-The Indian Express Prof M S S Pandian is not the sole dissenter as far as the Thorat committee’s recommendations on removal of cartoons from NCERT textbooks go. A number of academic experts roped in by the committee to review Political Science textbooks, which are at the centre of a controversy over “controversial” cartoons, also echoed views similar to Pandian and fully supported the cartoons. Set up in May following MPs’ objections...

-The Indian Express It is not just 21 cartoons that have been deemed “inappropriate” for NCERT textbooks. The Thorat Committee has frowned on much more, disapproving of “ too many cartoons of Mrs Indira Gandhi” in the Class XII textbooks, and objecting to some Amul advertisements. Set up in May following MPs’ objections to political cartoons in textbooks, the six-member committee headed by ICSSR chairman S K Thorat vetted six textbooks that...

The dissent note by a member of a government appointed committee reviewing textbooks of political science avers that the pedagogic intent and methods of the NCERT textbooks are sound and they encourage critical dialogue among learners.  M.S.S. Pandian (mathiaspandian57@gmail.com) is member, the NCERT Committee for Reviewing the Textbooks of Social Science/Political Science and teaches history at the Centre for Historical Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.   It...

-The Hindu The six-member panel constituted to review the cartoons used in social sciences textbooks of the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) has ordered the deletion of several cartoons and words that it says are either “ambiguous”, negative or show politicians and bureaucrats in an ‘incorrect way. Among the material that gets the chop: an R.K. Laxman cartoon from the 1950s showing Nehru telling France and Portugal (represented as monkeys,...

-The Telegraph In government report cards on babus, “adequate” will now mean “inadequate” and “satisfactory” signify “unsatisfactory”. No, India’s government isn’t turning into a doublespeak-driven Orwellian Big Brother; nor is it taking lessons in obfuscation from Sir Humphrey Appleby of Yes Minister fame. What it has done, for the first time, is to define “non-performance” on the part of senior bureaucrats, nudging states to prematurely retire those whose annual reports routinely judge their...