The results are still some days away, but Dilli is intrigued and confused at the extraordinarily high turnout of voters in West Bengal, Assam, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu in the assembly elections
The results are still some days away, but Dilli is intrigued and confused at the extraordinarily high turnout of voters in West Bengal, Assam, Kerala, and Tamil Nadu in the assembly elections. Psephologists, political commentators and other experts are rushing in to take stock, having already excitedly noted the record 80 per cent turnout of voters in the recent panchayat elections in Jammu & Kashmir.
Certainly, some broad pointers to the voting trend are already available to the curious. The growing desire for good governance, the burgeoning of the constituency of young but increasingly politically aware voters, who now constitute an estimated 20 per cent of the electorate, and not the least being the public enthusiasm (at least in urban India) over Anna Hazare's almost Gandhian quest to eradicate corruption in high places ufffd all may have contributed to this phenomenon. The role of the Election Commission too has encouraged more people to step out and be counted.
Varsity vexationsThough Delhi University is still trying to put the semester system in place despite opposition from sections of the faculty, this is just one of the many changes vice-chancellor Dinesh Singh hopes to implement. Clearly, seeing the obstacles in his path Singh's task is by no means an easy one, but his tenacity is certainly admirable. Even as the debate continues to rage, the hardening positions adopted by the naysayers and the authorities make the issue even more challenging.
Last month, when vice-chancellors of central and state universities gathered to cogitate on educational reforms, the opinion was overwhelmingly in favour of the semester system, among other changes. While no radical reform can be truly painless, it just happens that Dinesh Singh finds himself at the forefront of leading this change! What happens next may well indicate how higher education will be like in the years ahead.
