[B][COLOR=red]Maharashtra[/COLOR] [/B]
[SIZE=4]Day of the vandals[/SIZE]
When eminent indologist Dr. M.A. Mehendale, editor of the Cultural Index of Maha-bharata entered the buildings of the internationally acclaimed Pune-based Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute (BORI, est. 1917) on January 5, the 85-year-old scholar’s eyes brimmed with tears. Precious research material — rare manuscripts and artifacts — was littered around in tatters on the 13-acre estate housing the 87-year-old institute which has 42 professors, researchers and supportive staff on its muster roll. Mehendale has been researching the Mahabharata for the past 20 years in the institute, publishing the first volume of the index last year. The second volume was due for publication next year. But with valuable research material “collected from all corners of India and a few manuscripts accessed from Asian countries as well†destroyed, Mehendale is a poignant picture of despair.
img:54:Shambhaji Brigade activists in action: love-driven outburst The cause of his deep anguish was a frenzied mob of 200 activists of the Shambhaji Brigade of the Pune-based Maratha Mahasangh who drove into the institute in jeeps and comprehensively vandalised it. True, the police followed and arrested 72 vandals, but the damage had already been done.
The provocation to the Shambhaji Brigade was a book: Shivaji: A Hindu King in Islamic India, written by American historian James Laine, in which the author has made unflattering remarks about Maharashtra’s much revered 17th century icon, Shivaji. In his foreword, Laine thanks the institute for its assistance. This prompted the Shambhaji activists to visit their wrath upon the institute. “It was an emotional outburst after we learnt about the disparaging statements made by this American writer in his book on Shivaji. The incident took place out of sheer love for King Shivaji,†says Santosh Nanawate, president of Vidhyarthi Maratha Mahasangh.
Shambhaji Brigade is the youth wing of Maratha Mahasangh, founded in 1990 to uplift the Maratha community. Its founder president Purushotam Khedekar, an employee of the Maharashtra govern-ment’s public works department (PWD) is also the husband of a BJP MLA from Maharashtra’s Buldhana district. The mahasangh has 25 shakas (branches) across the state. The mob targeted the institute as Dr. Shrikanth Bahulkar, a research scholar and member of BORI’s managing committee, Dr. V.L. Manjul, BORI’s regulating council vice chairman and others had also been given credit in the foreword to Laine’s book.
Significantly, the attack on the institute was undeterred by the fact that Oxford University Press, India which published the book in June 2003 withdrew it from the market two months ago (November 21) after tendering an apology. Eminent historians Dr. Jaysinhrao Pawar, Dr. Babasaheb Purandare, and Dr. B.G. Mehendale among other members of BORI had also protested several passages in the book.
In the trail of debris were 1.5 lakh volumes and over 30,000 ancient manuscripts, artifacts, ancient clay tablets on Indology and Orientalogy meticulously catalogued and preserved for Indian and foreign scholars who visit BORI from countries as diverse as Germany, UK, USA, France, Japan, Switzerland and Korea.
“These hoodlums also destroyed a 600 BC Syrian clay tablet excavated in Maharashtra; a 15th century 10-inch idol of mundkata Ganapathi worshipped by the Tantric cult; Bhagwat, a 250-page illustrated 17th century manuscript on Shivaji and a manuscript from Kashmir on the Mahabharata dating back to 1000 AD. Moreover an album of rare photographs of the Nizam of Hyderabad with a beautiful case is missing, as is a copy of paintings of Chhatrapati Shivaji with the British Museum,†says Dr. V.L. Manjul, librarian and vice chairman of the BORI regulation council.
“We will arrest the brain behind the attack on our culture and storehouse of knowledge and exemplary punishment will be meted out to the culprits,†says R.R. Patil the state’s home minister, adding that the attack on the institute was a blot on Pune — the cultural capital of Maharashtra. But thus far despite the arrest of 72 activists of the Shambhaji Brigade, the “brain†behind this act of unprecedented vandalism has not been identified.
Meanwhile BORI secretary Saroj Bhate, who estimates a loss of Rs.1.25 crore to the institute, says with help in terms of money and volunteers pouring in, the institute will be back on its feet within a month. “But much of the loss is irreparable,†she laments.
Sic transit gloria
[B]Michael Gonsalves (Pune)[/B]
[COLOR=red][B]Delhi[/B] [/COLOR]
[SIZE=4]Quota judgement jolt[/SIZE]
A public interest litigation (PIL) alleging that the managements of several of Delhi’s most well-known schools have not honoured their commitment to provide education to poor children has thrown managements, parents and students of the impugned schools into turmoil. The PIL filed by Social Jurist, a legal advocacy group in May 2002 charged that several prominent private and government-aided schools had not fulfilled the terms of agreements made between the schools and the DDA (Delhi Development Authority) under which the schools were allotted land at throwaway prices by DDA upon their undertaking to reserve 25 percent seats for poor slum students. The petitioners alleged that this undertaking has not been honoured by many recipients of DDA’s largesse. On January 20, the Delhi high court upheld the PIL and ordered the Delhi state government to compile a list of the erring schools within four months and submit it to DDA which was directed to take action against them for breach of contract.
Given that most schools which are now on the mat are more than two decades old and the issue of seat reservations had been considered dead and buried, the high court directive has come as a rude shock. Comments Raj Kumar Verma principal of the Cambridge Foundation School, Rajouri Gardens (est. 1966) which was cited in the PIL: “Cambridge School has complied with all the regulations and has been regularly awarding freeships to the children of employees and widows to cover their tuition costs. However we don’t have students from slums or from families living below the poverty line. The school neighbourhood is predominantly middle class, and it is not feasible or even realistic to think of integrating very poor slum children into our classes.â€
img:52:r:Slum children in Delhi: half-decent schools dream Most principals echo these sentiments with some also claiming that the media has misinformed the public, since many of the targeted schools including DPS, Springdales and Bluebells, already run volunteer programmes to meet the needs of poor students, and the school authorities regularly seek donations of books and clothing to help students who can’t afford to pay for these necessities.
But Delhi’s education minister, Arvinder Singh Lovely is unimpressed. “Voluntary teaching projects cannot substitute for the actual reservation of seats in the mainstream, which is what the high court has ordered,†she says.
The land allocation scheme which is at the heart of the PIL was devised in the early 1970s. More than 1,200 recognised schools in Delhi were allotted public land at significantly reduced prices on condition they provide free education to children from weaker sections of society by reserving a quota of seats for them. But recent scrutiny of the land allocation letters reveals they were not standardised. Some of the allotment letters stipulated that the schools should admit poor students against 25 percent of “available†seats and provide “freeships†to them, while other schools were only asked to provide aid to needy students.
“Many schools in Delhi have already established special cells to oversee the education of children from poorer communities for whom they run educational programmes, expose them to computers, and a whole array of other activities,†says Suman Kumar, principal of the CBSE-affiliated Bluebells School (est. 1957) which runs Project Ankuran for slum children in the contiguous neighbourhood of Kailash Colony. The Delhi Public School Society (est. 1949), in particular has been one of the pioneers in such cross subsidisation, successfully running its Shiksha Kendras sponsored by DPS schools in and around Delhi since 1999. These kendras are afternoon schools established specifically for imparting education to disadvantaged students at nominal charges.
But given that the mainstream in most English medium schools comprises cell phone-toting, computer savvy, upwardly mobile students, the impact of sharp and glaring disparities of material wealth on poorer students is a subject of prime concern. Yet there are many poor students who dream of attending half-decent schools and believe they can bridge the gap between the haves and have-nots. The results of projects like DPS’s Shiksha Kendras have been encouraging, demons-trating that the gradual integration of poor students can be empowering for them, enabling them to notch up extraordinary achievements.
With India committed to attaining the global goal of (quality) Education For All by 2015, the Delhi High Court directive is a timely reminder to educationists and society in general to address the needs and rights of the huge population of socio-economically disadvantaged children sentenced to low quality education in sub-standard government schools.
Meenakshi Venkat (Delhi)
[B][COLOR=red]Uttar Pradesh [/COLOR] [/B]
[SIZE=4]Exam swindles locus [/SIZE]
To its many dubious distinctions, Uttar Pradesh recently added one more — of being the country’s most active locus of entrance exam question paper leakages. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) estimates that at least 20 organised gangs with this particular expertise are active in India’s most populous (160 million) state. Be it the civil services exam, B-school entrance or selection exams for the police, railways, teachers’ training or bank services, experts are readily available to provide question papers in advance. At a price, of course.
These CBI revelations have followed the arrest of Dr. K.K. Singh, assistant professor in the general surgery department of Lucknow’s King George’s Medical University (KGMU) by the bureau. Singh is the prime accused in the All India Post Graduate Medical Entrance Exam (AIPGMEE) 2002 scandal. The exams conducted by the highly regarded All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi were held on January 6, 2002. About 70 of the 360 MBBS students of KGMU who took the entrance examinations that year figured in the top 100 merit list. When last year’s AIPGMEE results were declared it was discovered that while top rankers of KGMU failed to get through the exams those who had unsuccessfully written the university’s MBBS internal exams as many as 15 times, figured among top rankers.
Following a PIL (public interest litigation) filed by aggrieved students in the Delhi high court, CBI estimates indicate that 2,000 people — even entire families — mostly of doctors, may be involved in the scam. Following the trail that led to Dr. Singh, the bureau’s sleuths have interrogated 163 suspects.
Investigating officers say the operation was planned a month before the examination by Jayendra Sahi (son of a sub-inspector), Ajit Singh (relative of a minister in the Mulayam Singh government) and Sunit Singh. The question papers were stolen from the strong room of a local college where they had been locked for safe keeping. Sunit Singh’s father was the principal of this college.
In a face saving measure after Singh’s arrest, KGMU has announced the constitution of a three member disciplinary committee to look into complaints of favouritism in the UP Post Graduate Medical Entrance Examination (UPPGMEE) and Combined Pre Medical Test, 2003. KGMU conducted these two exams for the first time last year and immediately there were allegations of large scale bribery and favouritism. Incidentally, Dr. K.K. Singh’s father Prof. K.M. Singh was the vice-chancellor when KGMU conducted these exams.
Senior faculty at KGMU are unsurprised. They claim these shenanigans are “an open secret†on the varsity campus. Meanwhile KGMU vice-chancellor, Prof. Mahendra Bhandari says that the medical university is “serious about cleansing our image†and that the disciplinary committee will submit its report in “record timeâ€. Bhandari has also authorised the disciplinary committee to function as a ‘standing committee’ for a year with powers to investigate any disciplinary complaints against faculty.
Sceptical teachers in kgmu however draw attention to an anomaly. The “deemed suspension†of Dr. K.K. Singh will come to naught if CBI gives him a clean chit. “The committee is unlikely to find anything the CBI can’t. It doesn’t have the CBI’s expertise and resources,†says Dr. S.K. Agarwal head of the department of microbiology and an executive council member. This is why another executive council member, on condition of anonymity says the charges of manipulation of UPPGMEE must also be investigated by CBI rather than the disciplinary committee. According to him Singh enjoys huge political clout in Lucknow and the constitution of the KGMU disciplinary committee is a ruse to help him escape the rigorous scrutiny of the bureau.
Meanwhile with the central and state governments adamantly refusing to address the supply side of medical education — and even blocking foreign medical schools from setting up campuses in India — it’s hardly surprising that selling exam papers is big business in the badlands of India’s most populous state. Apathetic Uttar Pradesh politicians too had better be on guard: the doctors attending them could have bought — rather than earned — their professional qualifications.
[B]Puja Rawat (Lucknow)[/B]
[B][COLOR=red]West Bengal[/COLOR] [/B]
[SIZE=4]English return hopes[/SIZE]
The continuous controversy on teaching English in primary school, and if so from what stage, which has raged for several decades in West Bengal’s academic and political circles has just been set at rest. In a bold move overruling some cherished nostrums of the ruling communist-led Left Front government, chief minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee has ordered that English will be taught from class I onwards in government-run primary schools come April, no further arguments please.
The long debate — because the Left Front abolished English in primary schools in 1979 and stuck to its guns for 25 years — has been so bitter, and the political schisms so wide, that hallelujahs and hosannas for the new dispensation have been muted. It is no secret, for instance, that West Bengal’s minister for school education, Kanti Biswas, is himself opposed to impressionable children being taught the language of despicable American and British imperialists from class I.
img:55: In particular the Left Front’s enduring aged ideologues smell a sinister plot on the part of the nation’s running dog bourgeoisie. Says senior Forward Bloc leader Ashok Ghosh: “The move is quite predictable. DFID (Department For International Development), of UK is providing the money to build schools. The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan programme funded by the central government is running the literacy programme. It is only natural for these funding agencies to insist upon creating a talent pool which will be comfortable reading, writing and conversing in English.â€
But polemics aside the big unaddressed question is who will teach English in village schools? Candidates who have cleared only the madhyamik (secondary) examination and are enlisted with employment exchanges qualify. But the likelihood is that such candidates would have had their schooling entirely in the Bengali medium. Says Pradipta Kanungo, principal of Patha Bhavan Primary School, Kolkata: “If you’re teaching beginners in the communicative mode, it’s essential that the teacher is fluent in English and confident about conversing in the language. How can you expect madhyamik teachers from Bengali medium schools to do that?â€
It’s a sign of the extent to which Deng Xioping style pragmatism has struck roots under Bhattacharjee’s leadership that the Left Front government’s solution is: let the British take charge. After all, no one knows English better than the Brits. Therefore English Language Training (ELT) programme experts have been recruited in Blighty through the good offices of the British Council to train primary school teachers in West Bengal in the art of teaching English. The training will follow the so-called ‘cascading model’. To wit, teachers from Britain will train an initial group of teachers. Members of this group will train other teachers. The latter will, in turn, train more teachers and so on till the process filters down to the grassroots level.
“The training is based on a simple plan, viz, to infuse simple techniques into classrooms so that teaching English is no longer a text-based exercise. Children should be inspired to associate language with their immediate environment so that they are encouraged to learn the language on their own,†explains Sujata Sen, Kolkata based director (eastern region) of the British Council. “We hope the training helps to upgrade the quality of grassroots-level English education in the state. We will extend all help to the state government,†she adds for good measure.
While the training programme has already begun, it isn’t likely to be completed until 2005. And apolitical critics are already voicing doubts about its efficacy. Comments Sunanda Sanyal, a retired college teacher and well-known educationist: “The cascading method of training has failed in other states. Tamil Nadu had devised a similar system and, through trials, it was proved that not much training reaches the classroom.†But education minister Kanti Biswas is cautiously optimistic. “We are trying our level best to get the new ELT system off the ground. The British Council is helping us and training workshops have begun.â€
The confusion is compounded by widespread awareness that the organisation responsible for implementing the decision, viz. the West Bengal Board of Primary Education, has few or no means to implement the new policy at such short notice. With over 90 percent of primary schools situated in villages, creating an ambience where children can associate English with their immediate surroundings — the pedagogy stressed above by British Council’s Sujata Sen — is well nigh impossible. Also, about 4,000 village schools are single-teacher institutions. Training their teachers to teach English in addition to a lot else is a tall order.
All that chief minister Bhattacharjee and his cabinet colleagues are offering at this moment is hope — hope for free, state-sponsored English education for millions who cannot afford private schooling. And the fond hope of the constituent parties of the Left Front government is that the re-introduction of English — denigrated and pilloried by the Left Front government for 25 years — will be a vote-winning gimmick in the forthcoming general election. Quite obviously the govern-ment’s leadership believes you can fool all the people all the time.
[B]Sujoy Gupta (Kolkata)[/B]
[COLOR=red][B]Tamil Nadu[/B] [/COLOR]
[SIZE=4]Medical education politics[/SIZE]
Undeterred by the state government’s adamant refusal to sanction the promotion of more private medical colleges in Tamil Nadu despite huge pent up demand, private sector edupreneurs and trusts are determined to do so even if it means dragging the state government to court.
Two private colleges — Meenakshi Medical College and Research Institute at Enathur in Kancheepuram district and Balaji Medical College at Chromepet, admitted their first batches of students last year after moving the Supreme Court. Several others are following suit. For example the SRM Institute of Science and Technology (deemed university), has applied to the Medical Council of India (MCI) for establishing a medical college at Kattankalathur also in Kancheepuram district; the Kanchi Kamakoti Peetam Charitable Trust has applied to the Union health ministry for permission to establish a medical college attached to the Kanchi Kamakoti Sankara Hospital at Perumbakkam, near Chennai.
The state government is now confronted with the prospect of being completely bypassed by private sector edupreneurs and trusts set upon promoting medical colleges to meet public demand. Predictably this has raised the issue of the centre’s rights over state authorities in the field of education and grant of deemed university status to colleges. Chief minister Jayalalithaa has accused the centre of permitting the establishment of private medical colleges without intimating the state and has criticised the Union health ministry and the Medical Council of India (MCI) in particular for granting approval to medical colleges without the knowledge of her administration.
According to MCI norms, any autonomous body promoted by either the state or centre under a statute for the purpose of medical education can start a medical college. A registered society or a charitable trust can also promote a medical college if medical education is one of its objects. It however states that a no-objection certificate (NOC) must be obtained from the state government even if colleges are started by deemed universities.
img:56:r:Purushothaman (right): imminent doctor shortage However, the Bharat Institute of Higher Education and Research, a deemed university, received permission from the MCI to start the Sree Balaji Medical College at Chromepet without a NOC from the state government, claiming that the medical college was a constituent of a deemed university for whom such consent is unnecessary. It argued that only if the state government establishes that the college’s deemed university status is not valid, can it take action against it.
“Even now the government’s stand is not quite clear. This is inexplicable because currently, India with a huge population of 1.2 billion boasts a mere 550,000 qualified medical practitioners against a minimal requirement of 1.2 million doctors. The doctor-patient ratio recomm-ended by WHO is 1:1,000 but in India it is 1:2,000. By 2010 about 70,000 doctors will retire and an increasing number will be working abroad. At that time the deficiency of doctors will be felt acutely,†says S.C. Purushothaman a Chennai-based consultant who specialises in new medical college projects.
Given this yawning demand-supply gap, the continuous opposition of government doctors and government medical college students to the promotion of private medical colleges smacks of sheer self-interest driven by the base motivation of protecting their incomes and practices by restricting potential competition from new entrants into the medical profession. “Such fears are wholly irrational. More medical colleges will create more job opportunities and improve the career options and earnings of doctors. Self-financed medical colleges also translate into hospital facilities for the general population through attached teaching hospitals. It’s now quite clear that the state governments cannot bear the huge annual cost of subsidised medical education. If aspiring medical students cannot gain admission into medical colleges in Tamil Nadu, they will go to the neighbouring states or even to Russia, the Middle East and other countries which offer price competitive medical education. Private initiative must therefore be encouraged but the colleges should be spread across the state,†says T.K. Parthasarathy, pro vice-chancellor Sri Ramachandra Medical College Porur, which until recently was the only deemed university in the medical education sector in Tamil Nadu.
Trapped in its socialist mindset which legitimises non-merit subsidies for the middle class, the state government, wary of public reaction to “exorbitant fees†and “quality of education†in self-financing private medical colleges is dithering on the issue of giving them the green signal. But the state’s growing number of edupreuners are confident that even hidebound bureaucrats in government will soon feel the pressure of public opinion to add to the small number of six medical colleges in Tamil Nadu (pop. 62 million).
[B]Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)[/B]
[COLOR=red][B]Maharashtra[/B] [/COLOR]
[SIZE=4]The Beeb’s new avatar [/SIZE]
It’s undoubtedly a household — even revered — name in the Indian subcontinent. But the most well-known avatar of BBC a.k.a British Broadcasting Corporation is as a purveyor of television and radio news. On January 15, a top-level team from ‘the Beeb’ presented another face of the world’s pioneer and arguably most famous news broadcasting organi-sation by announcing the launch of its e-learning initiative, BBC Learning, in India.
Conceptualised and designed by the affiliated BBC Worldwide, BBC Learning is a typically ambitious transnational endeavour of the London-based govern-ment owned (but fiercely autonomous) corporation. Comments Derek Ray-Hill, marketing manager (adult learning) of BBC Worldwide: “When we launched the BBC Learning website in the UK in May 2002, we found that of the 50,000 unique visitors each month to the website the vast majority were from India. This prompted our decision to launch BBC Learning in India.â€
img:51:(Left to right): Ray-Hill, Shah & Young: facilitative role for now While BBC Learning in Britain comprises three business groups — children’s learning, lifelong learning, and English language teaching and languages — only the adult (lifelong) learning module is proposed to be marketed in the subcontinent. BBC Learning will be tailored for adult learners who want to continue learning either at work or at home.
“Learners can get degrees from several reputable American and British univer-sities without leaving their work and families behind,†says Mark Young, BBC Worldwide’s chief executive for USA and Europe, Middle East, India and Africa. The universities in the scheme include UCLA, UMass, eCornell, Open University and the NEC (National Extension College). BBC Learning offers adult learners access to over 250 distance e-learning study programmes of these and other participating universities.
Under the scheme, potential learners in India must visit the BBC Learning website and apply directly to the universities listed thereon. If they meet the listed university’s requirements for admission they can enroll online for any of the study programmes offered and get their degree/ diploma from the varsity.
“Right now our role is restricted to facilitating the access of students to participating universities of their choice. But in the future BBC Learning may well launch a dedicated television channel, BBC Learning TV, to complement the website as we have done in Britain,†says Monisha Shah head of BBC Worldwide’s South Asia and Africa operations.
BBC Worldwide has also tied up with UK eUniversities Worldwide (UKeU), a UK government backed company promoted to provide online degrees from British universities. BBC Learning will offer access to the diploma courses and professional degree programmes of UKeU. The former include courses on book-keeping, fiction writing and the human genome and even one titled, ‘How to be Assertive’.
While launching the website BBC Worldwide’s top brass also announced that two MBA scholarships “from a world-ranked business school in London†are on offer to mark the launch of BBC Learning in India. Applicants need to register and simultaneously submit a 1,000 word essay on the benefits of acquiring an MBA qualification and the impact of business education upon Indian industry and commerce. From the applicants, 100 entries will be randomly chosen for scrutiny and assessment. Thereafter if the assessed applicants meet the eligibility criteria of the B-schools, they will be awarded full scholarships.
Given the formidable reputation of its parent corporation, BBC Learning is likely to prove a popular and welcome initiative in the subcontinent. May its projects increase!
[B]Mona Barbhaya (Mumbai)[/B]