Times of India ⁽⁹²⁾

Read full article Abstract: Opposition to the foreign universities Bill, some of it originating even from within the Congress, is a sad affair for the nation. Few arguments against this much-needed and long-neglected reform stand up to close scrutiny. Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in higher education, defined as the number of students enrolled in colleges and universities as a per cent of the total college-age population, stood at eight in China and 10 in India in 2000. By 2007, the ratio had shot up to 22 in China but crawled up barely to 13 in India. Seen differently, GER in secondary education in India was 57 in 2007. Even assuming that only half of these students actually graduate, our colleges and universities are seriously short of space.

Read full article Abstract: Lagging employment recovery and continuing high levels of unemployment have marked the macroeconomic scenario in the United States. So, it is natural that the United States, which chaired the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh, would use its privileged position as the host to invite the US secretary of labour, a well-known union activist, to convene a meeting of the employment and labour ministers on the jobs situation prior to the next G-20 heads of state meeting in Canada. The macroeconomic aspects of the labour situation are indeed a proper focus of such a meeting. But the Pittsburgh declaration goes further and urges the G-20 countries not to "disregard or weaken internationally recognised labour standards" and to "implement policies consistent with ILO fundamental principles and rights at work".

Read full article Abstract: India-China comparisons often take 1980 or a later year as the starting point. But a balanced understanding of the relative achievements of the two countries requires a look at prior decades as well. Chairman Mao Zedong founded the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, establishing the Communist Party of China (CPC) as the sole authority. Approximately around the same time, India opted for a democratic regime under the leadership of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. While most Indians have a good idea of what democracy delivered to them between 1950 and 1980, they perhaps know far less about China. Today, it is commonplace to argue that the Chinese economy is performing better because authoritarianism allows its government to be more effective. But few observers care to record the gigantic failures of the same authoritarianism in the early decades.

Read full article Abstract: The freedom movement of India is without a parallel in the history of mankind. Lasting for almost a century, the movement produced an unending stream of heroes ready to give their lives to the country. Its reach expanded as it progressed until it had drawn virtually all Indians into its fold. Once freedom had been won, the surviving heroes went on to unify peoples of diverse cultures, languages, religions and castes under a common democratic Constitution. Even excluding the area belonging to Pakistan, this was the first time since Emperor Ashok in the 3rd century BC that such a vast territory in the subcontinent had come to form a single nation with all princely states melting into it.

Read full article Abstract: Jaswant Singh has done a great service by sensitising us to the importance of a better understanding of India's immediate pre-independence history. His book, and the controversy that surrounded it recently, have led me to undertake a closer scrutiny of this critical period. I have, in turn, reached the conclusion that the key question on which the media has been transfixed who is culpable for the partition is essentially moot. The objectives, philosophies and backgrounds of Jawaharlal Nehru and Mohammed Ali Jinnah and of the Congress and Muslim League were so fundamentally in conflict that the partition was inevitable.