"Many students graduating are either underemployed or unemployed because the aspirations in industry do not match the kind of skills which are being imparted to the students in our schools and colleges, in many technical institutions and engineering colleges…What we have today is a mismatch between the requirement of industry and school and college curriculums."
Ajay Maken, Union minister for youth affairs, at the convocation ceremony for students trained under the Youth Employability Skill Project in Shillong (December 10)
"Tougher yet for a man of personal integrity is that he is presiding over such widespread and outrageous corruption. Nor can it be easy for him to accept that, despite an emphatic re-election in 2009, his government has passed no substantial laws."
The Economist on prime minister Manmohan Singh (December 17-30)
"Shaking my head at government, and Kapil Sibal’s newest gaffe! ‘Guidelines’ for content on the internet. Which planet are these people living in?"
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, MP, on Union HRD and telecom minister Kapil Sibal’s proposal to censor social media (www.twitter.com)
"Custodian posts were auctioned at hotels. Valuation, revaluation, retotaling etc, were all like gold mines for the few vested interests inside the university."
Ravindra Reshme, academician, on Bangalore University’s recent marks cards and revaluation scams (Deccan Chronicle, December 25)
"India’s public institutions — the legal, educational, policing, health, financial and infrastructural systems that successive governments were supposed to be responsible for — have proved totally unable to absorb and regularise the risks of everyday life."
Sunil Khilnani, director, King’s India Institute, King’s College, London (Outlook, December 26)
"When the street erupted to the romance of we-are-all-Anna-Hazare-today, Delhi trembled, the fig leaves fell, and a triangulating regime lost its argument. A Lokpal became inevitable."
S. Prasannarajan on India Today’s Man of the Year Anna Hazare (December 27)