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Privatization of Education: A Boon or A Bane? Sambit Mallick ... about a truly revolutionary transformation in the field of education in India by removing ...
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10 Aug 2008 ... Experience of Privatization of Education in India.
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5 Jan 2009 ... But, for a poor country like India, privatisation of education will not be without its unmitigated ills. First of all, how many Indian ...
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It is also possible to look at privatisation of higher education in India from a sociological and cultural perspective, focusing on the bias inherent in ...
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[Via Solomon Arulraj] In a paper on Privatization of Higher Education in India, Jandhyala BG Tilak, a senior economist at the National Institute of ...
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Privatization of Education. Within the Asian and Pacific region, as in other parts of .... However, one study in India seemed to contradict these findings. ...
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14 Aug 2008 ... Education is the process of instruction aimed at the all round development of boys and girls. Education dispels ignorance.
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5 Aug 2009 ... Parliament on Tuesday passed the Right to Education Bill giving all the children between six to 14 years of age in the country a right to ...
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Education is now a right
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Asha announces 12th global 'Work an Hour' campaignSiliconindia.com - 6 hours ago By siliconindia news bureau Bangalore: In its drive to promote education among underprivileged children in India, Asha for Education (AfE) has announced the ... 'Needed, a critical mass of class XII students'Economic Times - Aug 5, 2009 ... come in droves to the education sector, of course, with government intervention to ensure that the underprivileged groups too get the benefit thereof. ... MVP donates P3.2 million for education of soldiers' childrenPhilippine Star - 2 hours ago MANILA, Philippines - A business group involved in assisting underprivileged people and communities to be self-reliant turned over yesterday P3.2 million to ... Videos `doctored' says Akshaya Patra FoundationTimes of India - 21 hours ago BANGALORE: The independent trustees of Akshaya Patra Foundation (APF) have said that the APF has always worked for the benefit of underprivileged children ... Graduates seek solace in NREGSTimes of India - - 19 hours ago The ngos seeks to provide equal opportunity to even the most underprivileged child. "Almost every village in tribal areas have 4-5 educated youth working as ... On a mission to teach 1m childrenTimes of India - Aug 6, 2009 ... the Right to Education Bill 2009 two days ago, but Round Table India has already set its target of providing education to 1 million underprivileged ... Saif Ali Khan goes back to his ABCsDaily News & Analysis - Jul 22, 2009 Project Shiksha is anational consumer program which allows consumers to participate in a national effort to support the education of underprivileged ... Empowering the underpriviliged: VihaanTimes of India - - Jul 21, 2009 Vihaan started its operation in early 1993 in Jaipur to work for child development and provide education to underprivileged children in the state. ... Beat the recession--watch uplifting Bollywood films & make a ...Siliconindia.com - 2 hours ago All of the funds that are raised during the course of the film festival will go towards the education and empowerment of underprivileged children. UK charity raises funds for Indian childrenHindu - Jul 24, 2009 London (PTI): Seventy-five volunteers of Pratham UK, a charity organisation, have raised £13500 for the education of underprivileged children in India, ... Stay up to date on these results: |
Sibal now looking at Foreign Universities BillExpress Buzz - Aug 5, 2009 NEW DELHI: After getting smooth passage of the Right to Education Bill in both the Houses of Parliament, Union Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil ... Sibal speech gets thumbs-up from disability rights activists Indian Express Beginning of term Indian Express Sibal promises fair deal to Kashmir on central universityTimes of India - Aug 3, 2009 NEW DELHI: Amidst a demand for a central university in the Jammu region, HRD minister Kapil Sibal on Monday said the government would follow the path of ... TOWARDS FREEDOM Calcutta Telegraph • Kapil Sibal inaugurates CII- BESU Industrial Research, Innovation & HRD CentreInstitute of International Trade - 8 hours ago Mr. Kapil Sibal, Hon'ble Minister for Human Resource Development, Government of India at 4th CII University at Industry Council Symposium at BESU, Shibpur ... Government mulling autonomous colleges with stringent norms: SibalTimes of India - Jul 24, 2009 NEW DELHI: Human resource development minister Kapil Sibal on Friday said the government was considering allowing new autonomous colleges to be set up ... Sibal clips AICTE wings Calcutta Telegraph Education Bill: Sibal pushes, BJP opposesThe Statesman - Jul 31, 2009 NEW DELHI, 31 JULY: The HRD minister, Mr Kapil Sibal, today made a strong push for the Bill on the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education in the ... Right to education a step closer to reality Chandigarh Tribune Orissa CM Naveen Patnaik meets HRD Minister Sibal, demands more fundsOrissadiary.com - Aug 5, 2009 Report by Orissadiary correspondent; New Delhi: Orissa Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Wednesday met Union Human Resource Development minister Kapil Sibal ... CM seeks hike in Central aid for education scheme Times of India Plea for more central aid in school scheme Calcutta Telegraph Send more funds: CM The Statesman State enraged at Sibal callCalcutta Telegraph - Aug 4, 2009 Human resource development minister Kapil Sibal's call to curb political interference in the appointment of vice-chancellors has touched the state ... Dubious foreign univs won't be let in: SibalTimes of India - Jul 28, 2009 NEW DELHI: HRD minister Kapil Sibal said on Tuesday that while caution in letting foreign educational providers in India is well advised, the country should ... Sibal: No place for profit-making foreign varsities Indian Express Stay up to date on these results: |
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Parliament nod for Right to Education Bill - 2 days ago The legislation would ensure every child's right to education, and the obligation of the government to impart it. Once the President gave assent to the Bill ...Hindu - 174 related articles »Right to Education Bill, demystified - Express Buzz - 13 related articles »Latha Jishnu: The right to cut-rate education - Business Standard - 49 related articles »Welcome to the Homepage of the Right to Education Project | Right ...
A resource on the status of the right to education as outlined by the United Nations, supporting the work of the UN Special Rapporteur on education.
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ibibo Sawaal Expert Answers:According to Manusmriti, what r the
According to Manusmriti, what r the rules of observing Dharma? , Ask your Lucknow questions at ibibo, Give answers share your knowledge on Lucknow, ...
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The Manu Smriti was written as the words of the original creator, the “Imperishable One .... British Raj primarily refers to the British rule in the Indian ...
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Manusmriti: The Laws of Manu ... The above rule regarding impurity on account of a death has been prescribed (for cases where the kins men live) near (the ...
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They have argued that the caste system as prescribed by the Manusmriti developed a society that was very easy to subjugate and rule[citation needed]. ...
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Most importantly, even alleged anti-Hindus like Balsham (in his book "The Wonder that was India") have praised the Manu Smriti for the rules it lays for the ...
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29 May 2004 ... It is a great misunderstanding that the Manu-smriti (or Manu's .... your children here (in the house): be vigilant to rule your household in ...
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It is the creation of the Muslim rule because those who put up a fight and did ... The Vishva Hindu Parishad totally rejects the "Manu Smriti" as it has no ...
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Before you discuss Manusmriti you must know its origin . ... each yuga or epoch has a smruti that has the rules laid out that are to be followed. ...
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They have argued that the caste system as prescribed by the Manusmriti developed a de-facto apartheid social system that was very easy to subjugate and rule ...
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Manusmriti, Manu and the medical paradox by Dr. Subhash C. Sharma
29 May 2004 ... Contrary to the general Vedic view insisting the search for knowledge, Manu-smriti seems to nullify the importance and pursuit of education ...
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View manusmriti manusmriti's professional profile on LinkedIn. ... manusmriti manusmriti. India. Industry: Education Management ...
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Bhagavata Purana And Manu Smriti Relate The Duties Of A Brahmachari ... During the period of his education the Brahmachari has to live in his guru's ...
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Seva posted Re:(smartha 5) Adi Sankaracharya and Manu Smriti on 6 days ago ..... allow them to get even the basic education in language, grammar, math etc. ...
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Encyclopedia article of Manusmriti at Reference.com compiled from comprehensive and current ... The education of women is also discussed in the text. ...
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View Manu Smriti profile. SiliconIndia is empowering professionals like Manu Smriti to network, get daily news updates, blogs, Q&A, communities, education, ...
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Select Category, Background, Crime, Economy, Education ... The Manusmriti translated "Laws of Manu" is a foundational work of Hindu law and ancient Indian ...
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Manusmriti is the creation of Kalayugga and created multiple fractions in the society ... The text is not related to any right to education (that's a modern ...
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Introduction to the Manusmriti the laws of Manu by George Buhler. ... Computer/Electronics, Dating, Education, Entertainment, Family, Financial_Services ...
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Restorative Justice and India's Caste System: New World Outlook ...
- 6 AugIndia's caste system can no longer fully contain the socioeconomic change that the country ... and levels of education are no longer correlated with caste. ...
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2 Oct 2006 ... According to a recent news item, the Indian government will start offering a ... This equanimity about the caste system did not last. ... If the poor people had some basic access to education and work, later generations ...
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Postprimary education has traditionally catered to the interests of the higher and upwardly mobile castes (see Changes in the Caste System, ch. 5). ...
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An improved education system may be one of the key ingredients to breaking the cycle of poverty and deprivation to scheduled caste children in India. During ...
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20 Jan 2008 ... In India, equalizing education viewed as weapon in fight against caste system. Failure to close gap between social strata slowing progress ...
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The caste system in Bali is similar to the Indian caste system; however, ..... on to further education more easily and this has raised their social status. ...
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Free Online Library: India: quotas vs. the caste system: affirmative ... of Indian society, caste discrimination has limited access to education and jobs. ...
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India passes free education bill | |
The Indian parliament has approved a landmark education bill which seeks to guarantee free and compulsory education for children aged between six and 14. The bill, passed by the lower house of parliament, will set up new state-run neighbourhood schools. It will also force private ones to reserve at least a quarter of their places for poor children. Currently about 70 million children receive no schooling, and more than a third of the population is illiterate. The bill was passed by the upper house last month. It now needs presidential assent - a mere formality, correspondents say - to become law. 'New era' India's Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal described the passage of the bill as "harbinger of a new era" for children to meet the challenges of the 21st century. "We as a nation cannot afford our children not going to schools," he said. The minister said the bill covers children with disabilities and that the government is planning to set up special schools for them. "This bill provides for the inclusion of children who are disadvantaged because of disability. The government is not only setting up special schools for them but doing all it can to provide education to them in all types of schools," Mr Sibal said. The bill also ends widespread practices by which schools impose admission fees on parents to guarantee their children a place and bureaucrats enjoy discretionary powers on deciding who to let in. Achieving universal education is one of the UN's Millennium Development Goals to be met by the year 2015. Critics of the bill, however, say it is not clear how the government plans to pay for this. Also, they say it does not cover children below the age of six and therefore fails to recognise the importance of the early years of a child's development. They say it also does little to address India's inequitable school system under which there are vast discrepancies between well-funded private schools and state-run schools with poor quality teaching staff and infrastructure. At the moment India spends a little over 3% of its GDP on education. | |
The law is unique as while providing compulsory education, it would not fail any student till Class 8th while enjoining upon all government and private schools to provide 25% quota to “disadvantaged” children. The law provides for building neighbourhood schools in three years whose definition and location will be decided by states.
The legislation which has already been passed by the Rajya Sabha will soon be enacted after getting the assent from President Pratibha Patil.
In an indication of importance which Congress attaches to the law, party chief Sonia Gandhi sat through its passage on Tuesday while observers speculated if she would speak. In the event, she chose not to. But her presence was expected to help Congress’s efforts to seal its stamp on the seminal law.
Sonia’s was no token presence, however. She was attentive, and even prodded HRD minister Kapil Sibal to switch from “disabled persons” to the politically correct “differently abled”.
Replying to the discussion on the landmark legislation, Sibal clarified doubts on the right of disabled persons, raised by some groups, He said disabled persons were part of the category of “disadvantaged sections” who would get reservation. He added that Disability Act, which was part of RTE, was being amended to include Cerebral Palsy and Autism, and the amendment would automatically bring in the law’s ambit children with these disabilities.
A lingering doubt, however, remains on the bill not exempting minority institutions from reservation. MIM MP Asaduddin Owaisi warned it could be challenged in court as violative of Constitution. Sibal, however, said the minority institutions could give quota to disadvantaged sections among the minorities.
Crucially, the bill aims to do away with the practice of schools taking capitation fees before admission and subjecting the children or parents to any screening procedure.
The RTE would empower the seven-year-old 86th Constitutional amendment that made free and compulsory education a fundamental right. The RTE Bill sets down guidelines for states and the Centre to execute and enforce this right. Earlier, education was part of the directive principles of state policy.
Both Centre and states will be responsible for the finances. The Centre will prepare the capital and recurring expenditure and provide it as grants-in-aid to each state.
Sunil Maurya, secretary of local unit of AISA said that the Right to Education bill would result in the commercialization of education and privatization. The bill is also silent that 10 per cent of the annual budget would be spend on the education sector and further no recommendations of DS Kothari and Unnikrishan have been ignored in the bill.
He said that the provision of 25 per cent reservation for poor children in the schools and right to education is simple ploy of the Centre to be absolved of the responsibilities for providing education.
He said that AISA would continue to agitate on the issue of present structure of the Right to Education bill unless necessary changes are made in the bill in the interests of the children and the students at large.
The World Bank Institute offers a formal definition of a knowledge economy as one that creates, disseminates, and uses knowledge to enhance its growth and development.
A knowledge economy uses data as it raw material and transforms it using technology, analysis tools, and human intelligence into knowledge and expertise. Fig. 1 illustrates the main phases of this transformation process.
India will become a leader in the global knowledge economy by 2010. This will be the result of a highly focussed effort to achieve global thought leadership in a few select fields that offer the highest potential for Knowledge Process Outsourcing (KPO). Here are three reasons for my optimism:
- India enjoys unique advantages in having a large pool of English-speaking professionals with degrees in engineering, science or mathematics, who are capable and flexible to learn new skills fast given the right opportunity and reward structure.
- The Indian Diaspora in the United States and the United Kingdom have several among them who have achieved thought leadership in knowledge intensive fields. They are a rich source of domain expertise and can be motivated to help transfer knowledge and expertise to India and nurture a new generation of India-based thought leaders.
- The entrepreneurial and energetic business community in India has the capacity to step up to this challenge and is capable of working closely with a supportive government to remove barriers that stand in the way of achieving of this vision.
Let's examine in some
First-generation People of Indian Origin (PIO) in North America and the UK includes scientists, doctors, technologists, engineers and managers who migrated to these countries from India starting in the 1960s. Many of the children of these high achievers have been educated at the best universities in the US, Canada [ Images ] and the UK and are now part of the workforce in these nations.
Between these two groups of PIOs there are several hundreds if not thousands who are recognised thought leaders within the global knowledge economy. They are perfect role modes for what India-based staff needs to be like by 2010.
Free education for children or a Bill of lapses
;Statesman News Service
BHUBANESWAR, 6 AUG: While the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Bill, 2009, which was recently passed by the Lok Sabha, has been hailed nationwide, the civil society has found certain lacuna in the Bill and called for its re-drafting in order that it may benefit one and all.
The Bill, which was passed in the Rajya Sabha on 20 July, envisages providing free and compulsory education to children in the 6-14 age group. It now awaits the Presidential assent.
Campaign Against Child Labour (CACL), billed as the largest network in the country on child rights with 6,500 member organisations in 21 states, rued that the Bill “excludes” millions of children from the Right to Education. It is limited to 8th Standard only, which means exclusion of children in the age groups of 1-6 and 14-18 years from their Right to Education. This apart, the Bill does not guarantee quality of education, which is the essence of the hour.
The Bill, if enacted as it is, will exclude about 157 million children of India, who are in the age group of 1-6 years and were already guaranteed the right to free and compulsory education by the Supreme Court of India way back in 1993, CACL national executive committee member Mr Ranjan Mohanty said. Similarly, the Bill does not recognise the right to free and compulsory education for children of the 14-18 age group, notwithstanding the United Nation’s Declaration on Child Rights, he pointed out.
Besides, the Bill is depriving poor children from the opportunity and eligibility for technical education and higher education by providing free education only up to the eighth standard because to be admitted into most technical education and higher education courses a student now needs at least ‘10+2 passed’ eligibility, he noted.
Also, in the age-group of 6-14, about 150 million children in government-run schools will be given the same old cheaper quality of education, as the bill is not talking about the improvement of learning quality and infrastructural quality in the schools.
The Bill further limits the role of the government to ensure that there is one school in each neighbourhood area and shifts the responsibility of bringing children to those schools onto the parents.
“This shows the government abdicating from its responsibility of making special provisions for bringing child labourers, bonded labourers, and mentally and physically challenged children to school. Thus the bill is depriving 11.73 million physically/mentally challenged children and 12.6 million child labourers,” Mr Mohanty lamented adding that the bill does not have any clear direction or commitment regarding the financial responsibility of the state and Central government.
“It also stops citizen from knocking on the court's door if the fundamental right to education is violated, as it directs people to complain to the “National Commission for the Protection of Child Rights” which has no judicial power,” he observed.
After the bill was first introduced in the Rajya Sabha in December last year, the civil society had organised many programmes to sensitise stakeholders in a bid to rectify the loopholes. While some of the demands were raised and supported by many MPs during the debate on the bill, the remaining lacuna would spoil the very spirit behind the bill, he said, maintaining that they would continue to raise and organise public opinion in all its state chapters in 21 states on the derogatory provisions of the bill. He added that they would strive for a larger people’s movement if the bill gets enacted without any consideration or change.
Manusmṛti
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 | This article contains Indic text. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks or boxes, misplaced vowels or missing conjuncts instead of Indic text. |
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Smriti · Śruti · Bhagavad Gita · Purana · Manu Smriti · Agama · Pancharatra · Tantra · Akilathirattu · Sūtra · Stotra · Dharmashastra · Divya Prabandha · Tevaram · Ramacharitamanas · Bhagavata Purana |
Manusmṛti (Sanskrit: मनुस्मृति), also known as Mānava-Dharmaśāstra (Sanskrit: मानवधर्मशास्त्र), is the most important and earliest metrical work of the Dharmaśāstra textual tradition of Hinduism.[1] Generally known in English as the Laws of Manu, it was first translated into English in 1794 by Sir William Jones, an English Orientalist and judge of the British Supreme Court of Judicature in Calcutta.[2] The text presents itself as a discourse given by the sage called Manu to a group of seers, or rishis, who beseech him to tell them the "law of all the social classes" (1.2). Manu became the standard point of reference for all future Dharmaśāstras that followed it. [3]
[edit] Sources and Authority
The Manu Smriti was written as the words of the original creator, the “Imperishable One,” or “Brahmā”. [4] By attributing the words to supernatural forces, the text takes on an authoritative tone as a statement on Dharma, in opposition to previous texts in the field, which were more scholarly. [5] A content analysis, however, shows the obvious influence of previous Dharmasutras and Arthasastric work. In particular, the Manu Smriti was the first to adopt the term vyavaharapadas. These eighteen Titles of Law or Grounds for Litigation make up more than one fifth of the work and deal primarily with matters of the king, state, and judicial procedure. [6]
[edit] Author
Western scholars imagine another author of this sacred text, who used the eponym “Manu” in order to invoke association with the first human being and also the first king in Indian tradition. Though most scholars had previously considered the text a composite put together over a long period of time, Olivelle has recently argued that the complex and consistent structure of the text suggests a single author. However, no details of this eponymous author's life are known, though it is likely that he belonged to a conservative Brahmin caste somewhere in Northern India.[7]
[edit] Dating and Historical Context
A range of historical opinion generally dates composition of the text any time between 200 BCE and 200 CE.[8] After the breakdown of the Maurya and Shunga empires, there was a period of uncertainty that led to renewed interest in traditional social norms.[9] In Thapar's view, "The severity of the Dharma-shastras was doubtless a commentary arising from the insecurity of the orthodox in an age of flux."[10]
The dharma class of texts were also noteworthy because they did not depend on the authority of particular Vedic schools, becoming the starting point of an independent tradition that emphasized dharma itself and not its Vedic origins.[11]
[edit] Structure of the Text
The original treatise consisted of one thousand chapters of law, polity, and pleasure given by Brahmā. His son, Manu, learns these lessons and proceeds to teach his own students, including Bhrigu. Bhrigu then relays this information in the Manu Smriti, to an audience of his own pupils. [12]
This original narrative was subdivided later into twelve chapters. There is debate over the effects of this division on the underlying, holistic manner in which the original treatise was written. [13] The book is written in simple verse as opposed to the metrical verse of the preceding dharmasutras. Manu also introduced a unique “transitional verse” which segued the end of one subject and the beginning of the next.
The treatise is written with a frame story, in which a dialogue takes place between Manu’s disciple, Bhrigu, and an audience of his own students. The story begins with Manu himself detailing the creation of the world and the society within it, structured around four social classes. Bhrigu takes over for the remainder of the work, teaching the details of the rest of Manu’s teachings. The audience reappears twice more, asking first to ask about how Brahmins can be subjected to death, and second to ask the effects of action. [14]
[edit] Table of Contents
This Table of Contents comes from Olivelle's translation of the Manu Smriti and provides the transitional verses between each subject: [15]
[edit] 1. Origin of the World (1.1-119)
[edit] 2. Sources of the Law (2.1-24)
"I have described to you above succinctly the source of the Law, as also the origin of this whole world. Learn now the Laws of the social classes." (2.25)
[edit] 3. Dharma of the Four Social Classes (2.25-11.266)
- 3.1 Rules Relating to Law (2.25-10.131)
- 3.1.1 Rules of Action in Normal Times (2.26-9.336)
- 3.1.1.1 Fourfold Dharma of a Brahmin (2.26-6.97)
"I have explained to you above the fourfold Law of Brahmins, a Law that is holy and brings imperishable rewards after death. Listen now to the Law of kings." (6.97)
- 3.1.1.2 Rules of Action for a King (7.1-9.325)
"I have described above in its entirety the eternal rules of action for the king. What follows, one should understand, are the rules of action for the Vaiśyas and Śūdras in their proper order." (9.325)
- 3.1.1.3 Rules of Action for Vaiśyas and Śūdras (9.325-36)
"I have described above the splendid rules of action for the social classes outside times of adversity. Listen now to the rules for them in the proper order for times of adversity." (9.336)
- 3.1.2 Rules of Action in Times of Adversity (10.1-129)
"I have described above the entire set of rules pertaining to the Law of the four classes. Next, I will explain the splendid rules pertaining to penance." (10.131)
- 3.2 Rules Relating to Penance (11.1-265)
"You have described this Law for the four classes in its entirety, O Sinless One! Teach us accurately the ultimate consummation of the fruits of actions." (12.1)
[edit] 4. Determination Regarding Engagement in Action (12.3-116)
"Bhrgu, the son of Manu and the very embodiment of the Law, said to those great seers: ‘Listen to the determination with respect to engagement in action.’" (12.2)
- 4.1 Fruits of Action (12.3-81)
"I have declared to you above all the fruits arising from actions. Listen now to these rules of action for a Brahmin, rules that secure the supreme good." (12.82)
- 4.2 Rules of Action for Supreme God (12.83-115)
"I have explained to you above all the best means of securing the supreme good. A Brahmin who does not deviate from them obtains the highest state." (12.116)
[edit] Nature and Purpose
The Manu Smriti is written with a focus on the “shoulds” of dharma rather than on the actuality of everyday practice in India at the time. Still, its practical application should not be underestimated. Through intermediate forces such as the instruction of scholars, the teachings did indeed have indirect effect on major segments of the Indian population. It is also an invaluable point of common reference in scholarly debates. [16]
It seems likely that the book was written in a manner which was very mindful to the dangers facing the Brahmin community during a time of much change and social upheaval. A renewed alliance between the Brahmin and Kṣatra communities is clearly a goal reflected in the introduction of the vyavahārapadas. [17] The emphasis which this topic receives can be seen as an offering of solidarity from the religious community to the ruling class.
[edit] Commentaries on Manu
There have been numerous commentaries written on the Manu Smṛti. Some of the major commentaries are listed below:
[edit] Bhāruci
Bhāruci is the oldest known commentator on the Manu Smṛti. Kane places him in the late 10th or early 11 century,[18] Olivelle places him in the 8th century, [19] and Derrett places him between 600-650 CE[20]. From these three opinions we can place Bhāruci anywhere from the early seventh century CE to the early eleventh century CE. The surviving portion of Bhāruci's commentary that we have today deals mostly with the duties of the king and whether or not the king can be a source of dharma.
[edit] Medhātithi
Medhātithi is one of the most famous commentators on the Manu Smṛti, and there is some debate regarding the location in which he was writing, but scholars such as Buhler, Kane, and Lingat tend to believe he was from Kashmir or the area around Kashmir. The exact date that Medhātithi was writing is also unclear, and he has been placed anywhere between 820CE and 1050CE.[21]
[edit] Views and criticism
The work is considered an important source for sociological, political and historical studies. Manu Smriti is one of the most heavily criticized of the scriptures of Hinduism, having been attacked by colonial scholars, modern liberals, Hindu reformists, Dalit advocates, feminists[22] , Marxists and certain groups of traditional Hindus, namely Smartas. Much of its criticism stems from its unknown authority, as some believe the text to be authoritative, but others do not. There is also debate over whether the text has suffered from later interpolations of verses.
In northern/southern India Vaishnavism and Shaivism were the common religious traditions, and the teachings of the Manu Smriti was not as widely followed or well-known.
In 300 BCE, Megasthenes wrote that the people around the Mathura region worshipped Harculas (Hari-Krishna) and followed the Gita as daily life principles. Also Fahn-sain did not mention anything about rigid-ness of the varna systems. Chanakya, the author of Arthashastra, never mentioned any social laws prevailing in the society during the first integrator and Mauryan Emperor Chandragupta's reign.
The Manu Smriti was one of the first Sanskrit texts studied by the British. It was first translated into English by the founder of indology, Sir William Jones. His version was published in 1794.[23] British administrative requirements encouraged their interest in the Dharmashastras, which they believed to be legal codes. In fact, these were not codes of law but norms related to social obligations and ritual requirements.[24] According to Avari:
The text was never universally followed or acclaimed by the vast majority of Indians in their history; it came to the world's attention through a late eighteenth-century translation by Sir William Jones, who mistakenly exaggerated both its antiquity and its importance. Today many of its ideas are popularised as the golden norm of classical Hindu law by Hindu universalists. They are, however, anathema to modern thinkers and particularly feminists.[25]
The "Law of Manu" was cited favorably by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who deemed it "an incomparably spiritual and superior work" to the Christian Bible. He observed that "the sun shines on the whole book" and attributed its ethical perspective to "the noble classes, the philosophers and warriors, [who] stand above the mass."[26] However, he also criticized it for its abusive treatment of the chandala, claiming that "this organization too found it necessary to be terrible."[27]
Surendra Kumar, who counts a total of 2,685 verses, finds that only 1,214 are authentic, the other 1,471 being interpolations on the text.[28] In reply to the criticism of the sudra caste, the verses critical of the sudras and women are considered to be later interpolations, but not later than Adi Shankara (7th-8th century CE). The law in Manu Smriti also appears to be overtly positive towards the brahmin (priest) caste in terms of concessions made in fines and punishments. The stance of the Manu Smriti about women has also been debated. While certain verses such as (III - 55, 56, 57, 59, 62) glorify the position of women, other verses (IX - 3, 17) seem to attack the position and freedom women have. The education of women is also discussed in the text. Certain interpretations of Verse (IX - 18) claim that it discourages women from reading Vedic scriptures. Verse (II - 240), however, allows women to read Vedic scriptures. Similar contradictory phrases are encountered in relation to child marriage in verses (IX - 94) and (IX - 90).
In his book Revolution and Counter-Revolution in India, Dalit leader B. R. Ambedkar asserted that Manu Smriti was written by a sage named Brigu during the times of Pushyamitra of Sangha in connection with social pressures caused by the rise of Buddhism. [29] However, historian Romila Thapar considers these claims to be exaggerations. She writes that archaeological evidence casts doubt on the claims of Buddhist persecution by Pushyamitra.[30] Support of the Buddhist faith by the Sungas at some point is suggested by an epigraph on the gateway of Bharhut, which mentions its erection "during the supremacy of the Sungas"[31] Hinduism does not evangelize.[32]
However, not all Hindus agree with the criticisms of the text, or the assertion that the Manu Smriti is not authoritative. Some prominent Hindu figures, such as Swami Dayananda Saraswati[33] and A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami[34], hold the text to be authentic and authoritative. Other admirers of the text have included Annie Besant, P.D. Ouspensky, Pandurang Shastri Athavale and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. Friedrich Nietzsche is noted to have said "Close the Bible and open the Manu Smriti. “It has an affirmation of life, a triumphing agreeable sensation in life and that to draw up a lawbook such as Manu means to permit oneself to get the upper hand, to become perfection, to be ambitious of the highest art of living" [35]
[edit] Notes
- ^ See Flood 1996: 56 and Olivelle 2005.
- ^ Jones's translation is available online as The Institutes of Hindu Law: Or, The Ordinances of Manu, Calcutta: Sewell & Debrett, 1796.
- ^ Olivelle, "Literary History," p. 16.
- ^ Olivelle(2004), p. xx.
- ^ Olivelle, Literary History, p. 17.
- ^ Olivelle, Literary History, p. 17.
- ^ Olivelle, "Literary History," p. 16.
- ^ For composition between 200 BCE and 200 CE see: Avari, p. 142. For dating of composition "between the second century BCE and third century CE" see: Flood (1996), p. 56. For dating of Manu Smriti in "final form" to the second century CE, see: Keay, p. 103. For dating as completed some time between 200 BCE and 100 CE see: Hopkins, p. 74. For probable origination during the second or third centuries AD, see: Kulke and Rothermund, p. 85. For the text as preserved dated to around the 1st century BCE. see: Encyclopedia Britannica Concise, http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/article-9371223/Manu-smrti, retrieved on 2007-06-24
- ^ For significance of post-empire social uncertainty as a factor in the development of the Code of Manas, see: Kulke and Rothermund, p. 85.
- ^ Tharpar (2002), p. 279.
- ^ For the dharmashastras, including Manu Smriti, as the starting point for an independent tradition not dependent on Vedic origins, see: Hopkins, p. 74.
- ^ Olivelle(2004), pp. xxi-xxii.
- ^ Olivelle(2004), pp. xxvii.
- ^ Olivelle(2004), p. xxv.
- ^ Olivelle(2004), pp. xxviii-xxix.
- ^ Olivelle(2004), p. xxli.
- ^ Olivelle, Literary History, p. 19.
- ^ Kane, P. V., History of Dharmaśāstra, (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1975), Volume I, Part I, 566.
- ^ Olivelle, Patrick, "Dharmaśāstra: A Literary History", 29.
- ^ Olivelle, Patrick, "Dharmaśāstra: A Literary History", 29.
- ^ Kane, P. V., History of Dharmaśāstra, (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1975), Volume I, Part II, 583.
- ^ For objections to the work by feminists, see: Avari, pp. 142-143.
- ^ For Manu Smriti as one of the first Sanskrit texts noted by the British and translation by Sir William Jones in 1794, see: Flood (1996), p. 56.
- ^ For British interest in Dharmashastras due to administrative needs, and their misinterpretation of them as legal codes rather than as social and ritual texts, see: Thapar (2002), pp. 2-3.
- ^ Avari, p. 142.
- ^ Friedrich Nietzche, The Antichrist (1888), 56-57.
- ^ Friedrich Nietzche, Twilight of the Idols (1888).
- ^ Surendra Kumar, Vishuddha Manusmriti, (Arsh Sahitya Prachar Trust, Delhi, Fourth Edition), p. 5.
- ^ Revolution and Counter-Revolution in India
- ^ Romila Thapar, Asoka and the Decline of the Mauryas, Oxford University Press (1960) p. 200.
- ^ John Marshall, "An Historical and Artistic Description of Sanchi", from A Guide to Sanchi, citing p. 11. Calcutta: Superintendent, Government Printing (1918). Pp. 7-29 on line, Project South Asia.
- ^ K. V. Rao, Socialism, Secularism, and Democracy in India, pp. 28-30. Nagendra K. Singh, Enforcement of Human Rights in Peace and War and the Future of Humanity, p. 35. Martinus Nijhoff (1986) ISBN 9024733022
- ^ The Light of Truth, Chapter 4
- ^ Bhagavad Gita As It Is, Chapter 16 Text 7 - "...Even up to today, those who are Hindu follow the Manu-samhita..."
- ^ Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, vol. 1.
[edit] References
- Flood, Gavin (1996). An Introduction to Hinduism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-43878-0.
- Hopkins, Thomas J. (1971). The Hindu Religious Tradition. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing Company.
- Keay, John (2000). India: A History. New York: Grove Press. ISBN 0-8021-3797-0.
- Kulke, Hermann; Rothermund, Dietmar (1986). A History of India. New York: Barnes & Noble. ISBN 0-88029-577-5.
- Olivelle, Patrick (2005). Manu's Code of Law: A Critical Edition and Translation of the Mānava-Dharmaśāstra. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-195-17146-2.
- Thapar, Romila (2002). Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-24225-4.
- Translation by G. Bühler (1886). Sacred Books of the East: The Laws of Manus (Vol. XXV). Oxford. Available online as The Laws of Manu
"The Laws of Manu". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913. http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Catholic_Encyclopedia_(1913)/The_Laws_of_Manu. - Olivelle, Patrick (2004). The Law Code of Manu. New York: OUP. ISBN 0192802712.
- Olivelle, Patrick. "Dharmasastra: A Literary History"
India and the Knowledge Economy: Leveraging Strengths and Opportunities | ||
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A World Bank report, India and the Knowledge Economy: Leveraging Strengths and Opportunities, was launched in Washington DC on June 28, 2005.
Buy the Book Online | Download the Overview | Brief Summary of Recommendations
New World Bank Report Says India Can Make Even Greater Strides in Growing its Economy and Reducing Poverty.
See all K4D resources on India and the Knowledge Economy
One of the world’s largest economies, India has made enormous strides in its economic and social development in the past two decades. But according to a new World Bank report, India can do much more to leverage its strengths in today’s knowledge-based global economy.
India and the Knowledge Economy: Leveraging Strengths and Opportunities argues that, when supported by the right kind of government policy incentives, the country can increase its economic productivity and the well-being of its population by making more effective use of knowledge.
"This report serves as an important Bank input into the domestic consultation and reform process which will move India further into the global knowledge economy of the twenty-first century,” says Michael Carter, World Bank Country Director for India. “The World Bank recognizes that making effective use of knowledge in any country requires developing appropriate policies and institutions to promote entrepreneurship and efficient use of knowledge.”
Grooming World Class Knowledge Workers
India already has many highly educated and vocationally qualified people who are making their mark, domestically and globally, in science, engineering, information technology (IT), and research and development (R&D). But they represent only a small fraction of the total population.
“To create a sustained cadre of 'knowledge workers,' India needs to make its education system more demand driven to meet the emerging needs of the economy and to keep its highly qualified people in the country,” suggests Anuja Utz, co-author of the report. “This means raising the quality of all higher education institutions, not just a few world-class ones, such as the Indian Institutes of Technology.”
Some ways of making the system more demand driven are to allow the private sector to fill the burgeoning demand for higher education by relaxing bureaucratic hurdles, and through better accreditation systems for private providers of education and training. Increased university-industry partnerships to translate research into applications can yield economic value. Lifelong learning programs can be used to meet the learning needs of all, both within and outside the school system, including using distance learning technologies to expand access to and the quality of formal education and lifelong training programs.
Promoting Innovation
India is becoming a major global source of R&D; about 100 multinational corporations have already set up R&D centers in the country, leading to the deepening of technological and innovative capabilities among Indian firms. But even so, “India is still a relatively closed economy compared with other Asian economies,” notes Carl Dahlman, co-author of the report. “India should increasingly tap into the rapidly growing stock of global knowledge through channels such as foreign direct investment, technology licensing, and so on, so that it can catch up to countries like China, where reforms have moved ahead much more rapidly.”
An important part of India ’s innovation system is the diffusion of modern and more efficient technologies in all sectors of the economy. According to Dr. R.A. Mashelkar, Director General, Council of Scientific and Industrial Research of India, “India is already gaining international repute for its innovations in areas ranging from pharmaceuticals to software. IT will achieve even more as it improves the efficiency of public R&D, increase private R&D, and encourages greater university-industry linkages. It is leveraging traditional knowledge with modern science and exploiting public-private partnerships to support grassroots innovations which can improve the quality of life for the poor. An example is the Computer-Based Functional Literacy program, initiated by Tata Group to overcome illiteracy through innovative use of IT.”
Creating a for Center of Excellence Information and Communication Technology
In the telecommunications sector, fierce price competition has resulted in Indian mobile telephony becoming one of the cheapest in the world; more than 47 million people had mobile phones at the end of 2004! India has achieved remarkable global success in the IT sector which accounted for about 3.82 percent of India ’s GDP in 2003-04, and provided employment for almost a million people.
But the report notes that the explosive growth of ICTs has been concentrated in urban areas. The government should promote the application and use of ICTs throughout the economy to raise productivity and growth. This requires increasing access to ICTs, such as widespread availability of telephones, including mobile phones, computers, and connectivity to the Internet; enhancing ICT literacy and skills among the population; and developing ICT applications that can provide much-needed social, economic, and government services to citizens.
Moving to Action
This report recognized India ’s achievements but sees enormous potential yet to be unleashed. It recommends an India-led process to coordinate and integrate reforms, combining those in the economic and institutional regime with the many initiatives in education, innovation and ICTs.
“This report comes at a very opportune time. It provides a very useful input for discussion by all stakeholders. What is needed is a national vision and the leadership and governance mechanisms to put this into action,” notes Arun Maira, Chairman, Boston Consulting Group, India.
Sam Pitroda, Chairman of India's National Knowledge Commission supports this view: “We will take into consideration the analysis and recommendations of the report as we design our own strategy. We look forward to cooperating with the World Bank and other multilateral agencies as well as with think tanks and universities in India and abroad as the Commission works to harness knowledge for India ’s development and realize its potential to become a major knowledge power." | ||
India to be superpower needs 10% GDP for 10 years
LUCKNOW: Former President of India APJ Abdul Kalam visited Tata Consultancy Srevices (TCS's) newly commissioned facility at Lucknow Avadh Park on
Monday and mesmerised the officers by his pearls of wisdom. His talk was indeed an intellectual journey into the future directions of science, technology and economy with a special focus on India.
Kalam exhorted TCS workers to work towards building India as a perfect knowledge economy and strongly advocated the need for the IT graduates from being software programmers to system professionals. He emphasised the need to integrate the hardware knowledge with the software competency along with business domain skills.
He said that GDP alone might not be a complete indicator of the economic development and there was a need to gauge the inclusive growth with National Prosperity Index. He also threw light on the need to have 10 per cent GDP growth per annum for 10 years in order to make India a global superpower by 2020.
Later, answering a question on the economic turbulence that Indian economy is going through, Kalam explained the basic reasons why our economy was not as badly hit by the recession. He also spoke on the impact of the Indo-American nuclear deal. Responding to a question on how his life changed after becoming the President of the country, he said that he sensed no major change and emphasised the essence of being righteous all the time in the true spirit of the Tata family.
In all it was a lifetime experience for TCS Lucknow associates. TCS principal consultant Jayant Krishna presented the former President with a coffee table book `Tatas: the century of trust'. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/city/lucknow/India-to-be-superpower-needs-10-GDP-for-10-years/articleshow/4858090.cms
Kalam exhorted TCS workers to work towards building India as a perfect knowledge economy and strongly advocated the need for the IT graduates from being software programmers to system professionals. He emphasised the need to integrate the hardware knowledge with the software competency along with business domain skills.
He said that GDP alone might not be a complete indicator of the economic development and there was a need to gauge the inclusive growth with National Prosperity Index. He also threw light on the need to have 10 per cent GDP growth per annum for 10 years in order to make India a global superpower by 2020.
Later, answering a question on the economic turbulence that Indian economy is going through, Kalam explained the basic reasons why our economy was not as badly hit by the recession. He also spoke on the impact of the Indo-American nuclear deal. Responding to a question on how his life changed after becoming the President of the country, he said that he sensed no major change and emphasised the essence of being righteous all the time in the true spirit of the Tata family.
In all it was a lifetime experience for TCS Lucknow associates. TCS principal consultant Jayant Krishna presented the former President with a coffee table book `Tatas: the century of trust'. http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/news/city/lucknow/India-to-be-superpower-needs-10-GDP-for-10-years/articleshow/4858090.cms
Knowledge economy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2008) |
The knowledge economy is a term that refers either to an economy of knowledge focused on the production and management of knowledge in the frame of economic constraints, or to a knowledge-based economy. In the second meaning, more frequently used, it refers to the use of knowledge technologies (such as knowledge engineering and knowledge management) to produce economic benefits. The phrase was popularized if not invented by Peter Drucker as the title of Chapter 12 in his book The Age of Discontinuity[1].
The essential difference is that in a knowledge economy, knowledge is a product, in knowledge-based economy, knowledge is a tool. This difference is not yet well distinguished in the subject matter literature. They both are strongly interdisciplinary, involving economists, computer scientists, software engineers, mathematicians, chemists, physicists, as well as cognitivists, psychologists and sociologists.
Various observers describe today's global economy as one in transition to a "knowledge economy", as an extension of an "information society". The transition requires that the rules and practices that determined success in the industrial economy need rewriting in an interconnected, globalized economy where knowledge resources such as know-how and expertise are as critical as other economic resources. According to analysts of the "knowledge economy", these rules need to be rewritten at the levels of firms and industries in terms of knowledge management and at the level of public policy as knowledge policy or knowledge-related policy.[citation needed]
[edit] Concepts
A key concept of this sector of economic activity is that knowledge and education (often referred to as "human capital") can be treated as one of the following two:
- A business product, as educational and innovative intellectual products and services can be exported for a high value return.
- A productive asset
Can be defined as
" The concept that supports creation of knowledge by organizational employees and helps and encourages them to transfer and better utilize their knowledge that is in line with company/organization goals "
The initial foundation for the Knowledge Economy was first introduced in 1966 in a book by Peter Drucker. The Effective Executive described the difference between the Manual worker (page 2) and the knowledge worker. He differentiated between the two by describing a manual worker who works with his hands and produces goods or services. In contrast, a knowledge worker (page 3) works with his or her head not hands, and produces ideas, knowledge, and information.
The key problem in the formalization and modeling of knowledge economy, is a vague definition of knowledge, which is rather relative concept, for example, it is not proper to consider information society as interchangeable with knowledge society. Information is usually not equivalent knowledge, as well as their use depend on individual and group preferences (see the cognitive IPK model) - which are "economy-dependent".[2]
[edit] Driving forces
Commentators suggest there are various interlocking driving forces are changing the rules of business and national competitiveness:
- Globalization — markets and products are more global.
- Information technology, which is related to next three:
- Information/Knowledge Intensity — efficient production relies on information and know-how; over 70 per cent of workers- in developed economies are information workers; many factory workers use their heads more than their hands.
- New Media - New media increases the production and distribution of knowledge which in turn, results in collective intelligence. Existing knowledge becomes much easier to access as a result of networked data-bases which promote online interaction between users and producers.
- Computer networking and Connectivity – developments such as the Internet bring the "global village" ever nearer.
As a result, goods and services can be developed, bought, sold, and in many cases even delivered over electronic networks.
As regards the applications of any new technology, this depends on how it meets economic demand. It can remain dormant or make a commercial breakthrough (see diffusion of innovation).
[edit] Characteristics
It can be argued that the knowledge economy differs from the traditional economy in several key respects:
- The economics are not of scarcity, but rather of abundance. Unlike most resources that deplete when used, information and knowledge can be shared, and actually grow through application.
- The effect of location is either
- diminished, in some economic activities: using appropriate technology and methods, virtual marketplaces and virtual organizations that offer benefits of speed, agility, round the clock operation and global reach can be created.
- or, on the contrary, reinforced in some other economic fields, by the creation of business clusters around centres of knowledge, such as universities and research centres. However, clusters already existed in pre-knowledge economy times.
- Laws, barriers, taxes and ways to measure are difficult to apply on solely a national basis. Knowledge and information "leak" to where demand is highest and the barriers are lowest.
- Knowledge enhanced products or services can command price premiums over comparable products with low embedded knowledge or knowledge intensity.
- Pricing and value depends heavily on context. Thus the same information or knowledge can have vastly different value to different people, or even to the same person at different times.
- Knowledge when locked into systems or processes has higher inherent value than when it can "walk out of the door" in people's heads.
- Human capital — competencies — are a key component of value in a knowledge-based company, yet few companies report competency levels in annual reports. In contrast, downsizing is often seen as a positive "cost cutting" measure.
- Communication is increasingly being seen as fundamental to knowledge flows. Social structures, cultural context and other factors influencing social relations are therefore of fundamental importance to knowledge economies.
These characteristics require new ideas and approaches from policy makers, managers and knowledge workers.
The knowledge economy has manifold forms in which it may appear but there are predictions that the new economy will extend so radically as far as acknowledging a pattern in which even ideas will be recognised and even identified as a commodity. This certainly is not the best time to make any hasty judgment on this contention, but considering the very nature of 'knowledge' itself, added to the fact that it is the thrust of this new form of economy, there certainly is a clear way forward for this notion, though the particulars (i.e. the quantum of the revolutionary approach and its applicability and commercial value),remain in the speculative realm, as of now.
[edit] See also
- Attention economy
- Digital economy
- Information economy
- International Innovation Index
- Internet Economy
- Knowledge market
- Knowledge organization
- Knowledge management
- Knowledge policy
- Knowledge Revolution
- Knowledge value chain
- Learning economy
- The Long Tail
- Network Economy
- Social Information Processing
[edit] External links
- Knowledge for Development Program, World Bank
- Colloquium
- IS-Driven Organizational Responsiveness in a Knowledge Economy
- Public Service Modernization Act - Canada
- MTI
- EnterWeb
- BOOK: The Knowledge-Based Economy in Central and East European Countries
- recent book: Knowledge and innovation processes in Central and East European economies
- The Work Foundation Knowledge Economy Programme
- Knowledge Economy in Farsi/Persian
[edit] Wikibooks
[edit] References
- ^ Peter Drucker, (1969). The Age of Discontinuity; Guidelines to Our Changing Society. Harper and Row, New York. ISBN 0-465-08984-4
- ^ Terry Flew (2008), New Media: An Introduction
- Arthur, W. B. (1996). Increasing Returns and the New World of Business. Harvard Business Review(July/August), 100-109.
- Bell, D. (1974). The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting. London: Heinemann.
- Drucker, P. (1969). The Age of Discontinuity; Guidelines to Our changing Society. New York: Harper and Row.
- Drucker, P. (1993). Post-Capitalist Society. Oxford: Butterworth Heinemann.
- Machlup, F. (1962). The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
- Romer, P. M. (1986). Increasing Returns and Long-Run Growth. Journal of Political Economy, 94(5), 1002-1037.
- Rooney, D., Hearn, G., Mandeville, T., & Joseph, R. (2003). Public Policy in Knowledge-Based Economies: Foundations and Frameworks. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
- Rooney, D., Hearn, G., & Ninan, A. (2005). Handbook on the Knowledge Economy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.
Research Parks for the Knowledge Economy
Nations are constructing lavish science parks, often with big city amenities, to gain a competitive edge in the global economy
Since it opened 50 years ago, North Carolina's Research Triangle Park has been the epitome of science parks: a neatly landscaped campus of low-rise building buildings in exurbia, where scientists at aspiring technology spin-offs from nearby universities toil all day in cramped, low-rent "incubators" and then disperse each evening to fight the Interstate traffic on their way home.
The rest of the world is moving far beyond that model. As more nations try to gain an edge in the next generation of knowledge industries, stunning new high-tech meccas are going up from Asia to Europe to Latin America, a building spree that hardly has been slowed by the recession. They are nothing like the far-flung developments of old like Research Triangle Park, which was carved out of 11 square miles of pine forest near Raleigh-Durham. Many, in fact, are being constructed deep inside old cities and include nearby housing and city amenities with the intention of creating new communities.
"New Century Cities"
Spain's 22@Barcelona project, for example, involves transforming 115 blocks of industrial land in Barcelona's historic cotton district into an international hub for more than 1,000 media, information technology, and medical technology companies; research institutes; and university labs that could employ 150,000 in 15 years. Seoul's new 135-acre Digital Media City aspires to be a global ecosystem for developing and deploying cutting-edge technologies for entertainment, games, and interactive workplaces. And Singapore is pouring some $10 billion into futuristic architecture for a megadevelopment called One North, which integrates new research complexes and "living laboratories" for biotechnology, advanced materials, and medical services.
Many of these "new century cities," as urban planning guru Michael Joroff of Massachusetts Institute of Technology dubs them, will be showcased at the annual International Association of Science Parks conference on June 1-4 in Raleigh, N.C.
"The vision is to kick-start high-priority industries with new spaces where companies and universities can work together and develop the next generation of workers," says Joroff, an adviser to the media city in Seoul and similar projects in Britain, Sweden, and Abu Dhabi. "They are about inventing the future, so they want to be of the future."
New science parks can be tightly focused. Snowpolis, in Vuokatti, Finland, is a collaboration between Finnish companies, universities, and education institutes that specializes in wellness, sports, and cold-weather technologies. And Winston-Salem, N.C., which is reeling from the collapse of the textile, furniture, and tobacco industries, is refurbishing much of its urban core into a biotech hub called the Piedmont Triad Research Park. Its prize tenant: one of the nation's leading centers for regenerative medicine, led by Dr. Anthony Atala, a pioneer in growing organs from patients' own tissue.
Building Communities
Whatever the focus, the trend is to nurture living, breathing communities rather than sterile, remote compounds of research silos. Planners don't want to mimic Triangle Research Park's original design or Tsukuba Science City, where 13,000 researchers toil in 300 R&D facilities in an isolated site an hour away by train from Tokyo. Instead, they are drawing inspiration from the kind of vibrant ecosytem that evolved organically near the MIT campus in Cambridge, Mass. They hope to design their parks based on visions of what 21st century innovation environments will need.
Most new research parks incorporate the trappings of "new urbanism," the planning principles at work at the preferred destinations for young creative types. That means relatively inexpensive housing within minutes of labs by foot or bike.
The Transformation of Knowledge
Knowledge assumes many forms and behaves in anomalous and unpredictable ways. Unlike the tangible resources of the industrial economy, there is little shared understanding of knowledge as an economic factor despite its immense importance in the global economy. Yet the knowledge-based economy, conventionally measured by the composition of the workforce, is in flux. It is plainly characterized by an explosion of data and codified knowledge, propelled by a revolution in information and communication technologies, but the changes go much deeper.
The generation of knowledge is traditionally conceived as a process internal to single entity. But it is increasingly a product of networked entities, often differently situated yet motivated to find new solutions to specific problems, needs, and circumstances – and, in many cases, to reveal these solutions to others. Enabled by technology, knowledge moves quickly within these networks – across firms, institutions, borders, and distances. While scientific research has long been characterized by unfettered circulation of discoveries and the ability to build instantly on these discoveries, distributed models are gaining importance and becoming essential to the larger fabric of the knowledge-based economy.
There are paradoxical elements in the transformation of knowledge that are difficult to model for policymakers. Knowledge tasks and processes are both accelerating and decentralizing. At the same time, important forms of knowledge are becoming more complex and context-specific, and the span and heterogeneity of knowledge forms is increasing. Complex forms may incorporate both tacit and explicit elements, thereby becoming less like digitally codified information objects and more difficult to replicate outside of the original location.
Furthermore, there are multiple factors behind this transformation, including:
- globalization of communications and commerce;
- commoditization of ICTs (and partial commoditization of codified knowledge);
- the increasing role of scientific research in innovation;
- advanced, integrative information infrastructure;
- modularization, vertical disaggregation, and outsourcing; and
- expanded value chains and clusters with new categories of actors.
An expanding environment for creating and managing knowledge recasts a wide range of policy issues, including public investment priorities, program design, dissemination of research results, technology transfer, and the form and scope of private controls on information and knowledge. Tension arises from the fact that governments, universities, and private companies operate in different ways and under different rules, yet there are compelling reasons to encourage rapid movement of knowledge across sector and institutional borders. The open, global nature of science and the scale and scope economies of cyberinfrastructure argue for international cooperation in support of diverse users in academia, government, and industry. The success of university-industry technology transfer in the U.S., the public funding of large cross-sector teams in Europe, and the seeding of new markets for technology all reflect the importance of moving research and technology across boundaries in order to facilitate commercialization. Moreover, optimal design and exploitation of cyberinfrastructure ultimately depend on a deep, contextual understanding of knowledge and its modalities, and a case can be made that cyberinfrastructure should be explicitly open to interconnection and privatization, as was the case for the federally subsidized Internet.
More generally, a deeper understanding of knowledge is needed to support the vast knowledge-related investments, institutions, and laws throughout the economy. Although there is a practice-oriented literature on knowledge management, the microeconomics of knowledge is poorly understood. Most movements of knowledge between entities do not pass through conventional priced markets – and cannot be counted as transactions. Knowledge does not come in discrete units, and the most valuable knowledge is often the most difficult to capture and evaluate. Knowledge is continually transformed by technology, market conditions, and institutions. Just as businesses and knowledge professionals struggle to understand and manage knowledge as a strategic resource, policymakers are challenged to develop public policies that properly account for the diverse natures and uses of knowledge. Yet the growing scope, scale, and economic importance of knowledge demands an assessment that contributes not only to scientific understanding but to democratic decision-making about the future of knowledge and the policies needed to realize that vision.
A false economy of knowledge
The minute division of labour in a market economy takes away our competencies and sells them back to us
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- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 4 August 2009 18.30 BST
- Article history
The division of labour in rich societies is so minute and particular that an individual's specialised knowledge is often sealed off from that of other people. It isn't my field. I'm not an expert. I didn't cover that period. That isn't my responsibility. It's not my department. I know nothing about that. These are some of the phrases with which people explain a narrowing apprehension of the world.
As a consequence many basic common human competences lapse. A concentration on the specific is accompanied by the loss of other forms of knowing, which come to appear archaic in the modern world. Abandoning basic skills may seem like liberation, especially at first – forgetting how to grow, or even to prepare, our own food, how to make the simplest garments, how to provide ourselves with shelter: to pass over such tasks to others is to set aside a great burden.
But once lost, these simple accomplishments become irrecoverable; and other, precious human powers also fall into decay as they become someone else's labour: knowing what to do in times of want, sickness and death, how to behave in the presence of suffering; but also how to celebrate our own lives through our own stories, songs and poetry – all this is forfeit in the interests of an ever more elaborate partitioning of social function.
This gives a clue to why there is much debate over whether a new generation is becoming more clever or less instructed than those that went before. On the one hand, there is dumbing down, simplifying, losing abilities formerly taken for granted, being cut off from knowledge of history and literature; on the other, improving examination results, greater "awareness", different forms of consciousness, the acquisition of new skills – the hand-eye co-ordination of the computer game, the dexterity and sharpness of youth. The argument is inconclusive. Perhaps in what looks like a contradiction, both sides contain a measure of truth; and young people can become simultaneously more and less capable.
The only thing you need to know in "advanced" or "developed" societies in the throes of perpetual reform and modernisation is how to get, acquire, earn or make money, because with that you can get everything. The range of verbs is significant, for it covers both licit and forbidden methods of coming by it. Since the great majority of us rely on a wage or salary to maximise income, we have to know a good deal about something. But in acquiring and intensifying the particular knowledge, the more likely it becomes that mastery of other capabilities will sink into oblivion. The complexity of the division of labour is accompanied by a reduction in areas of active competence.
This is how money both empowers and depowers: it permits us to buy in all that is necessary for a full and creative life; but it also divorces us increasingly from what Ivan Illich called "our native capacities for healing, consoling, moving, learning, building our houses and burying our dead"; the work of those who now service our needs were once common property, but are now jealously guarded professional qualifications. In this way, ignorance co-exists with highly specialised knowledges. In a sense, we are all existential sub-contractors, like the character in Villiers de l'Isle Adam's drama, Axel, who said "as for living, our servants will do that for us".
This social and economic mechanism is itself the generator of the real dependency culture. It is fragile and easily disrupted: all it takes to throw it into disorder is a strike of deliveries to supermarkets, an interruption to the power system, a natural calamity that blocks the delicate yet cumbersome process by which our daily bread comes to us. The image of empty supermarket shelves, a breakdown in the petrol supply, a blank TV screen are frightening reminders of our dependency on a system that takes from us as much as, or more than, it yields, but which must be kept going at any cost.
This subjection is the opposite of the freedoms of which our society is supposed to be the supreme embodiment. The choice, democracy and liberty we enjoy are highly conditional upon others; yet these easily vanish, since our social and economic purpose appears detached from theirs – our own needs are foregrounded, our own indispensability in the labour structure, and above all, that most private of all our relationships (no longer love or even sex) but the secret, sacred communion that subsists between ourselves and our money.
Outside our own sphere of knowledge, we are a nation of gilded incompetents; since in the unfamiliar world of other people's expertise, we grope in ignorance and helplessness.
This is what the apparently benign phenomenon of "the market economy" actually means. For its growth and expansion, it must appropriate more areas of human proficiency, reshape them and sell them back. It involves a relentless mining, not so much of human needs as of human competences. It robs us of abilities and markets the results of that larceny in a new shape. If we are constantly fascinated by whatever novelties appear on sale in the showcases of the world, this is because, more often than not, they embody the predations of lightning raids on our internal resources; and indeed, parallel the pillage of their material counterparts. Shopping, in this context, becomes not so much addiction or therapy as a desperate effort to recuperate some of the lost capacities and aptitudes through the conjuring power of money.
It is a truism that we now occupy a "knowledge economy". This is an ambiguous terms, for it suggests also an economy of knowledge, that sparingness that makes it a scarce commodity; and one for which we pay dearly and doubly, since not only is it removed from our hands, heads and hearts, but also can only be regained by paying for it. It is not, as some moralists have claimed, that "artificial wants" or unnecessary needs are created by consumerism and the expanding market; it is, rather, that something vital is always being taken away, which can never be compensated adequately by the buyback scheme that is global retailing, since it lies, inert, captured and stored in the growing array of things set before us. If they beguile and enchant, this is because they belonged to us in the first place.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/aug/04/knowledge-market-economy
 | KEF VIII - FONTAINEBLEAU Reforming Innovation Systems:Moving Beyond Lectures & Labs April 29-May 1, 2009 Fontainebleau, France |
The Fontainebleau Forum is the eighth in this series of flagship events that the World Bank is organizing in partnership with INSEAD Business School to support ECA countries in their transition to becoming increasingly knowledge-based. More Details » | |
| Previous Forums | |
 | KEF VII - ANCONA Technology Absorption by Innovative SMEs June 17-19, 2008 Ancona, Italy |
 | KEF VI - CAMBRIDGE Technology Acquisition and Knowledge Networks April 17-19, 2007 Cambridge, England |
 | KEF V - PRAGUE Innovation and Technology Absorption for Growth March 28-30, 2006 Prague, Czech Republic |
 | KEF IV - ISTANBUL Business Environment and Knowledge for Private Sector Growth March 22-24, 2005 Istanbul, Turkey |
 | KEF III - BUDAPEST Improving Competitiveness Through a Knowledge-Based Economy March 23-26, 2004 Budapest, Hungary |
 | KEF II - HELSINKI Implementing Knowledge Economy Strategies: Innovation, Life Learning, Partnerships, Networks and Inclusion March 25-28, 2003 Helsinki, Finland |
 | KEF I - PARIS Using Knowledge for Development in EU Accession Countries February 19-22, 2002 Paris, France |
Private schools have no right to hike fees: SC
New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday ruled that private unaided schools do not have the right to hike fees.
Hearing a review petition filed by the Action Committee for Unaided Private Schools seeking reconsideration of a 2004 apex court verdict, the Supreme Court said that only the government can regulate private school fees.
The apex court upheld the 2004 verdict, authorizing the Director Education to take a final decision in fee hikes being implemented by schools on the ground of implementing pay commission recommendations for teachers.
While filing the review petition, the unaided private schools’ action committee had also argued that the 2004 judgment was contrary to provisions of the Delhi School Education Act.
Today’s verdict is a major victory for parents of school children who have been opposing private schools’ move to hike fees periodically.
The SC in its 2004 verdict had also endorsed the Director Education’s move to put a freeze on the fee structure and halt transfer of funds from schools to the parent society.
Source: ANI
New Delhi (PTI): Students appearing for the Common Admission Test (CAT) this year need not worry much as the examination pattern is unlikely to change even though the mode will shift from paper to a computer-based one.
The candidates will be divided into 20 batches with two batches sitting for the test everyday over a period of 10 days.
Prometric, the firm entrusted with the task of conducting this year's test, has said that CAT will be held in 20 possible sittings across 23 cities.
However, irrespective of the delivery mechanism, the pattern of the exam for admission to MBAs in the prestigious IIMs will remain more or less the same.
"It is only that instead of a pencil and paper, the students appearing for the exam will be given computers to mark the correct answers. There will be no major change in the pattern of exam," Ramesh Nava, Vice-President and General Manager, Asia Pacific, Japan and Africa of Prometric India, told PTI.
While the infrastructure needed to undertake this task will be determined only after the actual number of aspirants is known, the mammoth task might require about 15,000 computers.
Zeal-hit Sibal to seek seal | ||
| CHARU SUDAN KASTURI | ||
New Delhi, Aug. 5: Kapil Sibal plans to seek the approval of the country’s apex education advisory panel before proceeding with his planned reforms in a bid to quell criticism that the proposed changes are being introduced without adequate consultations. The human resource development minister has called the first meeting of the Central Advisory Board on Education (CABE) under this government to place before the panel reform plans that have run into a storm of criticism. Sibal intends to ask the CABE to discuss his controversial plans to move towards making school education curricula more uniform, viewed by some states as a bid to centralise education, government sources said. The CABE meeting is scheduled later this month in the capital, ministry sources said, tentatively suggesting that the body could meet around August 20. The board last met in January this year, under then HRD minister Arjun Singh. The ministry is desperate to hold the meeting “as soon as possible” to get the views of members on Sibal’s 100-day agenda, welcomed by some but criticised by others either as too ambitious or controversial. “The idea is to be as ready as possible with drafts of all that we have said we will do in a 100 days when we go to the CABE meeting. Once we get broad approval from the CABE, we can officially move on the plans without allegations of unilateralism,” a senior official said. The CABE consists of education ministers of all states and Union territories apart from union ministers of science and technology, and HRD — who is the chairman — educationists and civil society representatives. The meeting of the board will give state governments an opportunity to discuss their concerns over Sibal’s proposed reforms with the minister and other officials. “Our idea is not to push through something unacceptable to states. But we believe we can convince states that there is merit in reforming traditional structures of our education system,” a source said. In 2004, after the UPA came to power for its first term, then HRD minister Arjun had revived the CABE, lying defunct through the NDA years. But the first meeting of the CABE under Arjun proved tumultuous, with representatives from BJP-ruled states openly accusing the minister of politicising education. Arjun was at the time just starting his “desaffronisation” campaign aimed at “cleaning out” alleged RSS sympathisers from influential posts in education. Sibal is not under fire for politically controversial statements or moves, but ministry officials say they expect several states to raise concerns over the minister’s proposed reforms. The minister has argued repeatedly in favour of making school curricula more uniform than it is, and has said he personally believes a single education board will be more beneficial than having multiple ones. He has argued that while at present, many state boards lack standards required for their students to compete with others under a uniform board, India must move towards a single board. The plan has, however, been criticised by several state governments— not all run by Opposition parties — which have argued that a single board will be incapable of addressing concerns of diversity. The BSP, which rules Uttar Pradesh, has said its existing single state board struggles to meet the aspirations of that vast state even now, questioning Sibal’s concept. The BJP’s Murli Manohar Joshi, a former HRD minister, has criticised Sibal’s 100-day agenda as superficial and violative of the tenets of federalism. The CPM and other Left parties have criticised Sibal’s plans to encourage public-private partnerships in schools and allowing foreign universities to set up campuses here as “neo-liberal”. | ||
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Pay hike protest, the IIT way |
| OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT |
New Delhi, Aug. 5: Veteran IIT Kharagpur cryogenics professor Kanchan Chowdhury will report to laboratories and classes as usual tomorrow — but wearing a black badge of protest on his shirt pocket. Demanding — as he puts it — respect. Around 3,000 faculty members across the Indian Institutes of Technology are expected to wear black badges at work tomorrow in a rare public display of frustration at repeated delays in promised salary hikes. A government panel under the former Indian Institute of Science director, Goverdhan Mehta, recommended a raise for the faculty at apex technical institutions like the IITs and the IIMs in early February. But six months later, the government is yet to approve any hike in teacher pay at these institutes. “It isn’t about the money. I chose teaching at the IITs even though my classmates and juniors are earning much more in the corporate sector. This is about the respect we deserve,” said Chowdhury, who has taught at IIT Kharagpur for a quarter of a century. India’s premier engineering schools have faced an increasing shortage in faculty for over five years now, with better-paying industry luring away some of the best brains in the country. But the sharpest jump in workload for those who teach at the institutes came last year, when the Centre decided to open eight new IITs and enforced an expansion in student intake to introduce OBC quotas. Suddenly, teachers at the seven older IITs were expected to take more classes, tutorials and laboratory sessions, and even travel to sites hosting temporary campuses of the new IITs. “The nation needs to decide whether by overburdening us without any recognition, it wants the IITs to become like any other higher educational institution. Or, do we want to retain the excellence associated with the IITs,” asked Chowdhury. But even in their protest tomorrow, the IIT faculty will show what makes them different from teachers at several other Indian universities. On August 1, the All India IIT Faculty Federation — the conglomeration of bodies representing teachers at each IIT — met at IIT Delhi and decided on the protest against the delay in their pay hike. Minutes of that meeting show that apart from wearing black badges, the federation resolved “to take recourse to other expressions of protest such as mass casual leave”. But three IIT directors, who requested not to be named, independently confirmed that their faculty had collectively decided to take all their classes, tutorials and laboratory sessions and register a casual leave as protest. “Effectively, teachers will take all their classes, do all their academic work... and in protest demand that one of their holidays be struck off. That, I guess is the IIT way,” one of the directors said. |
OBCs bust quality myth | |
| CHARU SUDAN KASTURI | |
New Delhi, Aug. 1: Two of every three OBC students selected to the IITs this year would have made it without any quotas, 2009 entrance test details reveal, debunking fears that this year’s quota hike would lead to a drop in student quality. At least 1,300 of the 1,930 Other Backward Class students admitted to the IITs through the Joint Entrance Examination secured marks that would have guaranteed them seats even without the quotas, details released today show. In chemistry, the OBC topper notched 126 — four more than the general category (and overall) top ranker. The lowest-ranking selected general category student scored less in mathematics (31) than his or her counterpart from the OBC (63), Scheduled Caste (41), Scheduled Tribe (40) and physically handicapped (36) quota categories. The OBC students meeting the general cut-off make up 15 per cent of the 8,245 short-listed in the general merit list, which is just 3 percentage points short of the 18 per cent seats reserved for them this year. These statistics appear to rubbish concerns expressed by government and IIT officials that hiking OBC quota seats from 9 per cent in 2008 to 18 per cent this year could lead to large-scale seat vacancies. The 1,930 OBC students selected make up over 19 per cent of the total figure of 10,035 students, which is higher than the 18 per cent seats reserved for them this year. Although not all OBC students may choose quota seats, most did so last year, leaving only 20 backward class seats vacant in 2008. Opting for a quota seat gives a student a better chance of getting into his or her preferred engineering stream. “There is every likelihood that we will not have many OBC quota vacancies this year,” a senior admissions official at IIT Delhi said. Contrary to assurances made last year after The Telegraph revealed critical errors in the marking of the JEE mathematics paper, the IITs have not disclosed an answer key that will allow independent verification before admissions are finalised. But like last year, the IITs today revealed the cutoff marks used for selecting students, and the scoring patterns of selected students. Subject cutoffs for physics, chemistry and mathematics were set at 8, 11 and 11, respectively, calculated by determining the average score in each subject of all students who appeared for the JEE. This procedure for setting subject cutoffs departs from the policy of simply eliminating the bottom 20 per cent students in each subject to set cutoffs, used the last two years. In 2006, the IITs had used cutoffs that did not match the formula they claimed to have used to arrive at the cutoffs. Although, as decided by the IITs last year, the subject cutoffs were relaxed by 10 per cent for OBC candidates, this lowering of the minimum standards has proved unnecessary, the details released today reveal. After short-listing students on the basis of subject cutoffs, the IITs every year finally select those with the highest aggregate scores. Compared with the aggregate of 424 secured by the overall JEE topper, the highest-ranked OBC student scored just 11 less — 413. At least 1,300 OBC students scored higher than the 178 aggregate cutoff set for general category students. The OBC aggregate cut-off, cleared by 1,930 students, was set 10 per cent below, at 161. |
IT IS only natural that, after the publication of the World Bank's flagship annual World Development Report on agriculture, its president would indicate the bank's interest to be more involved in the sector. Tanim Ahmed writes.
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The finance and commerce adviser to the military-driven interim government, AB Mirza Azizul Islam, said as much at a press briefing that followed his meeting with Robert B Zoellick on Saturday. The intended involvement would understandably hinge on the findings, recommendations and conclusions of the development report that provide valuable pointers to the direction that the multilateral lending agency would like to pursue.
There is little doubt that agriculture remains the most crucial sector in developing countries, which, needless to say, are agriculture-based economies and typically have the largest segments of their populations engaged in the sector. In the case of Bangladesh, agriculture currently contributes just over a fifth of the GDP but employs over half the labour force. At least a third of the population is dependent on this sector for their livelihoods. Since most of the rural poor, who are among the most marginalised and deprived, are engaged in agriculture, it is intuitively posited that a sustainable agriculture which is profitable would benefit them and contribute to reduction of poverty and the ever-widening disparity. It would, however, be important to ascertain how exactly investment in agriculture would lead to poverty reduction and human development. The development report does not touch upon the issue and suggests that any improvement of agricultural commerce, in whatever form or mode, would lead to poverty reduction, without clearly establishing the link between agricultural growth, suggested mode of innovation and transformation and poverty reduction.
Most controversial is perhaps the unquestioning support to fully exploit the benefits of biotechnology and genetically modified organisms that the development report provides. To strengthen its case the report draws upon the experience of Bt cotton without mentioning the devastating effect it has had on the livelihoods of thousands of farmers in India. The Deccan Development Society, which works with grassroots farmers, has convinced the government of Andhra Pradesh, an Indian province where farmers had been the worst hit, to kick out Monsanto that had developed and marketed the seeds of Bt cotton. There were reports of angry farmers vandalising the local offices of the biotech multinational. None of it was mentioned in the report, though.
Such omissions, however glaring or minute, which contradict a foregone conclusion, as internal reviews and external research prove, are largely by design rather than by default. The nagging suspicion among the critics of the multilateral lending agencies that their research was not entirely reliable became all the stronger when Joseph Stiglitz had to leave his position of the chief economist of the World Bank, which also claims to be the world's knowledge bank, after a difference of opinion with the US Treasury about the contents of another World
Development Report, Attacking Poverty, in 2000. That report turned out to be one that had been used for several years to decide upon the right policies for poverty reduction. There have been several other untimely exits of senior researchers who did not quite toe the line, including William Easterly and Ravi Kanbur.
Robin Broad's article on how the World Bank ensured 'paradigm maintenance' through its research was a severe blow to the credibility of this bank's research. 'Research, Knowledge, and the Art of
"Paradigm Maintenance": The World Bank's Development Economics Vice-Presidency (DEC)' was published in the Review of International Political Economy in August 2006. Broad, a professor at the School of International Service at American University, concluded, after a 'look inside' the department concerned and two dozen interviews of current and former staff of the bank, that 'through its research, the World Bank has played a critical role in the legitimisation of the
neo-liberal free-market paradigm over the past quarter century and its research department has been vital to this role. As activists working on the World Bank explore which parts of the Bank should be eliminated or reformed, they should look closely at the Bank's research department as well as its external affairs department which disseminates broadly this less than objective research.'
She refers to the much-cited work of David Dollar that apparently 'exemplifies the "paradigm-maintenance" role.' It basically posited that it was empirically proved that countries committed to liberalisation, privatisation and the free market — in others words, the firm believers of the Washington Consensus — achieved higher growth than those who were averse to globalisation and the free market. Broad describes six mechanisms – hiring, promotion, selective
application of rules, discouraging dissenting views and manipulation of data – by which the development economics vice-presidency performed in the role of perpetuating the imperialist hegemony.
Soon after came the damning blow by way of an internal evaluation of the World Bank's research between 1998 and 2005 headed by Angus Deaton, a professor of economics at Princeton University. This evaluation slated two articles by Dollar, including the one that Broad discusses, as being flawed and concluded that the lending agency had placed undue importance on just one paper to advocate policy setting. The other paper that this panel criticised was one which concluded
that aid is more effective in countries with good policies. Through interviews of previous and current staff of the World Bank the panel found that research which challenged the agency's goals or operations was actively discouraged and subjected to endless reviews. The panellists also said conclusions of some of its flagship publications, such as the World Development Report, were negotiated earlier and the entire exercise was conducted to prove those conclusions. The panel
rightly observed that these publications, although based on flawed research, were disseminated by the World Bank with much zeal and enthusiasm and have a direct bearing on decisions that policymakers take across the world. Its publications go on to form the opinion of an inordinately large number of development practitioners, bureaucrats and politicians who would then sincerely act as tools that further agency's agenda on their own.
When Mirza Aziz was asked about the people's tribunal on Saturday on the lending agencies — announced on the same day as the arrival of Zoellick — he pointed out that these organisations provided almost half of the development budget. His questioning manner suggested that
the finance adviser would only be convinced with robust analyses of the economic effect of halving the development programmes of the government. One, however, wonders if he had the same attitude during his meeting with Zoellick or Thomas Rumbaugh when the IMF delegation visited Bangladesh in September. It is painfully clear that the finance adviser and his colleagues running the government would unquestioningly abide by a certain agricultural policy that the World Bank suggests despite the contradictory opinion from local economists and experts as they have in the case of the precautionary monetary policy prescribed by the International Monetary Fund. Surely, Mirza Aziz did not ask for a robust analysis of the agency's conclusion.
Furthermore, to maintain this intellectual hegemony, the World Bank has begun to produce a far higher number of publications on development and poverty reduction since the introduction of the
poverty reduction strategy paper. Besides providing the guideline for its preparation, the World Bank ensures that its agenda is fully reflected by the 'home grown' poverty reduction strategy by ensuring that an academic who is within its fold is charged with authoring the report. The volumes of publications are merely pointers of how to devise development policies.
While the poverty reduction strategy of Bangladesh is supposedly 'home grown' and while the decisions to privatise public sector jute mills or increase of fuel prices were also taken by the incumbents, they typically resemble exactly what those agencies had prescribed or would
have prescribed. Although there are numerous studies, research and practical examples from other countries that have industrialised and developed by not following the prescriptions of the lending agencies, decision makers hardly take them into cognisance.
That the international financial institutions only look to further the corporate interests of large multinationals based in countries that drive these agencies has been pointed out repeatedly. For instance the Asian Development Bank provides funds for infrastructure, roads and highways because it would only increase the demand for cars in Bangladesh. Provided that an overwhelming proportion of the cars in Bangladesh are manufactured by Japanese companies, Japan would
naturally be interested in helping such a market to build more roads.
Although the WB president appointment is typically linked with the foreign policy interests of the lending agency, such matters are hardly questioned around the world. It is due to the hegemony of knowledge that these agencies together create and perpetuate through the popular media.
One of the goals of the People's Tribunal on WB-IMF-ADB is to point these out and create a general awareness among the people so that they raise such questions. It is this myth of omnipotence in development research that the tribunal would want to deconstruct through
presentation of cases with exhaustive and convincing evidence as was mentioned during its announcement. People in other parts of the world are increasingly questioning these lending agencies. They are being rejected from Latin America after years of persecution through the
neo-liberalist paradigm that eventually ensure annihilation of the marginalised communities and prevalence of large capital increasing disparity, which is quite visible in Bangladesh too. These agencies are faced with strong opposition in East Asia where countries engage in serious negotiations. The IMF prescriptions have already elicited an unprecedented note of protest from the top business bodies and chambers of commerce in Bangladesh. Organisers of the tribunal rightly believe it is time to send a clear message that the policies imposed upon the government will be questioned and challenged.
Posted by collective at November 17, 2007 04:10 PM
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To embrace excellence, universities should get freedom: Sibal 2 Aug 2009, 0206 hrs IST, ET Bureau | |||
Investment in education is necessary for the creation of intellectual capital. In India, 900,000 students enroll for engineering every year, but behind this statistic is the fact that only 12% make it to college after passing the Plus-2 level. That, as compared to the global average of 27% and 50-70% in Europe and USA. In India, by 2020, this needs to go up to atleast 30%, Mr Sibal said in Kolkata while addressing the 4th CII University-Industry Council Symposium at BESU, Shibpur, where he also launched CII-BESU Industrial Research, Innovation & HRD Centre.
"We need to talk about 88% at the bottom of the pyramid," said Mr Sibal, adding that it was needed to free the university system of government control. "We need to embrace excellence and expansion. In the process of expansion, equity is necessary," he said. He also added that the department has earmarked Rs 31,000 crore for state universities.
Mr Sibal stressed that universities should be given operational freedom in designing courses and proposed an incentive benchmark for universities as well as for faculty based on performance. He also advocated transparency where he suggested having websites for every university having all details with regard to their curriculum and faculty. Referring to the one-examination-for-all along the lines of the GRE as a ‘dream’, he said schools first need to reach a certain standard over the next three-four years and then move towards a single test.
He also announced that the University-Industry Congress would be held from 2010, which would have national awards, showcase collaboration between industry and academia and auction university patents.
Vijay Thadani, chairman, CII National Committee on Education and CEO, NIIT Ltd said, among other things, that there is a need to build permanent bridges between universities and industry; create an innovative system from KG to PG and encourage youth to take up post-graduate studies and PhDs; address quality along with inclusiveness; learn from best practices abroad and then create our own. Sudarshan Raychoudhury, minister- in - charge, department of higher education, government of West Bengal said there is a need for Centre- state cooperation in the field of policy decisions in the educational sector, as state governments have a big role to play in this regard.
Political leash off IITs in ‘silent but massive’ shift | |||
| CHARU SUDAN KASTURI | |||
New Delhi, July 27: Playing God isn’t always fun — at least for the human resource development ministry. The HRD ministry has quietly withdrawn from its long-held role of ultimate arbiter in internal disputes of IITs, tired of handling an increasing number of complaints against institute administrators levelled by students and faculty. The ministry has instead set up a new grievance redress committee chaired by Dr R. Chidambaram, a member of the Prime Minister’s Scientific Advisory Committee, to resolve all internal disputes between members of the IIT community. The higher education department secretary will now forward all IIT-related allegations, complaints or pleas made by students, faculty or other members of the staff to this panel, top IIT officials told The Telegraph. The committee also has chairmen of the boards of governors of IIT Delhi (V.S. Ramamurthy) and IIT Kanpur (M. Anandakrishnan) as members, sources said. Chidambaram is also a member of the IIT council, the highest decision-making body of the Indian Institutes of Technology. “It is a silent but massive shift in the functioning of the IITs. No longer will India’s apex engineering schools be hostage to the political whims and fancies of the ministry on issues that can easily be sorted out by the institutes themselves,” an IIT director said. Ministry sources confirmed that they receive — almost every day — complaints from aggrieved IIT students or staff members, demanding the government’s intervention. Invariably, the ministry first forwards the representation to the concerned IIT for a response. Once it receives the response though, the final decision on the complaint is often coloured with politics, IIT officials allege. IIT administrators cite the recent spate of cases of students from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes asked to leave by institutes allegedly on the ground of poor performance. These students — the cases involved IIT Delhi and IIT Kharagpur — approached the ministry alleging caste discrimination as the reason they were asked to leave. Then HRD minister Arjun Singh met the students and assured them they would be taken back. The IITs didn’t agree, but “there was intense pressure”, an official said. In another instance late last year, the HRD ministry received an appeal from a student of IIT Guwahati filmed on a camera phone boasting that he had leaked an internal examination paper. The student had been asked to leave by the IIT and wanted the ministry to intervene. “Invariably, these incidents give ministry officials, and the minister himself, an opportunity to harass a director or administration he is unhappy with, or at the very least play God on an issue generally concerning simply the rules of the institute,” a former IIT director said on the condition of anonymity. But the ministry’s decision to withdraw from internal IIT disputes could also effectively end hopes of genuine victims of administrative bias receiving intervention from the government, a Delhi IIT student asked to leave last year said. “This may lead to a scenario where victims of biased administrative decisions have no realistic hope that their voice will be heard. The members of the grievance redressal panel are a part of the administration themselves. I am not casting aspersions on individuals, but I fear they will be loaded in their views in favour of the administration,” the student argued. Concurring with the student’s concerns, a senior IIT Bombay faculty member argued that members of the IIT community would be more susceptible to bias against or for fellow IITians than ministry officials. “There is greater chance of conflict of interest in the new grievance redressal mechanism than now,” the professor said. |
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