Opinion | Why India and the World Need Gandhi - The New York Times

Opinion | Why India and the World Need Gandhi - The New York Times

Science, tech streams in higher education are losing students' preference

By Abhishek Waghmare

At the level of a Master’s degree, the technology stream seems to be in bigger trouble

The higher education infrastructure in India is growing, and a new report throws light on achievements and areas of concern. There are about 140 million people in the 18-23 age group in the country as of 2018-19, but only 26 per cent of them actually take up education. 

But, the number of universities in India are on the rise. From 760 in 2014-15, India is now close to having 1,000 universities (Chart 1). The United States, with a fourth of India’s population, has nearly 4,000. One aspect of quality of education, the student-teacher ratio improved in 2018-19, after falling for two years (Chart 2). One teacher now takes care of 24 students, courtesy a reversal in the trend of a fall in the number of teachers (Chart 3). Nationwide, 1.42 million teachers teach 37.4 million students. 

But, some data points raise an alarm. Science and technology streams in higher education seem to have lost students’ preference in recent years. While student enrolment in bachelor’s courses in engineering and technology was already falling for many years, enrolment in Bachelor of Science also dropped in 2018-19 (Chart 4). 

Going ahead, at the level of a Master’s degree, the technology stream seems to be in bigger trouble. Students taking up MTech courses, where they specialise in a branch of technology, have halved in five years: From 290,000 in 2014-15 to about 140,000 in 2018-19 (Chart 5). Many IITs are planning to raise tuition fees for the MTech course to curb drop outs.

Another area of concern is the skewed gender ratio at the top teaching positions in colleges and universities. Women have nearly caught up with men when it comes to being a lecturer, or assistant professor (70 per cent of teacher posts are these). But, at the level of associate professor and professor, men still occupy a disproportionate share (Chart 6).

Kashmiriyat is dead, and Modi govt hammered the last nail into the coffin

Kashmiriyat is dead, and Modi govt hammered the last nail into the coffin

Lavanya Tripathi slams Brahmin pride in a tweet and deletes it - Movies News

Lavanya Tripathi slams Brahmin pride in a tweet and deletes it  - Movies News

how-talk-your-child-about-dating-108234

https://www.thenewsminute.com/article/navigating-teen-love-parent-how-talk-your-child-about-dating-108234

Arvind Kejriwal okays regularisation of unauthorised colonies in Delhi. Over to Centre now | india news | Hindustan Times

Arvind Kejriwal okays regularisation of unauthorised colonies in Delhi. Over to Centre now | india news | Hindustan Times

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal addresses a press conference, in New Delhi, Wednesday

I've found an interesting video on Kwai. Check it out! http://kw.ai/p/bDpaEv5S

Telangana Forest Officer Anita Went To Plant Trees. She Was Thrashed Allegedly By TRS Workers

Telangana Forest Officer Anita Went To Plant Trees. She Was Thrashed Allegedly By TRS Workers

BJP Succeeded In Creating Impression Of 'Nameless, Faceless Enemy' Coming For Hindus: Mahua Moitra

Mahua Moitra

In an exclusive interview to Outlook, TMC's Mahua Moitra dismissed the criticism against her party’s government in Bengal and lashed out at Modi’s BJP for “spreading lies and fear”.

First-time parliamentarian from Bengal’s Krishnanagar constituency and Trinamool Congress leader Mahua Moitra’s maiden speech in Lok Sabha has earned her bouquets and brickbats. Liberals, secularists and many in the Opposition believe she showed the mirror to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government and summed up what the collective Opposition had, hitherto, failed to say. Her detractors feel the points she made, particularly about muzzling dissent, are equally applicable to Mamata Banerjee’s Trinamool Congress government in Bengal.

In an exclusive interview to Outlook, Moitra dismissed the criticism against her party’s government in Bengal and lashed out at Modi’s BJP for “spreading lies and fear”. She asserted that in the recently concluded Lok Sabha elections, which saw the saffron party make huge gains in her home state, the BJP had succeeded in “creating an impression that there was a nameless, faceless enemy coming” for the Hindus which can only be defeated if Modi is voted back to power.

Asked if the oft-made accusation about Mamata Banerjee’s politics of appeasing Muslims in Bengal was the reason for the BJP’s rise in the eastern state, Moitra said, “The BJP follows the Goebbels Doctrine very well. They have got hold of this thing on Muslim appeasement… How are you appeasing – if you are giving away cycles, you are giving them to all children not just to Muslims, whatever other welfare schemes we are offering are all based on poverty lines, not on religion. The controversies are all stoked by the BJP.”

The first-term MP, who accused the BJP of spreading a “superficial and xenophobic narrative” of “false nationalism” in her speech in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday, told Outlook that the rise of the BJP has been on the back of a campaign forcing a section of the Hindus to be jingoistic.

“I am a Hindu and neither I nor anyone from my family, ever felt it necessary to assert or to tattoo the fact on our foreheads that we are Hindus or Brahmins. The fact that we need this jingoistic, assertive aggression to stand in the street and tell people that we are Hindus and make people fearful of us is not something that this religion is about,” Moitra said.

In her Lok Sabha speech, Moitra also spoke at length about the “subjugation of media” and the Modi government’s crackdown on dissent. However, she has been criticized for turning a blind eye to the actions of her own party’s government in Bengal where several incidents or arrests of people, including journalists and academics, for publicly criticizing the chief minister have been reported. An incident often recalled in this debate is that of Jadavpur University’s Professor Ambikesh Mahapatra who had been arrested on her instructions merely for circulating a caricature that lampooned the chief minister.

Asked how she reconciles these incidents in Bengal with the accusations she hurled against the Modi government, Moitra dismissed the parallel, stating “they just want to deflect attention by talking about one professor somewhere or some individual case, but I am talking about much larger issues. You can’t compare two incidents with what is happening 365 days. It is unfortunate, unfair”.

She added, “When I talk about the subjugation of mass media… today the richest Indian controls indirectly five media houses which make up 70-80 per cent of all viewership in India and the government ads spent towards them is disproportionate. When you have such lopsided control of the media and the line of control goes right up to the powers that be, that’s a very different thing from individual cases you may talk of in Bengal.”