Category Archives: Education

INTERNATIONAL: BUDDHISM CONFERENCE: India to Host 02-day ‘International Buddhist Conference’

Over 170 delegates from foreign countries and 150 from India would participate in the summit to be held on April 20-21 in the national capital.

India will host an international summit on Buddhism which would be attended by delegates from 30 countries, a notable exception being China. Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, was also unlikely to attend the two-day conclave.

The maiden conference being organised by the Union Culture Ministry and the International Buddhist Confederation will discuss contemporary global issues through a Buddhist perspective.

“India is the birthplace of Buddhism. The summit aims to find solutions to problems such as climate change, poverty, and conflict, among others, by exploring the Buddhist teachings and practices,” Union Culture Minister G. Kishan Reddy said.

Over 170 delegates from foreign countries, including Mexico, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Japan, and 150 from India would participate in the summit to be held on April 20-21 in the national capital.

The delegates include prominent scholars, monks, diplomats and members of Buddhist organisations across the globe.

The largest number of delegates are from Sri Lanka (20) and Vietnam (30), Abhijit Haldar, Director General of International Buddhist Confederation, said.

He said that while no delegate had confirmed from China, there would be two participants from Taiwan.

“The invitations were sent to various Buddhist institutions and not to governments,” he added.

He also mentioned that the Dalai Lama might not attend the event due to “health issues”.

The Tibetan spiritual leader has been at the centre of a controversy earlier this month over an incident with a minor boy.

PM to inaugurate conclave

The conference themed “Responses to Contemporary Challenges from Philosophy to Praxis” would be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The discussion would be under four themes Buddha Dhamma and Peace, Buddha Dhamma: Environmental Crisis, Health and Sustainability, Preservation of Nalanda Buddhist Tradition and Buddhist Pilgrimage, Living Heritage and Relics.

The conference was expected to produce a document for further academic research and study the viability of Buddhism as a tool for the conduct of international relations on global stage.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

INTERNATIONAL AWARD : STATISTICS : Indian-American Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao (C.R. Rao) Wins Top Statistics Award, the ‘ 2023 International Prize in Statistics ‘ – a look back at his pioneering work

Indian-American statistician Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao has been awarded statistics’ equivalent of the Nobel Prize.

The Indian-American statistician Calyampudi Radhakrishna Rao has been awarded the 2023 International Prize in Statistics, which is statistics’ equivalent of the Nobel Prize. It was established in 2016 and is awarded once every two years to an individual or team “for major achievements using statistics to advance science, technology and human welfare.”

Prof. Rao, who is now 102 years old, is a ‘living legend’ whose work has influenced, in the words of the American Statistical Association, “not just statistics” but also “economics, genetics, anthropology, geology, national planning, demography, biometry, and medicine”. The citation for his new award reads: “C.R. Rao, a professor whose work more than 75 years ago continues to exert a profound influence on science, has been awarded the 2023 International Prize in Statistics.”

What was Rao’s 1945 paper about?

Rao’s groundbreaking paper, ‘Information and accuracy attainable in the estimation of statistical parameters’, was published in 1945 in the Bulletin of the Calcutta Mathematical Society, a journal that is otherwise not well known to the statistics community. The paper was subsequently included in the book Breakthroughs in Statistics, 1890-1990.

This was an impressive achievement given Rao was only 25 at the time and had just completed his master’s degree in statistics two years prior.

He would go on to do his PhD in 1946-1948 at King’s College, Cambridge University, under the supervision of Ronald A. Fisher , widely regarded as the father of modern statistics.

The Cramér-Rao inequality is the first of the three results of the 1945 paper. When we are estimating the unknown value of a parameter, we must be aware of the estimator’s margin of error. Rao’s work provided a lower limit on the variance of an unbiased estimate for a finite sample. The result has since become a cornerstone of mathematical statistics; researchers have extended it in many different ways, with applications even in quantum physics, signal processing, spectroscopy, radar systems, multiple-image radiography, risk analysis, and probability theory, among other fields.

In an article published in the journal Statistical Science in 1987, the American statistician Morris H. DeGroot set out an intriguing story (corroborated by Rao’s own account) of how Rao arrived at the lower limit. Prof. Fisher had already established an asymptotic (i.e. when the sample size is very large) version of the inequality, and it seems a student had asked Rao, “Why don’t you prove it for finite samples?” in 1944. A then-24-year-old Rao did so in under 24 hours!

The second outcome of the 1945 paper was the Rao-Blackwell Theorem, which offers a method to improve an estimate to an optimal estimate. The Rao-Blackwell theorem and the Cramér-Rao inequality are both related to the quality of estimators.

A new interdisciplinary area called ‘information geometry’ was born as a result of the paper’s third finding. This field integrated principles from differential geometry into statistics, including the concepts of metric, distance, and measure. Erich L. Lehmann, a renowned statistician, said in 2008 that “this work [of Rao’s] was before its time and came into its own only in the 1980s”.

So overall, Rao’s 1945 paper made an outstanding contribution, boosting the development of modern statistics and its widespread application in modern research. In a 2008 book, Reminiscences of a Statistician: The Company I Kept, Lehmann also discussed the generative nature of the paper – i.e. the goldmine of insights that it was – and acknowledged that “several of my early papers grew out of Rao’s paper of 1945”.

How did Rao enter the field of statistics?

The Australian statistician Terry Speed claimed that the “1940s were ungrudgingly C.R. Rao’s. His 1945 paper … will guarantee that, even had he done nothing else – but there was much else.”

Indeed, one of Rao’s papers in 1948 offered a novel generic approach to testing hypotheses, now widely known as the “Rao score test”. In fact, the three test procedures – the likelihood ratio test of Jerzy Neyman and E.S. Pearson (1928), the Wald test (1943) of Abraham Wald, and the Rao score test (1948) – are sometimes called “the holy trinity” of this branch of statistics.

Rao also contributed to orthogonal arrays, a concept in combinatorics that is used to design experiments whose results are qualitatively good, as early as 1949. A 1969 Forbes article described it as “a new mantra” in industrial establishments.

Given the magnitude and relevance of his contributions, it might seem surprising that Rao entered the field of statistics by chance.

Despite scoring first in mathematics at Andhra University, a 19-year-old Rao didn’t secure a scholarship there for administrative reasons. He was also rejected for a mathematician’s job at an army survey unit because he was judged to be too young.

When he was staying at a hotel in Calcutta, he met a man who was employed in Bombay and had been sent to Calcutta to be trained at the Indian Statistical Institute. He asked Rao to apply to the institute as well. Rao did so, for a year-long training programme in statistics, hoping the additional qualification would help him land a job.

P.C. Mahalanobis, then director of the institute, replied promptly and Rao was enrolled. That marked the beginning of a four-decade-long stay at the institute. Rao retired in 1979 and afterwards settled in the U.S.

The first half of the 20th century was the golden period of statistical theory in general, and Rao is undoubtedly one of the reasons for this being the case, thanks to his mathematical ingenuity. In the words of the late mathematician Samuel Karlin, Rao’s contributions to statistical theory have “earned him a place in the history of statistics”.

Indian statisticians also owe Prof. Rao gratitude for his enormous contributions to the growth of statistics in the country, notably at the Indian Statistical Institute (where this author works). As Lehmann wrote, Rao was “the person who did the most to continue Mahalanobis’s work as a leader of statistics in India.”

Atanu Biswas is professor of statistics, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

GLOBAL: INDIA & USA : India Biggest Trading Partner for U.S., says Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen

Ms. Yellen stressed advanced a new ‘friendshoring’ approach under which the U.S. is seeking to diversify away from countries that present geopolitical and security risks to the supply chain,

Terming India as the biggest trading partner, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet L Yellen on Saturday pitched for advancing an approach called “friendshoring” to bolster the resilience of supply chains.

As President Biden has said, India is an indispensable partner to the United States, Ms. Yellen said while addressing a roundtable with U.S. and Indian tech business leaders on the sidelines of G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting here.

“The US is India’s biggest trading partner. In 2021, our bilateral trade was over USD 150 billion. Our people-to-people ties affirm the closeness of our relationship. 200,000 Indians are studying in America and enriching our schools and universities. We depend on each other on a daily basis: Indians use WhatsApp to communicate and many American companies rely on Infosys to operate,” she said.

The roundtable was attended by top tech honchos, including Infosys chairman Nandan Nilekani, IBM India managing director Sandip Patel, Intel India country head Nivruti Rai, Foxconn India Country Head Josh Foulger and Wipro chairman Rishad Premji.

“As we look towards the future, I am eager to deepen our ties in the technology sector. The United States is advancing an approach called “friendshoring” to bolster the resilience of our supply chains. We are doing this by strengthening integration with our many trusted trading partners – including India. We are seeing progress; as an example, technology companies like Apple and Google have expanded their phone production in India,” she said.

The U.S. in its new ‘friendshoring’ approach is diversifying away from countries that present geopolitical and security risks to our supply chain, Ms. Yellen said. Friendshoring approach involves partnering with developing countries to grow local industries and connect them to the global supply chain.

Through the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment, or PGII, she said, the U.S. is investing in digital technologies that will drive inclusive, resilient growth in India.

Under PGII, she said, the United States has announced investments in agri-tech to enable climate-smart agricultural production, and in digital payments systems for microentrepreneurs.

These stand alongside investments in renewable energy, health, and other infrastructure sectors in India, she said, adding, the United States aims to mobilise USD 200 billion through 2027 for PGII, and look forward to partnering with India to continue investing in its future.

During the roundtable, Mr. Nilekani said Infosys has opened new centres in six different American states in the last few year and hired 25,000 workers there in the last six years.

“We have focused heavily on localisation in the US. Total global workforce is 3,30,000. We have built a 160,000 square feet world class training centre in Indianapolis. We hired 7,000 fresh graduates this year. Our aim is to pick young, talented people, including from community colleges, and invest in their training,” he said.

Infosys runs India’s tax systems, he said, adding, the back-end of the entire direct and indirect tax system is run by the company.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

WORLD RECORD: SPACE / SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY: Wings of fire: Chennai-based Space Kidz India Launches AzaadiSAT, which Involves 750 Schoolgirls.  AzaadiSAT – the ‘First STEM Project in the World Comprising All-Girls’

Schoolgirls had to remotely build payloads (transport of data across a network) and write codes for the satellite to be launched into space.

It seemed like a flight of fancy a year ago for Tanvi Patel. The tenth grader and a science enthusiast from Shri BS Patel Kanya Vidyalaya in Mahesana, Gujarat, was chosen to be part of an ambitious space plan. Called AzaadiSAT, the project involved 750 girls like her from government schools across India.

They had to remotely build payloads (transport of data across a network) and write codes for the satellite to be launched into space. On February 10, as part of the ISRO’s SSLV-D2 launch, the small, eight-kg CubeSat blasted off into space from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh. How does Patel wish to celebrate? 

“I want to hug Srimathy ma’am for making me a Space Star,” she says. Dr Srimathy Kesan is the brain behind the communication satellite. The 49-year-old founder and CEO of Space Kidz India (SKI), a Chennai-based science and space technology incubator, made AzaadiSAT the first STEM project in the world comprising all girls.

Founded in 2011 with the mission to help young minds ‘savour space sciences’, SKI runs three-month modules—from the solar system and galaxy to robotics and drones—for various age groups. So far SKI has trained 3,500 kids in space exploration of whom about 100 are already working with companies that are into robotics and drone startups across India.

Incidentally, Kesan herself is neither a space scientist nor an aeronautical engineer. “In school, 
I was an NCC cadet and was chosen as a paratrooper. Paratrooping put me in the sky and the space bug bit me,” she recalls.

The tipping point came in 2009 when her friend mentioned a global conference being held in Miami. “I had to be there,” she says. It was in Florida that she got an opportunity to interact with NASA representatives who had set up a kiosk to talk about their programmes. NASA had several initiatives for young school students and that same year, she managed to fly a batch of 108 students to the US to give them a taste of space.

Since then, Kesan has taken around 3,500 youngsters to various space workshops. In 2013, SKI started the Young Scientist India programme to identify high school students who could be mentored to become space scientists. Kesan herself was part of the one-day astronaut programme in Florida in December 2022 where she was handpicked to join celebrity NASA astronaut Charlie Duke, becoming the first Indian woman to experience zero gravity.

How did a commerce student become a space ninja? “Reading NASA news, attending workshops/seminars at the US space agency, taking copious notes and googling like crazy about anything related to satellites,” she says with a twinkle in her eyes. 

In 2022, Kesan pitched the idea to include 750 girls from government schools to build an indigenous satellite to Prime Minister Narendra Modi during a Zoom call where some space startups were meeting. “The PM instructed the government officials to offer me all help needed,” she says.

ISRO gave them technical support and other incidental expenses for the programmes were sanctioned by Hexaware Technologies, a Mumbai-based IT services company. Anna University, Chennai, gave them the space to build the satellite. The students were picked based on their enthusiasm to learn fast. The space lover, wants to take kids to the moon in the next five years. Audacity is, indeed, Kesan’s first name.

source/content: newindianexpress.com (headline edited)

INTERNATIONAL: ARTS & CULTURE: India to Organise World Hindi Conference in Fiji, Feb 15-17

India is set to organise World Hindi Conference between February 15-17 in Fiji.

A 270-member delegation from India will visit Fiji for the event.

Representatives from 50 countries will participate in the event and representatives from South and Northeast India will be presenting papers at the conference.

“Hindi has made limited progress in the United Nations. U.N. press releases are now available in Hindi. We are trying to get Hindi its rightful place at the U.N.” said Saurabh Kumar, Secretary (East), MEA.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

NATIONAL: SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY: JNCASR Scientists Develop Brain-like Computing with Industry Compatible Nitride Semiconductors

They used scandium nitride (ScN) to develop a device mimicking a synapse that controls the signal transmission as well as remembers the signal.

A team of scientists from the Jawaharlal Nehru Centre for Advanced Scientific Research (JNCASR) have used scandium nitride (ScN) and Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (CMOS) compatibility to develop brain-like computing.

This invention can provide a new material for stable, CMOS-compatible optoelectronic synaptic functionalities at a relatively lower energy cost and also potential to be translated into an industrial product.

According to the Department of Science and Technology, the JNCASR team led by Dheemahi Rao who were working on nitride-based materials used their background for developing hardware for neuromorphic computing. They used ScN to develop a device mimicking a synapse that controls the signal transmission as well as remembers the signal.

“The JNCASR team demonstrates an artificial optoelectronic synapse with ScN thin films that can mimic synaptic functionalities like short-term memory, long-term memory, the transition from short-term to long-term memory, learning–forgetting, frequency selective optical filtering, frequency-dependent potentiation and depression, Hebbian learning, and logic-gate operations,” states the department.

Compared to the existing materials used to demonstrate optoelectronic synapse, ScN is more stable, CMOS compatible, and can be seamlessly integrated with existing Si technology. It can act as a platform for both excitatory and inhibitory functions. The industrial processing techniques of ScN are similar to the existing semiconductor fabrication infrastructure. Response to the optical stimuli also has the advantage of possible integration with photonic circuits known for higher speed and broader bandwidth than electronic circuits.

“Our work enables neuromorphic computing research with a stable, scalable, and CMOS-compatible III-nitride semiconductor that exhibits both excitatory and inhibitory synaptic functionalities. Unlike the previous works on all-electronic synapse, our work shows an optoelectronic synapse with a large bandwidth, reduced RC delays, and low power consumption,”said Dr. Bivas Saha, Assistant Professor, JNCASR.

Apart from JNCASR, researchers from the University of Sydney (Dr. Magnus Garbrecht and Dr. Asha I. K. Pillai) also participated in this study published recently in the scientific journal Advanced Electronic Materials.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

GLOBAL RECORDS: ARTS & CULTURE/ HISTORY/ MANUSCRIPTS: World’s First Palm-Leaf Manuscript Museum in Kerala capital, a Mine of Stories

The facility is essentially a repository of curious nuggets of administrative, socio-cultural and economic facets of Travancore spanning a period of 650 years till the end of the 19th century.

A treasure house of both obscure and celebrated tales of the erstwhile Travancore kingdom that became Asia’s first to defeat any European power on Indian soil, the recently opened Palm leaf Manuscript Museum in the Kerala capital has further brightened the state’s cultural and academic space.

Billed as the world’s first palm leaf manuscript museum, the facility is essentially a repository of curious nuggets of administrative, socio-cultural and economic facets of Travancore spanning a period of 650 years till the end of the 19th century, besides documents relating to territories of Kochi in the state’s middle and Malabar further north.

Besides brightening the state’s culture space, the museum also serves as a reference point for historical and cultural research for academic and non-academic scholars, officials said.

Among the manuscripts that the museum houses are accounts of the famed Battle of Colachel wherein the valiant Travancore king Anizham Thirunal Marthanda Varma (1729-58) defeated the Dutch East India Company at Colachel, 20 km northwest of Kanyakumari in present-day Tamil Nadu.

This 1741 victory ended Dutch expansion in India, and Travancore under Marthanda Varma became Asia’s first state to defeat the expansionist designs of any European power.

The museum, which opened last week, has 187 manuscripts chronicling a mine of stories based entirely on primary sources: Documents written on cured and treated palm leaves consigned to the corners of the records rooms.

The archival material, in the first phase, was chosen after painstaking sifting from a huge stock of haphazardly stored 1.5 crore palm-leaf records from across the state.

Today, the select documents occupy what is the world’s only manuscript museum that solely displays sheaves of palm leaf materials and allied paraphernalia such as styluses and carriers of the Cadjan bundles, they said.

Bamboo splints and copper plates, too, make a presence. Officials are elated about the museum set up on the ground floor of the three-century-old complex which functions as the Central Archives under the state government.

More so, since this is just the first move towards a major heritage conservation project. With its eight galleries that also feature videos and QR code systems permitting the acquisition of information, the facility is wooing common people and niche researchers alike.

The manuscripts also outline the evolution of writing in the region, points out Dr V Venu, State Additional Chief Secretary (Archaeology, Archives and Museums).

“They give visitors an idea about the emergence of the Malayalam script from older systems such as Vattezhuthu and Kolezhuthu,” he said.

“Primarily, the galleries give a glimpse of the complex administrative systems of land management, path-breaking proclamations of the Travancore royals and international negotiations as well as agreements, besides documents that became historical milestones,” said Venu, also a former Director General of National Museum in Delhi.

The museum here is expected to breathe new life into exploring the entire manuscript collection and hopes to attract more researchers and students.

The collection of palm leaf records will soon move to a modern facility in the city, with arrangements for scientific storage and study.

“It is a safe set-up, giving a comfortable space for research,” Venu said. R Chandran Pillai, Executive Director of the government’s Keralam Museum, the nodal agency assigned to set up and refurbish repositories across the state, claimed that the palm leaf storehouse had no previous models anywhere in the world. The manuscripts straddle six centuries, from 1249 CE to 1896, said J Rejikumar, who heads the Directorate of Archives.

According to author-historian S Uma Maheswari, palm leaves have the capacity to plug certain gaps in Kerala’s history.

“The records may not guarantee continuity to past events, but they own a great potential to lend new angles to existing narratives and strengthen their composition as well as colour,” said the writer of the two-volume Mathilakam Records that essays Travancore history of the last millennium.

“Each item in the museum is a commentary on the state affairs: Revenue, defence, administration, health, education, religion, caste, corruption, crime and whatnot,” Maheswari said.

The museum has eight galleries representing as many segments: ‘History of Writing’, ‘Land and people’, ‘Administration’, ‘War and peace’, ‘Education and Health’, ‘Economy’, ‘Art and culture’ and ‘Mathilakam Records’. The tile-roof museum housed the Central Archives two years after the department was formed in 1962.

Before that, it had been the Central Vernacular Records Office since 1887. Till then, the building was a prison under the Travancore ruler and, prior to it, barracks of his Nair army.

source/content: newindianexpress.com (headline edited)

INTERNATIONAL: LEADERS / LEGAL & LAW: Chief Justice of India (CJI) Chandrachud to be Conferred with the ‘Award for Global Leadership’ by Harvard Law School Center

At the event, professor David Wilkins of the Harvard Law School will also have a conversation with the CJI.

Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud has been selected for the “Award for Global Leadership” by the Harvard Law School Center in recognition of his lifetime service to the legal profession in the country and around the world.

The award will be presented to him at an online event on January 11.

Chandrachud obtained an LLM degree and a Doctorate in Juridical Sciences (SJD) from the Harvard Law School in the United States.

At the event, professor David Wilkins of the Harvard Law School will also have a conversation with the CJI.

Justice Chandrachud, who was part of the apex court benches that delivered several landmark verdicts, including the Ayodhya land dispute case, was sworn in as the 50th CJI on November 9, 2022.

source/content: thehindu.com (headline edited)

INTERNATIONAL: ARTS & SCIENCE / PHOTOGRAPHY: NASA Publishes 4 Jupiter Images Processed by Navaneeth Krishnan, Editor, Kerala State Institute of Children’s Literature

Science enthusiasts around the world love to process the raw images taken by The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s spacecraft on various missions.

Science enthusiasts around the world love to process the raw images taken by The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)’s spacecraft on various missions. It’s a passion for many. Some of their processed works even get recognition by the US space agency. Navaneeth Krishnan, a native of Angamaly won the recognition when NASA published four images of its Jupiter Mission that he processed. 

An editor at the Kerala State Institute of Children’s Literature, Thiruvananthapuram, Navaneeth recently processed the image of the Northern Cyclones on Jupiter taken from JunoCam, the public engagement camera aboard NASA’s Juno spacecraft. NASA also gave credit to Navaneeth for enhancing the colour and contrast of the image.

“NASA’s Juno spacecraft has been making rotations around Jupiter and providing raw images for years. It is the Southwest Research Institute that publishes these raw images which are further processed by various citizen scientists. Every time an image is published by NASA, scores of people from across the globe download it as part of the public engagement project and process it. This is the fourth time that NASA is publishing an image that I processed. I am extremely happy that NASA is recognising my efforts,” says Navaneeth.  

The latest image he worked on a cyclone on the northernmost region of Jupiter, perched near the gas giant’s north pole, was taken on September 29, 2022. While publishing the image in December, NASA said, “Jupiter has eight circumpolar cyclones, and four are visible in this image, framing the northernmost cyclone. 

A small anticyclone (which spins counterclockwise) has wedged its way in just above the northernmost cyclone. The image was acquired on Juno’s 45th pass of Jupiter from an altitude of 17,248 miles and shows features as small as 11.6 miles across. Citizen scientist Navaneeth Krishnan S processed the images to enhance the colour and contrast.” 

Navaneeth has completed his PG in Physics and has always been passionate about astrophysics. 
“I use Photoshop and other softwares like G’MIC-QT and GIMP to process the raw images. So far, I have processed 300 images, of which four images have been published. Processing these can contribute to more discoveries in future,” says Navaneeth.

The frst image processed by Navaneeth that got published was one of Jupiter’s South temperate belt and the Great Red Spot. The second was of Europa taken on September 29 in 2022 at an altitude of around 1,500km. An image of a storm titled ‘Oval BA’ in Jupiter was also processed by him and published by the agency.  

There is no monetary aspect involved in this process in which many space enthusiasts participate.  Navaneeth is also part of the Aastro Kerala Organisation along with many science enthusiasts of all ages, from children to adults.

source/content: newindianexpress.com (headline edited)

INTERNATIONAL: U.K. / LEADERS: Meet Ranjeet Rathore, the First Indian Student to be Head of a Students’ Union in the UK

The pioneering student-politician on what it took to break the glass ceiling of colour and race in UK’s student politics.

While Indians across the world are still celebrating the appointment of Rishi Sunak as the first person of Indian-origin to become the Prime Minister of the UK, it is time to acknowledge the contributions of another political leader whose Indian roots have blossomed to great effect in Britain. Ranjeet Rathore, 26, from Jaipur, is the first Indian as well as the first international student to win their university student elections in the UK, a feat he achieved in June 2018. He held his presidential term till July 2020.

My Kolkata caught up with Rathore to take a deep dive into his political journey, his struggles and aspirations, the challenges of Indian students in the UK and more.

‘People like me were never meant to run for elections’

My Kolkata: Tell us more about how you won the students’ union election at Brunel University, London.

Ranjeet Rathore: My story is an unlikely one. People like me were never meant to run for elections. For people like myself it was never about planning our path to big universities or even to London. It was about keeping our heads low and surviving the tide because we are minorities here. Believing in the Indian teaching of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, which translates to “the world is one family”, I was able to get involved in my university and represent the voices of 15,000 students. 

How did everyone react when you became the first-ever Indian students’ union president in the UK?

The news of my victory was met with mixed reactions, as I wasn’t the traditional white candidate running for president. I wasn’t the “obvious choice”, as one would say! On one hand, the international student community was overjoyed with the results as “one of their own” had been elected. And on the other, there were people who had their doubts and were naysayers with respect to the results.

What are you currently involved in? 

I’m currently doing a balancing act of sorts, with my time split across two major things. First, community work, which I’m super passionate about, where I volunteer my time and resources with a number of charities from food banks to community trusts to working with youth organisations as well as the Indian High Commission. Second, working with the national political party — The Conservatives, in various capacities, from helping at the grassroots with organising and mobilising campaigns to advocating on a large scale when necessary. 

‘We can’t expect politics to change if we leave it to the same old people to run it’

How did you get interested in student politics in the UK? What are the challenges of being a student politician of colour in the UK?

Initially, I didn’t believe politics was for me. But we can’t expect politics to change if we leave it to the same old people to run it. Politics is for everyone. I’m a big believer in the fact that we need leaders who understand what it’s like to live like us, to face the everyday issues we face. That is why I got into politics. To give our youth and our communities a voice. 

The challenges of being a youth leader of colour are many. From systemic oppression to being up against elitist groups to being treated as a second-class citizen. 

What is your view of the political affiliations of the student community in the UK? Are they inclined more towards Labour or the Conservatives? Do student affiliations fluctuate a lot depending on demography and/or ethnicity?

There are both types of affiliations (towards the Conservatives and Labour) that prevail in the UK. Demographics and socio-economic factors play a major role in deciding which side you lean. Some universities and campuses are very vocal and Labour-leaning. Some universities are liberal but have other political views. With time and age, students get more clarity on what the right affiliation is for them as individuals. Regardless of political affiliation, I believe quality education should be the key focus. With the right education, students and adults in general will make more informed political decisions.

‘I was a volunteer campaigner for Team Boris, pulling in the masses to come out and campaign’

What did your work with Boris Johnson’s team entail?

Perhaps the highlight of my work so far came during the two-election season we saw in 2019, one being the snap elections and the second being the general elections. I was a volunteer campaigner for Team Boris, pulling in the masses to come out and campaign. Our work involved facilitating a wide range of conversations, developing strategies to drive change in the boroughs and beyond, delivering projects, resources and creating awareness about important causes through public engagements and door-to-door campaigning.

What are your long-term plans for UK politics? Do you ever plan to join politics in India?

There’s this famous saying by Marc Anthony, “If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.” I plan to carry on doing what I love doing for the community. There are general elections in the UK in 18 months’ time, and if during the lead up to it, the right opportunity comes along, I’ll try to do justice to whatever role I’m given in the UK’s political landscape. In terms of Indian politics, I plan to be a cheerleader of India’s economic growth and support its young leaders by getting more involved in shaping the nation. With India assuming the presidency of G20, I am leading projects for Youth G20 from the UK to discuss and debate global challenges and policy recommendations that people would like G20 leaders to take forward. 

‘I hope Sunak provides more opportunities to international students, especially Indians’

How do you envision the UK-India relationship developing considering Rishi Sunak is now the Prime Minister of the UK?

Sunak himself summarised it quite well when he said that the UK-India relationship should be a “two-way exchange”. This will benefit both the economies, especially when it comes to collaborating on big projects such as the India-UK Free Trade Agreement. I also hope it provides more opportunities to international students, especially Indians, since I’ve always been an advocate for the post-study work visa in the UK for Indian students. Overall, under Sunak, I think the future is immensely bright for the exchange of knowledge and business between both countries. 

Do you think the UK’s current policies are doing enough to battle systemic racism against Indians?

To battle systemic racism against Indians or anyone, the most important thing to do is to call it out. There are structural problems with race within our communities. A lot of groundwork is being laid to address this issue. The government has formed an Equalities Office, whose entire purpose is to eradicate systemic racism. From decolonising the curriculum to workplace changes to reformation of the criminal justice system, there’s a lot that’s being done.

‘The rightful country as far as the Kohinoor goes is India’

Following Sunak’s appointment, there was even more talk of the UK giving back the Kohinoor and which nation would be entitled to get it should that happen. What’s your take?

In August, London’s Horniman Museum agreed to return 72 stolen Nigerian artefacts, including the Benin Bronzes (a group of sculptures made of brass and bronze), taken over a hundred years ago. So, following the same precedent, the rightful country as far as the Kohinoor goes is India. 

What are the biggest social issues or challenges Indians face in the UK that you are trying to solve?

Indians in the UK work very hard, but the barriers to success are very high. From colourism to  systemic racism, from mental health being a taboo to housing issues to lack of  social mobility, it’s a long list. A lot of these come from the systemic hierarchies which have been embedded since colonialism began. My work to address these issues includes working on a race and equality charter with my university, lobbying for more BAME (Black, Asian and minority ethnic) jobs and making Indians more aware about the resources they have available that can help them succeed. 

source/content: telegraphindia.com/mykolkata headline edited)