Sunday Posts

I have had several conversations with Learning and Development managers in large companies in India, primarily in an attempt to get them to adopt the Global Business Professional credentials that we have developed. These interactions present me with some insights what the Indian Learning and Development community is doing, and re-ignite an old discussion about the need to re-imagine the profession in India. Indeed, in most cases in my experience, Learning and Development is a non-strategic function in the Indian companies, an extension of Human Resources. The Learning and Development Manager, who, despite his/her title, mostly a junior operative, engaged in functions such as induction training and compliance related work, traditionally HR domains. Whether the company is focused on 'inner market', where Indian companies in most sectors enjoy a level of protection, or export-led, which is far more competitive, does not seem to matter such. The IT Services companies that I e...

Now that BJP manifesto is out, it is interesting to read and compare the manifestos published by two leading parties on the issue of Higher Education. Admittedly, this is only a minor issue in this election. This election is, as I have written about before, more about the idea of India and how the republic will be shaped. Minds are focused on bigger issues of identity, and should be. Trying to deconstruct manifesto approaches on one issue or the other is surely inconsequential in the face of what's at stake. Besides, parties hardly keep manifesto promises, and BJP almost did not have a manifesto ('Modi is the manifesto', someone said in jest, but got it right). Besides, if Manifestos are inconsequential, Higher Education is inconsequential among other issues addressed in the manifestos. Indeed, there are bigger issues and clear themes that cut across these manifestos, and dare I say that there are clear ideological undertones. Congress seems to be saying 'yout...

The conversation about universities today are defined by two extreme views: One says that the universities are failing their mission by failing to serve their students, by failing to connect them to jobs, and therefore, failing to make them successful; the other says that the universities are failing their mission as they have abandoned their traditional values, they have become 'marketised' and are engaged in a struggle to fit into badly fitting form as education can't be a market activity. Two polar opposites, united in the agreement that universities are failing their mission - they are not doing what they are supposed to do. I have admittedly oscillated between these two views as I 'blogged' (rather than systematically researched) about the universities. I did see the problem of disconnectedness, the teleological view of the universities in some quarters that the universities have a purpose of their own, rather than being an institution to serve contempora...

The university is changing. This statement may be self-evident, but there is no consensus about what it is changing into, much less on whether this is a good thing. On one hand, there is nostalgia, based on an image of a golden age, which, as one of my teachers appropriately defined, was always based on as things were when the interlocutor was about twenty years old; on the other, there are the apocalyptic visionaries, the prophets of the information age, those who believe software is eating the world and should, must, eat the universities as well. And, overarching all these passions and interests is the very real question of entitlement - the questions of winners and losers of a new system - played out in Britain over the last few years noisily and vividly. I engaged in this conversation with intent and purpose. The changing landscape and its implications perhaps became clearer to me during the time I was attempting to set up a network of Vocational Training centres in many diff...

'Liberal' is a bad thing, something to be ashamed about these days. If you are one, like me, your views are likely to be dismissed to be some kind of a Hippie opinion that does not seem to matter. Why not, indeed, because 'capitalism' (with the attendant label of 'neo-liberal') seemed to have decisively won? It takes guts to say that standing in the middle of the greatest financial disaster of a lifetime. It takes arrogance to make such a proclamation when the system we have brought more miseries to more people than the World Wars and Dictators ever did. And, perhaps, it takes ignorance, self-induced ignorance of the charmer who has fallen in love with his own words and being charmed himself. This is, I shall claim, a break point. 'Liberal' got a bad name just at the point of its greatest triumph - when civil rights were finally firmly established and street revolutions got under way to change the society. Liberalism's defining year may hav...

Next week, the electioneering in India will start. It is set up like any other election: With parties lined up on either side, politicians trying to get maximum advantage, money being spent like water, with the noise, promises, processions and frustrations like the other times. But this is not like any other election. There is an existential threat to the Indian Republic and what it stands for. This is no exaggeration. The leading candidate, though by no means certain, is a man with an agenda: Narendra Modi is trying to convince Indians that he will bring the development that Indians crave for, and will run a corruption free administration. But he has an ugly record of abetting a genocidal riot in Gujrat back in 2002, and he and his apologists are trying to see that it does not matter. In fact, in a shocking TV interview, Lord Bhikhu Parekh, the champion of multiculturalism in Britain, was trying to argue Mr Modi's case saying that we should not be talking about the past and ...

I am getting into that time, after 18 months of bootstrapping, when people have started asking whether the personal sacrifice is worth it. My views are unchanged: I am soldiering through my otherwise miserable life of lecturing four days a week to earn the keeps, so that I can do one thing that I really really wanted to do in life. This is about building a truly great educational institution. I know it does not make any sense. Educational institutions are all about big money, big land and big buildings. It is about having grants and scholarships, playing to the tune of government policies. It is about rankings and prestige. You don't just get up and create an education institution, much less a great one. I disagree. My ideas may be less quixotic that it sounds, and here is my defense: That we are at a time of fundamental discontinuity. I am one of those who believes that the next twenty years isn't going to be like the last twenty years. This is not just about Interne...

I spent an entire day today discussing Reverse Migration and how this could be facilitated through Corporate Philanthropy. The underlying assumption of the whole exercise was that reverse migration is good thing, and we did little to challenge that assumption, and focused instead on the mechanics of how this could be facilitated. Since this discussion was in the context of a region I don't know well, it was inappropriate for me to question the assumption that everyone seemed to have taken for granted. However, it does create an opportunity for reflection within the contexts I know - India in particular - and think whether reverse migration is a good or a bad thing. Such ambivalence may be completely out of place given all the research about Brain Drain that we know of. And, the case for this may be acute in some cases: There are more Ethiopian Doctors in America than there are in Ethiopia. My college years were full of readings regarding the economic impact of brain drain (al...

Over the last three years, I have had several conversations explaining why I chose to study Education, and particularly Adult Learning. It struck some people as odd that when I thought of gaining professional credential, I chose to do a Masters in Education, rather than an MBA or study online learning technologies; and, that I chose to focus on Adult Learning as a discipline, and not study Compulsory Education, which is indeed the more popular thing to do for an Education graduate.  It was a common sense decision for me, as I wanted to pivot my career into Adult Learning: All the things I did in the last few years, taught Postgraduate courses, wrote curriculum, designed online environments, explored international partnerships, wrote and conducted assessments, explore education policy, and built an education start-up, all those activities centred around this one clear decision to build a career in adult learning. So, the decision to study the discipline formally was a no-brain...

India's election in 2014 is going to be a defining one. Whoever wins, and whoever becomes India's leader afterwards, it is going to be a definitive break with the Post-Independence Republican experiment. And, though it is far from certain that Gujrat's Chief Minister, Narendra Modi, will finally prevail, powered by a carefully orchestrated campaign by the American firm APCO Worldwide, his prominence is symptomatic and an indicator of things to come: Hence, the title of this post. There are lots of things in balance. The balance between the rich and the poor, the young and the old, the city and the village, the English Speaking and the non-English Speaking, the Big City and the Small City, the metropolis and the regions, the Majority and the Minority, all the balances that the constitution makers had to grapple with, during the founding days of the republic, are up for grabs again. The foundational principles, yet again, need to be interrogated. However, we are per...