‘India is good to gifted children’

Dr Laurie Croft, a professor from the Belin Blank Center for Gifted Education, US, honours advisor and a research guide, believes that India's growth story with gifted children (she hates to refer to them as disabled) will be more successful than China's. She was in India to attend the annual general meeting of Mensa, an NGO working towards the cause of educating gifted children, and was visiting special schools in Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and Nasik.

"I can applaud the way India has worked towards this cause. It is better than what China has done. In 2008 Dr Nayaran Desai, an executive council member from Mensa, an NGO, had come to the University of Iowa for a scholarship on campus. From then onwards the University of Iowa has formed a partnership with Mensa to support them with ideas and techniques to make life less complicated for gifted children. I contribute with scholarly articles and improvised plans. Our association with Mensa guarantees a scholarship for these students to study an honours programme in several subjects from the University of Iowa," Dr Croft told The Sunday Guardian.

According to her, different Indian states have different needs: "We have started stressing on local communities so that we can plan study material and teaching methods according to their needs as talent development is immense in India."

Dr Croft herself is the mother of two gifted children who inspired her to learn more about special children: "It wasn't easy for me to consider this option until my elder daughter turned eleven. At such a young age she was learning a new language — Russian, which amazed me because she was faster than others. At 15 she left school and started college. She is a linguist and is now pursuing her PhD. Later we got to know that our younger one has brain tumour. I decided to pursue a PhD in educational leadership specialising in gifted education from the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma." "My job profile includes working with gifted children in classrooms and teaching teachers how to train them. I am also an honours advisor and help develop ideas at the University of Iowa. I have been in touch with different educators across the world trying to brainstorm and get new ideas to train these special children. I have been working for almost 13 years now," she said.

Dr Croft believes that in many ways she has the easiest job. "Many of these special children in the 4th grade in America are performing better than an average 8th grader. But they have been repeatedly told that they are gifted, which implies that things come easily to them. Unfortunately, at some point they will realise that life is tough," she explained.

She says she had a dream fulfilled during this India visit. "I saw and touched an elephant. I have always wanted to see one. And I get to see monkeys every now and then," she said with utmost excitement, almost jumping out of the sofa.

"I would recommend teachers to get appropriate training to teach gifted children. I see a lot of potential in India as the IQ level is much higher than students from other parts of the world," she concluded.

2 October in The Sunday Guardian.

Intellectual JNU hostels in sin-along mood

Live-ins are "in" for Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students. Officially, JNU has separate hostels for men and women and live-ins are illegal, but tell that to the students who have been living together "openly", with even hostel wardens sometimes looking the other way, or fining them Rs 200 when they catch them. But the students are "scared" about giving their real names. "Do not name us or else we will be detained," was the common refrain. Some senior students had been detained in the past. So most of the names have been changed in this article.

"What is the harm in living together in the same room? We are adults. We are not twelve anymore and are capable of taking our lives' decisions. Plus this has been quite common here," said Janakya, who has been in three live-in relationships with three of her classmates over a period of one and a half years that she has been in JNU and is on the verge of leaving her third partner.

JNU has 18 hostels on campus, including a working women's hostel. Out of these hostels only six are for girls and the other 11 for boys.

"Hypocrisy is evident in JNU as the girls are allowed to enter boys' hostels, but the boys are not allowed to enter girls' hostels. Even some faculty members had objected to this discrimination, but no action has been taken so far. Living together is very common on our campus but it is not really allowed. However, our faculty is particular about these rules. If they find students fooling around they impose a fine of Rs 200 on them, especially when they are on attendance rounds at night," said Abhi, who is not in favour of the idea of live-ins but does not dare to say anything because of peer pressure.

"JNU has always been a world-renowned university. Why should we bother about such petty issues? We are happy with the advanced thought process we have. It is no big deal if students are staying together. We are intellectuals, unlike other college kids. We can differentiate between what is wrong and right. We even have boys staying with their male partners in the same hostel. And let's not even talk about how many one-night stands we know of," said Amrita, who has the reputation of being in the know and is said to be one the biggest gossipmongers of JNU.

The most famous in-house couple (we are allowed to give their real names), profiled by various publications, is Sree, 27, who is finishing his PhD at JNU and his girlfriend Gargi Bhattacharya, 26, who is a lecturer at St. Stephen's College. "For the past six years we have practically been living together in Sree's hostel room," said Gargi.

Sree and Gargi say that they never want to get married as they do not want to bear the burden of in-laws, children and "grief".

Other students share similar thoughts and are happy that they get to live with their partners and decide about their relationship's future based on their experience. They say that JNU makes life less complicated for couples as it gives them the "option" of living together. But they firmly believe that this does not affect their studies because they are studying in JNU to fulfill their respective goals.

2 October in The Sunday Guardian.

Difficult to fill vacancies, say firms

Only 25% of India's professionals who have already been hired are of any merit, the rest lack the skills to do their job well. This is the finding of a report by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and Ernst and Young. With school dropout rate as high at 57%, employers are finding it difficult to fill skilled job vacancies. The report says 90% of the country's total workforce lacks skills for gainful employment. Four out of every ten people are in the working age group.

The report says that over 40 million people are registered in employment exchanges but only 0.2 million get jobs annually; almost 80% of the workforce in rural and urban India does not have marketable skills; and the difficulty of employers in India to fill job vacancies has increased to 67% in 2011 compared to 16% in the previous year. Almost 93% of the Indian workforce is in the unorganised sector with no formal training.

"There is a critical need to upgrade the skills of India's workforce, like in Germany, which is doing well compared to the highly depressed economies of the Eurozone, primarily because of its skilled workforce," S. Ramadorai, advisor of the Prime Minister's National Skill Development Council, told The Sunday Guardian.

"It is imperative for society to legitimise vocational education and training as an equally attractive alternative to conventional degree-based education," said R.V. Kanoria, managing director of Kanoria Chemicals and Industries Limited, Delhi.

Analysts believe that India needs to gear up for internal challenges like inconsistency in infrastructure and delivery mechanisms and a larger role for sector-wise skills councils. "There are six basic steps for better implementation of skills development. They are pre-training assessment, training obtained from working on the job, certification, which guarantees that you have received skills training, placement and on the job mentoring, which leads to better productivity. Embedding appropriate training at the source will help in achieving targets and providing jobs," Pooja Gyanchandani, director, FICCI Skills Development, told this newspaper.

There are 17 Central ministries, along with the National Skill Development Corporation and State governments who provide skill development programmes. "National level strategic collaboration and co-operation of existing bodies will increase hiring levels. Skill enhancement at the individual level will lead to better trained manpower, lower attrition rates, and better matching of aspirations," added Gyanchandani.

Dilip Chenoy, CEO of National Skills Development Corporation said that the industry is coming forward to enhance awareness on skill development. While referring to organisations like Tata Steel and Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, he highlighted the impact and reach that an organisation can have towards contributing to skill development.

28 September in The Sunday Guardian.

British lady lobbies for UK apology on Amritsar

Caroline Jaine, a British artist, writer and former diplomat is trying to get her government apologise for the Jallianwala Bagh massacre of 13 April 1919. Her application to e-petition the UK Foreign Office has been accepted and if she can get 100,000 British signatures for her cause by next August, she will be successful in getting the matter debated in Parliament. "I had never heard of the Amritsar (Jallianwala Bagh) massacre before," Jaine told this newspaper over the internet. "I wrote a blog (on Pakistan newspaper Dawn's website) about the summer riots in the UK and commented that I had been surprised that some South Asian friends appeared smugly happy with the unrest. Another blogger picked up on this and wrote a rather amusing tongue-in-cheek blog post listing the many reasons that Indians in particular might enjoy an ailing Britain. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre was mentioned and I began to research it and realised what a terrible thing had happened," she explained. The Jallianwala Bagh massacre took place in a public garden in Amritsar when 50 British Indian Army soldiers commanded by Brigadier-General Reginald Dyer shot dead over 1,000 people. Jaine believes it is unfair that Britain was able to apologise for events like Bloody Sunday in Ireland, but not for what happened in Amritsar. "Google revealed how many appeals had been made to the British to issue an apology. I think the Queen even visited the site, but stopped short of saying sorry. I knew about the e-petition system and thought it was a good democratic way to demonstrate that the people of Britain would like to issue an apology." "I am hoping this campaign will be viral and that I will not be at the heart of it, as each of the signatories is as important as the other. The driving force will be the 100,000 signatures that we raise in support of the statement." Author of the book, A Better Basra based on the time she has spent in Iraq, Jaine also writes academic texts, and blogs for Dawn and World Bank. She also runs Cambridge Advanced Strategic Training (CAST) and Askance Publishing and lectures on Public and Cultural Diplomacy at London Metropolitan University. She has also taught at summer schools in both Oxford and Cambridge. She is a portrait artist and uses mediums like film, story-telling and oil paint. India has played an important role in helping Caroline select her surname "Jaine" after she was divorced. As she puts it, "Jains are known for their compassion for animals and dedication to a pacifist path in life. And I made a decision there and then on the surname. I would insert an 'I' at the very heart of Jane to make it mine." 18 September 2011 in The Sunday Guardian.