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Kudos to your editorial team for bringing out a bumper 8th anniversary issue, which gave significant coverage to a range of educational issues and challenges the country faces today. From prime minister Manmohan Singh’s Indep-endence Day promise to upgrade Indian education, to the mushrooming new genre international schools in Mumbai and the coaching schools boom, it all made good reading.

Your sustained coverage of education over the past eight years and in this bumper issue in particular, is sure to bring the attention of policy makers and the general public to the herculean task of reforming and upgrading public education (both school and tertiary level) to global norms. Please ensure you send a copy of this issue to Dr. Manmohan Singh, lest he forgets his promise to the citizens of India!

I also enjoyed the high-quality columns penned by Rajiv Desai, Shiva Kumar, Ashish Rajpal and Amrita Shah. Each of them threw new light and insights on education issues.

Thank you for your great 8th anniversary issue, which is a mine of information and erudition. In the eight years since it was launched as a modest publication in black and white, EW has come a long way to establish its identity as a truly unique magazine. In your cover story ‘Indian education @ tipping point’ (EW November), you have quite rightly taken some of the credit for education having risen to the top of the national agenda, as evidenced by the prime minister’s address to the nation on Independence Day when he made a large number of tall promises to expand capacity in secondary and higher education. If his government fulfils even a few of them, I will be pleasantly surprised.

However the purpose of this letter is not to discuss the bona fides of the prime minister, but to congratulate EW for completion of eight years of uninterrupted publishing. This is noteworthy because most of the content in EW is original rather than recycled information which is the staple of mainstream magazines. Right from the letter from the editor to the postscript page, EW makes engrossing, informative reading. Perhaps the only lacuna in EW was its deficient coverage of pre-school and primary education. This gap has been admirably filled by your new EW Kidzone section.

I wish you many years of success and good luck in your mission to "build the pressure of public opinion to make education the No.1 item on the national agenda".

Your well-written editorial ‘Root cause of rough-n-ready mob justice’ (EW October) was apt and overdue. Almost daily there are outbreaks of mob violence across the country with destruction of public and private property. The latest shameful incident is of a mob gouging out the eyes of three youths accused of stealing a motorcycle in Bihar.

The television and print media is doing an excellent job of exposing mobs and rioters who have evidently forgotten Mahatma Gandhi’s doctrine of non-violent protest. You have done well to expose the shortcomings of the law, order and justice systems. But while public anger about the system is understandable, retribution must not be taken into its own hands by the public. Such people have no right to act unlawfully. On the contrary they must be severely punished for dispensing mob and vigilante justice.

Mahesh Kumar on e-mail

Thank you for your cover story ‘Time to welcome foreign universities into India’ (EW October).

If higher education in our country has to achieve its three-fold objective of enhancing capacity, excluding none and excelling in all areas, the only solution is to let private and foreign investment flow freely into education. If we are to prevent the demographic advantage from becoming a demographic liability, the only way is to educate and equip our youth with employable skill sets and competencies required by the global market.

But to attract private and foreign investment in education, a prerequisite is full institutional autonomy in all areas — academics, administration and finance. Regulations must encourage entrepreneurship and innovation in education rather than restrict and constrict.

In my opinion, the time to liberalise and deregulate Indian education is long overdue. Yet the government is dilly dallying and stifling the future of our youth and the nation. Someone has to make bold decisions and deal with this perpetuation of rottenness.

I am an avid reader of Kavita Mukhi’s natural health column in EducationWorld. In particular her article ‘Revival of traditional healing sciences’ (EW October) has convincingly highlighted the wisdom of our ancient sciences, particularly Ayurveda. Her message to educationists to repose faith and confidence in these miraculous health sciences which are our "legacy", is particularly welcome.

Her concluding line, "The education system we inherited from the British may have served a useful purpose, but it divorced the people from our miracle healing sciences, which happily are in the process of being re-discovered," are encouraging words. Let’s heed them and incorporate the teaching of our ancient health sciences in our school and college curriculums.

Shehryar Suhael on e-mail