Obama's Fear About Competition from India
Obama said US must worry about engineering students from India. Really? And does that mean engineering education in India is doing well?

Educational Revolution Among Meo Muslims of Mewat

While people in this region just south of Delhi have perhaps become poorer, Yogi Sikand writes, in the last fifteen years there have been a thirst for learning. Boys and girls are going to school.

Education Reform: The Need for A Debate
The new UPA government is making a renewed attempt at education reform through a variety of efforts including the Right to Education Bill that had been scuttled in 2008 after fierce opposition. While there has been discussion in the mainstream media on certain aspects of these reforms, they have been rather skewed.

 

Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009

Numerous social thinkers and activists have found faults with the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009.

Implementing Right to Education

Given that the Right to Education Bill has been passed by the two Houses of Parliament and is now only awaiting the Presidential signature, we write to Minister of Education with some voices that have remained unheard because they do not have the opportunity to reach the Minister.

Samajshala - Masti ki Paathshaala

While state atrocities show no sign of abatement in Pardhi communities, a small school in Mahadev basti in Usmanabad (Maharashtra) is their hope.

Caste Discrimination in Govt Schools

The Hindustan Times reported that dalits and other lower caste children in government schools in MP systematically faced discrimination and abuse.

Islamisation of Pakistani Social Studies Textbooks

Yogi Sikand reviews a book by Yvette Claire Roser titled "Islamisation of Pakistani Social Studies Textbooks".

Schools Or Hate-Labs?

Yogi Sikand reviews a book by Apoorvanand titled "Schools or Hate-Labs' highlighting the inherent hate that is melded into Rajasthan school books, as well as numerous scientific, historic and social inaccuracies.

Indian Muslim Educational Reform: Halting Efforts

The reform of Muslim education, in particular bridging the gap between 'religious' and 'worldly' knowledge, has been one of the main focuses of the efforts of a range of South Asian Muslim reformists and revivalists over the past century and more. Yogi Sikand reviews the processes and the impact.

A Madrasa With A Difference: An Educational Oasis in the Kutch Desert

Yogi Sikand reports on the Jamiat Arabia Ulum ul-Islamia madarsa in Kutch where students are given both modern and Islamic education.

Islam's Women Scholars

One indicator of the development of a society is its female literacy rate and, related to this, the number of its female scholars. On both these fronts, India's Muslims are among the lowest of all the
communities in the country. An article by Yogi Sikand, reviewing a study by Maulana Syeed Ghulam Mustafa Bukhari Aqeel.

CPM Targets Sibpur Students

Why did students write on blank answer- scripts "Save BESU from becoming a Nandigram"? Students complain that CPM cadre and goons are targetting students inside the campus to join the student wing of CPM, or else.

Madrasas in South Asia: Teaching Terror?

Yogi Sikand review this book by Jamal Malik titiled "Madrasas in South Asia: Teaching Terror?" which was recently published by Routledge. He goes on to review a breadth of opinions by a number of scholars on the role and impact of madrasas and directions for reform.

Islam and Science

Maulana Shihabuddin Nadwi's 'Scientific' Approach to the Quran - an article by Yogi Sikand

New Models of Islamic Education in Kerala

The religious education system of Mappila Muslims, who make up almost a quarter of Kerala population, needs a separate and profound study that will shed light on various unique features of the system and on how it differs from the Islamic education system prevalent elsewhere in India. A note by Zubair Hudawi

Ideas for Madrasa Reform

Yogi Sikand speaks to Maulana Tariq Rashid Firangi Mahali on Dars-e Nizami and Madrasa Reform in South Asia and the basis and framework for such reforms.

IIT Kanpur Hides More Deaths on Campus

More skeletons are falling from the cupboard of Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur . The prestigious and world renowned Institute seems to have a practice of suppressing information about untimely deaths of daily wage workers on the campus.

Military Inc and the Death of Civic Society

Ayesha Siddiqa’s book “Military Incorporated: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy” is not only a brave work that provides a first in depth look at the monopolization of sectors of Pakistani economy by the military but also presents us with much learning regarding scenarios in South Asia and the impact of eroding civic society participation.

JNU Administration Encouraging Corruption!

Students of JNU have been involved in protests against the violation of minimum wages of workers on the campus. Some of the leading activists of that movement including three of the JNU Students' Union office bearers are currently facing a crackdown by the JNU Administration.

Growing within the Trash Trade

While this is not a complete description of Bhavnagar, it is a description of certain poor sections of the city, that depend significantly on recycling and extracting components from the ‘trash’ that comes out of the ship building industry in Alang. A report from a visit to child rights work in Bhavnagar.

Two Nation Rehash

Mariana Baabar writes in The Outlook: "Rescripting history is Musharraf's homage to 'secular' Jinnah"

Muslim Students Top Dropouts' List

Bobby Ramakant forwards a report by UNI from December 11th, 2006, that drop outs among muslim students is higher than even students from ST and SC communities.

Survival in the Cauldron of Globalization

Speaking at the A. V. Krishna Rao Memorial Lecture at IIT Madras, Vasantha Surya uses poetry to talk about science, technology, globalization and the essence of human growth.

School Vouchers in India: A Critique

Rather than efforts to improve public school infrastructure, school vouchers are being touted as the solution to poor quality of education by World Bank, sections of the US government and now the Indian government. Raghav Kaushik analyzes these claims.

Conundrums of Education

The government dropped the Right to Education bill. Where was the vehemence?

Government Drops Right to Education Bill

The Indian Government's recent decision to drop the long pending Right to Education Bill (RTE) and pass it on to the State Governments as a model bill, is a completely outrageous decision ignoring not only a fundamental right but also the genuine expectations of each and every citizen.

Mountain Children Propose Rights for Children

The state of Uttaranchal currently has no comprehensive policy on or rights of children. This is a report by 16yr old Tushar, who attended a conference with children from the mountains focusing on this issue.

Will We Support Economic Based Reservations, Then?

One opposition to India’s caste based reservation argues that policies should be based on economic differences to empower those who are poor. A recent article in Outlook lists the opposition to such efforts as well as their impact.

Success of Reservation: Tamil Nadu Health Care

Ravishankar Arunachalam, a former faculty at IIT Madras and social activist follows up his first article (see below) with more evidence of its success.

Hogwarts, Kausani

A residential school for girls, in the shadow of the peak of Nanda Devi, has been graduating confident young women from the girls of Kumaon hills.

Education Is the Main Challenge of Indian Muslims

Interview With Hamdard University Chancellor Saiyid Hamid

California Textbooks Need Sensitive Edits

The article on textbook edits received numerous comments – with different perspectives but all very thoughtful. And one thing they made clear – some form of editing of the current textbooks is needed and the edits have to be sensitive to our communities.

Who Opposes Textbook Edits?

I am an atheist, a Hindu. I am not a Marxist, do not think that Marxism or Communism is the alternative to the crisis our world faces. I oppose the textbook edits being presented for the 6th grade in California as Hindu or South Asian history.

Second Teleconf. Connects Kids in Rohtak, Hyderabad

Another teleconference between children from Rohtak (India) and Hyderabad (Pakistan) is an effort to further decentralize this peace movement. Will the people of Pakistan and India not bet on peace once they get to know each other? Prof. Ramneek Mohan describes this effort.

Toba Tek Singh Teachers, Faridabadi Students

On the 24th of August, a group of teachers from Toba Tek Singh, Pakistan had come to Delhi and then visited a school in Faridabad (Eicher school). The reception of the visitors and the response to the visit exemplifies the promise of peace driven by continuing people to people interactions.

Comments on National Curriculum Framework 2005

Teesta Setalvad’s note written on September 7th, 2005 addressed to CABE critiques its processes and its recommendations.

Violence in Schools: So What do We Do?

While there have been few systematic studies, reports and investigations – whatever few have been put together – show that violence against girls is quite pervasive in our class rooms and that it is affecting quality of education and the number of girls in education institutions in India.

Gender Violence and Education of Girls

While there is a greater focus on increased participation of girls in education programs, without acknowledging the extent of gender violence in our schools, success of these programs is unlikely.

Problems faced by Muslim Women to attain Higher Education

India is a land of diversity with different linguistic, ethnic, religious, groups and has a unique feature of ‘unity in diversity’. Indian culture is distinct and each ethnic group has the liberty to maintain their religious identity. Among the different religious groups in India Muslims constitute the largest minority group i.e. 13% of the India’s total population.

Engendering Gender Education

Prof Narayanan explores the conditions that cause this bias against education of the girl child, conditions that are economic as well as those that are socio-cultural in nature. This article first appeared in the Education Review.

Why Our Girls Do Not Go To School!

The first issue of the journal Education Review, looks at the gender biases that affect education of the girl child in India. This is an excerpt from an article in the journal.

There Live Enslaved Children

In India.

Really.

Education trends in India: a look at the statistics

Vignesh Nandkumar presents an analysis of the Educations trends in India, and its correlation to social and economic changes. This was first published in the Education Review

Who is Afraid of Religious Fundamentalism?

It is usually assumed that the minority communities are at risk of being targeted by religious fundamentalists. In fact, majority communities are as much at risk and must proactively resist religious fundamentalist groups and their policies, argues Sanat Mohanty

Madrassa Reforms in India

This is the first part of an interview by Yogi Sikand with Asrhan Amanullah on madrasas and their role in Islamic education.

Pakistani Textbooks: Politics of Prejudice

In the first part of this series, Yvette Rosser talks about political forces and the prejudices in Pakistani textbooks.

Molested School Girls and the Mystery of Skewed Literacy Ratios

India has one of the poorest sex ratios in the world and among the most skewed literacy rates. Statisticians, policy makers and arm-chair analysts have presented numerous arguments on how this relates to the economic growth of the country, to the overall literacy rates or government spending on literacy.

Gender Inequalities – The Case of The Missing Millions

The UNDP Development Indices for India presented a large gender divide in India forcing us to acknowledge that in times of increased economic growth, women in modern India continue to face systemic discrimination and are disempowered.

Compassion Beyond Borders

Before it was in fashion to be talking about peace between India and Pakistan, a Pakistani physician, having immigrated to the US, was exploring what was possible.

South Asia and Gender Inequality

Human Development Indices from 2004 report by UNDP point to very high gender inequalities in South Asia.

Education in South Asia

Numerous global programs – AID, loans, etc – are based on economic and human development indices. The 2004 Human Development Index published by UNDP provides a fresh look at South Asia from within the filter of such indices. In the first of a series of articles, we analyze some numbers regarding the state of education in various parts of South Asia and gauge the commitment of various South Asian nations to providing infrastructure for education to its future generations.

Is Caste Still an Issue?

A Blackboard from a school in South India. Notice the columns listing the number of Schedule Castes, Schedule Tribes, and Most Backward Class students attending school. Melli Annamalai explores the implications of caste in Modern India

Reconstituted Central Advisory Board of Education Meets

The Central Advisory Board of Education was reconstituted after about ten years, when the mission of this group was first diluted and later allowed to dissipate. The meeting occurred over two days and included participation of thirty two nominated members from civil society, state level ministers or secretaries connected to education as well as the Minister of Human Rights and Development, Shri Arjun Singh.

Help for puzzled visitors

Shristi in Bangalore is a part of India's response to the needs of special children.

Subtext of Doctored Textbooks

A study by academics from the Sustainable Development Institute of Pakistan revealed that social studies texts for the junior grades in Pakistan's public schools instruct students in the concept of jehad

In Times of Drought

The view of a parched Fateh Sagar continually tugged at the minds and the hearts of the seventy people who gathered for the Unfolding Learning Societies conference in Udaipur. Even those who had become numb to the dry lake beds examined the landscape with fresh eyes. Why had this happened? Local people, many of whom would be considered illiterate and ignorant, constructed the lakes two hundred years ago, without the aid of large engineering companies. After centuries of abundance how had the lakes now run dry? What human activities contributed to the current situation? The issue of what had happened and what was to be done was talked about from time to time. Fresh thoughts, ideas, energies and a desire to act, to make changes sprang from the sight of the dust outside.