79th Session of Indian History Congress at Bhopal

THE Indian History Congress, the major forum of Indian historians since 1935, was due to meet for its 79th session at the invitation of Savitribai Phule University, Pune, on December 28-30, 2018. About 1,500 members had paid delegate fee of Rs 2000 each by December 1, the last day set for it. But on December 10, barely a fortnight before the session was to be held; the host university announced that they would not be able to hold the session.

Exclusion in Education

SIXTY per cent of India’s population is very young, below 25 years of age. This young India has no memory of the pre-liberalisation era during which state policy was broadly oriented towards the welfare of the people. Post-1991, a calibrated change in public consciousness was made to take place through commercialisation of public needs and corporatisation of governance. Media and technology have played a strategic role in this transformation.

United March for Education

ON February 19, student organisations including SFI joined a protest action in the national capital that saw the participation of teachers and non-teaching staff. Thousands of students, teachers, non-teaching employees and parents from different states converged at Delhi on February 19 to march under the banner of the Joint Forum for Movement on Education (JFME) and demanded a reversal of the privatisation policies that have led to social exclusion and denial of rights.

On Recitation of Hindu Religious Shlokas in Govt Schools

A PUBLIC Interest Litigation (PIL) against recitation of Hindu religious shlokas in Kendriya Vidyalayas, filed by Veenayak Shah, an advocate from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, has been pending before the Supreme Court since January 2018. A bench of Justice R F Nariman and Justice Naveen Sinha decided to refer the case to a constitutional bench as the issue was of “seminal importance”. In the meantime, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, presenting arguments on behalf of the government, made a statement which assumed much importance.

Failure of Modi Govt in the Education Sector

IN the 2014 Lok Sabha elections, people gave singular majority to the BJP.Now, after almost five years, a lot of people who had believed the promises of ‘achhe din’, are probably biting their tongues and considering whether they did speak too soon? BJP wrote in its election manifesto in 2014,“25 crore employment opportunities will pull the on rising unemployment rate down.” The BJP had also promised that 2 crore new jobs will be provided every year in the run up to the 2014 election. However, the reality is different; 11 million jobs were lost in the year 2018.

Assault on Higher Education: DUTA’s Struggles

HIGHER education in our country has witnessed a continuous and unprecedented assault in the last decade, since the UPA-2 regime. The same received a vicious momentum since the Modi government took over in May 2014 as evident in the relentless attack on the academic and the financial autonomy of the university system. University of Delhi is no exception to these attacks in the last decade owing to the continuity of policies by the governments led by both Congress and BJP.

HECI- A Move to Push RSS-BJP Agenda in Higher Education Institutions

AS students, teachers and college administrations gear up for the new academic year, the minister of Human Resource and Development (MHRD) mooted a proposal to replace University Grants Commission (UGC) with Higher Education Commission of India, a new body of governance for Higher Education Institutes in the country.The MHRD released a draft of Act, called “Higher Education Commission of India Act, 2018 (Repeal of University Grants Commission Act, 1956) according to the subsection 1 of the Section 1 of draft.The proposal is yet another move to accelerate the commodification the higher educa

4 Years of Systematic Destruction of Education under Modi Regime

EDUCATION must create minds free from superstitions, hatred and violence and become an important vehicle to cement national unity, social cohesion and religious amity. Our endeavour should be to inculcate moral, ethical and humanistic values in the individuals and the society.” These words are from the BJP’s elections manifesto for the 2014 parliamentary election. Now, four years down the line, it seems that either these words have a different meaning in the BJP’s dictionary or these too were ‘jumlas’ like everything else.

SFI Opposes Fee Hike in BITS Institutes

THE central executive committee of the Students’ Federation of India, in a statement issued on May 16, has strongly opposed the exorbitant increase in fees imposed on the students of Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS). The annual tuition fee in the Pilani campus of the institute has been increased this year to Rs 1,59,500. It needs to be underlined here that in the last decade the institute has seen consistent average fee increase of 17 per cent every year.However, BITS is certainly not an isolated phenomenon.

SSC Paper Leak: Protests Reflect Anger of Unemployed Youths

AFTER months of hard work and sleepless nights, candidates who appeared and were preparing to appear in a job test conducted by the Staff Selection Commission (SSC) were shocked when the news of alleged leak of a question paper reached them. Screenshots of a question paper of Combined Graduate Level (Tier-II) examinations, along with answers, were found circulating on social media. There were also report of mass copying. The SSC has subsequently cancelled the exam held on February 21, 2018.

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