On occasion of its diamond jubilee, the Marathi Vidnyan Parishad is adapting its mission of vernacular science outreach to a more digital age without losing sight of its founding ideals. The Marathi Vidnyan Parishad (MVP), Mumbai, one of India’s most respected science communication movements, recently completed 60 years of its inspiring journey. Over the past six decades, the Parishad has played a pioneering role in promoting scientific temper, disseminating scientific knowle

From a Caltech lecture hall to modern cleanrooms, Feynman’s vision of the atomic frontier continues to guide scientific ambition even today. During the fourth year of my doctoral research, my Ph.D. advisor gifted me a humongous printed volume. It was an IEEE anthology of selected academic papers, on microfabrication and miniaturization, published over a period of 50 years. That beauty started with a transcript of Professor Richard Feynman’s famous classic talk given on Decemb

India’s new learning generation is dismantling the classroom monopoly, replacing rigid processes with fluid, skill-driven learning. AI generated image While Indian classrooms may be full when it comes to attendance, the students’ attention span for learning has certainly slipped its leash. Across India’s varsity campuses, learning now happens in the glow of a screen which is regrettably, often more compelling than the lecture at hand. A five-minute video can make clearer what

Consider three children. All are six years old. All attend Class I classrooms in the same city. All are equally entitled, under Article 21A of the Constitution, to free and compulsory education. But that is where equality ends. The first child attends a government school. The teacher standing in front of the class was required, by law, to pass the Teacher Eligibility Test (TET) - a benchmark designed to assess whether they understand how children learn, how classrooms functio

The government’s school reform agenda promises transformation, but delivery gaps in staffing, infrastructure and funding threaten to blunt its impact. India’s school education system is undergoing its most significant structural change in a decade. From the 2026-27 academic session, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) is implementing three reforms simultaneously: a mandatory third language from Class 6, computational thinking (CT) and artificial intelligence (AI)

When state textbooks face judicial scrutiny The Supreme Court of India’s recent direction to the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) to revisit and remove allegedly defamatory content from its textbooks raises a fundamental and somewhat uncomfortable question: where does academic freedom end and reputational harm begin when the state itself is the author of the narrative? State Responsibility At the outset, it must be acknowledged that textbooks pres

The birth of Artificial Intelligence is often compared to the birth of the Internet-an innovation that quietly entered our lives and gradually became inseparable from it. Decades ago, the Internet was a luxury; today, it is a necessity woven into our daily existence. Similarly, AI is not just another technological trend-it is steadily becoming an integral part of human life. Whether we consciously choose to use it or not, AI will continue to exist, evolve, and shape the way w

The birth of Artificial Intelligence is often compared to the birth of the Internet-an innovation that quietly entered our lives and gradually became inseparable from it. Decades ago, the Internet was a luxury; today, it is a necessity woven into our daily existence. Similarly, AI is not just another technological trend-it is steadily becoming an integral part of human life. Whether we consciously choose to use it or not, AI will continue to exist, evolve, and shape the way w

As AI renders entry-level work obsolete, India’s education system risks producing graduates for jobs that no longer exist. Last week, I made a simple phone call. I was trying to help a young finance graduate - a bright kid, full of hope - find a job at a company I knew well. A BPO firm. The kind of company that used to hire hundreds of freshers every year. My friend, a senior leader there, heard me out. Then he said something I was not ready for. “We don't need freshers like

As other nations rebuild their entire knowledge systems for an AI-driven future, India remains trapped in incrementalism while leaving the deeper architecture of learning untouched. Picture a classroom. Thirty students. Bright faces, packed bags, parents who sacrificed holidays and savings to put them there. Now remove fifteen of them. Tell them that you studied hard, you passed your exams, you did everything right but are not ready for the world waiting outside this door. Th

As the Centre expands PG medical seats, Maharashtra is losing both seats and standards—amid faculty shortages and allegations of corruption in contractual appointments. Even as the Union government expands PG medical seats nationwide, Maharashtra is losing ground due to a chronic faculty shortage in government medical colleges. At Rajarshi Shahu Government Medical College, vacancies across seven departments have already cost 23 PG seats, with the total likely to rise to 40 as

Karnataka’s fake degree scandal reveals a deeper collapse of scrutiny in public higher education. How did counterfeit doctoral degrees slip past official scrutiny in a State that prides itself on academic heritage? Who verified the credentials of those appointed to mould young minds? How many deserving scholars were denied opportunity while forged certificates quietly opened doors? Can an education system endure when suspicion clouds the integrity of its own faculty? These q

Maharashtra’s bureaucratic drift is turning a flagship foreign-study scheme into a machine for wasting talent. For a government that talks grandly of global exposure and human capital, the foreign merit scholarship scheme run by the Higher and Technical Education Department has acquired an unfortunate reputation. It raises hopes early, dashes them late and teaches students a brutal lesson in administrative indifference. The scheme’s purpose is admirable. It is meant to help m

Long before rankings became an obsession, India’s leading institutions had earned their standing through serious scholarship and mentorship. There was a time when Indian universities did not wait anxiously for an annual announcement to know who they were. There were no league tables, no accreditation cycles, no dashboards of perception indices. And yet, as history shows, Indian higher education produced scholars of global standing and institutions of intellectual depth. In 18

The enduring weakness of India’s education policy lies not in reform design, but in the absence of an organised constituency that turns learning into leverage. A longtime reader once told me my writing on education was “good writing” but “idealistic.” I was irritated at the time. How can education, the one subject every parent worries about, be called idealistic? But two recent editions of India Today forced me to reconsider. A January commemorative issue arranged the country

Anger over relaxed admission norms sparks nationwide backlash; the deeper structural failures demand scrutiny. A large number of vacant seats in the third round of counselling for postgraduate medical admissions has pushed policymakers into a controversial corner. In a bid to fill these seats, the Medical Counselling Committee’s decision to sharply lower cut-offs has triggered widespread criticism from across the medical fraternity. The National Medical Commission (NMC) has p

India’s war on coaching centres is being fought everywhere except where it matters most. In June 2025, the Ministry of Education constituted a high-level committee to examine students’ growing dependence on coaching centres and to recommend measures to reduce it. The MoE’s order is unusually candid in its diagnosis. It acknowledges that Indian schools are not building critical thinking or analytical depth, that rote learning continues to dominate classrooms, that formative as

In an age where students are constantly juggling expectations, racing against deadlines, and battling unseen emotional storms, mental well-being often takes a back seat. While classrooms focus on grades and playgrounds shape physical fitness, the silent struggles of young minds frequently go unnoticed. Breaking this long-standing pattern, Nanded Education Society’s Science College, Nanded, has stepped up to the plate by launching an innovative initiative, ‘Aapulki,’ a dedicat

NEP 2020 envisions education as the foundation for building an equitable and innovative society. Although it is a comprehensive vision, its full realization is evaluated by its capacity of overcoming significant implementation challenges, especially in governance and equitable access. According to the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, the primary goal of education in India is to transform the system to an integrated, versatile, multidisciplinary, and aligned to the 21st

India’s education reforms will succeed not by producing trained hands, but by cultivating adaptable minds. One phrase dominates discussions on higher education today: the ‘job-ready graduate.’ It sounds practical, reassuring, and even urgent. Yet it hides a deeper question that is rarely asked. What does ‘job-ready’ really mean at a time when jobs themselves are changing faster than ever? In most professional settings, there are no fixed manuals. Engineers, scientists, and te