ECONOMIC AND POLITICAL WEEKLY: TABLE OF CONTENTS
Monday, January 22, 2018
Jump-start your career
The 10th edition of The Hindu Edge International Career Fair is back
The Hindu Edge International Career Fair, the #1 event in its genre in South India, caters to the aspiring student community across major metros in South — Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Coimbatore.
Over the past decade, this event has carved a niche for itself among students and parents. It is an ideal platform that brings the best of universities and colleges from across the world. The fair will host a variety of exhibitors ranging from foreign universities to specialised institutions, from travel and banking to other service providers.
There are also special seminars for students by Consulates and official education boards.
The fair will be conducted in four cities and the dates are as follows:
Chennai: February 4, 5 at Hotel Hyatt Regency
Coimbatore: February 7 at Taj Surya
Bengaluru: February 9 at Taj MG Road
Hyderabad: February 11 at Taj Deccan
To attend the expo, register for free at:www.thehindu.com/iefand follow the event on Facebook throughwww.facebook.com/thehinduief
Source: The Hindu, 22-01-2018
What’s a good ratio?
Will the AICTE move to relax the student-faculty ratio help improve the quality of learning in technical institutions?
The decision by the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) to relax the student-faculty ratio from the existing 15:1 to 20:1 in technical education institutions (degree as well as diploma engineering institutions) has been received with mixed reactions by the academic community. According to a newspaper report, an association has filed an online petition requesting the Prime Minister to intervene and direct the AICTE to maintain the existing 15:1 ratio.
Those who oppose the move state that the quality of technical education will be diluted because the teachers will be forced only to teach and not to focus on research and their professional development. They also state that their workload will increase and some teachers will lose their job because of the relaxation rule.
Those who welcome the move are of the opinion that many engineering colleges in India are teaching-centric and say that the ratio is quite reasonable. It is true that many technical education institutions focus only on teaching and do not give importance to research and professional development of the faculty. Only in some universities and colleges professors are involved in supervising research scholars, guiding students in innovative research projects, collaborating with industries and teaching.
Teacher-students ratio is defined differently by Quacquarelli Symonds (QS) and Times Higher Education (THE). QS defines it as “the number of full-time academic staff members employed relative to the full-time student enrolment numbers,” but THE defines it as “the ratio of full-time equivalent students to the number of academic staff – those involved in teaching or research”.
Is the lower student-to-staff ratio (SSR) linked to high quality of education in higher education institutions? Will it improve productivity? Is it fair to use SSR as an indicator to assess the quality of technical education in colleges? Is SSR a key determinant of learning outcomes?
The main advantage of lower staff-student ratio is that teaching and learning will be more effective. It helps them have easy access to their professors and enables them to connect with their fellow students and learn better.
Professors can also do justice by giving individual attention students need, interacting with them, modifying their teaching by knowing their learning styles and learning needs, mentoring them and leading them to the path of success. If there are fewer students, professors can go through the work (assignments, projects, papers, etc) carefully and provide proper guidance and support.
When there is a low student-staff ratio, students get personalised attention from their teachers. This helps them excel in studies and motivates them to learn better and acquire knowledge and develop skills in a more efficient way. We can very well state that the lower the student-staff ratio, the higher the level of engagement in academic activities.
Foreign universities
Is it fair to compare Indian higher education institutions with foreign universities and colleges?
“No” is the answer. The reason is that in developed countries there are many research-intensive institutions and in such universities the focus is mainly on research and there the student-staff ratio is lower than 5:1. For example, in Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) the ratio is 3:1. In India we have very few such institutions. Tata Institute of Fundamental Research is one such institution where the number of students per one member of staff is 2.2.
In top-ranked higher education institutions in developed countries such as the USA and Japan, almost all academics are involved in teaching, research activities, projects and other academic-related activities. Professors are accessible to students and devoted to spending time with their students and providing personal academic guidance. Here is a sample of student-to-staff ratio in some top universities: Duke University (7:1), Caltech (3:1), Stanford University (11:1), Harvard (7:1), Washington University (8:1) and Yale (6:1). All these universities are research-centred institutions and they have more graduate students than undergraduate students.
Two categories
In India we have mainly two categories of technical education institutions. The first category of institutions focuses on research as well as teaching and teachers working at these institutions spend a significant portion of their time in research and are also involved in teaching. The second category focuses only on teaching. Though the education system in the second category is not desirable, such a system is quite prevalent across the country.
What is an ideal student-to-staff ratio? It depends on many factors. If an institute of higher education is research-centric, the ratio should be lower than 15:1 and if it is teaching-centric, it can be 20:1.
If it is a mix of both teaching and research, the ratio could be 15:1. What is crucial is that technical education institutions should move from being mere teaching-centric institutions to teaching and research-balanced institutions. What is important is focusing on holistic education and improving the quality of technical education by creating opportunities for learners to acquire knowledge and develop skills required in the 21st century.
Ultimately, the learning outcome should be effective.
The author is an academic, columnist and freelance writer. He can be contacted at rayanal@yahoo.co.uk
Source: The Hindu, 22-01-2018
Capacity building for primary health care
A pluralistic and integrated medical system remains a solution worth exploring
A contentious element of the National Medical Commission (NMC) Bill 2017 — an attempt to revamp the medical education system in India to ensure an adequate supply of quality medical professionals — has been Section 49, Subsection 4 that proposes a joint sitting of the Commission, the Central Council of Homoeopathy and the Central Council of Indian Medicine. This sitting, referred to in Subsection 1, may “decide on approving specific bridge course that may be introduced for the practitioners of Homoeopathy and of Indian Systems of Medicine to enable them to prescribe such modern medicines at such level as may be prescribed.”
Missing the reality
The debates around this issue have been ranging from writing-off the ability of Ayurveda, yoga and naturopathy, Unani, Siddha and homoeopathy (AYUSH) practitioners to cross-practise to highlighting current restrictions on allopathic practitioners from practising higher levels of caregiving. However, these debates miss the reality: which is a primary health system that is struggling with a below-par national physician-patient ratio (0.76 per 1,000 population, amongst the lowest in the world) due to a paucity of MBBS-trained primary-care physicians and the unwillingness of existing MBBS-trained physicians to serve remote/rural populations. Urban-rural disparities in physician availability in the face of an increasing burden of chronic diseases make health care in India both inequitable and expensive.
Therefore, there is an urgent need for a trained cadre to provide accessible primary-care services that cover minor ailments, health promotion services, risk screening for early disease detection and appropriate referral linkages, and ensure that people receive care at a community level when they need it.
Issue of cross-prescription
The issue of AYUSH cross-prescription has been a part of public health and policy discourse for over a decade, with the National Health Policy (NHP) 2017 calling for multi-dimensional mainstreaming of AYUSH physicians. There were 7.7 lakh registered AYUSH practitioners in 2016, according to National Health Profile 2017 data. Their current academic training also includes a conventional biomedical syllabus covering anatomy, physiology, pathology and biochemistry. Efforts to gather evidence on the capacity of licensed and bridge-trained AYUSH physicians to function as primary-care physicians have been under way in diverse field settings, and the call for a structured, capacity-building mechanism is merely the next logical step.
The 4th Common Review Mission Report 2010 of the National Health Mission reports the utilisation of AYUSH physicians as medical officers in primary health centres (PHCs) in Assam, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand as a human resource rationalisation strategy. In some cases, it was noted that while the supply of AYUSH physicians was high, a lack of appropriate training in allopathic drug dispensation was a deterrent to their utilisation in primary-care settings. Similarly, the 2013 Shailaja Chandra report on the status of Indian medicine and folk healing, commissioned by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, noted several instances in States where National Rural Health Mission-recruited AYUSH physicians were the sole care providers in PHCs and called for the appropriate skilling of this cadre to meet the demand for acute and emergency care at the primary level.
Our own experience at the IKP Centre for Technologies in Public Health shows that there is hope. Here, the focus has been on deploying a capacity-building strategy using AYUSH physicians upskilled through a bridge-training programme, and the use of evidence-based protocols, supported by technology, to deliver quality, standardised primary health care to rural populations. Protocols cover minor acute ailments such as fever, upper respiratory tract infections, gastrointestinal conditions (diarrhoea, acidity), urological conditions, as well as proactive risk-screening. The Maharashtra government has led the way in implementing bridge training for capacity-building of licensed homoeopathy practitioners to cross-prescribe.
As anchors
Capacity-building of licensed AYUSH practitioners through bridge training to meet India’s primary care needs is only one of the multi-pronged efforts required to meet the objective of achieving universal health coverage set out in NHP 2017. Current capacity-building efforts include other non-MBBS personnel such as nurses, auxiliary nurse midwives and rural medical assistants, thereby creating a cadre of mid-level service providers as anchors for the provision of comprehensive primary-care services at the proposed health and wellness centres. Further, the existing practice of using AYUSH physicians as medical officers in guideline-based national health programmes, a location-specific availability of this cadre to ensure uninterrupted care provision in certain resource-limited settings, as well as their current academic training that has primed them for cross-disciplinary learning hold promise. These provide a sufficient basis to explore the proposal of bridging their training to “enable them to prescribe such modern medicines at such level as may be prescribed”.
Ensuing discussions will be well served to focus on substantive aspects of this solution: design and scope of the programme, implementation, monitoring and audit mechanisms, technology support, and the legal and regulatory framework. In the long run, a pluralistic and integrated medical system for India remains a solution worth exploring for both effective primary-care delivery and prevention of chronic and infectious diseases.
Aparna Manoharan and Rajiv Lochan are involved with the IKP Centre for Technologies in Public Health;
Rajiv Lochan is MD and CEO of
The HinduGroup
Source: The Hindu, 22-01-2018
One With Universe
DEEPAK CHOPRA
We can understand reality through the senses, mind and the soul. We understand reality mainly through our senses. But what we understand through the mind is more significant. Scientists conduct thought experiments. The essential nature of material reality is its being ‘nonmaterial’. It consists of just states of energy and vibrations coming out of a void. Our senses are the least reliable because they lie to us. Hence we need to see reality through the eyes of the soul.
When we use our senses, we are following the materialistic way of seeing reality which states that if one can understand how molecules behave then one can understand life
On the other hand, Heraclitus stated that one can’t step into the same river twice because there is constant change occurring. Our bodies are continuously being recycled, 98% of all our atoms are replaced in less than a year. So, we outlive the molecules through which we express ourselves — 99.9% of the body is empty space.
The universe is a discontinuity. It appears as being continuous. Just like the eye in the cinema theatre sees the film as being continuous. What is the space between thoughts?
It is the transformation vortex or the ground of being. The whole universe is an ‘on/off ’ phenomenon. The soul occupies the ‘off ’ space. In the presence of one’s soul everything comes and goes. Thoughts come and go. Only the soul remains.
58% of rural teens can read basic English, reveals survey
Manash.Gohain@timesgroup.com
New Delhi: In a marker of the growing appeal of English in rural India, more than 58% of teenagers were able to read sentences in the language during a survey of 30,000 rural children across 24 states.
The survey, for the recently released Annual School Education Report 2017 (ASER 2017), also found that 79% of children who could read English also understood the meaning of the sentences. The ability to read English sentences was found in 53% of 14-year-olds and it increased to 60% among 18-year-olds.
The figures are significant as the survey was done among rural teens (aged 14 to 18), 25% of whom could not still read basic text fluently in their own language.
‘English seen as stepping stone to higher studies, jobs’
The rising proficiency in English correlates with growing aspiration among the children surveyed, 60% of whom want to study beyond Class XII. By contrast, just 35% of those who could not read Class II level text fluently wanted to continue studies beyond Class XII. The ASER 2017 indicates that a large proportion of 14- to 18-year-olds can at least read simple texts. The age group selected for the latest survey is also the first batch of the Right of Children to free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act 2009, which guarantees elementary schooling to all children in the age group of 6-14 years. The Act came into effect from April 2010.
Ashok K Ganguly, educationist and former CBSE chairperson, said, “Parents are realising that their kids have to compete at the national level. Knowledge of English is also needed to succeed in professional courses. So parents have started motivating their wards to learn English,” Ganguly said.
Ashok Pandey, principal, Ahlcon International, Delhi, said, The perception is that if you have to go for higher studies and get a good job, you have to be proficient in English.”
Source: Times of India, 22-01-2018
Wednesday, January 17, 2018
ECONOMIC & POLITICAL WEEKLY: Table of Contents
Vol. 53, Issue No. 2, 13 Jan, 2018
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