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By:

Quaid Najmi

4 January 2025 at 3:26:24 pm

Thackerays’ ‘Taandav’ for trees, tigers

AI generated image Mumbai: Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) President Raj Thackeray launched a sharp attack on the government for the systematic degradation of the state’s environment under the garb of development, even as the climate change poses a direct threat to the environment, economy, agriculture, public health and the future of both rural and urban centres. Questioning the state government’s claims of having planted millions of trees, he rued how the World Environment Day has been...

Thackerays’ ‘Taandav’ for trees, tigers

AI generated image Mumbai: Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) President Raj Thackeray launched a sharp attack on the government for the systematic degradation of the state’s environment under the garb of development, even as the climate change poses a direct threat to the environment, economy, agriculture, public health and the future of both rural and urban centres. Questioning the state government’s claims of having planted millions of trees, he rued how the World Environment Day has been reduced to an annual ritual of tree-planting drives and clicking selfies for social media, though 90 pc of the saplings don’t survive even a day. “Only the government knows where those trees really are,” said Raj sternly. He recalled a "Blueprint of Maharashtra’s Development" he had proposed in 2015, in which he advocated how development without environmental sensitivity is hollow. Justifying, he said that the consequences are visible where roads, bridges and infrastructure projects are hailed as achievements, but even a short spell of rainfall can paralyze entire cities. Referring to recent reports on farmers returning from the fields after 10 am due to the scorching heat, Raj said that the worsening climate crisis has become an everyday reality. Citing official statistics, Raj claimed that extreme heat has caused productivity losses of nearly USD 159 billion and slashing of 160 billion work-hours annually in recent years. He mentioned the World Bank estimates that India’s GDP could plummet by 2.5-4.5 pc while 57 pc of the country’s districts sheltering 76 pc of the population stare at serious climate-related crises. Taking a swipe, he said while the governments boast about growth figures and economical rankings, they are silent on the staggering costs of environmental destruction. He questioned the development model “whether flooded cities, washed-away crops and unbearable summers” genuinely indicate progress. Claiming that Maharashtra was increasingly becoming unliveable for upto 8 months in a year, he said excessive monsoon rains disrupt rural life and urban floods cripple cities, while extreme heat make normal life a torture in summers in both urban-rural areas. Targeting the Centre, Raj alleged that nearly 173,984 hectares of forest lands were diverted in the past 11 years for mining and infrastructure projects to benefit the PM’s single favourite Adani Group. He said that these lands amount to 1,730 sqkm, or equivalent to the area of 16 Sanjay Gandhi National Park (SGNP) that is spread over barely 104 sqkm. Dissolve state wildlife board: Aaditya Shiv Sena (UBT) leader Aditya Thackeray has accused the Maharashtra government for issuing a permit to carry out mining activity in the sensitive tiger corridor between the Tadoba-Andhari and Indravati sanctuaries housing the big striped cats. In a strongly-worded letter to the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) Member-Secretary Sanjay Kumar, Thackeray sought his immediate personal intervention, sacking the Maharashtra State Board for Wild-Life (SBWL), revoking the permit, and probe against the Chief Wildlife Warden & Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) M. Srinivasa Reddy for the alleged lacunae. Aditya’s two-pager says the permit has been granted for “scientific exploration and excavation/systematic recovery of low-grade iron ore in existing mines in villages Hedri, Bande, Parsalgondi and Round Parsalgondi, in the Etapalli taluka of Gadchiroli district”. Last January, Aditya – MLA from Worli – had first raised the issue saying that the proposed mine would create only 120 jobs, including 32 permanent, and the estimated output is pegged at 1.1 million tons in a year. Referring to two letters of Reddy – on April 28 and May 21 – the SS (UBT) leader claimed that in communications to the state government, the PCCF had changed his stance on the issue. Aditya said that in the first letter, Reddy had effectively opposed the government plans for mining activity but in the second letter, he took a somersault, ostensibly due to government pressures or some commercial interests, “the U-turn is disgraceful and detrimental to India’s national interest” – and this abrupt shift in stance must be investigated thoroughly. In view of the contrary stance of the PCCF Reddy, entrusted with protecting the wildlife but failing to defend the NTCA and NBWL, point to serious malfunctioning of the SBWL, and hence it must be dissolved, besides reviewing all its decisions in the past three years, particularly those pertaining to hazardous activities in sensitive areas, demanded Aditya. 444 tigers roam in 11,000 sq.km As per the Status of Tiger Report (2002), and the Maharashtra Economic Survey 2025-2026, the state boasts of 444 tigers prowling in the wild along with other menacing creatures. The state’s total protected wildlife network of 88 Notified Areas of National Parks, Sanctuaries, and Conservation Reserves - including 6 dedicated to the striped big cats – is spread over 11,092 sq. kms as per current data.

The AI Classroom Divide

India’s AI curriculum broadens access, but risks widening the employability gap.

India’s Economic Survey 2024-25 flagged the tension directly. Chief Economic Advisor V. Anantha Nageswaran noted that while technology eventually creates more jobs than it displaces, the critical period lies in between. That interval requires supporting institutions, changed academic curricula, and changed workplace practices. India’s AI education policy, rolled out through CBSE from 2026-27, is one such institutional response. Its design choices carry specific implications for who benefits from the AI economy and how soon.

 

The National Education Policy 2020 identifies AI, data science, and related fields as essential for future employment and economic growth. The Ministry of Education frames the CBSE curriculum for Classes 3 to 12 as building a pipeline of AI literate students capable of contributing to technology-driven sectors. The curriculum emphasises computational thinking as a precursor to AI capability, not as early technical specialisation. Students begin with logical reasoning and pattern recognition. Depth is deferred.

This is a deliberate choice. And it signals a specific theory of labour.

India’s AI curriculum is explicitly cross-sectoral. Programmes like YUVAi, under which students apply AI to agriculture, health, transport, and rural development, link school education to real-world problem solving across domains. The objective is not to produce AI engineers alone. It is to produce workers who apply AI thinking across a mixed economy with a large informal sector.

 

China’s model runs on a different logic. Its Ministry of Education released guidelines in May 2025 establishing a tiered system where primary students learn AI through voice recognition and image classification, junior high students examine machine learning processes, and senior secondary students design and refine algorithmic models. The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology reported that China’s AI sector crossed 900 billion yuan in 2024, a 24 percent year-on-year increase. Education is organised to feed that industrial machine.

 

India delays specialisation by design. China accelerates it. Changjiang Securities forecasts China’s AI education market will reach 160 billion yuan by 2027, aligned with a coordinated industrial policy framework where labour demand is anticipated and training pipelines are built to match.

 

Embedded Inequality

 

DIKSHA (Digital Infrastructure for Knowledge Sharing) uses AI to improve accessibility, including for visually impaired learners. But ASER (Annual Status of Education Report) 2024, which surveyed 649,491 children across 605 rural districts, reveals what inclusion looks like at the ground level. Only 43.5 percent of government schools have computers for teaching, against 70.9 percent in private unaided schools. Among 14 to 16-year-olds, 89 percent report smartphones at home but only 57 percent use them for education. Over 44 percent of Class 5 students in government schools still cannot read a Class 2-level text.

 

Gender compounds the gap. ASER 2024 found that 36.2 percent of boys aged 14 to 16 personally own a smartphone, against 26.9 percent of girls, a 9.3 percentage point gap consistent across all states. Girls from conservative rural households face reduced digital access at home, which means AI curriculum delivered in school cannot be reinforced at home. The policy’s inclusion intent and its likely outcomes are not the same thing.

 

China’s centralised system reduces implementation disparity by design. Standardisation ensures more uniform exposure across schools, and the Ministry’s coordinated mechanism synchronises curriculum, teacher training, and infrastructure nationally. But China’s model subordinates individual flexibility to national industrial priorities. Skills built for current strategic sectors may not adapt when technological trajectories shift.

 

India’s curriculum incorporates ethical reasoning alongside technical exposure. Students are expected to understand how AI affects society, not only how to operate AI systems. This shapes a different kind of worker over time, one who questions systems rather than only operating within them.

 

China’s model places greater emphasis on application and optimization within defined systems. The May 2025 guidelines prohibit students from submitting AI-generated content as academic work and mandate critical thinking about AI outputs. But the curriculum’s stated goal is technological self-reliance and industrial competitiveness. Ethical training is supplementary to that objective, not co-equal with it.

 

India’s approach builds contextually adaptable workers suited to a diverse economy with a large service sector, an informal workforce, and developmental challenges that require cross-domain problem solving. China builds functionally specialised workers aligned with a coordinated industrial state. The question for India is whether its broad-base strategy produces workers with enough technical depth to compete for high-value segments of the AI economy, and whether the infrastructure to support that depth exists outside the country’s top-tier urban schools.

 

Execution Gap

Teacher training is the most acute pressure point. India has approximately 96 lakh school teachers as of UDISE+ (Unified District Information System for Education Plus) 2024-25. NISHTHA’s (National Initiative for School Head and Teachers Holistic Advancement) grade-specific modules are the planned delivery mechanism. But AI pedagogy is not yet integrated into B.Ed. curricula. Teachers trained through short-term workshops face students who will not see the benefit if that training does not translate into sustained classroom practice.

 

The infrastructure deficit compounds this. A school without functional electricity cannot run AI-enabled tools. A student without home internet access cannot practise outside school hours. The 18.5 percentage point internet access gap between government and private schools is not a technology problem. It is a resource allocation problem that requires sustained public investment, not curriculum design.

 

If India addresses these gaps, its broad-base model holds genuine promise. A large, demographically young workforce applying AI across agriculture, health, logistics, and finance could produce development outcomes that specialised industrial pipelines do not reach.

 

If those gaps remain, AI education will expand awareness without shifting labour outcomes. Students will learn what AI is. They will not learn to use it at a level that changes what work they access.

 

The curriculum is set. The system that must deliver it is under-resourced in precisely the schools that serve the students who need it most.

 

(The writer is an independent public policy researcher who writes on political economy, climate, and the ethics of everyday systems. Views personal.)

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