Sunday Posts

I feel happy that I have now been able to replace my teaching commitments with other kind of work, because I didn't think the teaching I was doing was moving me forward. I am hoping that the work I shall be taking on will do this - and allow me to move towards my goal of returning to India/ Asia and eventually settling there. Once I transition into this life starting 1st of August, this will truly be the next big thing in my life. As always for me, I am preparing for this now. I believe this new phase will require a new living ethic, learning ethic and relationship ethic, radically different from how I have lived my life in the last ten years.  For a start, this is a time for to stop waiting, which was the predominant theme of what I have done for the last ten years, a patient build-up for some undefined future, and start doing things. I wanted an education and experience of travel, which I have got: It is time now to get doing things that I thought I would do after I hav...

The idea of India is a contested one, and one can not take it for granted. The British colonialists saw India as a hodgepodge, not a nation but just a geographical entity ('the land beyond the Indus'), and Churchill famously observed "India is no more a country than the Equator". Overlooking common cultural heritage of India, once one of the richest country of the world and a source of philosophy and culture, was not just a cynical colonial ploy, but it was fought over from within as well. In this context, the pragmatic cosmopolitan conception of Modern India was a stroke of genius, which rejected the British concern of non-existence of India and laid a claim to certain aspects of the Indian heritage while obscuring others. This is indeed the usual tools of trade for modern nation building, and in a sense, this was mostly successful. Despite many premonitions of its demise, India just held on and somewhat solidified as an idea, perhaps because of the wider partici...

Day 3 of my hundred days was rather indifferent, partly because this is part of the teaching week and once I have spent three hours teaching, and another two travelling to and fro, most of my time is gone. But I did manage to catch up with one old colleague with whom I have done some work for U-Aspire, towards getting some conversations going in Bangalore. I wanted to tell him about the change in our plans - the fact that we may not pursue engagements the way we originally envisaged in India. For me, this was important, though slightly painful, a sort of a retreat; however, at the same time, we could talk about Indian education and various opportunities. Now that I have decided to disengage from education delivery in India, I suddenly see a number of possibilities opening up that I decided to ignore before. Setting up a college in London, which we did explore in the past, isn't one of them though. And, this is not just because of my background and interests in Asia, but more fo...

The second day in my 100 day plan in transition went better than I expected. I would sometimes have these 'productive' days, when I accomplish quite a bit, some of it just because of things coming together, and some of it because I feel motivated, and this was one of those. I did feel good in the end: I had two interviews, though for the same job, which I had to complete before I can have the next round of conversations; completed paperwork for another position; started working through the mountains of assessments that I must complete before I move to my next life; and completed a lengthy piece of content for the marketing course that I am delivering currently. Between the interviews and a few other conversations, I spent about four hours on Skype, which is not what I want to do for an ideal day, but it was good to connect with so many people in the space of a day too. I also started reading Michael Roth's Beyond the University, a spirited defense of Liberal Arts educ...

Half year gone - should I repeat the cliche that time's flying - and I am on the threshold of a new thing. A new 100 days plan will be handy, and I intend to set this in motion from tomorrow. Let things change and fast. So, here is the last six months: Our plan to get the business off the ground with a strategy that we decided upon late last year has failed. Focusing on one territory and a couple of partners was a risky plan - I did foresee this bit but didn't win the argument - and rather predictably, when this under-delivered, we were out of time. I spent a great amount of time as an Adjunct Tutor, feeling claustrophobic and waiting for a miracle, but kept my already overdrawn bank account on a life-support. And, towards the end of a rather tentative, but boring, six months, things started coming together in the form of interesting ideas and interesting projects. I am just on time to make a fresh start. It is not that I have not achieved much in the last six months....

I am in the midst of a change: After teaching in a public institution for two years, I am looking to give up teaching and get back to other kind of work. Indeed, teaching was primarily to cover me during the bootstrap years so that I can pay my bills. However, there was more to it: I chose to take up teaching responsibilities, dating back to 2010, in order to learn the practice of teaching, concurrently with my Masters in Education. This was part of my commitment to get into education and a demonstration of my deeply held belief that education is an art by itself and to get into it, one must understand the domain. That may seem obvious, but it is not. Because education touches almost everyone, everyone has a view about it, which is good. However, what's problematic is that everyone seems to think that they have a definitive view what education should be. So, the technologist thinks that education is all about neat technology, the business person thinks that it is about capaci...

How much should one pay heed to cultural issues when planning to deliver education globally? This question has assumed renewed significance as global education is now a reality. Technology has made it possible, financial liberalisation made it desirable. Now, even the last barriers, which were there for mostly political and cultural reasons, are also coming down. Even a country like Bangladesh, which is forever at war with Western influence at home, has now allowed overseas universities to set up shop ( see story ). With a broad global consensus slowly emerging about a regulatory easing of Higher Education, the global online providers never had it better. The technology of delivery has reached a tipping point, the access to computing, through cheap tablets and smartphones, have reached even the remotest parts of the world, and the groundswell of middle class aspirations have far outstripped the traditional modes of supply.  Indeed, there are big hurdles to cross. Chin...