-The Hindu Business Line A sustainable collectivisation of agri produce and marketing, through Farmer Producer Organisations, will help the highly fragmented agriculture sector realise its full revenue potential. It is widely known that India’s agriculture sector has a challenge of lack of scale. Around 80 per cent of our farmers are small and marginal, with less than two hectares of land. Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) have been posed for years as the...

-The Hindu They advocate inter alia ‘rebalancing of exams’ — focus on assessing application A survey by the Oxford University Press (OUP) of science teachers in 22 countries on their respective national science curricula found that fewer than half of the respondents (46%) believe that the science curriculum in their country prepared children for the future. Only 31% of teachers surveyed said science education was fit for the future. In India however, 80%...

-The Tribune The economic argument in support of market reforms, claiming that farm incomes go up when the number of farmers recedes, has turned out to be untrue. America has lost more than 5 million farms in less than 100 years, and Australia 25 per cent of its farms between 1980 and 2002. The speed at which farmers across the globe have got out of agriculture hasn’t increased farm incomes, but...

-The Indian Express A reworking of curriculum and activities is urgently needed for the age band from four to eight. ASER 2019 report underlines this While the importance of good early childhood education has been known for a long time, the draft New Education Policy (released in June 2019) links the “severe learning crisis” to what goes on with young children in India. The voluminous policy document points out that close...

-The Hindu The Annual Status of Education Report findings make a clear case for strengthening early childhood education centres One of the big debates in early childhood education is on children’s “school readiness” and whether early childhood education provides them with the requisite skills to cope with the school curriculum. A vast literature exists on the importance of certain cognitive abilities that are supposed to be developed during the years children spend...