-The Hindu Liberalisation has eroded the institutional capacity to train young people who might pursue liberal values The other day, a student asked me what exactly the word ‘liberal’ mean. She wanted to know whether ‘liberalisation’ promotes ‘liberal’ values. She had noticed that institutions of higher education, which are supposed to promote liberal values, were finding it difficult to resist ideological and commercial pressures triggered by the process of economic liberalisation. So,...

-IANS Kolkata: Lack of policy directions for ensuring quality implementation of programmes makes the Union Budget 2017-18 allocations to ailing core social sectors like education and health inadequate in delivering the benefits, experts say. Schemes like Swachh Bharat-Urban and the National Social Assistance Programme saw no increase, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan got a mere 4.4 per cent rise in allocation, while the Integrated Child Development Services got an enhancement of about five per...

-The Times of India Bengaluru: Midday meals and nutritious milk seem to have done the trick. Not many students are leaving government schools in Karnataka these days due to effective retention strategies, say experts. The number of out-of-school children has come down to 90,000 in 2016 from 7,00,000 in 2001, according to Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan (SSA) officials. The number of dropouts in 2015-16 was 12,878. Paradoxically, enrolment in government schools, which are in...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi has suggested a series of structural reforms in education, ranging from schools being mandated to display grade-wise learning goals for each class for which Niti Ayog has been entrusted to recommend overhauling of University Grants Commission and All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE). School students will be asked to evaluate their teachers and a university may be started for teacher training....

In the age of social media, various sections of the Indian polity and civil society have reacted publicly in diverse voices, following the presentation of the Union Budget 2016-17 by Finance Minister Shri Arun Jaitley. An assessment of the Union Budget 2016-17 has been done in the following paragraphs by the Inclusive Media for Change team, based on a number of media reports, Government documents (including the Budget documents), and reports...