Medical educator | Biochemistry, MedEd, EdTech | Health, Higher Education & Public Policy | Words in NDTV, Mint, The Wire, etc | Manipal | MUCM Malaysia
Melaka, Manipal
Joined January 2010
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Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
Delighted to share the setting up of Kaushalya, initiative between SEWA & Bagchi Foundation. Will train 50000 women in 10 years. 8.5 acre residential campus in Ahmedabad. Training technology from ITEES Singapore. It will set new a global standard in human development.
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
Centre’s Nilekani panel led ambitious exam reforms rollout plan for 2027 - hits serious roadblock with southern states raising several concerns
TN to Kerala have red flagged JEE, NEET’s urban bias, CBSE leaning, need for higher school board weightage
Panel to urgently reach out to states this week on to build consensus
Clock ticking- stage set for NEET-UG 2027 likely to go on Paper +CBT mode; full CBT switch only over next 2-3 yrs
NTA set to announce exam format very soon
More @ETPolitics
m.economictimes.com/news/ind…
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
Every serious educationist I spoke to is worried, concerned and frustrated. The ‘Viksit Bharat 2047’, is an empty slogan, throwing the ball a couple of decades away to cling on to power.
As we speak, India's higher education is on ventilator.
1. Reform bill in limbo. The VBSA Bill went to a JPC, deadline was extended twice and adoption meeting cancelled twice. The monsoon session ended with no date.
2. We have a Part-time minister who holds Education as additional charge. The higher education dept. had 3 secretaries in 3 weeks.
3. Pending VBSA, we are running on Stand-in regulators. UGC has had no regular chairman for 19 months running. It is run by the ministry's own secretary, though the UGC Act bars government officers from the post. AICTE has had an interim head for 10 months. The bar council is run by the same person for 10 years. Files don’t move. Policy decisions are never taken.
4. Empty classrooms. At least 14,617 of 46,151 faculty posts are vacant (31.7%):
• IIITs 54%
• IITs 38%
• AIIMS 35%
• IIMs 32%
• NITs 28%
• Central universities 26%
5. While all this happens, the government indulges in data blackout. Asked in Parliament how many posts are vacant, the ministry now reports only how many it has hired. The real numbers come from RTI applications.
All that govt. does is building perceptions, hiding realty and playing politics. India’s education is on a ventilator. The hospital has no doctors. And the bills keep getting piled up.
Who is responsible?
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
Four thousand years ago, Indian merchants were living in Mesopotamia in large enough numbers to have a village of their own and a professional interpreter to deal with them.
Texts from Lagash written towards the end of the third millennium BC, record a village of Meluhha inside Sumerian territory. Meluhha is the Sumerian name for Indus-Sarasvati lands. The Louvre holds the cylinder seal of a man called Shu-ilishu, whose inscription describes him as an interpreter of the Meluhhan language. Around 2300 BC, Sargon of Akkad boasted that ships from Meluhha, Magan and Dilmun were moored at the quay of his capital, Agade.
Indus seals have been found at Ur, Kish and Nippur, while hardly any Mesopotamian seals or objects have been found in the subcontinent, suggesting the pro-active merchants were Indian. The monsoon blows one way across the Arabian Sea for half the year and back for the other half, so a merchant who sailed west could spend months in a foreign port waiting for the wind to turn. This goes a long way to explaining both the village and the interpreter.
The Sumerians knew perfectly well whose ships were tied up at their quays, and they wrote the name down.
Episode 3 of my graphic novel, Maritime World: The True Cradle, is called The River That Fed the World and follows one of those merchants from Lothal to a Sumerian market and home again. Link in the reply.
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
Factory workers in Haryana are losing fingers and hands on power press machines used to make auto parts. This ground report reveals how unsafe machines, production pressure, treatment after accidents and what factory work can cost the workers.
Watch full video on our YouTube channel👇🏼
youtube.com/watch?v=exV7zICa…
Report & Edit: @bhuvan_mov
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
In the early eighteenth century, if a visitor had walked out of the East India Company’s Fort St George, at Madras, and proceeded southwards towards the village of Adyar, five miles or so away, he (or she) would have heard, successively, English spoken at the Fort [although Marathi more in its cutcheri (office)]; Armenian, Gujarati and Telugu in the neighbouring Black Town; Urdu, Persian and Dakhni at the court of the Nawabs of Arcot, but Sanskrit mantras at the very adjacent Sri Parthasarathi temple (one of the landmarks of Sri Vaishnavism in the region); Tamil shop-talk and less-exalted Sanskrit chanting at the lesser Mylapore temple; Portuguese in San Thome and then rather more rustic Tamil in the Mudaliar villages somewhat inland from it. -- David Washbrook, Intimations of Modernity in South India.
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
A @lufthansa crew member is among the deceased. What an incredibly sad and tragic way to lose a life, particularly in what should have been one of the safest environments for an airline crew member during a layover.
Time and again, such incidents point to one of two systemic failures: regulatory corruption or institutional mediocrity.
Neither is acceptable.
BREAKING: A German & A Slovak national have died of electrocution in the swimming pool at Bengaluru’s Conrad Hotel. US guest & Indian pool attendant injured attempting rescue, safe, @dpkBopanna reports on NDTV. (file photo)
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
Microplastics are increasingly considered to be at the root of the most troublesome health problems like cancer, atherosclerosis and ageing. But it was unclear how it causes damage. Research published in Nature journal shows likely mechanism - oxidative stress.
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
This recent article by anthropologist Tanuj Luthra is a major milestone in better understanding a conundrum which mainstream healthcare discourse has consistently failed to grasp: Why do so many people trust & go to "quack" doctors? Enlightening research.
doi.org/10.1080/00856401.202…
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
Recently, a university founder told me “My return on investment is far better when I bring film stars to campus than when I invite experts to deliver guest lectures”. He goes on to say “A Daler Mehendi Concert will have every newspaper cover us. We also give free VIP passes to the media people and their families”.
What happened at @MRU_Hyderabad is a reminder of this disturbing trend. They are known to be the preferred venue for film launches. The institution reportedly even declared a holiday to enable students to watch a movie.
It explains much of what is wrong with higher education today. It is easier to bring a film star for two hours than build an institution of academic excellence over twenty years. Sadly, it works. Gullible and start Struck students and anxious parents often mistake visibility for credibility.
The frustrating part is how Universities adapting these shortcuts thrive. The hard questions around faculty quality, teaching, research and student outcomes remain unanswered.
While all this happens, @ugc_india and @EduMinOfIndia is a silent spectator!
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
I hope you understand how insane this chart is. There is a decile of US Americans who consume 10+ alcoholic drinks per day. The three bottom deciles don’t drink at all.
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
Premature birth may do more than interrupt brain development—it may fundamentally alter how the cerebellum matures into early childhood, according to a new study in Science.
The findings reveal how the timing of birth shapes brain cell development and neural connections, offering new insight into the lasting neurodevelopmental effects of prematurity.
📄: scim.ag/47OzVMI
#SciencePerspective: scim.ag/4yLJRkY
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
A team of experts free from political bias needs to travel across India to understand what our poverty actually looks like on the ground.
Headline numbers must be examined carefully.
I once did this exercise for Shamika Ravi.
Last year, the Indus Valley report observed that around 80% of Indians have negligible or zero ability to spend on discretionary goods.
Rama Bijapurkar is widely regarded as one of the most reliable experts on Indian consumption.
Her consumer segmentation:
L5 (Affluent): Annual household spend of ₹11.24 lakh+, covering just 25 million people
L4 (Resilient): ₹5.4 to 7 lakh, covering 71 million people
L3 (Real Middle): ₹3.8 to 5.4 lakh, covering 200 million people
L2 (Strained Mass): ₹2.2 to 3.8 lakh, covering 432 million people
L1 (Vulnerables): ₹1.1 to 2.2 lakh, covering a massive 707 million people
These figures refer to household expenditure, not individual spending.
Taken together, L1 and L2 account for nearly 80% of India’s population. For them, everyday life is a constant struggle. They are living on the edge.
The others are not living in luxury, but the scale of vulnerability at the bottom is stark.
80% of the country is just surviving and that too with great difficulty.
Over the years I have shared extensive data on income, expenditure, wealth and poverty.
We see only what we want to see.
We simply refuse to face reality.
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
New Data Byte: Childcare and housework take women out of India's labour force, by @akwaghmare
Fewer women than men being in the labour force is a global phenomenon, but the gender gap is one of the highest in India. While 80% of men are part of the labour force, only 40% of women are in the labour force in the country.
Both men and women may enter, leave, and re-enter the labour force for a range of reasons. However, the circumstances that take men and women out of the labour force are very different.
India's national labour surveys ask people who are currently not working but have worked in the past the reason for dropping out of work. Most men between the ages of 20-49 years cite health as the reason, followed by lay-offs or contract termination.
Health reasons take some women out of work as well, but the numbers are much smaller, and restricted to older women. Women in their twenties, thirties and forties who have dropped out of the labour force largely cite household work and childcare as the reasons they left the workforce.
Childcare is a particularly important reason cited by young women, or those in their twenties. More than three in ten women between the ages of 20-29 years who were earlier working report childcare as the reason they do not work anymore.
As women grow older, household work and health become more prominent reasons to quit work. Across all age groups in the prime working ages, however, household work remains the leading reason women leave the labour force.
#Jobs #Women #Employment #Work #India #DataForIndia
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
India’s Nuclear power ambitions & SHANTI Act throw up a manpower challenge
Centre to nudge top tech institutes to launch nuclear courses to ready N-skilled workforce
Expert committee considering specialised Institute of Nuclear Science
Reason- Estimates indicate near 2 lakh N skilled professionals will be needed for 100GW ambition
@ETPolitics
m.economictimes.com/industry…
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
Indians are not allowed in India. Yet no one ever questioned this. It's incredible.
indiatoday.in/mail-today/sto…
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
"X-Men" and "Star Trek" star Patrick Stewart has died at age 86. He spoke to AP in 2014 about the broader themes in the "X-Men" franchise.
#PatrickStewart #StarTrek #XMen
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
Demonetisation & déjà vu
ECI found the needle in a haystack! just 1,600 foreigners on voter lists in six states. Well done, all! Great story by @himansshhi
hindustantimes.com/s/1kYNFzM
Sambit Dash, PhD retweeted
Exactly seventy years ago, Elvis Presley took a polio vaccine shot on national television.
Just that one moment changed the public perception of vaccination in the US. The number of children taking vaccines shot up from less than 1% to more than 80%. There were more than 28,000 Polio cases in 1955, and the US has been polio free since 1979. They say that with that one shot, Elvis did more for American healthcare than any other human.
