Following protests from Darul Uloom, Deoband, and certain Islamic organisations, a research scholar at Meerut’s Chaudhary Charan Singh University has requested the UGC to change the subject of her post-doctoral fellowship for research on ‘Use of Magic Realism in the major novels of Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh and Vikram Seth’. Prabha Parmar has communicated her decision in a letter to the University Grants Commission (UGC), which had awarded her the five-year...

When the fledgling Indian government drafted its higher education policy after Independence, it formed two separate tiers for teaching and research: colleges and universities in one, exclusive research establishments in the other. The intention was of the noblest, to deploy our best talent exclusively to create an indigenous knowledge pool; in particular, to provide research input for the nation’s development. Sixty years down the line, the outcome has patently failed those...

A day after Newsline highlighted that the AIIMS administration had not implemented most recommendations of the Sukhadeo Thorat Committee that probed allegations of caste discrimination on the campus, the institute re-appointed Thorat, a former chairman of the UGC, to evaluate the status of implementation of his suggestions. Sources said that the decision was taken hours after an “informal communication” from the Union Health Ministry to end the agitation by MBBS students. There...

The University Grants Commission has demanded a four-fold hike in funds allocation in the 12th five-year Plan to create 10 million additional seats in higher educational institutions. The demand has come in spite of the higher education regulator managing to spend only 50 per cent of the Rs 46,449 crore allocated in the 11th Plan three months before the period ends. The UGC has submitted a detailed report to the HRD ministry,...

The Bar Council of India (BCI) today announced that lawyers throughout the country would stay off court work on January 20 as a mark of protest against the new education super-regulator proposed by the central government. At a media conference here, chairperson Ashok K. Parija said the BCI had asked all state bar councils to register their protest in ways they “thought fit” but added that most had decided to “abstain...