Akademos 2013-14
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Akademos 2014 An Annual Miscellany of Liberal Arts and Scholarship Golden Jubilee Year 1964-2014 KAMALA NEHRU COLLEGE (University of Delhi) 1 Contents Editor’s Note Acknowledgement Right to Education Act and its Implications Dr Tanuka Endow 9 Interrogating Gandhi’s economic ideas in the age of globalization: A political economy perspective Prof. Rumki Basu 23 Rights of Internal Minorities in a Democracy: Some Reflections on Muslim Women Dr. Chetna Sharma 40 India’s Partition: With the Humans, Music too Migrates Dr. Partha S. Ghosh 51 The Buddhist Traits in Sufi Traditions Dhritabrata Bhattacharjya 54 Proust and the Modernist Aesthetic Namita Paul 66 Art and Agency: Notes on the Agency of Viewers in Contemporary ‘Timed’ Visual Art Representing Delhi’s Modernity Neha Khurana 78 Women’s Exile’ in the Victorian World of Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ Dr. Fouzia Usmani 100 Impact of futures trading on spot market volatility: An empirical study of CNX it index Vidisha Garg and Vibhuti Vasishth 108 Is Indian Stock Market Weak-Form Efficient? - An Empirical Analysis Kanu Jain and Sahaj Wadhwa 118 2 MSME Sector in India: An Engine For Inclusive Growth and Development Dr. Alka Agrawal and Anuj Aggarwal 130 Challenges of Sustainable Consumption: Indian Context Dr. Sheetal Kapoor 140 Managing Attrition in Fast-Food Chains Dr. Soma Sen Gupta 158 How Corporate India Can Deal With Mandatory CSR Ritika Gupta and Dr. Pankaj Jain 177 Well-being of India’s Rural Labour in the era of Economic Reforms Nupur Kataria 183 360 Degree Performance Review: A technique of performance appraisal and evaluation. Shikha Gupta 199 Tracing The History of Allocation Problems in relation to Ethnomathematics Dr. Rita Malhotra 203 Understanding Nature Mathematically: History, Educational Implications And Philosophical questions Pragati Gautam 212 Cityscape of Medieval Patna: Continuity and Change Shubhra Sinha 231 Cancer and My Life Extraordinary Life of an Ordinary Woman Dr. Archana Ojha 245 Bionotes 252 3 A view of one of the gates of the Sanchi Stupa. The part of the structure of which our logo is a prototype is visible on top. 4 Editor’s Note Never doubt that you can change history. You already have. - Marge Piercy On 20th July 1964, the Government College for Women opened its doors for the first batch of students. 50 years later, the Government College for Women evolvedinto Kamala Nehru College, an institution that goes beyond producing mere graduates and instead creates holistically educated individuals.This edition of AKADEMOS commemorates the Golden Jubilee of Kamala Nehru College, and while we celebrate the past, we look towards the future.The challenges of educating a generation that has access to the world provides teachers an opportunity to develop new pedagogical strategies. Teachers must be good learners in order to impart knowledge to students. AKADEMOS was envisioned as a journal that would facilitate the process of learning and researching for the teachers of Kamala Nehru College. I can only imagine the challenges faced by Dr. Indira Menon, the first editor of AKADEMOS. Working at a time when most colleges did not have academic journals for faculty members must have required a pioneering spirit. Publishing is a leap of faith and the faculty members who wrote for the first few editions must have done so with a combination of enthusiasm and trepidation because publishing one’s work exposes the writer to both bouquets and brickbats. But the initial apprehension must have given way to confidence and a drive to rally forward. It was with this confidence and determination that Dr. Malabika Majumdar took over the reins of AKADEMOS. Her 5 meticulous editing and far ranging knowledge made AKADEMOS one of the few registered journals of Delhi University. Faculty members contributed diligently to meet the exacting standards that are required to write for a registered journal. At the same time the journal was persistently inclusive and Dr. Majumdar ensured that every discipline was represented in the journal. In its eighth year of publication, this special edition of AKADEMOS has been opened out to accept the works of eminent teachers and scholars from across the country. We share their research with the teaching community in an effort to learn and absorb the knowledge that is being generated in academic spheres across the country. We are glad that in this historic year AKADEMOS is taking another step forward and evolving to meet the challenges of the future. -Namita Paul 6 Acknowledgement AKADEMOS enters its eighth successful year as an academic journal. As a community of teachers we thank each other for extending cooperation in every form. We thank our principal, Dr.Minoti Chatterjee for her relentless encouragement in making it a journal of repute. Our sincere thanks go to all the contributors for their excellent articles which have lent quality to this journal. We are especially thankful to Prof. Partha S. Ghosh, Dr. Tanuka Endow, Dr. Rumki Basu, Dhritabrata Bhatacharjya Tato, Dr. Fouzia Usmani, Neha Khurana, Vidisha Garg, Kanu Jain and Sahaj Wadhwa for their contributions to this special edition of AKADEMOS. This endeavour owes much to Dr. Rita Malhotra, Namita Paul and Dr. Debasree Basu for investing considerable effort in proof reading and editing the articles and all the faculty members who have allowed us to publish their scholarly endeavours. Team AKADEMOS 7 8 Right to Education Act and its Implications Dr Tanuka Endow Introduction The Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act 2009 came upon the Indian education scenario like a ray of hope for millions of children in the country. Some of these children are scattered across the countryside, some in remote forested areas, some are in urban milieu, working daily to eke out a meagre living. The reason that this landmark regulation brought hope into their lives is that for millions of children in the country, being educated has remained a distant dream, in spite of the fact that more than sixty years have passed since India achieved independence. It is a heartening statistic that the number of out of school children (6-14 years) in the country has reportedly declined from 32 million in 2001 to 13.5 million in 2005 to 8.1 million in 2009 to as low as 3 million in 2012.2 Clearly, there has been a substantial increase in enrolment in schools. However, the class completion rates are discouraging to say the least. Drop-out rates for 2010-11 were 27% for the primary level (classes 1-5) and as high as 40% at the elementary level (classes 1-8).3 With the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act, or RTE, all 6-14 years old children can now demand at least an elementary education, i.e. education up till class 8, from the State. They now possess the legal right to this basic school education. Policy under the SSA In order to appreciate the difference that a law like RTE can make for children in matters of school participation, we need to examine the policy and strategy followed by the government in the years before RTE was promulgated, much of which still continues. In the beginning of the 21st century, in 2001-02, an umbrella scheme called Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) was introduced in India which aimed to universalise elementary education in the country. Till then, education had figured importantly in the government’s agenda, but a balanced growth of the various sectors of education had been envisaged. The school cycle in India is usually segmented as the following: Primary (classes 1 to 5), Upper Primary (classes 6 to 8), Secondary 9 (Classes 9 and 10) and Higher Secondary (Classes 11 and 12). Further on, there is general college education, vocational education, technical education, etc. In the early years of planning, education was a state subject, i.e. the jurisdiction of state governments and the policy approach was to promote a balanced growth in the sector, so that all the different segments of the sector grew in tandem. In 1976, education became a concurrent subject so that till present it is looked after jointly by the union and the state governments. The Centre has increasingly provided the policy direction for the education sector, and much of the running expenses are borne by the states. In the backdrop of the global initiative Education for All (EFA) launched in 1990 by UNESCO, UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF and the World Bank, the policy in India, too, came to focus on providing the basic elementary education to all the 6-14 year old children in the country. As a result of this shift, the existing schemes and initiatives for bringing children into school were all subsumed under the umbrella scheme of SSA. The mission of Universalization of Elementary Education or UEE under the SSA programme had three planks: access, equity and quality. Access At the time of introduction of SSA, access to schooling was a still major issue, so improving school access was high on SSA’s agenda for UEE. It is also important to realize that SSA had an underlying model for what a school should be and the kind of infrastructure it should have. So improving school infrastructure such as building, classrooms, drinking water, toilets, etc. were very much on the agenda. Equity We know that our society is riddled by caste issues and there is considerable segmentation not only by caste, but by religion and class as well. India, a developing country, has a very large population living below the poverty line. In 2004-05, a few years after SSA was introduced, 37% people in India lived below the poverty line, according to official estimates.4 In terms of numbers, this was 407 million people.