India extends invitation to Maldives President amid strained ties
plans grand welcome for swearing-in ceremony
New Delhi is gearing up to host a grand swearing-in ceremony for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's third term, with a notable guest list including Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu. Despite strained relations since Muizzu assumed office last November, India has extended an invitation, signaling a diplomatic gesture towards improving ties.
Muizzu's presidency saw a departure from traditional diplomatic protocols, with his initial visits to Turkey and China instead of India. However, India's invitation marks his first official visit to the country since taking office.
The invitation comes amidst past tensions, as Muizzu had criticized India during his election campaign and called for the withdrawal of Indian military personnel from Maldives. Since then, all Indian armed forces have left the nation.
Acknowledging the invitation, Muizzu expressed gratitude to PM Modi and emphasized his commitment to strengthening ties with India. The upcoming ceremony will not only witness Muizzu's attendance but also that of other South Asian leaders, reaffirming India's 'Neighbourhood First' policy.
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'Carnage' of India's public education system must end: Sonia
New Delhi (PTI): Congress leader Sonia Gandhi on Monday slammed the Modi government's education policy, charging its core agenda is centralisation of power, commercialisation and outsourcing of investments to the private sector, and communalisation of textbooks.
Noting that these three Cs haunt Indian education today, the Congress Parliamentary Party chairperson said in an article that this "carnage" of India's public education system must end.
In the article "The '3Cs' that haunt Indian education today" in The Hindu, Gandhi said the introduction of the high-profile National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, has hidden the reality of a government that is profoundly indifferent to the education of India's children and youth.
"The Union Government's track record over the last decade has convincingly demonstrated that in education, it is concerned only with the successful implementation of three core agenda items -- the centralisation of power with the Union Government; the commercialisation and outsourcing of investments in education to the private sector, and the communalisation of textbooks, curriculum, and institutions," she said.
Gandhi charged that "unchecked centralisation" has been the hallmark of this government's functioning over the last 11 years, but its most damaging consequences have been in the domain of education.
She noted that the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE), comprising ministers for education in both the Union and state governments, has not been convened since September 2019.
Even while adopting and implementing a paradigm shift in education through the NEP 2020, the government has not seen it fit to consult state governments on the implementation of these policies even once, she noted.
"It is a testament to the Government's singular determination not to heed any voice other than its own, even on a subject that is squarely in the Concurrent List of the Indian Constitution," she claimed in the article.
"The lack of dialogue is accompanied by a 'bullying tendency'. Among the most disgraceful acts committed by this government is the coercion of state governments to implement the PM-SHRI (or PM Schools for Rising India) scheme of model schools by withholding the grants due to them under the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) as leverage," she said.
She also referred to the draft University Grants Commission (UGC) guidelines of 2025 as "draconian", claiming they have fully written out state governments from the appointment of Vice-Chancellors in universities established, funded, and operated by them.
She charged that the Union government has given itself-- through the governors who are typically designated as chancellor of the University -- near-monopoly power in the selection of vice chancellors in state universities.
"This is a back door attempt to convert a subject in the Concurrent List into the sole preserve of the Union government and represents one of the gravest threats to federalism in today's times," she charged.
The former Congress president also alleged that the Narendra Modi government's commercialisation of the education system has been happening in plain sight, in full compliance with the NEP.
She claimed the country's poor have been forced out of public education, and into the hands of a prohibitively expensive and under-regulated private school system.
In higher education, the government has introduced the Higher Education Financing Agency (HEFA) as a replacement to the University Grants Commission's erstwhile system of block-grants, she said.
"The Union government's third thrust is on communalisation, the fulfilment of the long-standing ideological project of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party, of indoctrinating and cultivating hatred through the education system," the Rajya Sabha MP said.
She alleged that textbooks of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT), the backbone of the school curriculum, have been revised with the intention of sanitising Indian history.
"Mahatma Gandhi's assassination and the sections on Mughal India have been dropped from curricula. In addition, the Preamble to the Indian Constitution was dropped from textbooks, until public backlash forced the Government to commit to mandatory inclusion once again," she said.
"In our universities, we have seen the large-scale hiring of professors from regime-friendly ideologically backgrounds, no matter the comically poor quality of their teaching and scholarships," she said, claiming that leadership positions in key institutions even in IITs and IIMs have been reserved for "pliant ideologues".
Over the last decade, she said, the education systems have been systematically cleansed of the spirit of public service and education policy has been sanitised of any concerns about access to and the quality of education.
"The consequences of this single-minded push for centralisation, commercialisation, and communalisation have fallen squarely on our students. This carnage of India's public education system must end," Gandhi said in the article.
