2019-01-02 19:34
That India's Higher Education sector is in crisis and needs a 90s style liberalization draws the riposte: That Education is not commerce. It is a strange argument, as instrumentality is at t… Read More
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Books; People; Ideas : These are few of my favourite things. As I live between day-to-day compromises and change-the-world aspirations, this is the chronicle of my journey, full of moments of despair and of discoveries, of connections and creations, of the quest of knowledge-as-conversation.
2018-12-27 19:44
There are times in politics when being in opposition isn't a bad thing. With Brexit tearing the Tory Party, and with it, politics as usual, apart, Jeremy Corbyn feels lucky to be sitting on… Read More
2018-12-22 10:59
It is always poor people's fault.
The world seems precarious at this moment. The neo-liberal activism since the 80s have destroyed the foundations of the Liberal system, its system of nat… Read More
2018-12-18 12:30
With EdX's announcement that they have finally decided to search for sustainability by limiting the access to their online courses, the much awaited moment of normalisation of MOOCs has arri… Read More
2018-12-16 16:24
The cow cartoons explaining politics has now been greatly expanded (see the impressive range here) and an Indian version has become available. The joke, however, is timely, though slightly m… Read More
2018-12-08 22:50
India is among the most conservative countries in the world. Its republican constitution and democratic politics are misleading, as are its shiny IT service metropolises. The day to day life… Read More
2018-12-08 20:18
I am psychologically there already, to the end. Or, rather at the beginning of the next.
But, it is different this year. Since I migrated, I always measured my progress asking a que… Read More
2018-11-19 00:21
[This blog, a labour of love, gives meaning to me more ways than I realised. Unlike the blogs I am 'required' to write - to promote products or to project expertise - these unplanned, moment… Read More
2018-11-11 23:22
Higher Education in India is one of the world's most exciting opportunity, and one of the most frustrating problems.
The maths are obvious. India has hit upon a massive demographic opport… Read More
2018-11-08 17:17
Every year, governments of various Indian states roll out the red carpet for its diaspora. The shining, the leading, the welcoming and the emerging compete to attract the attention of prodig… Read More
2018-11-08 12:17
Perhaps this is a distinctly unfashionable question, particularly when so many new universities are being built all over the world and more people than ever before are going to the universit… Read More
2018-10-31 18:16
Gandhi is this incredible historical figure who is at once so inspiring and so absurd. He is a towering Jesus-like figure, who lives on in the street names and statues in his native India an… Read More
2018-10-26 06:43
Culture eats strategy for breakfast, Peter Drucker observed. And indeed so: Strategy's rational aims and goals are all too often frustrated by ways of seeing and doing things in an organisat… Read More
2018-10-21 22:12
Many of Jefferson's ideas have a lasting legacy, but perhaps none more so than the pursuit of happiness. That has become the essence of the American dream, the point of middle-class existenc… Read More
2018-10-21 21:45
I have traced the development of Indian Higher Education under a series of posts under two sections - The Road to Macaulay and Since Macaulay. This final post is about the formation of the C… Read More
2018-10-14 20:14
Macaulay’s minutes were accepted by Bentinck readily and the government resolution of 7th March 1835 plainly stated
His Lordship in Council is of opinion that the great object of the… Read More
2018-10-14 19:05
At the time when the expansion of Company state in India brought about political, economic and social changes that led to a rapid transformation of Indian education system, the idea of a Uni… Read More
2018-10-11 20:35
Bill Gates calls Hernando Del Soto 'the world's most important living economist'. He seems to have the mantra - the elixir of the 'mystery of capital' - that can turn the fortunes of the dev… Read More
2018-10-11 15:57
When he presented his Minutes in 1835, Macaulay’s mission was to align the educational funds, after its ten-fold increase, with the Utilitarian project of administrative and legal refo… Read More
2018-10-11 15:55
By the end of 1820s, the initial abortive efforts of Sir Thomas Munro in Madras and Mountstuart Elphinstone’s in Bombay to revive traditional Indian education were being replaced by pr… Read More
2018-10-11 15:54
In 1813, when the Company’s charter came up for renewal, Company territories in India were already a vast empire and its supremacy, over all the regional rivals as well as the Mughal E… Read More
2018-10-11 15:50
The Company state was in the middle of a rapid transformation in the 1790s. It was to be engaged in wars, with local rulers as well as in the broader global war with the French, for the next… Read More
2018-10-11 15:48
However, even when Hastings left Calcutta, forces that irreversibly altered India’s ‘ancient constitution’ were already ascendant. Paradoxically, the radical changes arose… Read More
2018-10-11 15:11
The big question for many college graduates is whether to work for a start-up or, wait and look for opportunities with more stable companies.
In my straw poll, the opinions are split righ… Read More
2018-10-11 15:05
If you live a life like I do, you will know one never really fails - only pivots.
So it is and I am in the middle of one now. To be sure, I am well into it: The difference between a pivot… Read More
2018-09-19 18:29
India faces a general election in 2019 and the battle lines are clearly drawn. The Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government, which came to power promising an economic miracle, has been an a… Read More
2018-09-08 11:42
That governments are so enthusiastically trying to promote start-up cultures, handing out investment grants and building fancy new hubs, would make Milton Friedman turn in his grave: One can… Read More
2018-09-05 14:29
Liberalism is a contested word. So contested, in fact, that I can't even qualify it with some catch-all phrase, like 'as it is commonly understood'.
In fact, it is not understood at… Read More
2018-09-02 21:58
I titled these posts the Global Condition as I thought my Internet-inspired, immigration-induced state of life is best expressed as such, but the debate whether this is living global or bein… Read More
2018-09-01 19:37
I have reset my life.
I did this before: When I hit a roadblock or got stuck doing something I hated, I would imagine a day when a new life started. And, it works, because, all frus… Read More
2018-08-19 12:25
The death of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the first non-Congress Indian Prime Minister who served a full term (the incumbent, Narendra Modi, is likely to become the second), occasioned a wave of sy… Read More
2018-08-17 19:04
I am working on developing a certification programme for professionals who have to work outside their countries, or, in an industry which needs constant global interaction, with customers, c… Read More
2018-08-14 17:31
So the date is near and the signs are unmistakable. House sales have stagnated along with house prices. The Sterling is forever stuck in a zone of weakness. Shoppers are staying home. Superm… Read More
2018-08-14 15:59
Imran Khan's ascension to Premiership in Pakistan could have been a great democratic moment: An elected government completed its term, only the second time in the country's history; the two… Read More
2018-08-03 07:35
As much we would like to believe that there is no common global pattern, we love to indulge in grand theories when things go wrong. So, the world politics has changed since 2014, and we have… Read More
2018-08-01 18:04
The future of college is a popular conference topic. The discussion usually starts with the obvious - that the college must change as the economy is changing - and revolves around a familiar… Read More
2018-07-22 22:02
I wrote about the case for allowing foreign universities to be allowed to operate in India. In this connection, I mentioned the Foreign Higher Education Providers Bill, which has appeared in… Read More
2018-07-22 18:41
Whether foreign universities would be permitted to operate in India, the way they do in Malaysia, United Arab Emirates, or even in China, has been one of the most vexing policy questions tha… Read More
2018-07-16 13:08
The trouble with Critical
Thinking is that we live in a society based on Mimicry. If we take away the
mimicry, the whole society falls apart.
That innovation is the basis of
our economic… Read More
2018-07-12 10:25
Alternative history is usually treated as nonsense or worse - by historians! Justifiably so, as there is so much falsification of history already. At a time of battle against the alternative… Read More
2018-07-06 05:55
Do we live to pursue Happiness?
Well, before you say that it is self-evident, here is the logic of the question: If happiness is inside us, why would have to live to pursue it?
Jeffers… Read More
2018-07-05 09:26
The conversation in India has now turned to liberal education. About time, one would say, to recognise a major problem - that the education became too vocational, too narrow and too fo… Read More
2018-06-29 07:54
I wrote about my career pivot, moving away from start-up kind of work and focusing more on introducing innovation within educational institutions. This means I am spending more time thinking… Read More
2018-06-27 13:21
A lot happening at my end, which impeded my blog writing for a while. As I restart, I thought I would do so by doing an update. This will, I hope, not only get the conversation started, but… Read More
2018-06-26 15:23
If there is a place to see Einstein's observation in action - about stupidity being the act of doing the same thing over and over and to expect different results - it would be the modern uni… Read More
2018-06-17 18:06
Unlike the American founders, the Founders of Modern India generally get a bad press. Indeed, many people do not think of them as Founders at all - India was there for thousands of years, th… Read More
2018-06-16 22:39
The relationship between state and enterprise has been at the heart of public policy debate for many years. There was the Nineteenth Century Liberal idea, reformulated in the Twentieth by th… Read More
2018-06-11 08:39
I didn't write for almost three weeks as I was in India. The essence of my work there is to deal with employment creation. Part of my work is pro-bono - a city initiative focused on Industry… Read More
2018-05-15 10:31
When the subject of establishing English style Public Colleges in India came up before the British Parliament in the late Eighteenth Century, the proposition was deemed to be both prepostero… Read More
2018-05-14 16:35
It's part of the romance of the college: The learner leaves home to join a community of fellow learners, to begin a new stage of life. The imaginary is integral to middle-class life, shaping… Read More
2018-05-10 11:08
Today is the Birth Anniversary of Rabindranath Tagore.
Tagore was the first global Literary Superstar, the first Nobel Prize Winner from Asia, whose flowing robes and the white bear… Read More
2018-05-07 19:28
Who wants to really study History anymore? Has it not ended already, as Francis Fukuyama famously declared? And, besides, what role may it have at a time when we are so busy making the futur… Read More
2018-05-02 09:26
Robots were supposed to take over the universe. Singularity - the end of human history - was due in about a decades time. And, then, it was to be a different world altogether - one with self… Read More
2018-04-22 08:50
One of the foundational industrial age belief is 'what gets measured, gets done'. This is indeed at the heart of scientific management and all the business models that we so love. The… Read More
2018-04-20 10:51
I. Why Doesn't Technology Change Higher Education?
I lived through the Dotcom years - all that frenzy about valuation of Start-ups, reading Red Herring (the aptly named Magazine of the ti… Read More
2018-04-13 09:01
China is redefining its universities, and, as a result, changing the landscape of International Higher Ed.
Indeed, this is early days, and most Chinese universities are still very t… Read More
2018-04-11 10:13
I just heard Michael Ignatieff hope that when some of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese students studying in the United States choose to go home, and confront the authoritarian society at… Read More
2018-04-09 19:25
At the heart of the modern education system, there are assumptions about a global division of labour.
The education system that we have today, came about in the nineteenth century, arising… Read More
2018-04-07 09:53
Since October, as I walked out of my job, I have been looking to fine-tune my ideas about Education-to-Employment transition.
The first step of this was to look at the experiences o… Read More
2018-04-02 12:06
I wrote about the origin story of the Indian Education system (See An 'Indian' Education) to argue that 'Indianness' of Education does not necessarily have to be regressive, ritualistic or r… Read More
2018-03-30 22:16
What would an Indian Education system look like?
There are many interesting conversations about this in India. The primary reason for this is indeed the ascendancy of BJP, a Hindu Nationa… Read More
2018-03-28 11:51
In earlier posts, I wrote about my current exploration of possibilities of a Liberal Education for the 21st Century (See A Liberal Education For The 21st Century and A Liberal Education for… Read More
2018-03-27 16:51
This is a question I asked my Trainer friends often, without ever receiving a satisfactory answer: Why isn't there a course on understanding failures?
Business failures are more common th… Read More
2018-03-27 13:57
In the conference circuit, the most
common complaint against Higher Education institutions is that they do
not understand employer requirements. Thereafter comes the slide that
cites eith… Read More
2018-03-25 15:11
Henry Moore's idea - that one should work all life towards a slightly unattainable goal - appeals to me: That way, I can have meaning at work and yet never be satisfied.
I am sure I have… Read More
2018-03-25 13:24
Is the game over for Facebook?
Would this outrage of knowing that the network is controlling us - reading out our most guarded desires and obsessions and feeding and fuelling the same thr… Read More
2018-03-23 17:44
Is Donald Trump mad?
That's the question that popped out in my mind as I engaged with the very unlikely New York Times piece When The Leader of the Free World is an Ugly American ,which a… Read More
2018-03-22 16:45
For those who want to change the world through Powerpoint, there are some fundamental beliefs about Education.
Like, education is about 'human capital', making the individuals receiving e… Read More
2018-03-21 14:41
I read Erez Manela's The Wilsonian Moment: Self-determination and the Intellectual Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism over the weekend.
As far as Intellectual Histories go, this is… Read More
2018-03-16 11:35
Business Schools are a great success story in Higher Education. What may have started as a Correspondence training was transformed by the establishment of University department in Pennsylvan… Read More
2018-03-15 15:27
In an ironic twist, many large employers in India complain that the education Indian graduates receive are too narrow.
Surely, the same employers, riding high on growth of IT servic… Read More
2018-02-22 14:22
I write this post mainly as a record and a response to a debate that I participated in last week. The question we were concerned with is the well-known one, why did Western Europe, and parti… Read More
2018-02-16 19:07
The Foundation of Asiatic Society
In discussing Warren Hastings' role in the history of Indian Education, I mentioned his sponsorship of Asiatic Society of Bengal (see the earlier post h… Read More
2018-02-15 10:20
Whether or not one includes Warren Hastings in the history of Education in India is a matter of perspective. If writing the history of education means writing the history of schools, the imp… Read More
2018-02-12 13:02
The story of British influence on Indian Education, to which Macaulay's Minutes of 1835 belong, has been told in six distinct phases. Syed Nurullah and J P Naik's very popular and influentia… Read More
2018-02-12 08:16
Ten years ago, I wrote a post on this blog about Lord Macaulay, or, more specifically, about a statement which he allegedly had made about India. I meant to debunk one of those Internet meme… Read More
2018-02-09 12:15
I have argued elsewhere that the expansion of formal higher education is precisely the wrong thing to do at a time of great technological change, as college lacks the inclusiveness and openn… Read More
![‘A World Without The Jews’: Nazi Ideology, German Imagination And The Holocaust[1]](https://cdn.blogarama.com/images/posts_thumbs_site_id/503/50266-1976235291.w320.jpg "‘A World Without The Jews’: Nazi Ideology, German Imagination And The Holocaust[1]")
2018-02-08 20:24
IntroductionErna Petri née Kürbs, a farmer’s daughter from Herressen in Thuringia, arrived in Ukraine with her three year old son to join her husband Horst in June 1942. Ho… Read More
2018-02-08 15:17
I have made this point before, that we need less College, and more Coffee-House, learning (see the earlier post). Here, I shall attempt to explain, one more time, the difference between the… Read More
2018-02-07 15:44
When we talk about automation, we usually imagine a future without jobs - except for a few nerds perhaps! Therefore, the conversation about this future centres around two things: One, on STE… Read More
2018-02-06 07:43
Automation is coming, to a factory near you - that really is the news. One may wrap the story with the fancy stuff - Robots or self-driving cars - but automation of less glamorous type is al… Read More
2018-02-05 12:56
In trying to explore the roots of the 'closed mind' - the inhospitable environment for new ideas in India - I concluded earlier that this has nothing to do with an unique Indian character, c… Read More
2018-02-05 08:52
At some point in 2006, the nature of the Higher Education changed. Many developing countries, led by China and India, embraced the idea that a college educated population is the key to escap… Read More
2018-02-02 18:23
Kishore Mahbubani calls India an 'Open Society with a Closed Mind' - in contrast with China's 'Closed Society with an Open Mind' - and he is certainly right. The apparent diversity of India… Read More
2018-01-31 10:30
My journeys abroad was to make sense of myself, to see from the outside what can't be seen from the inside. Perhaps predictably, but at once ironically, I ended up in England, mother country… Read More
2018-01-28 16:22
The Middle Class is all about paradoxes.
Those who embrace Middle Class claim not to believe in classes at all, or at least in class as a determinant of human behaviour.
For Mi… Read More
2018-01-28 12:21
We have come to love Innovation as the engine of growth and progress. Being innovative is no longer a pejorative, but a compliment; even totalitarian Governments set up innovation ecosystems… Read More
2018-01-16 11:57
Right now, India is one exciting economic story. Its population is young and its economy is growing. The government, with a strong mandate in Union and State levels, have been introducing a… Read More
2018-01-11 20:22
Indeed, I have borrowed the title from Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz's classic study, because we are living through a time when th race is visible in all its splendour, with anxious hinge… Read More
2018-01-09 12:00
Should Education become more local, or global? This was a question posed to me in a conversation: As in these cases, I improvised an answer. But, as usual, the obvious answer is not necessar… Read More
2018-01-02 09:09
I wrote earlier about the tension between The College and The Coffee-House - between formal and informal systems of education and knowledge sharing - and I intend to focus my attention on th… Read More
2017-12-31 16:40
The easy point to miss about the different modern institutions that we live by - markets and democracy - that these take for granted a compassionate society. Take away compassion and democra… Read More
2017-12-27 22:17
I have spent this holiday season working on my essay on Nazi Ideology and Holocaust. Earlier this year, I spent the first two weeks of the New Year doing another essay, a mistake that I don'… Read More
2017-12-25 20:05
When I migrated in 2004, I suddenly became, from being comparatively well-off in a poor country, to being poor in a rich country. I did not come with a job in hand, and did not have a techni… Read More
2017-12-06 14:15
The Idea of India, as conceived just after the country's independence, is facing an existential challenge, but that may not be a bad thing. It is being challenged because it was an act of im… Read More
2017-12-04 11:09
Even when the limitations of an education system are quite obvious, innovations are hard to come by. This is a lesson many well-meaning investors and hard-charging entrepreneurs have learnt… Read More
2017-11-27 13:29
When I am asked what I do, I would like to say I work on Education Innovation. This may sound vague, but it has the twin advantages of filtering the conversation: Most conversations end ther… Read More
2017-11-24 14:27
'Neo-Liberalism' has come to eat the world.
The term pops up every now and then, sometimes in unexpected places. Usually derogatory in its employ, it appears to signify both the cau… Read More
2017-11-23 10:57
It has become a commonplace to say that, with globalisation and automation transforming the world of work, we need more 'soft skills'. There are various lists of these 'skills' available on… Read More
2017-11-22 09:46
Apprenticeships seem like one idea whose time never comes.
Or, its time may have come and gone, long time ago. Its past makes it appear romantic, just like medieval castles and knights. I… Read More
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