The Bill to regulate medical education and govern human resource in health is a highly diluted version of the original draft. Distortions in the area of Human Resource for Health (HRH) are the root cause of many of the ills facing the health sector in India. Among them is the shortage of qualified medical professionals. The estimated density of 19 health workers (qualified and unqualified) per 10,000 population is nearly 25...

-The Telegraph IIT faculty today invoked Jawaharlal Nehru to protect the schools’ autonomy, accusing the Union HRD ministry of “political interference” by proposing a single engineering entrance exam. The IIT faculty federation issued a statement saying its fight was “to protect the academic excellence and autonomy of the institutions envisioned by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru from any political interference”. The statement, issued by faculty federation secretary Atul Mittal, came a day after HRD minister...

In an attempt to rein in fly-by-night operators who have set up shops in India, the Universities Grants Commission (UGC) has made its approval mandatory for all collaborations between foreign and Indian educational institutions. The new regulations approved by the UGC on Saturday give existing institutions six months to get approval. The UGC has also laid down dual criteria to ensure that quality academic institutions are allowed to run joint degree...

It needs pensive reflection to understand how an organisation whose name is perhaps the most widely recognised public sector brand across the length and breadth of India could become the target of so much instant anger and contempt in the highest legislative forum of the republic. Krishna Kumar (anhsirk.kumar@gmail.com) teaches education at Delhi University. The cyclone that hit Parliament on 11 and 14 May over the so-called cartoon controversy indicates, among other...

PROFESSOR Shamnad Basheer joined the National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS), Kolkata, in November 2008 as the first Ministry of Human Resource Development Chaired Professor in Intellectual Property Law. Before this, he was Frank H. Marks Visiting Associate Professor of Intellectual Property Law at the George Washington University law school and a research associate at the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre (OIPRC).  He is the founder of several initiatives, including...