of teaching competencies assessed according to rigorous CENTA standards. Certification is the outcome of practice-oriented objectives and practical assessment of teachers who apply for assessment of their capabilities. It facilitates the teacher recruitment, career progression and professional development programmes of school managements and prompts teachers to improve their own competencies. Eventually, I believe CENTA will make teaching an aspirational career, and benefit K-12 education nationwide.  One of your major initiatives is the annual CENTA Teaching Professionals’ Olympiad (TPO). What’s its objective and how satisfied are you with the response to TPO from the teachers’ community?  The CENTA Teaching Professionals’ Olympiad (TPO) is a national competition to recognise, celebrate and reward outstanding teachers. It is a two-hour objective multiple-choice test based on CENTA standards that are highly practice-oriented. The response from teachers has been overwhelming! Over the past three years, 15,000 school teachers, principals, coordinators, supplemental tutors, professional fellows,…

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The two-day celebratory EducationWorld India School Rankings Awards 2017-18 was the largest gathering of K-12 education leaders in Indian history. Over two days, 900-plus principals and trustees of India’s best schools networked and discussed issues of national importance – Summiya Yasmeen The EW India School Rankings (EWISR) Awards 2017-18, which felicitated and celebrated India’s Top 1,000 ranked primary-secondary schools, at the Leela Ambience, Gurgaon on September 22-23, was the largest gathering of K-12 education leaders in Indian history. The two-day celebratory event was a rare occasion when such a large number of school leaders were afforded the opportunity to network and exchange best practices. Over two days, 900-plus principals, trustees, and senior teachers of India’s best day, boarding and international schools networked and discussed education issues of national importance on the sidelines of the EWISR Awards event, even as they were conferred national, state and city rankings among other awards as per the EducationWorld India School Rankings 2017-18 league tables published in early September — the largest schools rankings survey conducted worldwide. Among the principals and education leaders who received awards on the occasion were Dr. Mahesh Prasad of Step by Step, Noida; Vanita Sehgal, DPS RK Puram; Nishi Misra, Scindia Kanya Vidyalaya, Gwalior; Zarene Munshi, Dhirubhai Ambani International School, Mumbai; Gunmeet Bindra, Welham Boys, Dehradun; Lt. Gen. Arjun Ray and Sarojini Rao of the Indus International School, Bangalore; and Ratna Reddy, CHIREC, Hyderabad. Moreover on the occasion, Dr. Jagdish Gandhi, founder of the City Montessori School, Lucknow; Jayashree Mohta, chairperson of the Sarala Birla group of schools; Arun Kapur, director of the Vasant Valley School, Delhi and Dr. Deepak and Dr. Bharti Madhok, co-founders of the Varanasi-based Sunbeam Group of Educational Institutions were conferred the EW Outstanding Achievement in Education Leadership 2017 Award with special citations. A highlight of EWISR 2017-18 was the presence of former India test cricketers Ajit Agarkar and Zaheer Khan, and Dr. Mufazzal Lakdawala, the country’s most famous bariatric surgeon, as special invitees who presented awards and trophies to some top-ranked schools.  The two-day awards presentation ceremony was prefaced by a keynote address ‘Computational thinking in K-12 education: Vital 21st Century Competency’ delivered by the Silicon Valley, USA-based Dr. Shuchi Grover. An alumna of BITS Pilani, Harvard and Stanford universities, a fellow of the National Science Foundation (USA), and former senior research scientist at SRI International Centre, a top-ranked American not-for-profit research institute, Dr. Grover is now all set to take charge as principal advisor of learning sciences at the new R&D division of ACT, the company that conducts America’s most popular college entrance exams. Also on the agenda was conferment of the EW India Grand Jury Awards 2017-18 which were introduced last year. Over 50 low-profile and/or newly promoted schools were ranked and assessed in 11 categories by a specially constituted jury of eminent educationists, and conferred awards during EWISRA (see p.108).  Our partners for the two-day event were education-sensitive corporates SmartClass Educational Services Pvt. Ltd; Infiniti Modules Pvt. Ltd; First in Math; Camlin…

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Branch campus leaders in Qatar insist that the diplomatic crisis in the Gulf is having limited impact on their universities as they prepare for the new academic year. Four Arab states — Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — have cut diplomatic ties with Qatar, accusing it of funding terrorist groups. Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have also ordered their citizens to leave Qatar. Omran Hamad Al-Kuwari, executive director of the Qatar Foundation, which is the principal funder of Education City where most of the country’s branch campuses are located, says there were about 300 students from the blockading countries at institutions in the global education hub. In terms of staff, he says there were fewer than 30 in total from Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and about 200 from Egypt. However, Al-Kuwari says the impact of the crisis has been “almost none” in terms of operations and he did not expect student and staff numbers to be badly affected in the upcoming academic year. “As soon as the blockade started, we reached out to all students from blockading countries and confirmed to them that from our perspective they are welcome to come and to stay,” he says. In cases where students have returned to their home countries over the summer holiday and are not able to return, the foundation is working to find “alternative solutions” for them to continue courses at institutions’ main campuses, says Al-Kuwari. According to Al-Kuwari, the branch campuses are in “high demand” and he is “confident that our history and performance will help us to get through this” in the long term. Mehran Kamrava, director of the Center for International and Regional Studies at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Relations in Qatar, agrees that thus far the impact has been “minimal or none” because other Gulf countries have not been “fertile recruitment grounds” for Qatar. “The GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries in general have competed with one another particularly in the field of education, so very few students come from other GCC states” to Qatar, he says. But Christopher Davidson, reader in Middle East politics at Durham University, says he expects the campuses to start feeling the damage from the blockade by summer 2018. “By then no international student in his right mind would choose a branch campus in Qatar given the slew of negative reports about Qatar,” he says. “This will cause phenomenal damage to their reputation and viability.”

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The number of English-taught or English-medium bachelor’s programmes being offered by European universities has increased 50-fold in the past eight years, according to a major study. Research from the European Association for International Education (EAIE) and international study platform StudyPortals indicates there are 2,900 such courses being offered today at universities in continental Europe, up from just 55 in 2009. The analysis is based on StudyPortals’ database of undergraduate degrees, covering institutions in 19 European Higher Education Area countries, plus interviews with higher education professionals from six countries. Turkey offers 545 English-taught bachelor’s courses — almost one-fifth of those documented in the study — while significant numbers are found in the Netherlands (317), Spain (241) and Germany (225). Germany also has the highest number of universities offering such programmes (69). Meanwhile, Switzerland and the Netherlands have the highest proportion of universities offering English-taught bachelor’s degrees, at 100 percent and 75 percent, respectively, according to the report English-Taught Bachelor’s Programmes: Internationalising European Higher Education, which was launched at the EAIE’s annual conference in Seville on September 14. More than a quarter (26 percent) of the programmes are offered in business and management, while social sciences (15 percent) and engineering and technology (14 percent) are also popular disciplines for English-taught degrees. The trend follows significant growth in the number of English-medium Masters courses: a 2014 report found that 8,089 of these are being run on the Continent. Anna-Malin Sandstrom, policy officer at the EAIE and co-author of the report, says that all respondents interviewed predict that the number of English-medium bachelor’s programmes in their country would continue to grow. “The data also indicate that there is room for growth: in the majority of countries studied, less than half of the higher education institutions appear to offer English-taught bachelor’s (courses) while, in all the countries, English medium bachelor’s (courses) constitute less than a third of the English-taught programmes (when) Masters and bachelor’s level (are) combined,” she explains. The report states that English medium bachelor’s programmes should be seen as “a mechanism to internationalise and improve the learning outcomes for graduates”, but some academics have criticised the growth in such courses. Gerard Verhoef, a member of Beter Onderwijs Nederland, which works to raise education standards in the Netherlands has launched a petition calling for education to be in Dutch, unless there is an obvious need for instruction in another language. He says that the trend means that the Dutch language “in secondary education and as the language of our leaders is threatened”. 

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When 14 years of civil war ended in 2003, Liberia was left with decrepit schools. Many children carried Kalashnikovs rather than textbooks. Since then Liberian governments have tried to start afresh. But, in part because of the outbreak of Ebola in 2014, efforts to improve education have made halting progress. The consequences are grim. Less than 40 percent of school-age children attend primary school. By the time they are 18, girls are more likely to be married than literate. Just one woman in four who has finished primary school can read a sentence. According to a study published in 2014, more than 40 percent of girls have been asked for sex in return for better grades, money or school supplies. One reason for optimism, however, is Partnership Schools for Liberia (PSL), a pilot scheme run by the education ministry with help from Ark, a British education group. Drawing on American charter schools and English academies, last year the ministry delegated management of 93 public schools to eight independent operators, three of whom are private firms. Policymakers from countries such as Ghana, India and Nigeria are monitoring PSL carefully as they consider trying similar ideas. Initial results from PSL suggest that would be wise. On September 7, researchers from two think-tanks, the Centre for Global Development and Innovations for Poverty Action, published their analysis of the scheme’s first year. On average, pupils at PSL schools spend about twice as much time learning as their peers at ordinary schools — a result of them turning up more often, relatively diligent teaching and longer school days. Some operators perform better than others. But overall, pupils at PSL schools made roughly an additional seven months’ worth of progress in English and maths compared with children at typical public institutions. These benefits came at a cost. Liberia’s government typically spends about $50 (Rs.3,250) per pupil per year. PSL schools could dip into a philanthropic pot and spend twice that amount. A few operators then add their own funding. Bridge International Academies, a company that runs 25 schools, spent several times more than most other operators.

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Western institutions working in China and the Chinese government have profoundly different attitudes. Usually, the two rub along uneasily. But sometimes the gap yawns too wide. This is what happened in the case of Cambridge University Press (CUP) versus the censors. CUP is the world’s oldest publishing house. It prints China Quarterly, a respected academic journal. On August 18, the press said that it was removing over 300 articles from its Chinese website, including ones about the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. It did not consult the journal’s board beforehand but took the action at the behest of its importer in China, a local distributor which foreign publishers must have. Tim Pringle, the quarterly’s editor, said the articles had anyway been made inaccessible in China by the state’s online censorship tools, and that CUP was acting to protect the rest of the journal’s output. CUP’s decision to kowtow sparked a storm of academic protest. An online petition launched by an American academic at Peking University gathered hundreds of signatures. A former member of China Quarterly’s board, Andrew Nathan of Columbia University, said the journal should find another publisher. Under fire from all sides, CUP reversed its position. It said it would repost the offending articles, in effect daring China’s authorities to censor its whole output. This is not the only recent case. Censors have demanded the removal of about 100 articles in the Journal of Asian Studies, also published by CUP. The Communist Party used to allow scholars modest latitude in their fields of research, permitting, for example, access to foreign academic publications that would be banned from general circulation. But in March the customs authorities tightened rules on importing books. Chinese academics complain that risk-averse librarians will now not order even innocuous scholarly works for fear of offending the customs service. Between 2013 and 2016, an average of 15 weekly issues of The Economist were distributed in China each year without censorship (which usually involves the ripping out of articles by a state-owned distributor). So far this year, just one issue has passed the censors unscathed. The big question is whether this is a blip or permanent change. Every five years, the party holds a big congress. Censors always go into overdrive before these events — the next one is due by the end of the year. On the other hand, the crackdown on universities for teaching Western values and on human-rights lawyers began long before the threats against CUP. Xi Jinping, China’s president, seems less willing than his predecessors to let Chinese and Western values quietly coexist.

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A stuffed fox stares down at a group of about 20 smartly suited men, the majority well into retirement age, drinking beer and chatting in the wood-paneled front room of a grand Berlin house. Every so often, a man wearing enormous white gloves, a plumed hat and a fencing-style sword by his side calls for silence and leads the group in another traditional German sing-along. Freedom, camaraderie and the fatherland are common themes. The fox and most of the men are wearing red, black and silver sashes, the colours of the Berliner Burschenschaft Germania, a German student fraternity celebrating its 155th anniversary. It is one of about 2,000 fraternities throughout Germany; the history of the groups stretches back to the 19th century, when many were set up to push for national unification. But as the preponderance of silver-haired former students in the room shows, this fraternity has struggled to recruit. Nationally, just 2 to 3 percent of students are now members, down from 30 percent in the 1950s, according to Deutsche Welle, Germany’s public international broadcaster. Many Germans perceive them as stuffy, boozy dens of nationalism — or even the far Right. Every few years, a new scandal seems to blow up. In 2012, one Bonn-based fraternity proposed a rule change so that only students of “German descent” could join, after another fraternity admitted a member with Chinese parents. Times Higher Education’s host, Dominik Lehmann, is keen to show this reputation is unjustified. He joined as a student for the sense of camaraderie, the exchange of “knowledge and experience” between young and old, and because of a “keen interest in German history and traditions.” The fraternity certainly has some curious customs. New members must duel — twice — using fencing swords and only eye protection. But not all fraternities require new members to fence, but for those that do, it does rather “thin the crowd” of potential new recruits, he acknowledges. New recruits also take an oral exam, assessed by other members, on 19th and 20th-century German history. Of course, they must hold German citizenship — and be a male. Why are they sometimes rather backward-looking? Since German unification, fraternities have “lost their common greater goal and are struggling to find a new cause to support”, explains Lehmann. But there are definitely a few moments during the evening that would make some feel uncomfortable. At the end of the evening, the room stands to sing Das Lied der Deutschen, the basis for the current German national anthem, belting out its controversial lyrics Deutschland, Deutschland uber alles (“Germany above all”), which were stripped from the official anthem after the Nazi period. The explanation given is that the song is a historical artifact, written in the mid-19th century about German unity, not conquest. But other fraternities have stopped singing the lyrics. Marc-Oliver Schach, a spokesman for the national fraternity association Neue Deutsche Burschenschaft (NeueDB), whose founding fraternities broke away from one of the main umbrella organisations in 1996 after it became too…

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The EducationWorld India School Rankings league tables assess schools across 14 parameters of education excellence. Respondents fatigue and constraints of printing space compel us to restrict the league tables to 14 parameters. However, there are several other parameters and best practices in which some schools excel. To recognise and celebrate schools which excel in these additional parameters, last year we introduced the EducationWorld Grand Jury Awards and a specially constituted jury of knowledgeable educationists to recommend conferment of awards upon newly-emergent or low-profile schools implementing globally accepted best practices.  Likewise this year, to shortlist and select low-profile and/or newly-emergent progressive schools countrywide for the EW Grand Jury Awards 2017-18, we invited nominations from educationists, individuals and schools themselves supported by evidence of best practices in 11 categories such as Green Schools, STEAM Education Excellence, New Technologies Usage, Campus Architecture and Design and Communications Excellence, among others. Evidence-supported nominations were received from 750 schools countrywide. To assess the evidence and rank nominated schools in each category, a Grand Jury comprising eminent educationists including Dr. Shayama Chona (Tamana, School of Hope, Delhi), Jerry Almeida (founder, iCONGO and social entrepreneur), Fatema Agarkar (co-founder of KA EduAssociates), Pritam Benjamin (well-known education consultant) and Sumer Singh (former principal of Daly College, Indore) was constituted. The Grand Jury duly assessed the nominations and ranked the Top 10 schools in each category. Of them, the Top 5 were conferred awards at the EW India School Rankings Awards 2017-18 function on September 22. The complete Top 10 EW Grand Jury Rankings 2017-18 are published in the pages following. Green schools Schools were judged on environment-friendly campuses and environmentally responsible and resource-efficient processes and sustainability practices. 1. The Shriram Millennium School, Noida 2. Sanskriti The Gurukul, Guwahati 3. N.H. Goel World School, Raipur 4. The Chintels School, Kalyanpur, Kanpur 5. St. Xavier’s English High School & Jr. College, Thane 6. Canadian International School, Bangalore 7. Maharishi International Residential, Kanchipuram 8. KiiT International School, Bhubaneswar 9. B.K. Birla Centre for Education, Pune 10. City Pride School, Pune STEAM education excellence These awards are for schools delivering innovative science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics education through experiential pedagogies. 1. Lotus Valley International School, Noida 2. Venkateshwar International School, Sector 10, Dwarka 3. Wisdom High School, Nasik 4. Redbridge International Academy, Bangalore 5. Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan Vidyalaya, Borivali (W), Mumbai 6. Alpha School (CBSE), Porur, Chennai 7. Delhi Public School, Gwalior 8. Samashti International School, Hyderabad 9. Bal Bharati Public School, Ghaziabad 10. Billabong High International, Santacruz, Mumbai Community outreach Schools were assessed for encouraging student-led community service projects, either in school-sponsored, regional or international community projects. 1. Sunbeam Lahartara, Varanasi 2. Anand Niketan, Shilaj, Ahmedabad 3. L K Singhania Centre for Education, Gotan, Rajasthan 4. G D Goenka School, Kanpur 5. Kaligi Ranganathan Montford Matriculation Hr. Sec. School, Perambur, Chennai 6. Pawar Public School, Bhandup, Mumbai 7. Legacy School, Bangalore 8. Kothari International School, Noida 9. DCM Presidency School, Ludhiana 10. Johnson Grammar School, Hyderabad Multi-sports culture The Top 10 schools…

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Outstanding Achievement in Education Leadership Award 2017 Dr. Deepak & Dr. Bharti Madhok Citation Dr. Deepak & Dr. Bharti Madhok are the co-founders of the Sunbeam Group of Educational Institutions (SGEI) comprising 13 institutions in Varanasi including six co-ed schools with 14,991 students, two women’s colleges and the Gramin School, Karsana, a free school offering vocational training to 800 students. They have also promoted 16 associate Sunbeam schools in Uttar Pradesh — India’s most populous state (212 million). The seeds of the Sunbeam Group were planted four decades ago by Dr. Amrit Lal Madhok and Deesh ‘Ishrat’ Madhok who promoted the first Sunbeam School in the Bhagwanpur area of the holy city of Varanasi. An alumnus of Benaras Hindu and Allahabad universities and former civic administrator of the Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission, Deepak quit the civil service in 1990 to help his parents realise their mission of providing high-quality, English medium education to the underserved children of Uttar Pradesh. Since then together with wife, Bharti, an English literature postgraduate of Kurukshetra University, and former Haryana cricket star, he has helped transform SGEI into Uttar Pradesh’s fastest growing schools chain. The group’s flagship Sunbeam School, Lahartara has been consistently ranked among the state’s Top 3 primary-secondaries in the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings. In addition, over the past eight years under the aegis of Sunbeam Eduserve, they have promoted Sunbeam schools under the franchise model in tier-II and tier-III urban habitats of eastern Uttar Pradesh. These schools provide English-medium education to children in the neglected small towns of UP. More recently in 2013, under the leadership of Bharti, a Sunbeam Autism Centre was inaugurated in Varanasi. In India’s most populous state where education is severely neglected — and English-medium education even more so — Dr. Deepak and Dr. Bharti Madhok have promoted 16 high-quality K-12 franchise schools with an aggregate enrolment of 11,504 children in tier-I and tier-II towns — including Jaunpur, Ghazipur and Mau — in the most educationally and economically backward regions of eastern Uttar Pradesh. Therefore, for their extraordinary contribution and commitment to providing quality K-12 education and upgrading education standards in the most under-developed regions of Uttar Pradesh, the Board of Directors and Editors of EducationWorld are proud to present Dr. Deepak & Dr. Bharti Madhok the EW Outstanding Achievement in Education Leadership Award 2017 and induct them into the EW Hall of Fame of Indian Education. 

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Kingfizzer: The rise and fall of Vijay Mallya, Kingshuk Nag, Harper Business; Rs.399, Pages 224 Former Times of India and Business India journalist and author Kingshuk Nag’s biography, Kingfizzer, on the dramatic rise and fall of Vijay Mallya, flamboyant former chairman, CEO and the be all and end all of United Breweries, the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines, and sundry other companies, is well-researched and has timely relevance. All dates and data relating to when and how Bangalore-based Mallya inherited United Breweries and McDowell & Co in the early 1980s from his parsimonious father, grew these mid-sized companies into the second largest liquor manufacturing conglomerate worldwide, and a few decades later had to flee from India for fear of indictment and jail for cheating and fraud, are detailed in this riveting account of the meteoric career of this reckless, high-spending tycoon now holed up in London fighting extradition to India.  The narrative begins dramatically with a report on Mallya’s tabloid-worthy 60th birthday bash (2015) in his swanky Kingfisher Villa, on Candolim beach, for India’s 200-plus rich celebrities, at which the fireworks display was so extravagant that it could be heard and seen in Panaji, the capital of Goa 18 miles away. To all intents and purposes, Mallya’s numerous businesses were thriving despite media reports that the ‘King of Good Times’ was neck deep in financial trouble, mainly on account of the collapse of his most ambitious venture Kingfisher Airlines, which had made a spectacular debut in the Indian skies in 2005.  But this was to prove Mallya’s last hurrah. Within three months, reportedly tipped off by a high flying socialite that his arrest for bank fraud was imminent and his passport was to be impounded, on March 2, 2016, waving his diplomatic passport (by virtue of being a Member of Parliament) Mallya boarded a plane with a first class ticket, seven pieces of luggage and girlfriend in tow for London. According to Nag, on February 28, senior Supreme Court counsel Dushyan Dave had advised the State Bank of India, Kingfisher Airlines’ largest creditor, to get a court order to prevent Mallya from leaving the country. Typically, the country’s largest government-owned bank was slow to react.  Now Mallya who owes several public sector banks — Rs.9,000 crore — is fairly safe in his sprawling Hertfordshire estate on the outskirts of London. The bumbling efforts of the CBI and other Indian authorities to extradite him are unlikely to succeed, because the sloth of the Indian judicial and filth of prison systems which inflict “cruel and unusual punishment” are notorious.  The point to note is that until Mallya foolishly promoted Kingfisher Airlines in 2005, every diversification he made after the death in 1983 of his father — the reclusive and penny-pinching Vittal Mallya — was successful. Driven by a flashy, excessive lifestyle, Vijay set about making Kingfisher the country’s #1 beer brand, exporting it to the UK and made a spirited bid to acquire Shaw Wallace’s Royal Challenge, then the country’s #1 whisky brand. For this…

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A Lear-like tragedy is unfolding within the upper crust of tony Sobo (south Bombay). The once flamboyant and super-rich former chairman of the prospering Raymond India Ltd, Vijaypat Singhania, who in 1998 solo-piloted a micro light single-engine airplane from London to Mumbai in 23 days to a hero’s welcome, is now in his own words “homeless”, dispossessed by his own son, Gautam to whom in a weak moment he gifted his entire shareholding of Raymond in 2015.  The facts of the case are as sordid as they are straightforward. Two years ago, Vijaypat now in his late seventies, ill-advisedly bequeathed his entire shareholding of 37,000 equity shares of the company to Gautam. A contract signed at that time between the board of Raymond Ltd and Vijaypat, guaranteed duplex 5,185 sq. ft flats in a 47-floor residential property being re-developed by the company in the posh south Mumbai area of Breach Candy to Vijaypat, and several members of the Singhania family at the then prevailing market price of Rs.9,000 per sq. ft. It’s a telling commentary on the havoc created by rent control legislation enacted by Congress governments which have ruled Maharashtra for over 60 years, that the price of the flats has since risen to a staggering Rs.100,000 per sq. ft.  The steep rise in the value of these apartments prompted the opportunistic Gautam — who has conveniently allotted himself a duplex apartment in Raymond House in his capacity as managing director — to demand the current market price from his father and relatives. When the latter insisted on fulfilment of the contract by the company, Gautam placed the matter before a general meeting of the shareholders who voted overwhelmingly in favour of rescinding the contract.  From your editor’s not inconsiderable knowledge of law, the contract between the board and Vijaypat is binding because the board is the duly authorised agent of shareholders and neither the board nor shareholders are empowered to rescind the contract. Pity, the brave and competent Vijaypat who built strong foundations for the company has been duped by his duplicitous offspring. Moral of the story: don’t part with wealth and property except in your last W&T (will and testament).   Unworthy choice One of the great leaders of the Freedom Movement was C.R. Rajagopalachari (aka Rajaji). Soon after independence, Rajaji was quick to discern that the enthusiastic imposition of the Soviet-inspired, centrally planned socialist economic development model upon the country by prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru would spell disaster for the high-potential newly liberated nation, and in 1959 he resigned from the ruling Indian National Congress to found the pro market and private enterprise Swatantra Party (SP). Although in the 1967 general election the Swatantra Party won 45 seats (one more than the Congress won in General Election 2014), after Rajaji’s demise in 1972, SP disappeared from the collective consciousness of the electorate.  For disregarding Rajaji’s counsel and message about the evils of Congress socialism, the people of India have paid a heavy price. Therefore, when Swarajya,…

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Two US universities renowned for their strength in technology have credited their interdisciplinary nature as the reason why they top Times Higher Educations World University Rankings (WUR) for arts and humanities subjects. Stanford University takes the #1 spot in the 2018 subject table for the seventh year in a row, while the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is second, after climbing seven places. MIT improved across all five areas underlying the ranking methodology — teaching, research, citations, knowledge transfer, and international outlook. Harvard University, which was in joint first place last year, has fallen to third. Richard Saller, dean of Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences, says that the institution regards arts and humanities subjects as essential to its mission of inspiring creativity for innovation, and grounding it in human values and knowledge of the human experience. As a result, the university has made a strong investment over the past decade in the humanities and arts, which are flourishing through interaction with scientific and technical disciplines, as well as traditional methods. This years arts and humanities ranking includes 400 institutions, up from 100 last year. The US takes more than a quarter of these places (103), 35 of which make the top 100, down from 39 last year. Meanwhile, the UK has 56 representatives in total and 19 in the upper quartile, the same as last year. For the first time in the history of the table, a Chinese institution makes the top 20; Peking University is 17th, up from 27th last year and joint 84th in 2016. Its Beijing neighbour Tsinghua University has also made gains, jumping 18 places to 48th. THE Arts and humanities Top 10 2018 rank – Arts & Humanities 2017 rank – Arts & humanities University WUR 2018 rank 1 =1  Stanford University, US 3 2 9 Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US 5 3 =1 Harvard University, US 6 4 3 University of Oxford, UK 1 =5 5 University of Cambridge, UK 2 =5 4 University College London, UK 16 7 10 University of Chicago, US 9 8 =6 Princeton University, US 7 9 8 Yale University, US 12 10 =6 Columbia University, US 14   Source: The WUR 2018, = joint rank

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One of the most bitter legacies of Soviet-style central planning and neta-babu licence-permit-quota raj with which post-independence India was lumbered for over four decades — and vestiges of which still remain — is the neglect of education, and skills education even more so. Because of central planning, newly-independent India became a closed navel-gazing economy. Drastic foreign exchange controls made it very difficult for citizens to travel abroad, and imports of all except essential capital goods and raw materials were banned. This also resulted in the flow of socio-economic development ideas being reduced to a trickle. That’s why right until the eve of the new millennium hardly any importance was given to vocational education.  The outcome of over four decades of foolish self-reliance and obstinate refusal to learn from the needlessly hated industrially developed countries of the West, or even from the newly-emergent nations of South-east Asia which have been allocating 7-10 percent of their annual national income towards education (cf. India’s average 3.5 percent), is that half a century after independence almost 300 million Indian citizens are comprehensively illiterate, and only 4 percent of the country’s 400 million workforce has formal skills training as against 20 percent in China and 60-80 percent in the developed OECD countries. The consequence is rock-bottom productivity in industry, agriculture and services, especially government services.  Willingness to learn from advanced countries would have revealed that vocational education and training has been compulsory in all secondary schools in Germany for over three centuries. On the other hand, even everyday skills such as electrical wiring, elementary plumbing repairs and water management in rural areas, are not taught in India’s 1.40 million schools.  Our cover feature narrates the story of pioneer educationist Santosh Kumar Choubey who promoted the All India Society for Electronics and Computer Training (AISECT) in 1985. Since then AISECT has trained and certified thousands of electrical engineers, technicians, retail salespersons, nurses, plumbers and other craftsmen urgently required by Indian industry and society, and has established three universities legislated by state governments. But a distinguishing feature of AISECT universities is that it is compulsory for all students enrolled even in conventional engineering, commerce and MBA programmes to acquire skills education and certification. EW’s Delhi-based consulting editor Indranil Banerjie flew to Bhopal to write this month’s cover story on India’s pioneer skilling university.  And in our special report feature, we present a pictorial essay of the EducationWorld India School Rankings Awards Nite staged in Delhi/Gurgaon on September 22-23, which drew unprecedented response for the simple reason that over the years the annual EW India School Rankings league tables — which reflected the opinion of 12,357 informed respondents countrywide this year — are widely accepted as the most transparent and unbiased school rankings exercise in the country. 

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Whether a teenager grasps calculus is not obviously an issue of geopolitical importance. Yet since the first Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) in 2000, the poor performance of American pupils in this global test has worried policymakers. Not least since Chinese pupils, or at least residents of Shanghai, are at or near the top of the class. Some of Shanghai’s prowess is overstated. Children of poorer migrants to the city are not properly sampled, for example. America does a bit better in other international tests. Yet, on average, American teenagers trail their peers, especially maths whizzes from East Asia. “We can quibble,” said Arne Duncan, Barack Obama’s first education secretary, after a batch of scores came out in 2010, “or we can face the brutal truth that we’re being out-educated”. These concerns have a long history. In 1983, A Nation at Risk, a report commissioned by Ronald Reagan, warned of “a rising tide of mediocrity”. America had been “committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament”.  Many reasons have been given for these results, including policies and parents. Books have been written contrasting diligent Asian kids with feckless Americans. But what if the alarm is partly just a result of American pupils not trying as hard in a test that does not matter to them? That is the suggestion of a forthcoming paper by Sally Sadoff of the University of California, San Diego and five other economists from American and Chinese universities. Last year the researchers conducted an experiment in secondary schools in Shanghai and America. In each country pupils were split into two groups. The first answered 25 maths questions that had appeared in PISA. The second took the same test, but before the pupils did so, they were presented with an envelope with 25 dollar bills or the equivalent in yuan. The teens were told that for every wrong answer they would be docked a dollar. Sadoff and her colleagues found that the ploy boosted scores among American students relative to their compatriots without a cash incentive, but not among the Chinese ones. According to some rough calculations, if extrapolated to the main PISA test, the improvement in performance would have moved America from 36th to 19th in the ranking, in which Shanghai came top. The biggest gains were registered among normally average-scoring pupils and among boys. The study looks at results in just five schools and has yet to be peer-reviewed. Americans still lag behind their East Asian peers, even after greenbacks are introduced. Yet one implication from the new study is that results on comparative tests such as PISA do not simply reflect differences in ability. If scores can be boosted by the lure of a few dollars, then the potential of American pupils is greater than policymakers often assume. 

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With its population rising by 2 million every year, India is among the world’s youngest nations with 50 percent of the citizenry below the age of 25 and more than 65 percent aged below 35. In 2020, the average age in India will be 29 years as against 37 for China and 48 for Japan. These demographics offer millions of well-qualified Indian students the opportunity to make their mark on the global economy. However, there is a precondition: they need to be well-educated and skilled.  India’s Central and state governments have awakened to the need for skills education to supplement conventional school and collegiate education. Somewhat belatedly in 2009, the National Skill Development Corporation was established to fund private sector skills training enterprises to develop the vocational skills of school and college-leavers. While this is commendable, skill development centres also need to be established within the education system — in schools and colleges — so that students start learning and respecting vocational skills from early age.  Skills learning centres need to be set up in all primary-secondary schools so that children appreciate that there’s more to life than white collar jobs in business, industry and government. In this connection, the government instituted Atal Tinkering Labs programme — where children and youth can ‘tinker’ with machinery, do their own experiments and attempt innovations — is a welcome initiative. Thus far, 500+ Atal Tinkering Labs have been established countrywide.  In this connection, it’s pertinent to note that in developed countries students are introduced to formal skills education at age 16 onwards and their education systems also provide opportunities for students to obtain academic and skills certification before entering undergrad education. For instance:  • In Germany, school-leaving students can choose to enter vocational institutes or universities for further education  • As early as class V, students can opt for the vocational track or gymnasium (high school) system • However the secondary school (classes V-XII) curriculum for vocational students includes standard academic subjects such as language, economics, science and social studies plus technical drawing and applied maths  • Students who opt for the vocational track usually begin an apprentice programme at age 16-18. They combine formal schooling with workplace experience for three-four days per week in business, industry, government, or retail. On the fifth day, they learn the necessary soft skills such as communication, writing, workplace ethics, time management, and mathematics  It would be in the national interest for primary-secondary schools in India to adopt this model. The Union HRD ministry could direct the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) to introduce skill development programmes for children from age 13 onwards. These programmes should be taught parallelly with traditional academic subjects. For instance, if a student opts for an automobile repair programme as a skill development course, he could at a later stage opt for a diploma or degree in automobile engineering.  Unfortunately, in India the focus is on conventional academics and rote-learning in the school system. Little attention is paid to practical training…

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This university has produced some of the most well-known figures in French public life including six presidents of the republic, 13 prime ministers and 12 heads of foreign states Situated in the heart of Paris, Sciences Po is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading universities for the social sciences. The QS World University Rankings 2016-2017 ranks Sciences Po among the world’s Top 100 universities in the social sciences and #4 for international relations and politics worldwide.  Founded in 1872 by intellectual Émile Boutmy in response to the political and moral crisis in France in the aftermath of the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, it was intended to train a merit-based elite for leadership and promote an understanding of the world through a multidisciplinary grounding in the social sciences. The university has produced some of the most well-known figures in French public administration, international business and other multilateral organisations. They include six of the last seven French presidents (including the incumbent Emmanuel Macron), 13 prime ministers, 12 past and present foreign heads of state, and numerous CEOs and CFOs such as Jean-Cyril Spinetta, CEO of Air France and Patrick Barthe, former president of Unilever-France. Exclusively focused on the humanities and social sciences, Sciences Po offers undergraduate, graduate and doctoral programmes to 13,000 students including 180 from India. Sixty percent of the undergraduate and postgrad programmes are offered in the English medium with supplementary French language study. “Sciences Po offers bachelor’s as well as Master’s programmes in English with no prior requirement of French language study. We also offer dual bachelor’s degrees with some of the world’s top universities including Columbia, Hong Kong and Sydney universities. These dual degrees are very popular with Indian students as are Masters programmes offered at our main campus in Paris,” says Sophie Collet, the Mumbai-based India representative of Sciences Po. Campus facilities. Sciences Po boasts a main campus in Paris and six regional campuses — Le Havre (Normandy), Poitiers (Nouvelle Aquitaine), Reims (Champagne), Nancy (Lorraine), Dijon (Burgundy) and Menton (French Riviera). The regional campuses offer undergraduate programmes including English taught bachelor’s programmes to international and French students. The Paris campus offers graduate and doctoral programmes. The Paris campus, sited in the heart of the city, offers an enviable locational advantage over other universities in France. It is an ‘urban’ campus comprising 17th and 18th century mansions neighbouring ministries, embassies, corporate headquarters, publishing houses, the Louvre Museum, the Assemblée Nationale — in short, most of the decision-making centres of French life. In addition to professional advantages, Sciences Po’s central location exposes its students to the strong cultural flavour of the St. Germain district renowned for its cafes, avant garde philosophers, art galleries and architecture, shops, cinemas and restaurants where editors lunch and left-bank intellectuals dine. On campus academic support is provided by a library which houses 950,000 volumes, 20,000 online journals and offers access to a wide range of electronic and digital resources. However given its city centre location, the university doesn’t offer sports facilities although students have…

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Team India, represented by students of the unfancied Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies, Delhi (SSCBS), was adjudged winner of the Enactus World Cup 2017 by an eminent panel of business leaders. The winning projects included Mission Raahat and Project Udaan. Mission Raahat suggests ways and means to provide safe sanitation in urban slum communities. Project Udaan recommends ways and means to bridge the digital divide between urban and rural India by setting up computer centres. Enactus, an international non-profit organisation with 72,000 student members from 1,700 universities in 36 countries, held its annual, signature global event — the Enactus World Cup — from September 26-28 in London. As World Champions, the SSCBS and Enactus India were presented the Ford Better World Award of $50,000 (Rs.33 lakh). Enactus (estb.2008), whose objective is to nurture the entrepreneurial skills of students, addresses fundamental social and economic challenges by creating experiential learning opportunities for students to use their entrepreneurial skills to transform communities.    Godrej LOUD winners 2017 Five students won the sixth edition of Godrej LOUD (Live Out Ur Dream) grand finale in which 11 students from India’s top business schools presented their extra-curricular dreams. Godrej LOUD is a campus hiring programme to find young and passionate first year B-school students with interests beyond the workplace. The finalists presented their dreams to a jury of senior Godrej companies’ leaders.  Speaking on the objective of this campus engagement programme, Nisaba Godrej, executive chairperson, Godrej Consumer Products Ltd, said: “We believe that people with unique interests outside of work bring great ideas and diversity of thought to work. Godrej LOUD is our endeavour to find such B-school students and enable them to bring the same passion to Godrej Group of companies.” The five LOUD winners, 2017 from among 1,400 entrants are: Ayushi Gupta, SIBM, Pune (to make rescued dogs psychologically healthier and more adoptable); Kanad Basu, XIM, Bhubaneswar (solo photography excursion to Bangladesh); Omkar Jadhav, FMS, New Delhi (study the Henley Royal Regatta (UK)); Saurav Kumar, IRMA, Anand (develop 10 villages and form Green Groups of empowered women) and Viraf Heerjee, SIBM, Pune (to attend a clinic at the International Sailing Academy, Mexico, and prepare for sailing at the Asian Games 2018).  The winners were awarded Rs.1.5 lakh and summer internships in Godrej companies.    Kokuyo Camlin essay contest The Mumbai-based well-known stationery company Kokuyo Camlin Ltd has made common cause with the Rally For Rivers campaign of Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev and the Isha Foundation to rejuvenate India’s dying rivers. Kokuyo Camlin will contribute to the campaign by hosting a creative writing contest on the topic — ‘Saving Rivers: India’s Lifelines’. This contest will be conducted in over 1,500 schools in 26 cities across the country. The contest is open to all class V-VIII students countrywide.  Comments Saumitra Prasad, chief marketing officer, Kokuyo Camlin: “Kokuyo Camlin has been promoting mechanical pencils which aren’t made of wood and don’t destroy trees and hence help to sustain the environment. We are also associated with projects such…

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Himachal Pradesh chief minister Virbhadra Singh has proposed attaching pre-primary schools to government primaries to stem the flight of children to private schools. At the fourth governing council meeting of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan in Shimla on September 19, Singh asked education ministry officials to identify primary schools in district headquarters and sub-divisions suitable for starting pre-primaries, which should be introduced in phases. Moreover, the chief minister exhorted primary school teachers to “work with zeal” to improve standards in primary education. Singh’s other engagements on September 19 included inauguration of an ITI (Industrial Training Institute) at Delath (Rampur), and laying foundation stones for government degree colleges at Jai Nagar, Darlaghat, Tikkar, Jeori, Multhan, Dehra, Haroli, Basdehra, Renuka Ji, Dadahu and Ronhat.     HARYANA Jindal Global cleanest varsity  In its first ever Swachhta Bharat (Clean India) national rankings of higher education institutions, the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry has ranked the Sonepat (Haryana)-based O.P. Jindal Global University (JGU) as the country’s cleanest higher education institution. Union HRD minister Prakash Javadekar presented an award in recognition of this status to JGU in New Delhi on September 15. Altogether 3,500 higher ed institutions were assessed for the HRD ministry’s swachhta ranking. Of them, 174 were shortlisted and following inspection, the top 25 were selected. “For JGU, providing a physical environment that is clean and environmentally sustainable, inspires creativity, promotes collaboration and innovation and encourages a sense of inclusivity and community is a high priority. I’m pleased that our efforts to this end have been recognised,” said C. Raj Kumar, vice chancellor of JGU, speaking on the occasion.     Maharashtra  Ideal village programme Students of Nagpur’s Tirpude College of Social Work (estb. 1966) have adopted Ladai Village in Kalmeshwar taluk for five years with the objective of transforming it into an “ideal village”. The village hosts 316 tribal farmers and their families. Rajkumar Tirpude, president of the Yugantar Education Society, which manages the college, says that falling agricultural production due to irregular rains has burdened Ladai’s farmers with large debts.  According to Tirpude, over the next five years the students will focus on livestock management and alternative farming technologies, water management and sanitation systems. The villagers will also receive training in sericulture, poultry, goat and quail farming. “The students are guided by well-known water conservationist Dr. Rajendra Singh. The programme has been undertaken by the society without any government financial assistance,” says Tirpude.    Bihar  Another mass cheating incident Veer Kunwar Singh University in Bihar cancelled its BA Part II examination held in the affiliated Veer Kunwar Singh College, Ara, after pictures of hundreds of students writing the examination with open books and notes went viral on social media on September 1. The state government has ordered a thorough investigation into the incident. “We received information about use of unfair and irregular practices in the examination — including proxy candidates writing the university’s exams. We immediately cancelled all examinations written by the first batches at the Veer Kunwar Singh…

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“Rohingya people should be given citizenship in Myanmar, the country where they were born.. Over the last several years, I have repeatedly condemned this tragic and shameful treatment. I am still waiting for my fellow Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi to do the same. The world is waiting and the Rohingya Muslims are waiting.” Malala Yousafzai, Nobel Peace Prize winner, on the Rohingya refugee crisis on twitter (September 4)   “There’s a BJP machine, 1,000 guys with computers, to abuse me, tell you I’m reluctant, I’m stupid. It’s a tremendous machine, all day they spread abuse about me, and the operation is run by the gentleman who is running our country.” Rahul Gandhi, Congress vice president, at University of California, Berkeley (September 12)   “When we have the capacity to run Metro trains through a tunnel without shaking Connaught Place in Delhi, why can’t we opt for proper technology for maintaining the sewage lines? Why should we send human beings down into the sewage lines, which are 20 feet deep at many places? How can we even think of sending somebody inside? It is criminal.” Bezwada Wilson, Magsaysay award winner, on why 21st century India has failed to deal with sanitation in a scientific maner (Outlook, September 25)    “The prime minister claims that he has seen poverty from close quarters. His finance minister is working over-time to make sure that all Indians also see it from equally close quarters.” Yashwant Sinha, former finance minister, on the Indian economy (Indian Express, September 27)   “Freedom of the press isn’t some mincing left-wing luxury, like a Fair-Trade Americano with hot milk. Freedom of the press underpins all freedoms. That freedom is part of your own.” Bee Rowlatt, well-known author, on press freedom (Times of India, September 28)

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On July 1, 2017, when the phase 1 network of the Bangalore metro rail network was inaugurated, there was great jubilation within the citizenry because the new line enables the city’s growing community of commuters to change trains at two nodal junctions and proceed in other directions as is normative in all underground trains around the world. The first metro line inaugurated in October 2011 plied only in a linear direction.  However, the decision of the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd (BMRCL), a joint venture between the Central and state government, to designate all metro stations and signposting under the three-language formula — English, Hindi and Kannada — aroused the ire of the Karnataka Rakshana Vedhike (KRV or Karnataka Protection Forum), providing it an opportunity to revive its campaign of primacy for Kannada, the state’s primary language. Although the first metro line also sported three language signposting, at that time the KRV’s protests were muted by the celebrations. This time however, with the BJP in power at the Centre covertly and overtly pushing Hindi as the national language — which prompted a veiled threat from Tamil Nadu’s leader M.K. Stalin in April that 1965 (when ‘anti-Hindi imperialism’ protests rocked Tamil Nadu resulting in secession threats and several immolation deaths) could be repeated again — the KRV mounted a strident protest against the three-language posting of the Bangalore metro and masked the Hindi signage at several metro stations. Reacting swiftly, chief minister K. Siddaramaiah directed BMRCL to remove Hindi from the metro signage, an order which the organisation’s management has complied with. Anger against renewed attempts by BJP hardliners and even prime minister Narendra Modi and cabinet ministers to impose Hindi as the national language is back on the boil, especially in the non-BJP states of peninsular India. Therefore it came as no surprise that on September 15, the Karnataka Knowledge Commission submitted a report to the state government to scrap the three-language formula in schools.  However unsurprisingly, the Knowledge Commission presumably under pressure from subnationalist KRV language chauvinists went to the other extreme. Despite a Supreme Court judgement of May 2014, which ruled that parents have the right to choose the medium of instruction of their children, the commission recommended that classes I-V in all schools in the state must have Kannada as the medium of instruction and English as the second language. Members of the commission seem to have forgotten that the state government had made it mandatory for all schools constructed after 1994 to teach children in classes I-V with Kannada as the medium of instruction. After an epic courtroom battle in Associated Managements of (Govt. Recognised Unaided English Medium) Primary and Secondary Schools in Karnataka (KAMS) vs. State of Karnataka & Ors (writ petition No. 14363/1994), the Supreme Court struck down this government order in 2014. But this hasn’t deterred KRV language chauvinists from continuing to demand Kannada as the compulsory medium of education in classes I-VII. Therefore the metro signage has come as a godsend to…

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A peaceful protest on september 24 by women students of the 101-year-old Benares Hindu University (BHU), sited in the Parliamentary constituency of prime minister Narendra Modi — demanding justice for a fellow student who had been sexually harassed and a safer campus overall for women — resulted in their being chased and thrashed by lathi-wielding policemen.  Trouble started brewing on September 21 when a student of the visual arts faculty alleged that she was sexually molested and humiliated by motorcycle-borne miscreants on the university campus. When the woman’s friends complained to campus guards, they were rebuked for venturing out of their hostels after 6 p.m. Though an FIR (first information report) was lodged the day after, the police too made light of the complaint prompting a wave of indignation among the university’s 10,000 women students. This anger was fuelled by vice chancellor Girish Chandra Tripathi — a self-confessedly proud member of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the hindutva revivalist ideological mentor of the ruling BJP government at the Centre — who deemed it more important to join the entourage of prime minister Modi on a two-day tour of his constituency, than to attend to the grievances of BHU’s women students. The latter had drawn up an unexceptionable charter of demands — all-night deployment of security guards on the campus, adequate lighting on the girls’ hostel grounds and installation of CCTV cameras across the campus. Since Tripathi was appointed VC of BHU in November 2014 shortly after the BJP was swept to power at the Centre in General Election 2014, the varsity has imposed several restrictions on the freedom of women students. Among the injunctions: no-participation in off-campus cultural programmes, no Internet broadband in women’s hostels as it would tempt them to watch pornography and denial of access for women to the library after 6 p.m. In a subsequent closed door meeting with a delegation of women students Tripathi admonished them for blowing up a mere “eve-teasing incident” and besmirching the reputation of the prestigious university. Curiously, even as Tripathi, whose term as VC ends on November 27, is adamantly indifferent to calls for his resignation and rules out going on leave for the rest of his tenure, the university’s chief proctor Onkar Nath Singh resigned, taking moral responsibility for not preventing police violence against the women students. Simultaneously, students unions (including the BJP’s student wing ABVP) across UP and in Delhi have strongly condemned police violence prompting the state government to transfer five police officials.  However, according to Madhu Garg, state president of the All India Democratic Women’s Association, these are knee jerk reactions that don’t go to the root of why BHU is such an unsafe campus where violence and sexual harassment of women students are common. In January 2016, a research scholar was raped by a senior of her own faculty; in August last year, a 19-year-old male student was gangraped by five men in a vehicle bearing the university logo; in April of the same year student…

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The gruesome murder of Pradyuman Thakur, a seven-year-old class II student of Ryan International School, Bhondsi (Gurgaon), who was found dead in the toilet of the upscale school with his throat slit on the morning of September 8, has caused widespread middle class and media outrage, focusing national attention on the issue of child safety as never before.  Even as the shocking daylight murder of the little boy is being investigated by the Central Bureau of Intelligence (CBI), the heinous act has beamed the spotlight on the Mumbai-based Ryan International Group of Institutions (RIGI). Promoted by Dr. Augustine Pinto, a former school teacher who started a K-V primary school in the Mumbai suburb of Borivali in 1983 with his wife Grace and latterly son Ryan (an alum of Warwick University and the Cass School of Business, London), over the past 35 years the Pinto family has nurtured RIGI into India’s largest chain of proprietorial K-12 schools offering quality English-medium education to the country’s rising middle class at all price points. Currently the 135 RIGI schools in India have an aggregate enrolment of 270,000 students mentored by 12,000 teachers. Unfortunately in post-independence India’s schizophrenic anti-success culture, this has made the Pintos targets of the public, rising politicians and the media — particularly the TRPs-obsessed television channels. Therefore on September 9, the very day after Pradyuman’s bloody murder when police investigations had hardly begun, Arnab Goswami, the prime time news anchor of the popular Republic television channel, demanded the immediate arrest of Ryan Pinto, CEO of RIGI.  With the rest of the mainstream media which curiously seems to take a much softer line towards regular atrocities against vulnerable children in government schools, joining the witch hunt, the Pintos have been making the rounds of the Bombay and Haryana high courts for stay of arrest until hearing of their bail petitions. Finally on September 28 they were granted stay of arrest until the hearing of their bail plea by the Haryana high court on October 7. Essentially their case is that as the Mumbai-based top management of the RIGI chain, they can’t be held responsible for the acts of omission and commission of the local managements of their 135 schools spread across the country and abroad.  “Under the legal doctrine of vicarious responsibility, the top management of a company or any organisation is liable for the administrative lapses of its employees. However, if it can demonstrate that it had taken reasonable care to ensure that the safety standards expected of the industry or business in which it is engaged were adhered to, then the local rather than central management will be held primarily responsible,” says Satish Kishanchandani, the Mumbai-based founder partner of the DSK Legal, a law firm which represents several schools and education institutions across the country.  While “deeply regretting” the murder of little Pradyuman on the premises of Ryan International School, Gurgaon — management of the school has been taken over by the Haryana government for a period of three months…

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Re the EW India School Rankings 2017-18 (EW September), I would like to place on record that for the past three years, our school has been getting two ranks in EWISR. We had complained about this anomaly in writing last year. Yet again this year we have got two ranks, #37 and #41 in Karnataka’s best co-ed day schools league table. This is very de-motivating for the school.  Please note our name is Presidency School Bangalore South not Presidency School Bilekahalli, Bangalore South and we don’t have any branch in Bannerghatta. Please resolve this issue at the earliest.  J. Bhuvaneswari Director/Principal, Presidency School Bangalore South We regret the error — Editor   Wrong classification We were shocked to read that the Convent of Jesus and Mary, Dehradun, has been ranked #2 in Uttarakhand in the girls’ day schools category in the EW India School Rankings 2017-18. For the past three consecutive years we have been ranked the #1 girls day school in Uttarakhand and Dehradun in your league tables.  For your information CJM is a 117-year-old school providing unmatched quality education to girl children and is the only all-girls’ day school in Dehradun. Waverley Convent, Mussoorie which has been ranked #1 in Uttarakhand this year, is a boarding school with only 1 percent day scholars. Therefore CJM and Waverley should not be judged in the same category.  Please immediately rectify this category classification error and issue a corrigendum ranking CJM #1 in the state of Uttarakhand. Sr. Greta D’Souza Principal, Convent of Jesus and Mary, Dehradun This contention is correct. We have awarded CJM the #1 rank trophy and certificate. See p. 90 — Editor    Crass sensationalism The recent ghastly murder of a seven-year-old child at Ryan International School, Gurgaon, has stirred the conscience of the nation. The media is in overdrive demanding the arrest and trial of Dr. Augustine and Grace Pinto and their son Ryan — the promoter-directors of the school. The Central and state governments and police have also raised their own concerns. Amid all these emotional outbursts, it would be unfair to lose track of the commendable work done by the Pinto family in promoting 135 K-12 schools across the country and abroad. Cumulatively, nearly 30,000 students graduate from these schools every year. Thus they have made a great contribution to school education in India. While it is their bounden duty to cooperate fully and honestly in the investigations, the insulting manner in which mud has been slung at them by the media is grossly unfair. Crass sensationalism has given this tragedy an ugly touch. Close on the heels of the Ryan horror, a nine-year-old girl student of a government school in Gurugram was reportedly raped by her teacher. Should the police not reach the doors of the minister of education, the owner of the school? India has an excellent private education system which is the envy of Asia. This system is being systematically destroyed through unimaginative legislation by state and Central governments. Not many promoters would now consider…

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The sharp soviet-inspired left turn taken by independent India’s establishment constituted a complete break from centuries of the subcontinent’s tradition of native private enterprise. On the eve of independence, several big business houses established by pioneer industrialists such as G.D. Birla, J.R.D. Tata, Walchand Hirachand, Lala Shri Ram, among others, were poised to lead India into a new industrial age and transform into conglomerates which would have dominated Asia long before the world-beating chaebols of South Korea and zaibatsus of Japan emerged to give western industry a run for their money. But that was not to be and course correction and liberalisation of the over-regulated Indian economy was delayed until the early 1980s and picked up momentum after the historic liberalisation and deregulation initiative of 1991.  The benefits of liberalisation yielded immediate results. Since the mid-1990s, annual GDP growth, stuck in a 3.5 percent rut for over three decades, doubled touching 9 percent in 2005 with 7 percent having emerged as the new normal. As a result according to some estimates, over 300 million citizens have been lifted out of extreme poverty. However, according to a recent research paper titled Indian Income Inequality, 1922-2014: From British Raj to Billionaire Raj? by renowned Paris-based economists Thomas Piketty (Capital in the 21st Century, 2014) and Lucas Chancel, there’s greater income inequality in India today than in 1922 when income tax was first introduced. According to this research paper, the top 1 percent of the population has cornered 22 percent of national income.  This research paper, which will be included in the first World Inequality Report scheduled for publication in December, will surely be used by statists and leftists to rubbish liberalisation and India’s slow movement towards free markets. But while there’s some merit in Piketty and Chancel’s recommendations of imposing progressive inheritance and wealth tax, a major reason why the rich have grown richer over the past two decades is that they have discovered the virtues of investing heavily in the education of their progeny. Cursory perusal of the biodatas of the offspring of the country’s Top 1 percent most affluent households indicates that almost all of them have not only schooled in one or more of the country’s Top 1,000 schools, but have also attended prestigious American, British or Commonwealth universities. This cause of the rising inequality within Indian society has been overlooked or is insufficiently factored in by Piketty and Chancel.  The biggest failure of the Nehruvian socialist model was neglect of public education, which to this day remains inadequately funded and administered. Regrettably despite a mountain of evidence, there seems to be minimal awareness within the self-serving establishment that quality education is the greatest equaliser and passport to upward socio-economic mobility of the bottom 90 percent. That is the greatest treason of all.   Necessary but insufficient condition Sadhguru jaggi vasudev and the Isha Foundation’s national Rally for Rivers campaign, which has prompted this philosopher-seer to undertake an arduous road journey from Kanyakumari on the southern tip of India…

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Join with us in our mission to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda