Letter from the Editor

Letter from the Editor

By any reckoning seven years of uninterrupted publishing is a significant milestone for a first-of-a-kind periodical. Especially if it’s an entirely new genre publication focused upon the unsexy subject of education and published from a city which has no tradition of magazine publishing. Therefore how EducationWorld which took on the formidable challenge of waking the dormant interest of its main target groups — academics and parents — in education has survived and is finally on the threshold of viability, is as much a matter of surprise and wonderment to its promoters, as it is to its ill-wishers.

Suffice it to say it’s been a roller-coaster ride and on many an occasion this solo publication teetered on the edge of bankruptcy and closure. Given the direct causal connection between education and industrial productivity and prosperity, why some of the biggest names in Indian industry (many of whom I helped in another avatar to free from the shackles of licence-permit-quota raj, and the constraints of the ceiling on managerial remuneration) declined to lend the smallest helping hand to this pioneer magazine, is a speculation reserved for my memoirs. Nevertheless thanks to the kindness of strangers and brothers from whom we least expected support and encouragement, EducationWorld has not only survived, but modestly prospered. Currently we estimate a monthly readership of over one million spread across every state of the Indian Union and 300 pages of advertising sold annually. Our grateful thanks to the visionaries who enlisted with us to help realise our mission statement adopted seven years ago, to "build the pressure of public opinion to make education the No.1 item on the national agenda".

Although it’s unlikely that any credit will be given to this pioneer publication, perhaps coincidentally during the seven years past, the long-neglected subject of meaningful public education has drifted from the peripheries of the national radar screen towards the centre, even if it’s not quite there yet. Nevertheless there’s no doubt that the turn of the millennium years have been momentous for the growth and development of Indian education — primary, secondary and tertiary. For the first time there is widespread acknowledgement that the world’s largest child population (415 million below age 18) is not a curse as believed hitherto, but a high-potential national resource which — if diligently educated — could transform this benighted society into the workshop and service provider of the world.

And given that the politics and celebrities obsessed mainstream media has little time and space for education news and developments, in our seventh anniversary issue we have made a painstaking effort to collate and present a period history which highlights landmark developments in Indian education since the dawn of the new millennium, when this publication tentatively began chronicling news and events in this vital development sector. Also included in this celebratory issue are special columns written by some of India’s most insightful development commentators.

Careful perusal of the unprecedented period history, and critiques of our cherry picked learned columnists, should give readers a comprehensive overview of the status and problems of Indian education.

Dilip Thakore