Page 24 - EducationWorld January 2023

Education News

sulted or involved in ensuring that age-appropriate labs, THEY SAID IT
libraries etc are installed. All this has demotivated teachers.
That’s why the fall in teaching-learning standards in Tamil “Deeply concerned that the Taliban’s ban on
Nadu,” says Suresh. women delivering humanitarian aid in Af-
The shock of Tamil Nadu’s demotion in PGI 2021 is be- ghanistan will disrupt vital and life-saving
ing expressed in all sections of society. On December 6, Jus- assistance to millions. Women are central to
tice S.M. Subramaniam of the Madras high court directed
the state government to revisit the service rules related to humanitarian operations around the world.
appointment and promotion of school teachers to ensure This decision could be devastating for the
good quality education while warning against appointment Afghan people.”
of teachers with distance education qualifications. Antony Blinken, US secretary, on Taliban imposition
The silver lining to the dark PGI 2020-21 cloud that has of a ban on women working in NGOs (Twitter,
depressed sentiment in the state is that the establishment December 25)
has reacted strongly to the demotion of Tamil Nadu’s school
system. That’s the first step towards reform. “Students across the country will be taught
Shivani Chaturvedi (Chennai) a corrected version of Indian history under
the National Education Policy from January
TELANGANA 26 on vasant panchami. We must give a new
Dicey electoral strategy global perspective to India’s ancient culture
and civilization in the 21st century. Books
are being re-published with new composi-
ith the telangana legislative assembly election tions. These books will give clarity to the
scheduled to be held by end December and
WGeneral Election 2024 obliged to be called the world about India.”
following summer, all political parties led by the erstwhile Dharmendra Pradhan, Union minister for education
Telangana Rashtra Samiti, renamed Bharatiya Rashtra (India Today, December 28)
Samiti (BRS) on December 14 by chief minister K. Chan-
drasekhar Rao (KCR), have gone into election frenzy. As a “Certificates, diplomas and degrees are in
result, the state’s socio-economic development plans are great demand in what is literally an edu-
on the backburner. cational bazaar… a vast and varied market
This is a change in priorities because since 1995, of qualifications has grown since the mid-
the state’s politics has centred on the development of 1990s. Its growth feeds on itself, in the sense
Hyderabad which has rapidly transformed from a mofus- that the greater variety of qualifications
sil town into a globally respected software, telecom and on offer, the faster grows the demand for
other hi-tech industries hub. According to most political them.”
pundits in Hyderabad — carved out of a united Andhra Krishna Kumar, former NCERT director, in an essay
Pradesh and now the admin capital of Telangana (pop.35 titled ‘When degrees lose their worth’ (The Hindu,
million) — KCR’s national political ambitions will slow January 3)
down Telangana’s impressive economic growth rate and
development of social infrastructure. “The importance of Justice B.V. Naga-
Over the past two rathna’s powerful dissent is not the conclu-
decades, from a dusty sion. It is that it tries to affix administrative
laid back town, Hy-
derabad has metamor- responsibility and does not let officials hide
phosed into a shiny behind the smokescreen of statutory inter-
steel-and-glass ICT pretations. The need for fixing this respon-
(information commu- sibility is even more if you happen to think
nication technologies) that this is a sovereign decision. Her dissent
hub hosting a global asks the right question: What was the Board
Microsoft development of the RBI doing in all this?”
centre. It also hosts Pratap Bhanu Mehta, well-known public intellectual,
the world-class Indian on Supreme Court Justice BV Nagarathna’s
School of Business (ISB) dissenting judgement on demonetisation (Indian
and an international KCR Express, January 3)
airport with excellent

24 EDUCATIONWORLD JANUARY 2023