Nearly a year and a half ago, this blog carried a post focusing in part on the UPA government’s legislative attempts to implement the newly incorporated constitutional right to education in India. More recently, the UPA government has sought to involve the States in the process of implementation of the right to education, which has invited sharp reactions from activists involved in the movement to bring about universal education. As this article from India Together details, several of the people intimately involved with this process for several years see the move as regressive and as an attempt by the Central Government to “wash its hands off.”

A recent issue of the EPW carries an insightful essay by Ramachandra Guha where he analyses the historical contributions of Indian Universities, assesses their present functioning and status, and lays out his vision for the future of university education in India.

These accounts suggest that the road to achieving state-of-the-art education in India, comparable with the best available internationally, is a long and arduous one. That by itself is not news – the articles do, however, contain details and propose stimulating avenues to explore, beyond making the claim that these issues need to be addressed urgently.