India’s Education Report Card

India’s Education Report Card: Student Retention, not Enrolment is Key to Success

The message is clear. India needs not merely more children entering classrooms, but more children staying, completing and learning. Achieving the ambitions of NEP 2020 and SDG 4 will require sustained public investment, stronger secondary-school retention, better support for vulnerable learners and a sharper focus on completion.

For a Developed India, Its Young Need to Be Instilled with Civic Values First

The virtues like civic discipline or gender sensitivity in India are not at premium. Basic civic sense is conspicuous by its absence. It gets manifested as indiscriminate littering, spitting, traffic indiscipline, vulgar or derogatory comments against women etc. Such attitudes find manifestation in foreign destinations as well.

Indian Students, Techies Look Eastward as Ties with East/Southeast Asia Grow

Ties between India and East and Southeast Asia are bound to strengthen, given the growing synergies in strategic areas such as defence, critical technology and higher education. It is important for Indian students, professionals, and skilled workers to harness educational and work opportunities in that region that is open to receiving Indian students and techies. This is especially important given that countries in the Anglosphere, not just the US but also Canada and to an extent Australia, are adopting increasingly insular immigration policies and tightening student and work visa regulations.

Empty Classrooms, Crowded Reading Rooms and a Growing Educational Concern

Across Kashmir, the image of crowded reading rooms alongside empty classrooms should compel us to reflect on the direction our education system is taking. Reading rooms may help students prepare for examinations, but schools and colleges prepare them for life. 

More on Education and Gen Z Voices

Farmer protests in India: UP might be the deciding ground

Questions are numerous. There is a galore of doubts as well as apprehensions about the little over three months old farmers’ protests against the three farm laws enacted by the Narendra Modi government in September last year with experts and seasoned observers expressing contrarian view on the movement

The Tragedy of Life

You are only confined by the walls you, foolishly, build yourself

How is COVID vaccine safety ensured? A volunteer's account

How is the COVID-19 vaccine's safety and efficacy ensured? I volunteered for a trial of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and saw firsthand how scientists and doctors make sure that it is safe and effective before releasing it to everyone

Lord, Please Save Man From Himself

In the assembly/ mehfil of the world, I do not find human beings

India’s most bitter electoral battle: Will it be Battle of Plassey or Battle of Bengal?

The Indian state of West Bengal is known for its great composite culture, enthralling literature, and prodigious values

Farewell Baldev: From a child of India’s partition to a leading South Asian scholar

Professor Baldev Raj Nayar (born 1931)  Professor Emeritus of Political Science, McGill University who passed away in Ottawa, Canada at 89 of metastatic cancer, will be long remembered for his distinctive contribution to South Asian studies

Might Is Seldom Right, Friends

Nothing lies eternal, friends

Rising Sindh and Balochi nationalism a growing worry for Pakistan

On January 18, 2021, in a massive pro-freedom rally organised in Sann Town in Jamshoro District of Sindh, on the 117th birth anniversary of Ghulam Murtaza Syed, one of the founding fathers of modern Sindh nationalism, protesters raised placards of several world leaders to seek their intervention for the "liberation of Sindh"

Memories

A moment’s ecstasy is worth a hundred years

Share Your Joys, Keep Sorrows To Yourself

Moods are very contagious, indeed

Bengal polls will have national and international implications

The upcoming elections in West Bengal are making heads turn, not only in India but also across the borders

Can one shot of Covishield vaccine protect from COVID?

The Covishield (developed in the UK by Oxford Astra Zeneca) vaccine is 62 percent effective if both the full doses are given four weeks apart and 90 percent effective if the half dose is followed by the full dose

The Trip To Mars

The need for originality of thought and action

Why so many Indians think Modi’s stewardship is necessary to make India great

For the last nineteen years ever since Narendra Modi first became chief minister of Gujarat and later on Prime Minister of India, he has been receiving bouquets and brickbats from a cross-section of countrymen

Usha Rao-Monari appointed UN Under-Secretary-General

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has appointed investment professional Usha Rao-Monari as an under-secretary-general and the associate administrator of the UN Development Programme (UNDP)