De-stressing India’s frazzled students

With the world’s highest youth suicide rate, India’s authorities try to cut the pressure in school. Neeta Lal in Asia Sentinel:

india-studentIn the heart of New Delhi, students at the Mirambika School start their day by first helping their teachers tidy up and beautify their classrooms. They then head for a meditation session to help them “connect their outer selves with the inner,” according to the school. Only once these activities are out of the way, do the studies begin.

Similarly, students at Gurgaon’s Heritage School in north India begin their day with meditation sessions, sports and a glass of fresh juice. The school has a yoga and meditation centre that buzzes with activity throughout the day. Three yogic instructors help students master breath control and stress.

Indian health authorities are deeply concerned about stress, particularly revolving around studies. India was reported in 2004 to have the world’s highest youth suicide rate, with suicides accounting for 50to 75 percent of all deaths in adolescent girls and about a quarter of all deaths in boys between the ages of 10 to 19, most commonly by hanging, followed by poisoning, usually with insecticide.

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A sex manual for Indian sensibilities

‘Penetrative sex’ and ’sexual intercourse’ are banned from NACO’s watered-down sex education manual for teachers scheduled to be introduced across schools in August this year. Teena Thacker has the report in The Indian Express

Over six months after it pulled out its sex education manual following nationwide protests, the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) is ready with a revised version which has been sent to various states for their comments.

The states have been given two months to review the manual, which is expected to be introduced in schools by August this year.

Following protests over the “explicit” content in the earlier manual forcing NACO to pull it out in October last year, the expert group has tried to play it safe this time. The manual, which has been re-named as the “teachers’ handbook”, has no pictures of human figures or words like “penetrative sex” and “sexual intercourse” this time. It is expected to be uploaded on the NACO website for wider comments.

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It’s a landmark

In The Indian Express, Pratap Bhanu Mehta on the Supreme Court’s landmark judgment on reservations for the OBCs 

Landmark judgments can have one of two features. They can strike an uneasy balance between competing considerations, in a sort of compromise that keeps the peace. Or they can mark out a radically new course of action. Ashok Thakur is an oddity in that, amidst all the complications of four different judgments, it manages to do both. The core orders of the Supreme Court strike a balance between two considerations. A society like India needs affirmative action. But the core question must have some rational justification: Who should be targeted, why should they be targeted and how should they be targeted? For all the brave face the government is putting up, its perfidy has been exposed. The issue was not whether affirmative action is permissible. What was grossly objectionable was that the government indiscriminately included groups that manifestly ought not to be beneficiaries. They had converted a social policy into a pure power play.

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And in Mail Today, Dipankar Gupta says the judgment is a form of ‘damage control’

THE Supreme Court’s ruling to allow reservations for the OBCs, provided the creamy layer is kept out, is bound to hurt a large number of politicians who have made caste mobilisation their sole occupation. In my view, this judgment is more like “ damage control” as the Supreme Court could not quite disallow OBC reservations, what with the Constitutional amendment making the way for it. But by excluding the creamy layer from enjoying the benefits of OBC reservations, the Supreme Court has not only damaged the prospect of a large number of powerful and wellheeled members of the OBC, but has also plunged and twisted the knife into the very body of Mandal’s recommendations.

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Finally, who or what exactly is the ‘creamy layer’? For the answer from Mail Today click here.

The Islamic republic of Harvard?

In The New Republic blog, Harvard undergrad Sahil K. Mahtani asks how far universities must bend to accommodate religious observance

The symbolism could not be more striking: Harvard College, an institution founded for men by men has, for the first time in its history, banned men. For six hours every week, only women will be allowed in one of the university’s three major gyms–a new policy implemented in response to a request by female Muslim students, who were uncomfortable exercising around men.

Since announcing the new policy, the university has been besieged by vitriolic criticism, with some commentators characterizing the decision as “appeasement” and “capitulation” to the demands of “radical Islam.” One blogger, in a post entitled “Slouching toward Constantinople,” compared the decision to the Turkish conquest of that city in 1453. One commentator called it Harvard’s “Islamofascist gym.” Even Atlantic blogger Andrew Sullivan lamented the onslaught of “Sharia at Harvard.”

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Previously on AW:
Women only hours at Harvard gym

Forman Christian College’s political clout

In All Things Pakistan, Adil Najam on the famous alumni of Forman Christian College

At the new Prime Minister’s oath-taking recently, the body language of Gen Pervez Musharraf as well as Yousuf Raza Gillani made it obvious that neither was comfortable being with the other. Each has deep reasons to distrust the motives of the other. One doubts, therefore, if they took any time to reminiscence about their college days. Both, after all, went to college at Lahore’s famed Forman Christian (FC) College; although at different times.

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IIT’s new social networking

In Mint, S Mitra Kalita on IIT Bombay’s ‘LAN ban’ and the effect it’s been having on an old student pastime — that of hanging out

 At the stroke of midnight, like Cinderella stripped of her gown and glass slippers, students at the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai also lose something that defines their survival: technology itself.

Exactly one year ago, officials at the elite IIT Bombay began restricting the Internet in hostels after fearing high-speed access was impeding socialization, replacing talk with instant messaging, virtual gaming instead of the sweaty, heart-rate-quickening variety. Initially, the “LAN ban”, as it was dubbed, was between 4.30pm and 7pm, and then midnight and 7am. Participation in sports and extracurricular activities had dropped and “when we tried to figure out the cause of this problem, it didn’t take us long to find that these students locked themselves in the confines of their rooms,” Prakash Gopalan, the dean of student affairs at IIT Bombay, said in an interview back then.

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Fight for IIM talent: 30 minutes to judge skills

This fortnight, India’s top business schools — the Indian Institutes of Management in Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Kolkata — hold job placement weeks, where companies vie to recruit the best and the brightest of the batch. Aparna Kalra in Mint on how companies jockey to recruit on the first day:

It has not yet reached a crescendo but across theIndian Institutes of Management (IIMs) this week,one question is finally being asked aloud: Is this really the best way? The top business schools kicked off placements on Tuesday, starting at IIM-Bangalore. But, this year, after several years of frantic hiring and high stress levels among both recruiters and candidates, there has been admission and recognition that reform is inevitable.

In some ways, the inflection is logical. It was only last year that a few IIMs took the drastic step of banning the “S” word-salary-and discussions of it during placements. The IIMs in Ahmedabad, Bangalore and Kolkata each have a five-day or week-long process but, in real terms, the fight for the country’s most- sought-after business school talent is over in a day or two at every campus.

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Behind IIM’s placements: A first-person account

On the condition of anonymity, a recruiter from one such company spoke to Mint’s Aparna Kalra on his experience.

I graduated from an IIM, so I am part of the IIM system but in my time placements were not the circus that they have become now.
I feel that all the gaming that is going on is completely unnecessary. The placements are also based on some socialist principles to ensure that everyone gets a job. Theyhave to be based on market clearing forces.

They have to be more open and a rolling process as it is in business schools in the US. I have recruited at top schools there and the system was simple. Each company came with a list of candidates it wanted to interview, candidates showed up for the interview; at the end of the day the company got a chance to calibrate the candidates against each other and make offers. The candidates were given a lot of time, typically two months, to make up their minds.

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Live from Bombay — teaching students in California

An American student takes a class in web-based technology at University of California San Diego from his desktop in Mumbai. From a UCSD news release:

Although the course is very interactive, Derek Lomas teaches it using various forms of web-based technologies, including wiki sites, video streams and e-mail. Lomas’ course, “Design for Development: Developing Technologies for Developing Economies,” aims to connect UCSD students to the problems of the developing world. It is a practicum class with a diverse set of undergraduate and graduate students whose varied majors include engineering, computer science, economics, biotechnology and art.

Lomas received his undergraduate degree in cognitive science at Yale University and currently is in the Master of Fine Arts program at UCSD, studying social design and art and science integration. He first traveled to India in July 2007 to work for QUALCOMM Inc., but stayed because he was inspired to teach the course from an international perspective.

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[via SAJAforum]

The scramble for kindergarten admissions

Admissions for prekindergarten seats in Delhi begin for children as young as 3, and what school they get into is widely felt to make or break their fate. Somini Sengupta in International Herald Tribune.

They offer prayers. They set aside bribe money. Their nights are restless.

This is a disquieting winter for parents of small children in India, especially here in its fast-growing capital, where the demands of ambition and demography collide with a shortage of desirable schools. This year, admissions for pre-kindergarten seats in Delhi begin for children as young as 3 years old, and the schools they get into now are widely believed to make or break their educational careers.

And so it was that a businessman, having applied to 15 private schools for his 4-year-old son, rushed to the gates of a prestigious academy in southern Delhi one morning last week to see whether his child’s name was on the preliminary list for possible admission.

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Push for education yields little for India’s poor

India faces the difficulty of educating its children in schools that have sunk to spectacularly low levels, writes Somini Sengupta in The New York Times

LAHTORA, India - With the dew just rising from the fields, dozens of children streamed into the two-room school in this small, poor village, tucking used rice sacks under their arms to use as makeshift chairs. So many children streamed in that the newly appointed head teacher, Rashid Hassan, pored through attendance books for the first two hours of class and complained bitterly. He had no idea who belonged in which grade. There was no way he could teach.

Another teacher arrived 90 minutes late. A third did not show up. The most senior teacher, the only one with a teaching degree, was believed to be on official government duty preparing voter registration cards. No one could quite recall when he had last taught.

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