“The 21st century illiterates are not those who can’t read and write; they are those who can’t learn, unlearn and re-learn. Things change so fast by the time you master something, you have to relearn again.”
Byju Raveendran, founder of Byju’s The Learning App (Outlook, June 4)
“It is utterly myopic to hold that students should not take part in politics and singularly focus on their studies. It simply amounts to killing democracy… Student politics enable the strengthening of social bonds, forging of new friendships, fostering of communal harmony, and also helps administrations to be just and effective. Without it, students would be reduced to an inert feed to corporate mills, incapable of reacting to the problems of the day or in the IITs’ case technology zombies.”
Anand Teltumbde, civil rights activist of the Committee for Protection of Democratic Rights, Mumbai (Economic & Political Weekly, June 9)
“When over 18.6 million adults remain unemployed in India today, what is the reason India still employs over 10 million children?”
Kailash Satyarthi, Nobel Prize winner, in ‘Stop enslavement of our children’ (Times of India, June 12)
“Mafia in the education sector runs deeper than that in the coal mining industry. In the coal sector, the mining is underground, mafia is over ground. In education, all the mafias are underground. You got to mine them out and take them on. It has sieved into every aspect of education, unfortunately, over the years.”
Anil Swarup, recently retired education secretary of the Union HRD ministry, in an interview to CNBC TV 18 (June 22)
“Both Hitler and Mrs. Indira Gandhi never abrogated the Constitution. They used a republican Constitution to transform democracy into dictatorship...”
Arun Jaitley, Union minister/BJP leader, in an online blog titled ‘The Tyranny of Emergency’ (June 25)