“Friends are those rare people who ask how we are and then wait to hear the answer.”
Ed Cunningham
“मित्र वे दुर्लभ लोग होते हैं जो हमारा हालचाल पूछते हैं और उत्तर सुनने को रुकते भी हैं।”
एड कनिंघम
Friday, December 31, 2021
Quote of the Day December 31, 2021
UK, Canada and US among most popular destination for study abroad aspirants: Report
The UK is the most popular study abroad destination followed by Canada and the USA, according to data of over 75,000 applications processed by Leap Scholar. The data analysed revealed interesting trends witnessed during 2021.
Based on the applications for the year, the most popular country is the UK at 49 per cent, followed by Canada at 36 per cent, and the USA at 18 per cent. The most popular courses for study abroad in 2021 include MBA, MSc Data Science, and Computer Science, while MSc Management, Business Analytics, and Project Management saw an increase in popularity. The year has witnessed an increasing trend of students preferring specialized courses.
“2021 has seen a pent-up demand in the study abroad space and the aspiration to go overseas for education is higher than ever among students. They are exploring new and diverse ambitions,” said Vaibhav Singh, co-founder of Leap Scholar.
With the introduction of the Graduation Immigration Route, interest in the UK as a study abroad destination has zoomed. The new policy allows students graduating from UK universities to work in the UK for up to 2 years. This trend is expected to continue in 2022 as well.
Canada continued to be a favoured destination among students supported by diverse educational opportunities and a student-friendly policy stance. The US had a particularly strong rebound with the new political administration taking a welcoming stance towards international students.
Source: Indian Express, 31/12/21
Education Roundup 2021: Machine learning emerged as most popular online course in India, check list of top 10
A report released by Udemy for the emerging and expected trends for 2022 mentions that technical skills like Next.Js, Python scripting, and Terraform are surging in India.
As 2021 continued to restrict students and employees to online learning and remote working, online courses remained the preferable mode of learning this year. As per a report released by Coursera – machine learning, python and data analytics were the most trending courses among Indians in 2021.
The list was curated by monitoring the enrolment numbers on the eLearning platform. In soft skills, English for career development remained the most popular course in India.
The list of top 10 overall courses among Indians was machine learning, programming for everybody (getting started with python), foundations: data, everywhere English for career development, financial markets, HTML, CSS, and Javascript for web developers, introduction to psychology, foundations of user experience (UX) design among others.
Meanwhile, financial markets was the most subscribed business course on Coursera in 2021. 2021. Financial planning for young adults by the University of Illinois is another business the course made to the top ten list, indicating a growing interest in financial markets and investment advisory jobs.
A report released by Udemy for the emerging and expected trends for 2022 mentions that technical skills like Next.Js, Python scripting, and Terraform are surging in India.
Irwin Anand, MD, Udemy India, said, “The evolving workplace has made learning new skills more significant than ever, as employees are required to become lifelong learners to stay relevant in the workplace of the future. Every year, we are able to highlight the most in-demand workplace skills on the Udemy Business platform, which helps companies and professionals make informed decisions and stay up to date. Moreover, practical skill-based learning is important to stay relevant in this evolving nature of work, and is equipped to adapt to them is crucial.”
Source: Indian Express, 31/12/21
bell hooks and her pedagogy of hope
Avijit Pathak writes: For her, emancipatory education was supposed to be dialogic and experiential and a teacher always listened compassionately and without judgment
“Fear of losing control in the classroom often leads individual professors to fall into a conventional teaching pattern wherein power is used destructively.” — bell hooks
As a teacher, I have always felt that our academic culture needs a thinker/ educationist/ emancipator like bell hooks. Even though we can no longer see, feel and experience her embodied existence, it is important for us to invoke her time and again, allow ourselves to be touched by her passion and conviction, and redefine the meaning of teaching and scholarship. Yes, we have already read a series of obituaries; and enough has been said and written about this Black American feminist thinker, her sharp critique of racism and patriarchy, her expanded horizon that enabled her to continually write on gender, racism, sexuality, culture, pedagogy, love and even children’s literature, and above all, the immense politico-intellectual strength that characterised her life’s trajectory — from being born in a working-class family, growing up in a ghettoised/segmented Black locality, and eventually emerging as a charismatic professor nurturing and inspiring generations of students.
However, I wish to stress three principles that bell hooks internalised as a scholar/teacher; and these principles, I would argue, have immense relevance if we wish to humanise the prevalent academic culture. To begin with, let it be stated clearly that bell hooks was refreshingly different from a typical “value-neutral” academic — devoid of emotion and passion, and burdened with heavily technical and jargonised publications. And this sickness, every insider knows, is tempting; it has affected many Marxist, poststructuralist, postmodernist and even feminist thinkers and writers. Ironically, scholarship has been equated with incomprehensibility. But then, bell hooks was endowed with immense courage; she defied the style of this sort of prose; instead, her books and articles flow like a river, her words touch the soul of the reader. In a way, theory, for her, was like poetry. Yes, many scholars of the leading American universities where she taught were not very happy with her style and mode of writing. Yet, she inspired us, and gave us the confidence to realise that writing, instead of being reduced to a purely narcissistic exercise of demonstrating one’s “intellect”, can be therapeutic.
Second, she altered the character of the classroom. In a way, she took Paulo Freire pretty seriously. For her, emancipatory education ought to be dialogic and experiential. And a teacher ought to cultivate the art of non-judgmental/compassionate listening. Quite often, in our classrooms, no engaged dialogue takes place. A “scholarly” lecture by a professor, absence of lived reality and experience (even poetry or popular culture is taught like differential calculus), with a lengthy reading list, and repeated production of jargonised seminar papers: Most of our students experience this routine, or coldness of academia. But then, bell hooks transformed her classrooms, altered the meaning of the relationship between teacher and student, and encouraged young minds — particularly, Black women in a White male-dominated space — to articulate their voices, and their pain and trauma. Through this dialogue, reflexivity and inner churning, she continually interrogated patriarchy, racism, and other forms of domination in her classroom. Of course, most of us seek to avoid this sort of engagement with our students because it can also be emotionally taxing. Hence, quite often, our engagement with students remains limited to a bureaucratically-defined task — “covering” the syllabus, grading the students, and then forgetting them. Anyone who wants to join the vocation of teaching, I feel, must read bell hooks — particularly, Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom.
Third, bell hooks taught us another important lesson: Love is the essence of revolution. Quite often, in a dry intellectual milieu, we experience the absence of warmth. And it is impossible not to witness the growing culture of cynicism and despair. But bell hooks, despite the violence she saw in the world, didn’t lose her spirited religiosity — the religiosity of love and hope. We live amid a culture that normalises violence, be it structural, psychic or cultural. We live amid spectacular consumerism with the violence of what Erich Fromm would have regarded as a “having mode of existence”. It is a hyper-competitive social Darwinism that, as Thich Nhat Hanh would have said, negates the art of living “here and now” with mindfulness and meditative calmness, and the hyper-masculine aggression of militarism, religious fundamentalism and toxic nationalism. It is easy to accept this pattern, and “adjust” oneself to this pathology. However, bell hooks reminded us of the “redemptive” power of love, compassion, empathy and forgiveness. In moments of pain and despair, I read her amazing book, All About Love, and echo with her: “No matter what has happened in our past, when we open our hearts to love we can live as if born again, not forgetting the past but seeing it in a new way, letting it live inside us in a new way. We go forward with the fresh insight that the past can no longer hurt us.”
Without love, there cannot be any pedagogy of hope. Possibly, for those who celebrate the enchanting power of engaged pedagogy, and still dream of a compassionate, inclusive and egalitarian world, bell hooks would remain alive, and continue to sing her songs.
This column first appeared in the print edition on December 31, 2021 under the title ‘Teaching to transgress’. The writer is professor of Sociology at JNU
Source: Indian Express, 31/12/21
Thursday, December 30, 2021
Quote of the Day December 30, 2021
“You can make more friends in a month by being interested in them than in ten years by trying to get them interested in you.”
Charles Allen
“अपनों में दूसरों की रुचि जगाने का प्रयास कर आप जितने मित्र दस वर्षों में बना सकतें हैं, उससे कहीं अधिक मित्र आप दूसरों में अपनी रुचि दिखा कर एक माह में बना सकते हैं।”
चार्ल्स ऐलन
Current Affairs-December 30, 2021
INDIA
– AIM (Atal Innovation Mission) and NITI Aayog release 2nd edition of ‘Innovations for You’ and ‘The Ingenious Tinkerers’
– Sikkim Governor Ganga Prasad. inaugurates road named after Prime Minister Modi
– Indian Army sets up Quantum Lab at Military College of Telecommunication Engineering in Mhow (MP)
ECONOMY & CORPORATE
– Pension fund regulator PFRDA to soon allow subscribers of NPS (National Pension System) scheme to change investment pattern as many as four times during a financial year
– Govt begins inviting applications from investors under PLI (production-linked incentive) scheme for speciality steel
– Govt. issues operational guidelines for Production Linked Incentive (PLI) Scheme for textiles sector
– Defence Ministry notifies list of 2500 subsystems barred from imports to promote indigenous manufacturing
– Banks’ gross NPAs may rise to 9.5% in Sept 2022: RBI’s Financial Stability Report
– NRIs, OCIs do not need RBI’s prior nod to buy immovable property in India
– Textile and apparels firm Raymond incorporates new firm for real estate business
WORLD
– Indonesia to lift ban on Boeing 737 MAX, three years after fatal crash that killed 189 people
SPORTS
– Mohammad Shami becomes fifth Indian pacer after Kapil Dev, Javagal Srinath, Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma to take 200 Test wickets
– Portuguese football legend Cristiano Ronaldo’s statue installed in Panaji, Goa
India needs a realistic model of education to raise employment
Over the years, we have observed in India a visible increase in the number of children enrolled in schools. But at the same time, learning levels haven’t grown. Pratham’s Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2021 shows (bit.ly/3Jj3HLZ) that a higher number of older children (ages 15-16) are in school now, with 67.4% students enrolled in government schools (compared to 57.4% in 2018).
In the coming years, it is likely that we will see an even larger number of youth graduating with high school certificates and degrees. These youth are more likely to aspire for jobs in government or the private sector, with hardly anyone interested in agriculture or labour-based work. Yet, if we observe employment trends in India, over 80% of all workers are hired by the informal economy. Put two and two together, and it becomes painfully apparent that most youth are unable to fulfil the aspirations they had outlined for themselves.
Take for instance the youth trained by Pratham Education Foundation’s skilling centres. In 2015, over 85% of the youth enrolled had dropped out of the school system before grade 12. In 2021, however, less than 35% of the enrolled trainees were drop-outs, while the rest had completed grade 12 education. The eligibility criteria, content, courses and sectors have essentially remained the same over the last six years. Yet we can see that more ‘qualified’ youth are choosing to pursue a pathway designed for ‘drop-outs’. These youth who typically come from low-income families do not have the luxury of investing in higher education and advanced learning, given the opportunity cost. In such a situation, the idea that you can be connected from your village to a training centre and then to the workforce in less than 6 months is a more desirable alternative. There is a back-story which needs to be highlighted here.
Despite the higher rate of graduation from schools, most youth do not possess the skills expected of them by prospective employers. Much of this can be attributed to an emphasis on exams and the lack of focus on learning outcomes (bit.ly/3yVHK0M). Trainees who join Pratham centres have spent 3-7 years unsuccessfully looking for jobs after graduation (their median age of enrolment is 24-25), with limited guidance and awareness about opportunities. For years, these youth were conditioned to believe that working as an electrician or a housekeeping attendant is not admirable and they turned to vocational centres only as a last resort. The unfortunate reality is that there are millions in India who choose to stay unemployed instead of pursuing a vocation-based job. We need to shift from a ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to one that is tailored to match local realities.
Why AFSPA exists
Rajendra Prakash writes: It allows soldiers to carry out military operations which would otherwise, in the absence of any legal mandate, be legally and morally questionable
With the Kashmir Valley continuing to remain, sporadically, on the boil, and with violence re-emerging in the Northeast, the public and political discourse on the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA) has taken on unusual stridency. But a debate which is swayed by emotion, prejudice or cultivated ignorance, instead of resting upon a bedrock of facts and realities, becomes an exercise in mere sophistry.
Before embarking on a re-examination of the AFSPA, a word about the Indian soldier is necessary. The soldier is a citizen with equal obligations and the same rights as any other Indian citizen; she/he is neither a “slave” of the state, nor is she/he a “dummy” to be manipulated by the exigencies of politics or populism. However, as long as a soldier wears the uniform, she/he voluntarily denudes herself/himself of three fundamental rights granted by Article 19 of the Constitution — the right of free association, the right of political activity and the right to communicate with the press and media. Further, a soldier voluntarily places her/himself under the statutory rigours of military discipline (under the Army/Navy/Air Force Acts) and swears an oath to obey all “lawful commands” of her/his military superiors “unto the peril of death”.
Next, the armed forces are the servants of the Indian state and its ultimate resort. They are duty-bound to do all that is necessary for the “safety, honour and welfare” of our nation and to this end, faithfully and efficiently execute all lawful commands, directions and policies of the government with fidelity and to the utmost of their ability. Reciprocally, it is the bounden duty of the state (i.e., the legislature, judiciary and the executive) to provide the armed forces the means and wherewithal essential to perform the responsibilities and tasks assigned to them.
Coming now to the AFSPA — except in war, or when guarding the international border, the Indian Army has no constitutional authority or legal powers to use force or firearms against anyone whosoever. Like any other Indian citizen, the only legal right a soldier has is the right of “private defence” (of life or property), which must be proved post-facto in a court of law, and this takes many years of court hearings. The only other possibility of such use of force by the armed forces is when called out in “aid to civil authority”, for which a magistrate must be present at each spot to authorise the use of force in writing on a particular form. Only after completing these formalities/procedures can troops be “lawfully” ordered to use “minimum force” against civilians.
The current modus operandi of terrorists, insurgents and militants does not allow the luxury of a magistrate’s presence at the time and place of an operation or encounter. Moreover, unless the security forces are quicker and forestall the adversary’s actions, they are likely to suffer heavy casualties. Thus, any military commander, army chief downwards, ordering his troops to operate in a counterinsurgency role (cordons and searches, ambushes, counter-ambushes, pitched battles) against folks of this ilk, would be giving an “unlawful command”, not liable to be obeyed. If obeyed, it could land all commanders, right down the chain — from corps, divisions, brigades, battalions, companies and, platoons to infantry sections — before the courts of law on charges of murder, assault, injury and destruction of property. Defending such cases, in courts, would, obviously, leave no time or resources for any other military responsibilities, for years.
To avoid such situations, and to ensure that the Army is able to perform its basic function of external defence and internal security of the nation, pragmatic lawmakers, in the 1950s, devised the AFSPA, exclusively for operations in the Naga Hills. Regrettably, it is now invoked as a “fire-fighting” measure, elsewhere too; not by the Indian Army but by the government when the civil administration is unable to cope and police forces fail to restore normalcy.
In a democracy, only the elected government is mandated to govern. If it fails or cannot find political solutions and needs to exert state power to enforce its writ, then the Army may be called in. Under such circumstances, ordering a soldier, who is also a citizen, to carry out counterinsurgency operations in the absence of any legal mandate, is to order her/him to commit murder and mayhem. This would not be a “lawful command” and is legally and morally open to disobedience.
However, once the AFSPA (or other enabling legal measure) is invoked, and it becomes a duly authorised operation, it will be executed in a military manner, with restraint and responsibility. Stringent rules, guidelines and advisories are in existence, regarding respect for human rights. However, soldiers are human, and aberrations do occur. When they do, military justice is dispensed swiftly and without bias.
In closing, some advice for all those frantically urging the removal of AFSPA. Abolish the AFSPA, humanise it or whatever, but before doing so ensure the resolution of issues, whether socio-political or governance-related, which compelled the state to invoke this Act in the first place. In other words, create conditions which will convince the insurgents to stop insurgency, militants to stop militancy, terrorists to stop terror, Naxalites to stop mayhem and Kashmiri youth to stop hurling stones.
From the Army chief downwards, no one can order a soldier to obey an unlawful command, i.e., to inflict violence without legitimate legal sanction. Thus, debates based on ignorance of ground realities are harmful for the community — akin to banning a book without having read it.
Written by Rajendra Prakash
Source; Indian Express, 30/12/21
Challenging the rise of majoritarianism
D Raja writes: This can only be done by renewed focus on the real and concrete issues of dignity, livelihood, health, employment and housing
The widely telecast inauguration of the Kashi Vishwanath Corridor by Prime Minister Narendra Modi displayed the nefarious designs of the ruling regime. The invocation of Hindu symbols and ritualistic practices by the PM in a state function gave de facto official status to the majority religion. These developments throw open numerous questions regarding the relationship between the state and religion in a multi-religious, multicultural country.
While the Constitution categorically proclaims India to be a sovereign, socialist, secular, democratic republic, the current ruling regime willfully ignores this promise. Choosing to stand true to the vision manufactured in Nagpur, this right-wing Brahmanical regime is prioritising intolerance. While direct physical violence by these forces is the most evident, one has to be equally wary of the deep discursive violence inflicted. For a political formulation whose imagination is propped up by religion, the multicultural reality of the subcontinent is unpalatable. While a single definition of secularism has been evasive, modern nation-states have since long grappled with this principle. Scientific socialism since its inception understood the role religion plays in an unequal exploitative society. Marx famously wrote: “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.”In India, too, reformers constantly tried to do away with the orthodoxy practised in the name of religion and bring our society in conformity with modern democratic values.
While significant energies of our freedom movement were invested in driving away the British, at the same time, our leaders were conscious of how independent India would constitute itself. Secularism was a hallmark of the major participants in the freedom struggle. Gandhi, while proclaiming himself a Hindu, never tolerated religious discrimination. Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Bose, Sardar Patel, Maulana Azad and other luminaries were steadfast in their commitment to a future secular state. B R Ambedkar gave the clarion call for the annihilation of caste and initiated perhaps the greatest social reform on this land. EV Ramaswamy Periyar established rationality at the core of Tamil society and Sri Narayana Guru’s calls for the end of discrimination based on one’s birth found many echoes. From the leaders of the Ghadr Party to the Left revolutionaries led by Bhagat Singh, complete unanimity prevailed regarding the role of religion in the independent Indian state: It was to be a private affair with the state keeping equidistance from all organised religions. The republic that was inaugurated was a secular democratic republic with fundamental rights ensuring non-discrimination based on faith. The pro-British minority that advocated for a state religion or a theocracy found few takers among the people.
In India, we saw the rise of the RSS-BJP in the uncertain years after the financial crisis of 2008-09, riding the chariot of Hindutva. The Hindu religion had no institution akin to the church and it remained heavily localised in practice. The RSS and its obsession with uniformity has propelled them to devise monolithic interpretations of certain strands of Brahmanical texts, which they wish to impose on this extremely diverse society. This thought is not only dangerous for communal harmony but it can also push us back by hundreds of years by diverting us from issues of material interest. Certain contemporary developments have been disturbing in this regard. Recently, a few municipalities in Gujarat embarked on a mission to outlaw the public sale of non-vegetarian food. A BJP MP from Gujarat issued an ultimatum to tribals that the benefits of reservation will be snatched away from them if they do not convert to Hinduism.
The elevation of the religion of the majority as the de-facto state religion becomes a real threat. We should be conscious of French thinker Voltaire’s words: “… whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” The rise of religious common sense can be challenged and rejected only by bringing back the focus on the real and concrete issues of dignity, livelihood, health, employment and housing.
The important question before us is: Should we let religion interfere with, or take over, the workings of a secular state or should we resist this deviousness of the Hindu right? The lessons of our independence movement and the sacrifices of countless freedom fighters point us in only one direction.
Written by D. Raja
Source: Indian Express, 30/12/21
Wednesday, December 29, 2021
Quote of the Day December 29, 2021
“The nice thing about teamwork is that you always have others on your side”
Margaret Carty
“मिलझुल कर काम करने के साथ खास बात यह है कि आपके पक्ष में हमेशा और भी लोग होते हैं।”
मार्गरेट कार्टी
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