-The Times of India With an expert panel rejecting the SK Thorat committee's recommendations for large scale deletion of cartoons of politicians from school textbooks, the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) is likely to do away with only two illustrations from political science texts for classes IX to XII. A formal response to the Thorat report is being prepared, but NCERT is expected to delete two cartoons - one...

-The Telegraph A panel that approved NCERT textbooks in 2006 has expressed “dissatisfaction” at a review committee report suggesting 21 controversial cartoons should be deleted. The national monitoring committee (NMC), co-chaired by academics such as Mrinal Miri and G.P. Deshpande, had approved all new school textbooks in 2006. But a few cartoons in some political science textbooks had drawn criticism from politicians. The NCERT had then set up a committee under the Indian...

To replace ‘Dalit’ with ‘SC’, as the Thorat panel recommends, is to be inaccurate A commission led by S.K. Thorat, and charged with reviewing NCERT political science textbooks in the wake of the cartoon controversy, has singled out a specific word in the text for removal. All instances of the word “Dalit”, it is recommended, should be replaced with “Scheduled Caste” (SC). The blogosphere is rife with speculation on the motivation...

-The Hindu The debate over the cartoons used in NCERT textbooks as aids to learning have thrown up a range of issues. The discussion has crystallised around a set of oppositions: motivated political correctness of our elected representatives vs. the necessity of preemptory parliamentary intervention on educational material appropriate for schools; institutional autonomy vs. political responsibility of a state presiding over a diverse and fraught society; the hubris of ‘experts’ vs....

-The Hindu ‘It did not seem to be too happy with recommendations’ The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) on Wednesday decided to hold further consultations on the S.K. Thorat Committee report that recommended the removal of 21 cartoons and words, which, it said, were “ambiguous,” negative or showed politicians and bureaucrats in an ‘incorrect’ way, from the Social Science and Political Science textbooks for Classes IX-XII. Sources in the NCERT...