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On 15 August 2017, we complete two decades of our remarkable journey. As we celebrate our 20th anniversary year, we reaffirm our commitment to building a freer India—where each individual leads a life of choice, and every institution is accountable.
On 15 August 2016 CCS completes 19 Years of Promoting Choice. On this occasion we are sharing this video which suggests major reforms in the New Education Policy 2016 ranging from mechanisms for teacher accountability, setting learning goals, and moving to a new per-child funding model among others. It also highlights the revolutionary initiative, NEP WIKI, that will radically transform the debate on education policy by including all stakeholders—participatory democracy at its best!
This is an initiative by Centre for Civil Society to create conversation and debates around the NEP. We hope to bring together educators, edupreneurs, think-tanks, academicians, and all concerned to a single platform and eventually, feed back the ideas generated from this platform to the government.
The data presented here is collected between March, 2014 and May, 2016 through three key sources – a) Literature review of News Reports of credible regional and national English newspapers, b) Analysis of State and Central Government reports on school closures or actual closure notices and c) Review of litigation on the issue of school closures.
It is observed that the announcements made by officers of education department including education ministers, are not always followed by immediate legal action against the schools. There have been various instances of government functionaries giving unofficial statements to news publications about plans to shut schools without any actual legal notices served to such schools.
In India, reforms in regulation of private schools have been argued on the basis of universalizing access to education while recognizing the increasing role of private in enabling that access, particularly for the poor. However, the experience so far has been that the regulations create entry and exit barriers in the provision of education by entrepreneurs thereby reducing competition and keeping the cost of education high.
Union Budget 2016-17 has clearly come out with greater focus on quality of higher education in the country. Handful of new schemes, both for Higher Education and Skill Development, testify government’s commitment towards leveraging the demographic dividend of this country. With a meager increase of 1368 crores in school education budget, one may conclude that school education has received lesser attention in terms of new budgetary provisions or schemes in Budget 2016-17.
This paper presents case studies of two tribal villages - Mendha Lekha and Jamguda - successfully running forest-based bamboo businesses under the community forest rights provisions of Forest Rights Act (2006). We have documented the issues faced by the villagers in claiming community forest rights, issues faced in harvesting and sale of bamboo, and business practices adopted by both the villages.