Ramin Jahanbegloo is a renowned philosopher who is now associated with the Jindal Global University. His latest work, The Decline of Civilization, calls for countering the ‘decivilising’ tendencies of our times by returning to Gandhi and Tagore. Jahanbegloo answered some questions on this subject in an email interview with Yoshika Sangal.
What ails engineering education in India? Fifteen or 20 years back, a large number of industrialists and businessmen started engineering colleges, looking at them as a business opportunity. A large number of engineering colleges came up in Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, and also in Tamil Nadu. However, when the IITs – which pay teachers well and have a
We have recently seen farmers from Tamil Nadu protesting in the national capital. Then Maharashtra farmers protested, deciding not to send their produce to cities. The agitation has now reached Madhya Pradesh, leading to killings. Why there is sudden farmers’ unrest in the country? I think we tend to miss the real point behind these episodes of farmers unr
RS Praveen Kumar, a 1995 batch IPS officer, is also the secretary of Telangana Social Welfare Residential Educational Institutions Society (TSWREIS) – a state-owned educational institution which runs residential schools for scheduled caste, scheduled tribe and underprivileged children. In a telephonic conversation with Shivani Chaturvedi, Kumar talks about how quality
Giving highest priority to education, the AAP government in Delhi is working towards bringing government schools at par with private schools. Atishi Marlena, advisor to deputy chief minister and education minister Manish Sisodia, talks to Jasleen Kaur about the challenges that government schools are facing. What ails the e
Dr Pankaj Chaturvedi, a head and neck cancer surgeon at the Tata Memorial hospital in Mumbai, is a leading anti-tobacco activist. He joined hands with Sumitra Hooda Pednekar and others to file a PIL in the Bombay High Court earlier this year, questioning the state-run insurance firm LIC’s investments in a leading cigarette-maker.
What restricts MOOCs’ acceptance despite having credits? It is just a matter of time. India has been used to the traditional way of education. However, the fact that India is the second biggest learner base for edX, after the United States, speaks volumes about the kind of recognition MOOCs are receiving in India. Employers are now giving importa
Baijayant ‘Jay’ Panda feels that coffee would go well with the conversation we are about to have in the elegant, wood-panelled study of his Delhi house. “Do people drink coffee in Odisha?” I ask him to break the ice. “Once upon a time, coffee was not available there. Nowadays, I am amazed to see cafes selling coffee even in remote villages,” says Panda, who r
Peter Ronald deSouza is a professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi, and held the Dr S Radhakrishnan Chair of Rajya Sabha till April 2017. He works on issues of democratic politics and comparative politics of South Asia. A former director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Shimla, where he served two terms from 2007 till 2013, he was
Matthieu Ricard, 71, was dubbed the world’s happiest man after scientists carried out intensive research on him as he meditated. He is an author and holds a PhD in molecular genetics. Yet he gave up a promising career and became a Buddhist monk. An associate of the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, Ricard now lives in a monastery in Nepal. In an email interview, the man with a
Chetan Bhagat started as an investment banker, before turning to writing. His first novel, Five-Point Someone, sold briskly, and one bestseller followed another. Finally, The New York Times called him ‘the biggest selling English language novelist in India’s history’.His books have inspired movies like 3 idiots, Hello and the upcoming movie Half Girlfriend. Bhagat has also
In March, parliament passed the Mental Health Care Bill, which among other things decriminalises suicide and bans the use of electric shocks for children. To understand the new law, Archana Mishra turned to psychiatrist Vikram Patel, former chairman and co-founder of the Centre for Global Mental Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Patel, named among the Time magazi
Arvind Panagariya’s is one of the most elegantly done up offices in Lutyens’ Delhi. Its modern furniture is arranged to create multiple work areas, and the spacious office is enlivened by the Madhubani paintings on the walls and miniature potted plants placed in nooks and corners of the room. The get-
Tell us about the documentation work of indigo farmers’ testimonies. The testimonies of indigo farmers of Champaran were placed before the agrarian commission in 1917 but afterwards there was no study. These testimonies are housed with the National Archives of India. The National Archives and the Sabarmati Ashram have entered into a kind of partnership by w
Champaran was Gandhi’s first political campaign in India, and he chose to work in rural areas and for farmers. Can you tell us more about this context – how unusual was this for the mainstream political leadership back then? Gandhi had already travelled through the rural side of India and he never took up politics. It’s wrong to say it was a politica
The functioning of a national commission, be it NHRC, NCSC or NCST, depends on its head. Being the chief information commissioner (CIC), what is your vision for CIC? And what has been your experience so far? The chief information commissioner and ten information commissioners (ICs) are creation of the Act. What the Act defines is general superint
How do you view the state of contemporary Indian literature? Our cultural spaces are in a bad state – and this affects the writing, publishing and reading of literature. Over the last few years, we have seen far too many cases of the self-appointed thought police intimidating writers. From the Tamil writer Perumal Murugan to the young Kannada poet Huchangi
In a bid to educate the adolescent population of India – the largest in the world, the health ministry, in partnership with United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), rolled out a nationwide programme in February, under which around 1.6 lakh boys and girls will work as peer educators in the country. The programme called Sathiya – a part of the centre’s Rashtriya Kisho
To evaluate the new health policy, we turned to a leading expert in this area, Dr K Srinath Reddy, president of the Public Health Foundation of India. The former head of the department of cardiology at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, a Padma Bhushan awardee and advisor to the Odisha government, Reddy talks to Archana Mishra about the importance
Mansukh Mandviya is in his mid-40s and also looks young for a central minister, but he is not a novice in politics. When he first became MLA in Gujarat, in 2002, he was barely 30. An ABVP product, Mandviya is a Rajya Sabha member. As a minister of state, he looks after two ministries which take care of five sectors crucial to the economy. In a freewheeling chat with Pankaj Kumar
