-Hindustan Times Digital divide: Students who, in theory, have access to e-teaching will have to depend on inconvenient methods such as mobile The Covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the education sector globally. Classes have been suspended to enforce social distancing and educational institutions, from schools to universities, have shifted to online methods of teaching and evaluation. As the number of cases continues to rise, there is no certainty about when normalcy will be...

-Hindustan Times They own many educational institutions. To preserve their patronage network, they will resist reforms The New Education Policy (NEP) presented by the government recently is being described as a progressive and forward-looking document. There is little to quibble with the broad recommendations in the document. The deeper question to pose is whose interests the reform is going to hurt, and whether this class has enough power to circumvent the reform...

-Newsclick.in The document is exclusionary, reactionary and promotes conformism aimed at serving the interests of capitalism In a document like the New Education Policy, one must distinguish platitudes from new provisions, including the dropping of old platitudes. Thus, phrases like “education is a public good”, “6 per cent of GDP should be earmarked for education” are just platitudes, unless some concrete suggestions are advanced to realise these. In short, repeating old platitudes is...

The newly released Special Bulletin on Maternal Mortality in India 2016-18 shows that India's maternal mortality ratio (MMRatio) has reduced from 130 maternal deaths per one lakh live births during 2014-16 to 122 during 2015-17, and it further dropped to 113 during 2016-18. According to the Sample Registration System (SRS), the MMRatio refers to the number of women who die as a result of complications of pregnancy or childbearing in a...

-Outlook India Merit, not inclusion. ‘Holistic’ instead of ‘liberal’. Shallow eclecticism rather than criticality: NEP 2020 is full of pious keywords that mask a violent lurch back towards hierarchy and unfreedoms. The past decade has witnessed tumultuous events and changes in the history of Indian higher education. In part, some of these stand out as they are recent, and still alive in public memory. These have ranged from fierce student protests demanding...