People who interview young children for criminal investigations and other inquiries could elicit false information through their own gestures, particularly if the child is inarticulate, research at the University of Chicago shows.

The gestures the children make can also reveal important information that lawyers and police investigators may be missing by not paying attention to hand movements, said Susan Goldin-Meadow, a psychologist at the University of Chicago and an expert on gesture.

Interviewers go into the sessions with a great deal of information from parents and others, and although they are encouraged to ask open-ended question, they may provide clues to children through their gestures that encourage the youngsters to “remember” things that the youngster did not witness, the study found.

“While others have suggested that interviews should be videotaped, we suggest that the videotaping needs to be arranged so that both interviewer and witness are visible on camera,” wrote Goldin-Meadow, the Beardsley Ruml Distinguished Service Professor in Psychology, along with her former student Sara Broaders in “Truth is at hand: How gesture adds information during investigative interviewers,” published in the current issue of Psychological Science.

For an interview with the researchers, please contact William Harms at 773-702-8356, w-harms@uchicago.edu

“Ours is the first study to show that misleading gesture can have long-term effects on the veracity of children’s reports,” Goldin-Meadow said.

“Although it is unrealistic to expect investigators to review videotapes of an entire interview, it should be possible to check videotapes for nonverbal cues whenever a key fact is first mentioned,” said Broaders, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Northwestern University and lead author of the paper. “Such procedures are needed to ascertain whether the interviewer or witness first introduces a fact into testimony.”

The taping and attention to gesture is important because some of the pivotal information children communicate and pay attention to is conveyed only through gesture. People working on legal cases involving children frequently use written transcripts that do not include information about gesture, the authors pointed out.

To study the role of gesture in what children witness and later report, the scholars arranged for a professional musician to perform in seven classrooms, playing several instruments, wearing particular items of clothing and performing actions unrelated to the performance.

The study was conducted with 39 students, ages five and six, who were interviewed five times over a 10-to-12-week period. The arrangement is similar to what children experience when they are interviewed as part of a criminal investigation.

The researchers used two sets of questions for four of the interviews, one in which interviewers used no gesture and one in which gesture was included. A fifth interview was open-ended and sought to gather all the information children remembered about what they saw.

The study found that youngsters noticed gesture when it was used and responded by imitating the gesture they saw. When an interviewer asked a question such as “What was the musician wearing?” with a gesture that indicated a hat, the students frequently said the musician was wearing a hat even though he was not. The fact that the interviewer misled the child would show up in a videotape of the interview, but would be absent from a written transcript.

Transcripts can be misleading because they do not report information conveyed only in gesture.

“In these instances, a later interviewer who had access only to a written transcript would not be able to tell that the hat was introduced into the interview by the first interviewer, rather than the child. Moreover, 71 percent of the details children conveyed in their gestures were never found in their speech—written transcripts would provide no access to this information at all,” Goldin-Meadow said.

He also says countries with large numbers of globally mobile students, such as China, India and Malaysia, should pressure education providing countries for the creation of a “systematic regime of protection and respect for their student citizenship”. Export nations could then negotiate an ‘international student compact’ with the student source countries – establishing a pattern of bilateral negotiations that could eventually drive common global standards.

Professor Marginson, a University of Melbourne Professor of Higher Education, and member of the Centre for the study of Higher Education, was addressing the Asia-Pacific Association for International Education annual conference, hosted by Griffith University at the Gold Coast, today. He is lead author of the forthcoming Cambridge University Press book, International Student Security (Simon Marginson, Chris Nyland, Erlenawati Sawir & Helen Forbes-Mewett). Both the book and Professor Marginson’s address are based on a detailed study of the international education experience in Australia, as reported by students themselves.

The study found that loneliness, isolation, difficulties with cross-cultural interactions, the need for safer, more hygenic and better housing, health cover, personal safety, problems with immigration authorities, and employment exploitation were key problems facing international students.

Professor Marginson says that issues facing international students are similar to those facing other stateless or internationally mobile people, such as refugees, and believes international education could “lead the development of global approaches in relation to other, more difficult forms of cross-border people movement – not just labour and business migration, but political refugees, and the growing number of people displaced by global climate change.”

During his address, Professor Marginson said that in Australia, the UK and New Zealand, the “normalising policy and legal concepts” around international students are ‘consumer’ and ‘market’, and that no English speaking country emphasizes the human rights of the temporary migrants who are international students.

“With cross-border mobility continuing to grow (doubling in the last 10 years to reach three million people in 2007), and with education being the nation’s third largest export industry after coal and iron ore (ahead of tourism and specific agricultural goods), it is high time for the provider nations to get real about human rights and move the security and conditions of international students up the policy agenda of national governments, multilateral forums and global agencies,” he says.

The Vice President has said that Ours is a society in the throes of change. The value system itself is in a melting pot. No foolproof recipe is known to exist. It is in the nature of things that mistakes will be made as we proceed to actualize gender parity. Freedom, said Rabindranath Tagore, “cannot be called freedom unless one has the right to misuse it”. The only anchor for the citizen is the Constitution and what Ambedkar called “constitutional morality”. Both require unswerving commitment in word and deed.

Following is the text of Vice President’s Convocation address :

“ I am happy to participate in today’s ceremony. Convocations are to academic life what festivals are to social life: they signify rites of passage, the passing of seasons, a celebration of achievement, a benediction for facing the harsh world beyond the portals of the university.

Convocations are also occasions to draw lessons from the experience of life remembering, as Tennyson said:

Yet all experience is an art wherethro’

Gleams that untravell’d world whose margin fades

For ever and for ever when I move

This University is a testament to the vision and effort of Dr. Dhondo Keshav Karve over a century ago to ameliorate the depressing socio-economic condition of widows and women in India. His dictum that education was an essential element in empowering the women of India and making them self-reliant and self-confident remains valid to this day. Maharshi Karve’s foresight was complemented by the contribution and support of Sir Vithaldas Thackersey.

The motto of the University – ‘Sanskrita Stree Parashakti’ – ‘An enlightened woman is a source of infinite strength’ – has universal validity. As the first Women’s University in India and South Asia, and being endowed with a uniquely national jurisdiction, SNDT has come to represent excellence in higher education for women.

I propose to share some thoughts today on an issue of contemporary relevance; I refer to the question of Gender in our National Discourse. What are its contemporary contours? Where do we go from here?

The discourse of course is of older vintage and social scientists have traced its evolution, limitations and nuances. For our purpose today, and if we take the era of Independence as the point of reference, there is no doubt that the principle of gender equality constitutes a basic feature of the Republic and is enshrined in the Constitution. The Preamble and the sections on Fundamental Rights, Fundamental Duties and Directive Principles are unambiguously explicit. The Constitution not only grants equality to women and prohibits discrimination, but also recognizes their marginalization and empowers the State to adopt measures of positive discrimination in their favour.

These constitutional provisions have been reinforced by the Supreme Court which has held that the equality clause in the Constitution does not speak of mere formal equality before law but embodies the concept of real and substantive equality which is an essential ingredient of social and economic justice.

Legal equality is one, perhaps the easier, aspect of the matter; societal reality is quite another. In a land as old and a society as diverse as ours, the dead weight of tradition conditions perception and practice, tells its own story, and reveals a chasm between the two. Equally disturbing is the proclivity to underplay the latter and the impulses leading to it.

It is necessary to delve into the underlying, unstated, sources of the problem. It has been argued that the identification of women with their physical bodies is the root cause of their oppression in a patriarchal culture and society like ours: “Most often women are denied the rights to emotional, mental, psychological and physical spaces. The fact that the female body is constantly under pressure to conform and mould into prescribed social and cultural roles brings into question the spaces that need to be protected as well as rights to be claimed so that women’s bodily integrity is respected.”

A few years back Professor Amartya Sen identified seven types of gender inequality in two broad categories, natality and post-natality, and stressed the need to recognise that “gender inequality is not one affliction but many, with varying reach on the lives of women and men, and of girls and boys”; hence the need, as he put it, “to take a plural view of gender inequality, which can have many different faces (and) can vary from region to another, and also from one period to the next.”

This gap is quantifiable. The census data on declining sex ratio is well known. Discrimination and disparity begins even before a woman citizen is born. The saga of missing baby girls in wide swathes of rural and urban India has resulted from the marriage of ancient prejudice with modern technology and rising incomes.

A quarter of pregnant women do not receive pre-natal care and less than half of births are attended by skilled health staff. There is a high incidence of maternal under-nourishment and of under-nourishment of girls over boys. Female primary school enrolment rates are lower compared to boys and this is reflected, eventually, in the female literacy rate in the 15-24 age group. Similarly, the female economic activity is lower and so is female participation in professional and technical work.

In terms of representation in structures of power, and while things have changed qualitatively at the grass root level, the participation of women in political decision-making at middle and higher levels is abysmally low. Less than 11 percent of the seats in Lok Sabha are held by women. The situation is worse in the case of state assemblies where less than 8 percent of the lawmakers are women.

A recent National Survey of Household Income and Expenditure conducted by the National Council of Applied Economic Research brings forth glaring disparities in the economic sphere. It shows that (a) women comprise a mere one third of Graduates and Post Graduates in the country (b) of the women graduates, 35% are housewives, (c) 88% of salaried jobs are held by men, (d) across most occupation types, non-graduate women earned less than half of that earned by men, and (e) for graduates with salaried jobs, men earned a third more than women.

It took us over four decades after Independence to allow women citizens to pass on their nationality to their children without reference to their spouse and over five decades to receive explicit statutory protection from domestic violence. To this day, a woman citizen’s ability to unambiguously transmit her caste, tribal or domicile status to her offspring along with attendant benefits is ambiguous, and subject to a case-by-case determination.

The conclusion is inescapable that while all citizens are equal, women citizens are clearly less equal than men. The basic design of patriarchy still holds sway, sustained in good measure by the institution of early marriage and by real-life aberrations in property rights.

Is it then surprising that India ranked 114 out of 155 countries in the Gender Development Index of the World Bank?

To understand this inequality, we must realize that gender is not interchangeable with women. It refers to both women and men and the relation between them. Gender roles are not fixed, are learned as part of socialization, are influenced by culture and traditions, and can be changed through education, socio-political and legislative interventions.

Gender equality has been defined to mean that “the rights, responsibilities and the opportunities of individuals will not depend on whether they are born male or female and that the perceptions, interests, needs and priorities of women and men will be given equal weight in planning and decision making”.

The foregoing poses a question. How is gender equality to be promoted and ensured as a basic feature of our Constitution and as a necessary outcome of internationally accepted standards of human rights and women’s rights to which India subscribes in full measure?

The National Policy for Empowerment of Women 2001 outlines three policy approaches:

1. Judicial/legal empowerment – by making the legal system more responsive and gender sensitive for women’s needs.

2. Economic empowerment – by mainstreaming gender perspectives in the development process, enhancing women’s capacities and access to economic opportunities.

3. Social empowerment – through focused efforts on education, health and nutrition.

In terms of operational strategies, the National Policy has called for gender development indices, gender disaggregated data, gender budgeting, Women’s Component Plan in the Five Year Plans so that not less than 30% of benefits/funds flow to women, and gender sensitization.

The policy, committing itself to building and strengthening partnerships with civil society and women’s organizations, is silent on the methodology for the eradication of traditional prejudices and practices that impact adversely on women.

Meaningful action on these critical issues, clearly, lies in the realm of civil society. Experience has shown that women empower themselves by gaining power and control over their own lives. Governments and societies can facilitate these processes by raising awareness, expanding choices available to women, increasing women’s access and control over resources and through targeted interventions to eliminate gender discrimination and inequality.

It would also be a serious fallacy to look at women empowerment as a zero-sum game leading to a loss for men. Women cannot be empowered without the active participation of men.

The time has come to move beyond tokenism. Legitimizing gender equity in the minds of people is a complex process and women’s empowerment per se is only part of the solution. The India Social Development Report 2006 noted that “social development fractured along gender lines has to become a concern for society as a whole”, adding that “it is absolutely imperative that the process of women’s empowerment is located in broader structural, social and political structures” by assigning a greater role to men in engineering social changes in institutional rules.

The challenge then is the need to create a new consciousness and wider constituencies beyond the obvious.

A beginning has to be made at home. Domestic arrangements are central to the organization of gender relations. Some years back, an official document acknowledged that the family in India “has not been a cradle for nurturing democratic values…the need for a democratic family structure is a major challenge for families and not just for women.”

We need to acknowledge candidly the tensions that emanate from the universalisation of citizenship and adult franchise in a democratic polity and a diverse socio-economic and cultural milieu. As a result, the citizen does have multiple identities and unavoidably reflects them in power structures in which he/she is a participant.

The responsibility for resolving the resulting dilemma thus rests principally on the individual and the group rather than on the state. The latter can at best put in place formal structures and undertake a measure of inducement through the educational system that must be geared fully and comprehensively for the purpose.

Ours is a society in the throes of change. The value system itself is in a melting pot. No foolproof recipe is known to exist. It is in the nature of things that mistakes will be made as we proceed to actualize gender parity. Freedom, said Rabindranath Tagore, “cannot be called freedom unless one has the right to misuse it”. The only anchor for the citizen is the Constitution and what Ambedkar called “constitutional morality”. Both require unswerving commitment in word and deed.

The State’s responsibility on gender issues is not in doubt and it is committed to bringing about gender equality. Equally important is the role of other stakeholders, individually and collectively. Many of you in this audience, when you confront life beyond the sheltered environment of the university, may witness or confront gender discrimination. At that juncture, you would be called upon to act on the basis of your convictions. That would be the occasion for public policy activism to counter these social evils, for the good of a better, more inclusive, society.

Social reform is a relay race in which the baton has to be carried forward incessantly. The national discourse on the gender question has traveled a good distance and gathered momentum. It should remain focused on promotion of meaningful equity and on enhancing choices.

Allow me to conclude by congratulating the graduating students, the award winners and the rank holders. I wish them every success in their professional endeavours and in their personal life. I urge them to have the confidence that a better future can be created by their personal effort, however modest it may be.

I once again thank Chancellor Sankaranarayanan ji and Vice Chancellor Prof. Chandra Krishnamurthy for inviting me to this Convocation.”

With a view to promoting agriculture in the country and to fetch remunerative returns to the farming community in a sustained manner, the concept of the Agri Export Zones (AEZs) was floated. AEZs are to be identified by the State Governments evolving a comprehensive package of services provided by all State Government agencies, State agriculture universities and all institutions and agencies of the Union Government for intensive delivery in these Zones. Corporate sector with proven credentials are encouraged to sponsor new zone or to takeover already notified AEZs or part of such zones for boosting agri-exports. Services would be managed and coordinated by State Government/corporate sector and would include provision of pre/post harvest treatment and operations, plant protection, processing, packaging, storage and related research & development etc. According to the government’s agri-trade promotion body, Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority (APEDA) has been nominated as the Nodal Agency to coordinate the efforts on the part of Central Government negotiations.

The entire effort of AEZ focuses on the cluster approach of identifying the potential products, the geographical region in which these products are grown and adopting an end-to-end approach of integrating the entire process right from the stage of production till it reaches the market. There would also be a need to identify/enlist difficulties/ problems encountered at each stage. These difficulties could be procedural in nature or may relate to a particular quality standard. Agri Export Zones can yield benefits like strengthening of backward linkages with a market oriented approach; product acceptability and its competitiveness abroad as well as in the domestic market; value addition to basic agricultural produce; bring down cost of production through economy of scale; better price for agricultural produce; improvement in product quality & packaging; promote trade-related research and development; and increase employment opportunities

Once the project proposal of a State has been approved by the Committee, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is signed between APEDA (on behalf of the Government) and the State Government for providing possible assistance at each stage of the project. The responsibilities of the State government are defined in the MoU. To enable the Agri Export Zone achieve the objectives of the concept and to make the projects viable, it is necessary that the Central and State Governments work closely with each other. This would imply certain pro-active steps to be taken by the States with regard to identification of a State Government institutions/agency which will be responsible for implementation and coordination of the entire activity; single window problem solving desks should be created in the offices promoting zonal approach to agriculture exports; adequate availability of infrastructure, inputs, electricity, etc. and redeployment of extension officers in the Export Zones who would interact regularly with APEDA and organise training/activity on a regular basis with a definite action programme.

Other potential crops that can be tapped where India has a geographical and resource advantages are tea, coffee, spices and cotton. India is the world’s second-largest producer of cotton. The focus on this crop can bring a rise of 10 per cent to about 32 million bales (one bale is equal to 170 kg) in the 2009-10 season (October-September), provided it gets high support price and more sowing of high-yielding Bt seeds. India’s coffee output is pegged at 3.1 lakh tonne in 2009-2010, 4.4 per cent higher compared to 2008-09, according to the post-blossom estimates released by the Coffee Board. India is likely to climb up in the ranking list of world top 10 coffee-producing countries if the actual output in 2009-10 matches estimates.

Another area which AEZ can act as a catalyst of growth is food producing industry. The food processing sector, which contributes 9 per cent to the GDP, is presently growing at 13.5 per cent against 6.5 per cent in 2003–04, and is going to be an important driver of the Indian economy. This generates huge employment and helps in getting better price for the generic good and services. APEDA and Export Inspection Council (EIC) are providing necessary technical inputs and financial assistance through its schemes for Infrastructure Development Scheme for Quality Development to boost agri export. Market Development and the Scheme for Research & Development have been making efforts to expand flower exports. As a result of these measures; the exports of flowers have increased from Rs.4875 lakh during 2007-08 to Rs.6563 lakh during 2008-09 (up to February 09).

Centre and State forging an alliance to boost agricultural export is now showing good results despite the global recession still lingering on. The country’s farm product export in value terms has surged about 40% to over Rs.80,600 crore in the last three years, with food grains, oil meals and fruits and vegetables witnessing maximum demand overseas. India’s agri-export turnover is expected to double in the next five years, according to APEDA, Agri-export turnover is set to rise from US $ 9 billion to nearly US $ 18 billion by 2014. At present, around 70 percent of the country’s agricultural and processed food exports are to developing countries in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and South America. With the growing population resources imbalances and growing need for food and livelihood security, initiative like AEZ is a time honored investment.

[Rajiv Jain is the Director ( M & C), Press Information Bureau, New Delhi, A PIB Feature]

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Saakshar Bharat Programme (SBP) aims to further promote and strengthen Adult education. It aims at covering those who missed the opportunity of formal education earlier, and now feel a need for learning of any type, including basic literacy, basic education (equivalency to formal education), vocational education (skill development), physical and emotional development, practical arts, applied science, sports and recreation.

Within next three years, the Saakshar Bharat Programme will cover 70 million non-literate adults (60 million of them, women) in 15 plus age group in 365 low female literacy districts. This would redress the gender, social and regional disparities in literacy.

The Programmes main focus group would be women and adolescents from socio-economically disadvantaged sections like the SCs, STs, Minorities and other disadvantaged sections in rural areas of low female districts.

In SBP, all its programmes including Basic Literacy, Basic Education (linked to Equivalency with formal education system), Skill Development and Continuing Education will be taken up in continuum, without break. With respect to Basic Literacy, a flexible approach would be followed, including Volunteer-based literacy center, appointment of Resident Instructors where educated Volunteers are hard to find locally, Residential Camps, part-residential and part-volunteer-based approaches.

Lok Shiksha Kendra

In each Gram Panchayat a Lok Shiksha Kendra (Adult Education Centre) would be established to take up various types of continuing education programmes. Each Adult Education Centre would be manned by two Preraks (at least one of them, woman).

The gender perspective would permeate all different core aspects of the programme including the approach, strategies, planning, management structures, TLMs, T-L processes and monitoring and evaluation. This could reinforce women empowerment.

The overall aim of the programme is to promote and strengthen adult education in the lifelong learning perspective and create a literate society. To this end, it seeks to establish adult and continuing education as a permanent and institutionalized set up parallel to formal education system. This would strengthen the right perspective for adult education.

The Panchayat Raj Institutions (PRIs) would be the main implementing agency at the district, block and gram panchayat levels, with the State Literacy Mission Authority(SLMA) and the communities at the village level as valued stakeholders.

Especially at the Gram Panchayat level, the programme is envisioned as a programme of, for and by the people, under the auspices of the village panchayat. All stakeholders, especially at the grassroots level would have a due say and role in the planning and implementation of the programme. The role of National Literacy Mission Authority and State Literacy Mission Authority will be that of catalytic agencies, facilitators and resources providers.

The programme has conceptualized the Adult Education Programme in the right perspective of lifelong education, and seeks to build it as a permanent and institutionalized system, alongside and parallel to the formal education system.

This has devised a regular and uninterrupted fund flow system directly to the Panchayats through banks, cutting out the delays.

ILD Celebrations

In the International Literacy Day celebrations, for the first time, the SLMA Directors, SRC and JSS, besides their Chairpersons, Volunteer Teachers and neo-literates participated in large numbers, and heartily welcomed the launch of Saakshar Bharat.

To infuse new energy among neo-literates and literacy activists, NLM organized a special interactive programme with the President. About 100 women from States and Union Territories participated, dressed in their traditional costumes.

For the first time in India, the celebration of the International Literacy Day was combined by a week-long celebration of Adult Learners Week (ALW) in all states and districts.

In connection with the finalisation of the strategies and approach to implementation of Saakshar Bharat Programme, consultative meetings were held with representatives of State Governments, NGOs, literacy practioners, administrators, SRCs, universities, etc. More than 20 Task Forces under SRCs, & NLMA Members elaborated strategies and implementation modalities on various core aspects of Saakshar Bharat programme.

The Programme was launched on October 1, 2009. In view of the changes envisaged the strategy and approach of the programme, with special focus on women, designing a state of the art teaching-learning materials became imperative. Accordingly, based on national consultations involving experts, state-specific primers were prepared by each SRC, and kept in readiness for printing and distribution in time for the programme.

Capacity Building of Key Resource personnel is the first step for launching the cascade training strategy for a programme like Saakshar Bharat, which deploys a massive number of Volunteer Literacy Educators – something of the order of seven million for a target of 70 million non-literates. All the SRCs have undertaken one or two rounds of capacity building of the key resource personnel and in some cases, even the orientation of the PRI members.

In the adult education system envisaged in lifelong learning perspective, Equivalency Programme is one of the salient facets, whereby equivalency with formal education system in respect of III, V, VIII levels and even beyond is planned. Democratisation of education system and increase in the educational level, through the aegis of adult education system is on anvil, which would significantly raise the educational level of Gram Panchayat. For the first time, authentication and certification of prior knowledge of adults is planned.

Jan Shikshar Sansthans

The Jan Shikshar Sansthans (JSSs) are a unique creation of the Government with the challenging mandate of providing vocational skills to non-literates, neo-literates and rudimentary level education. The priority groups of Jan Shikshar Sansthans are women, SCs, STs, Minorities and also other socio-economically backward sections of the society. For the first time, a proforma was developed that could, at glance, reveal details of courses, beneficiaries, duration, programme expenditure, etc. This made possible the review of the progress in Annual Action Plan.

In adult education, motivation and mobilization of the non-literates as well as volunteers are critical for their participation. The changed context of rural areas, with the penetration of IT, ICT, including radio, TV, mobiles, would call for changes in strategy of motivation and mobilization. Thus, the Strategy Communication Group for implementation zeroed in intensive use of Radio and outdoor print message medium for launching environment building for Saakshar Bharat programme. For the next phase, a combination of the traditional environment building based on kalajathas as the dominant mode with the modern technology-based communication strategy could be used.

Based on the broad National curricular Framework for Adult Education, Primers for Saakshar Bharat programme have been prepared by the SRCs in respect of various languages. These have been scrutinized at national level review meetings by the Quality Assurance Committee. After receiving the Quality Assurance Certificate, these primers could carry NLM logo and would be eligible for printing and distribution.

The National Institute of Rural Development, Hyderabad, has been commissioned by NLMA to conceptualize and articulate the strategy for the Orientation of the PRI members and its administrative functionaries at panchayat, block and district levels. NIRD, in collaboration with SIRDs and their district counterparts, have worked out the strategy for PRIs orientation, to be completed by March 2010.

The NLMA has taken up, in a series of four-five states, the orientation of the SLMAs, to launch Saakshar Bharat programmes in their respective states. In such orientations, the SLMA members, State Education Secretaries and Directors of Adult Education would receive orientation on different core aspects of Saakshar Bharat programmes.

Mr. Gulshan says that the attacks are due to some Indian students going to Australia with the intention to find jobs. In addition, there are unscrupulous agents in India and Australia who multiply the students problems. “Every fifth International Student in Australia is an Indian and half of them live in Melbourne alone,” says Mr. Gulshan.

As per Mr. Gulshan, they take up the jobs of taxi drivers, delivery boys and other smaller chores. The Australians in lower economic strata loose out to those opportunities and hence the attacks. These category of Indian students being from economically weaker section live in the not so developed areas of Australia. Mr. Gulshan says that the students must take work according to their qualification. He says that ” I have seen Indian teacher who took up some lower work in Australia.”

One other concern is overnight closure of some Australian colleges in Australia. The Australian Education Union (AEU) has demanded for tougher industry regulations for private training centers. This can be viewed as both opportunity and efforts of the government to crack down on unscrupulous education establishments.

But Mr. Gulshan contends that “Australia is as safe as any other country of the world and a vast majority of Indian students enjoy their education experience in Australia.”

Mr. Gulshan says that the students must approach AAERI members in order to protect themselves in Australia. AAERI members follow Code of Ethical Practices (COEP) which stipulates that they must provide services to students in a manner which reflects the established practices of Australian education and training institutions and which safeguards the interests of prospective students on the other. AAERI’s Code of Ethics is based on the Australian Governments’s Education Services for Overseas Students Act (ESOS Act) which makes Australian education institutions accountable for the activities of their overseas agents.

Releasing the review, ACER Chief Executive Professor Geoff Masters said that even limited contact with a second language can have a positive effect by supporting and illuminating students’ knowledge of their first language.

“There are significant demonstrated educational benefits from studying a second language from the early years of schooling”, Professor Masters said.

The new review, Second Languages and Australian Schooling (Australian Education Review 54), authored by University of Melbourne academic Professor Joseph Lo Bianco, traces the history of language learning in Australia, outlines the findings of research from Australia and overseas and proposes a new rationale for language learning policy.

The central argument in the review is for a major improvement in the quality of language teaching across the nation. Professor Lo Bianco argues that, while the single most important variable in second language education is the quality of language teachers, at times the quality of language teaching in Australia has been too low.

“It is an unfortunate aspect of past policy that utilitarian rationales, and the often crisis-driven pressure to establish programs quickly, have resulted in a proliferation of rather superficial second language teaching endeavours.”

Professor Lo Bianco believes the promotion of language study by governments as being related to labour market and economic issues has failed to convince students, their schools and parents, that the learning of a second language is worthwhile.

“We must get away from these old conflicts about which languages should be favoured that have dogged the debate for 30 years,” Professor Lo Bianco said. “These arguments must be replaced with an educational rationale for major improvements in quality teaching and learning.”

Almost 90 per cent of Australian senior secondary students do not study a second language at all. Professor Lo Bianco identifies seven Asian and European languages – Chinese (Mandarin), French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese and Spanish – that students should have ‘an entitlement to continuation’ allowing them to continue studies throughout their schooling and proposes support systems for a wider range of languages.

Joseph Lo Bianco is Professor of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Melbourne.

Right to Education Bill slated is expected to tabled in Parliament in the current session. If passed via parliament, the bill will empower the 86th Constitutional Amendment. The seven-year old 86th Constitutional Amendment had made free and compulsory education as a Fundamental Right. The Right to Education Bill states guidelines for state governments and the centre government to execute and enforce this right. The bill is expected to ensure free education for 6-14 age group children.

India is expected to formulate a policy framework for Public Private Partnership (PPP) in school education and multiple PPP models. Information technology and broadband will enable distance education and open school/university model. India is also looking at evolution of National Curriculum Framework for Teacher Education accordance with the National Curriculum Framework, 2005.

While liberalization of the education sector is expected to bring in more finances, infrastructure and opportunities, India is also expected to bring out a tough law to prevent and punish educational malpractices.

As per recommendation of Yashpal Committee, India might set up an autonomous, overarching authority for Higher Education and research. This has been recommended even by the National Knowledge Commission. India might enact a law for mandatory assessment and accreditation in Higher Education through an independent regulatory authority.

Interest subsidy on educational loans taken for professional courses by economically weaker students is expected to be on cards. Model Degree Colleges are expected to be established in 100 districts with significant population of weaker sections and minorities. Hundred women’s hostels are expected to be sanctioned in higher educational institutions in districts with significant population of weaker sections and minorities.

India is expected to review the functioning of currently operating deemed universities, operationalize 12 newly established Central Universities and two new IITs. Assistance is expected to be provided to States to establish at least 100 new Polytechnics in Districts those are without any polytechnic at present. Approvals would be obtained for establishing 10 new NITs in the some States so that every State has one earmarked IIT.

We hope that all the above mentioned initiatives will be implemented in next five years.

Six decades back a resurgent India embarked on a programme of national development with great enthusiasm. Realizing that literacy is a powerful tool of development and a lever of change to achieve social progress the government resolved to make India fully literate within a decade when it became a republic nation in 1950.It made a promise to its citizens by a declaration under article 45 of the constitution that The State shall endeavour to provide over a period of ten years of the commencement of the constitution free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years. Since then determined efforts are being made towards the achievement of the Directive Principle – new schools were opened and a massive enrolment programme was undertaken to bring children to school.

Literacy at this time meant the same as the first internationally agreed upon definition given by the UNESCO Recommendation of 1958. It observed that “a literate person is one who can, with understanding, both read and write a short simple statement on his or her every day life’. This definition also includes arithmetic skills(numeracy). Hence for all practical purposes education for most meant attaining the three R’s-reading, writing and arithmetic-skills.

Education till 1976 had been essentially the responsibility of the States. This meant the availability of facilities and resources for education was dependent not on the commitment of the nation as a whole but upon the vicissitudes of the resources allotted by States for education. Though the States showed all round increment in enrolment, they presented a scenario that had wide disparities among the sexes, sections and states. The performance across different levels of education in the various States and Union Territories was also not uniform. What was more worrying was that growth rate in elementary education after an initial spurt, started a tendency to taper off. The drop out rate in schools became high and the drop outs lapsed into illiteracy adding to the mass of illiterates in the country.

While this was the state of affairs within the organized school system those who had entered the work force particularly in the productive age group 15-35 had no chance of becoming literate as there was no non-formal or adult education available. This general apathy towards education, irrelevance of educational content to the needs of the learner, and lack of resources set the government thinking for newer approach to education in general and literacy in particular.

In the mean time the World Conference of Education Ministers on the eradication of illiteracy organized by the UNESCO at Tehran (1965) concluded that rather than end in itself literacy should be regarded as a way of preparing man for a social, civic and economic role that goes beyond the rudimentary literacy training consisting merely in the teaching of reading and writing.

Agreeing totally with this definition the Education Commission(1964-1966)appointed under the Chairmanship of D.S.Kothari observed “ we do not equate literacy with mere ability to read and write” literacy if it is to be worthwhile must be functional. A functionally literate person would be one having acquired sufficient mastery over the tools of literacy and would acquire relevant knowledge which will enable him to pursue his own ends. Elaborating further it defined the scope of literacy programmes which would have three essential ingredients to enable one (i) to perform his work role i.e. it must be work based and aim at creating attitudes and interests and imparting skills and information which will help a person to do efficiently whatever work he is engaged in; (ii) to perform his or her role as a citizen i.e. it must enable an individual to understand the vital national problems and participate effectively in the social and political life of the nation and (iii) to enable one to enhance his skills and education either on his own or through other available avenues of informal education.

The Commission also noted that for a country aspiring to change from a traditional to modern society science should form the basic component of education and culture. Hence purposeful education should consist of four basic elements viz. literacy, numeracy ( a study of mathematics and natural sciences), work experience and social service.

The Government accepted most of the recommendations of the Education Commission and a National Policy on Education came into being in 1968. Accordingly in the school curricula in addition to laying down a common scheme of studies for boys and girls, science and math were incorporated as compulsory subjects and work experience was assigned a place of importance.

The main objective of scientific literacy was to enable the pupils to discover the relationship of science with health, agriculture, industry and other aspects of daily life. It was to develop in the child well defined abilities and values such as the spirit of inquiry, creativity, objectivity, the courage to question and an aesthetic sensibility. In short scientific literacy was to inculcate scientific temper in the individual.

However the general formulations in the 1968 policy did not get translated into a detailed strategy of implementation for various reasons. As a result the earlier mentioned problems of wastage, stagnation, access, quality, and finance accumulated over the years assumed such massive proportions that they had to be tackled with utmost urgency. Accordingly a new policy on education was enunciated in 1986 where in the emphasis shifted from enrolment per se to enrolment as well as retention.

For those outside the school system The National Literacy Mission (NLM) was launched as a societal and technological mission on 5th May 1988, with the object of imparting functional literacy to 80 million illiterate adults-by 1995.The NLM defined functional literacy as acquiring the skills of three R’s and the ability to apply them to daily life. Functional literacy would include imbibing the values of national integration, conservation of environment, women’s equality and small family norms etc. Thus literacy as enunciated in the NLM is not an end in itself but has to be an active and potent instrument of change ensuring achievement of these social objectives and creation of a learning society. The NLM believes that functional literacy would result in empowerment and a definite improvement in quality of life of an individual.

The efforts of the NLM are laudable indeed. By 2000, it had covered 152 million people spread over 559 districts of the country to impart to them the basic skills. The NLM also won the UNESCO-NOMA award in 1999 for its magnificent work.

Towards the turn of the last century we had ushered in the era of liberalisation and globalisation. New technologies like information technology, bio technology and nano technology have entered India in a big way in government banking industry, trade and commerce. The entire work environment is changing fast The requirements of the knowledge society that is emerging calls for a wider dimension of literacy. Information literacy and skill literacy are the demands of the day, which can enhance the capabilities of our human resources. Secondly, we need to address on priority basis the needs of those who do not already possess basic literacy skills, for them to take advantage of information literacy, otherwise equality of opportunities and social justice will remain simply slogans.

Written by A.Vasantha (Retired )Professor, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New- Delhi

Disclaimer : The views expressed by the author in this feature are entirely her own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Vertex career. This is a PIB Feature