Counterview

By Raj Kumar Sinha*  There is no single reason for the decay of India's government education system. Behind it lies a combination of insufficient budget allocation, lack of basic infrastructure, and an absence of accountability. Teaching positions in schools lie vacant, and those who are employed often lack the training and competence required for modern times. The education system prioritizes rote learning and exam scores over skill development or practical knowledge. The new generation taking to the streets against the deterioration of government education is demanding not just facilities, but accountability.

By Fr. Cedric Prakash SJ*  I am Malala: I was born on 12 July 1997 as Malala Yousafzai in the Swat District of Pakistan's northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. My family was lower-middle-class. It was certainly not easy to make both ends meet. My father was an educationist and ran a girls' school in my village; my mother was a housewife. We are three children: I have two younger brothers. The fact is that my parents did not have enough money for a hospital birth for me, so my mother had to give birth to me at home with the help of neighbours. My name 'Malala' means 'grief-stricken', after Malalai of Maiwand, a famous Pashtun poet and warrior woman from southern Afghanistan.

By Dr P K Gupta*  India’s allied-health professions have long operated in a fragmented landscape of universities, hospitals, State authorities and private institutions, each with its own nomenclature, curriculum and standards. The National Commission for Allied and Healthcare Professions Act, 2021 was meant to correct this by creating a unified national framework for education, professional regulation and institutional recognition. Few dispute the need for such oversight. The real question is whether standardisation is quietly becoming synonymous with longer courses, additional internships and new professional titles—changes that risk masking deeper gaps in clinical training, institutional capacity and affordability.

By Mohd. Ziyaullah Khan  Rahul Gandhi’s newly assertive politics has given him a sharper edge against the Modi government. But as he rises on the strength of a youth-led revolt, his greatest challenge will be ensuring that political ambition does not turn into political appropriation.

By A Representative   The People's Union for Civil Liberties, Gujarat , and the Student and Youth Collective Ahmedabad have condemned a mob assault on a peaceful reading assembly in Vastrapur , calling it a premeditated, communally motivated hate crime. On the evening of August 27, 2026 , about 40 to 50 students and citizens gathered at AUDA Garden for a silent reading session organized by the Student and Youth Collective and Gujarat Reads Anyway. 

By Sakshi Gupta*   India’s rapid digital expansion once promised to democratize learning. When COVID‑19 shut down classrooms, online platforms like DIKSHA , SWAYAM , PM eVIDYA and One Class One Channel became lifelines for millions of students. The National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 embraced technology as a central pillar of educational reform, imagining a future where digital tools would bridge gaps and deliver quality learning to every child. 

By Mohd. Ziyaullah Khan   The most worrying number is not 8.7 crore. It is how easily we can turn that number into a joke. Of late, a number has been circulating on social media: 8.7 crore Indians aged 15–29 are neither studying, working nor undergoing training. The number is real, but the viral interpretation is often misleading.

By Sandeep Pandey   Under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, a District Education Officer can impose a fine on a school operating without government approval. Yet a private university can apparently run professional courses without the requisite recognition, leaving hundreds of students to face an uncertain future.

By A Representative   A controversy over two celebrated books has plunged a private school in Ahmedabad into a political firestorm, drawing in right-wing groups and the state education department. The incident has now sparked a widespread solidarity campaign, with hundreds of citizens defending the school’s academic freedom .

By A Representative   The Bihar unit of the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) convened a public hearing at the Indian Medical Association (IMA) Hall, Gandhi Maidan, where victims of police violence testified to a pattern of systematic repression against student protesters that panelists characterized not merely as police brutality, but as "state brutality."

By Sakshi Gupta*  When children return to school after years of disruption, the most basic question is not whether they are enrolled, whether teachers have been trained, or whether schools have received new teaching materials. The real question is much simpler: can they read, write and do basic mathematics?

By A Representative   A Dalit rights activist, Kantilal Ukabhai Parmar, has submitted a representation to the Municipal Commissioner and Mayor of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation demanding a comprehensive official investigation into the land and property of the historic Municipal School No. 6 in Khanpur, Shahpur area of Ahmedabad. Parmar has also urged that if the land is found to be under AMC ownership or can be lawfully acquired by the corporation, a Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Bhavan be constructed on the site for public benefit.

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak*  Nestled in the county of Cambridgeshire, the historic city of Cambridge is bisected by the River Cam and defined by its eponymous university. Yet beneath the dreaming spires and academic prestige lies a starkly divided municipality in eastern England — Cambridge is one of the most economically unequal cities in Britain. The railway line, a casual traveller's marker, serves as a brutal socioeconomic scar, demarcating the impoverished north and east from the affluent enclaves that lie opposite. This entrenched class divide, far from being a modern anomaly, has long nurtured a vibrant, albeit fragmented, communist movement in the city that persists in various guises to this day.

By A Representative   The People’s Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL), Rajasthan, has condemned the alleged attack on members of the Campaign for Justice in Primary Education (CJP) during their visit to Rampura urf Kanwarpura village in Jaipur district and demanded the immediate arrest of those responsible.

By Bharat Dogra  Children’s Health Defense (CHD), a U.S.-based advocacy group recognized for its longstanding work on child safety, issued an advisory on August 11, 2026, highlighting the risks schoolchildren face from wireless technology . Though focused on the U.S., the advisory carries relevance for other nations, including India. The CHD statement warns: “Wi-Fi routers stay on in every classroom, often all day, whether or not they're in active use. Tablets and laptops sit in laps and against small bodies for hours each day. And in a growing number of districts, cell towers and 5G antennas have been installed on or near school property — sometimes without notifying parents or conducting any real health review. Most parents have never been asked for consent. Most don't even know wireless radiation has harmful impacts on children’s health.”

By Sudhansu R Das   It took several decades for the BJP to displace the Congress from power at the national level. The BJP benefited from a series of political movements and public discontent over issues including corruption and governance. The Ram Janmabhoomi movement, the anti-corruption movement associated with Anna Hazare, and earlier political mobilisations contributed to changes in the political landscape. The Congress-led government's corruption scandals and public dissatisfaction with its governance were among the factors that contributed to the BJP's victory in 2014.

By Rajiv Shah  A new report released by the World Bank has delivered a sobering assessment of global human capital development , finding that progress has stalled or reversed across much of the developing world. The report, Building Human Capital Where It Matters , quantifies how deficits in nutrition, learning, and employment can erase 51% of future earnings in low- and middle-income countries , while exposing stark inequities rooted in the settings where people live, learn, and work.

Counterview News   A new World Bank report , Building Human Capital Where It Matters , has revealed that India's human capital deficits are entrenched across homes, neighborhoods, and workplaces, with maternal education creating lifelong skill gaps, rural health quality varying by 46 percentage points between villages, and self-employed workers earning barely half the returns to experience of their salaried peers. In fact, India features prominently in the World Bank's latest human capital assessment, and the picture is sobering. 

By Bhabani Shankar Nayak* ​ Professor Jason Arday died on 4 August 2026, aged 41, in a flat in Battersea, London . But in a profound sense, he had been “killed” long before his physical death: reduced to the label of a Black professor and subjected to a relentless, coordinated campaign of institutional scrutiny and public hostility.

By A Representative   The Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers’ Association (JNUTA) has called for the immediate removal of Vice-Chancellor Prof. Santishree Dhulipudi Pandit and demanded an independent, time-bound inquiry into alleged violations of statutory rules, faculty recruitment procedures and the functioning of the university’s Internal Quality Assurance Cell (IQAC).