The year 2020 has posed unprecedented challenges for educators all over the world. In India, the pandemic and the ensuing economic crisis have laid bare the structural inequalities entrenched in all levels of education. Students and teachers have been struggling to cope with the enormous digital divide in a predominantly poor country as teaching was moved online; many teachers and other workers in the private education sector have lost their jobs; severe economic hardship of the migrants, who were forced to leave big cities after a countrywide lockdown, has resulted in an escalation of the number of school and college drop-outs.
Continue reading National Education Policy 2020: A Discussion on Educational Policy Reform in India, 14 October 2020Category: India Branch Office
‘Is this home? Not so much!’ – Gender, Ethnicity and Belongingness to the City
Lily and Esther have been in New Delhi for 17 and 22 years respectively. The former came to the city as a fresh graduate to pursue a Masters and the latter, to do an undergraduate degree. They have several things in common, despite differences in their ages and experience. Both belong to the north-eastern states of India, though from a different city and tribe. One identifies herself as a Naga, the other as a Mizo. Their ethnic identities, they point out, are evident from their facial features – a flat nose, small eyes and a heavily accented Hindi they speak.
Continue reading ‘Is this home? Not so much!’ – Gender, Ethnicity and Belongingness to the City