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Education News

and transform AP — gifted with a highly entrepreneurial THEY SAID IT
population — into India’s most well-educated and prosper-
ous state. “India has smart, hardworking people, and
Although opposition parties have criticised LEAP, it has
revived the spirit of teachers in Andhra Pradesh. Within now it seems the country truly wants its
the educators community there’s unanimity that LEAP people to succeed and become wealthy.
provides a clear roadmap for major reform of the state’s Historically, India wasn’t like this. But now
education system. something has changed.”
Priyanka Edupuganti (Hyderabad) Jim Rogers, American investor (Mint, October 24)

KARNATAKA “…a narrative that begins in 1492 with the
Level down directive mythic arrival of Christopher Columbus.

This moment is still described in textbooks,
ven as an intense sub rosa internecine war is being museums and mindless school rhymes
waged between chief minister Siddaramaiah and as the "discovery" of America. The truth,
Ehis deputy D.K. Shiva Kumar for the chief minis- of course, is far more brutal. Columbus did
ter’s office, the state’s Congress government is under fire not discover a new world. He invaded one,
from business and industry leaders over the city’s wors- and that invasion set in motion one of the
ening civic woes — pothole-ridden roads, crippling traffic most ferocious chapters in human history.
congestion, mounting administrative inefficiency and Columbus's arrival heralded not discovery,
corruption. To this add a new problem: the state govern- but genocide. The devastation was total.”
ment is also under fire from academics for lowering the
minimum pass marks in class X and XII school-leaving Shelley Walia, former professor at Panjab University,
state board examinations. On October 15, the govern- Chandigarh in an essay titled ‘Rethinking immigration
in the age of exclusion’ (The Hindu, October 29)
ment issued a GO (government order) reducing the mini-
mum average pass marks required to clear the class X
SSLC (Secondary School Leaving Certificate) exam from “Geopolitics today is no longer about
35 to 33 percent. Simultaneously, pass average for II PUC territory and force alone. Supply chains
(Pre-University Class i.e, class XII) has been reduced are the new borders, technology the new
from 35 to 30 percent. territory, data the new diplomacy, climate
The trigger for this GO — the draft of which was the new conflict line and narrative is the
published in June for public feedback and comment — is new battleground. In short geopolitics now
the consistently small number of students of the state
passing the class X exam, the lowest in peninsular India. determines corporate destiny.”
In 2024-25, only 62.34 Nirupama Rao, former foreign secretary delivering
percent of students who the 52nd Foundation Day lecture at IIM Bangalore
(October 29)
wrote the state board’s
class X exam were de-
clared passed cf. Tamil “For decades, one family has towered over
Nadu’s 93.8 percent, Indian politics. The influence of the Nehru-
Telangana’s 92.78 percent Gandhi dynasty — including independent
and Kerala’s 99.5 percent. India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru,
Likewise, 93.66 percent prime ministers Indira Gandhi and Rajiv
who wrote the CBSE exam Gandhi, and current opposition leader Rahul
passed and 99.09 percent Gandhi and MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra — is
the CISCE board’s class X Madhu Bangarappa bound up with the history of India’s struggle
ICSE exam.
The Congress government contends that the SSLC for freedom. But it has also cemented the
exam of the Karnataka School Examination and Assess- idea that political leadership can be a birth-
ment Board (KSEAB) is more rigorous than in other right. This idea has penetrated Indian politics
states and the GO was necessary to “create a level playing across every party, in every region, and at
field” for Karnataka’s children. every level.”
According to sources in the education department, Shashi Tharoor, Congress MP (The Indian Express,
“stringent evaluation and examination conduct November 4)

34 EDUCATIONWORLD NOVEMBER 2025