You have rightly criticised Indian industry for failing to engage with education institutions to design syllabuses and curriculums (cover story, EW July). The predominant mindset within India Inc is that it’s the job of colleges and universities to produce skilled and employable youth. However, with education ministries at the Centre and states infested with lazy, corrupt officials ill-equipped to revise syllabuses and school and college managements obsessed with examination success, it’s in the interest of business leaders and managers to engage deeply with education institutions, as they are the end-users of graduates.
The examples you have cited of graduates and postgrads applying in thousands for low-end government jobs graphically illustrate the deep disconnect between Indian education and industry. Captains of industry who pay lip service to education and human resource development need to walk the talk, and begin the process of comprehensive engagement with education institutions to transform India’s huge population of unemployable youth into industry-ready and productive employees.
Manoj Srivastava
Dehradun
Alienating attitudes
Thank you for the in-depth and revealing special report on Aligarh Muslim University’s fight for minority status (EW July).
Without doubt, AMU is one of the greatest educational achievements of the Muslim community in India. It was promoted by social reformer Sir Syed Ahmad Khan to provide modern Western education to the Muslim community and over the years, has done a commendable job of delivering high-quality education to thousands of Muslim youth. Any effort by the BJP or the courts to take away its minority status should be firmly opposed.
As highlighted by several committees including the Sachar committee, the educational status of Muslims in India is lower than of Dalits and the OBC communities who enjoy the benefit of reservations in higher education institutions, denied to Muslims.
Therefore, minority status, which enables AMU to reserve 50 percent of its capacity for Muslim students, is perfectly justifiable.
The BJP government’s stand that AMU is not a minority institution — if upheld by the Supreme Court — will deny thousands of Muslim youth access to higher education, and will further alienate them.
Danish Khan
Lucknow
Communal agenda
The BJP-led NDA government’s contention in the apex court that Aligarh Muslim University is not a minority institution reveals the anti-minorities agenda of the BJP and its ideological mentor, the RSS (EW July). For over a century, AMU has been operating as a Muslim minority university and has been acknowledged as such by an Act of Parliament. The contention of the Modi-led BJP government that AMU is not a minority institution has to be viewed in the context of the numerous vitriolic anti-Muslim speeches made by several BJP and RSS spokespersons over the past two years. Stripping AMU of its minority status may serve the communal agenda of the BJP/RSS, but is bound to create discontent and resentment within the country’s largest minority community.
The attack on AMU is part of a larger RSS game plan to wrest control of the country’s top universities. Earlier in JNU, Hyderabad and Jadavpur universities, the RSS let loose youth of its student wing — the ABVP — to intimidate students and faculty. With a sympathetic government at the Centre, the RSS wants to lose no time to impose its ideology of hindutva nationalism in campuses countrywide.
Uttam Chatterjee
Kolkata
Perfect model
Your international news story on University of Waterloo’s cooperative education programme made interesting reading (EW July). This Canadian university needs to be congratulated for pioneering a unique industry-academia cooperative programme under which undergrads spend up to two years in paid jobs, alternating terms in the workplace and classrooms. This initiative goes well beyond the ritual one-two month industry internships most universities offer, and is the perfect prescription for creating industry-ready graduates.
Read in conjunction with your lament in the cover feature about academia-industry disconnect in India, the Waterloo cooperative education programme offers the perfect model for Indian higher education institutions to emulate. Indian universities should link up with local industry to offer internships to students. To encourage such cooperation, the government should incentivise industry by giving them tax breaks.
Jaishree Mathur
Delhi