-The Indian Express Efforts to address child marriage in India should be in consonance with the socio-economic realities that demand investment in education, welfare, and opportunities for women. If Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s emphasis in his Independence Day speech on raising the legal age of marriage for women to 21 years is any indicator of the path the task force set up for this purpose is likely to tread, it needs to...
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‘Light But Tight’: Whose National Education Policy is it Anyway? -G Arunima
-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...
More »Ensuring delayed marriage requires concerted efforts to keep girls in school for longer -Sheila Vir
-The Indian Express A well-educated woman’s chances of making informed decisions and exercising greater agency in the household is monumental in breaking the cycle of poverty, ill health, as well as malnutrition. India’s Maternal Mortality Ratio (MMR) stands at 122 as per the latest Sample Registration System (SRS) bulletin from last year — a significant decline from an MMR of 556 in 1990. A parallel decrease in the prevalence of child marriage...
More »University Online Classes during COVID-19 -- Exclusionary and Insufficient -Santosh Verma and Tripti Kumari
-Vikalp.ind.in The spread of COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdowns in India since the last week of March 2020 have put not just people’s health concerns at the forefront, but most of the economic and social sector activities are at halt. Amidst the virus spread and subsequent lockdowns, schools, colleges, universities (educational institutions) are closed without completing the academic calendar year. To deliberate on teaching and learning processes and research activities in...
More »Online education must supplement, not replace, physical sites of learning -Satish Deshpande
-The Indian Express We have long ignored the vital role public educational institutions play as exemplary sites of social inclusion and relative equality. In Indian conditions, this role is arguably even more important than the scholastic role. The current craze for online education (OE) reminds me of the wall graffiti advertising sex clinics that are visible across urban north India. These ads promise guaranteed cures — shartiya ilaj — for all kinds...
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