Kolkata: School education is a sensitive subject for the CPI (M). After it came to power in 1977, the Government banned English in primary schools, calling its learning an obstacle to the growth of young minds. The language has been brought back into the curriculum since then, perhaps because of the chronic complaint of the state's school students that at all India competitive examinations, they find themselves lacking in English, computer literacy and mathematical skills.

REALIGNING EDUCATION: Bhattacharya

The school curricula were last revised in 1984-85. Now, Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya has taken the first step to realign school education in West Bengal with the rest of the country. In the last week of 2001, the School Education Department announced the formation of a 13-member committee that will determine the compatibility of the state's primary, secondary and higher secondary curricula with those of the Centre and other states, and "restore" it, if needed.

There is certainly much that needs to be changed-the approved school primer of geography misses out the bifurcation of the 24 Parganas and Dinajpur districts in the early '90s; the history syllabus does not include the disintegration of the USSR; and the maths syllabus excludes relatively new methods of computation such as matrices. For the first time since it came to power, the state Government seems inclined to address a basic question: do the state's schools equip their students to compete with their peers from other states? After 25 years of obscuring Bengal, the communists have finally rediscovered India.

-Sumit Mitra

OBITUARY

SATISH DHAWAN (1920-2002)

Karma Yogi is an odd description for a scientist. But Professor Satish Dhawan's life was an embodiment of such values. If Vikram Sarabhai was the father of India's space programme, Dhawan mothered it through its most critical years. Before he took over as chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), Dhawan was a brilliant professor of aeronautical engineering at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, becoming its youngest director when he was 42. Teaching was his first love, so when the late prime minister Indira Gandhi chose him to head ISRO in 1972, he agreed only on the condition that he continued as IISC director. Dhawan gave ISRO its mission approach that set targets for every programme and rigorously evaluated them. During his tenure, India entered the exclusive space club by building its satellites and launching them. Always projecting his team, Dhawan camouflaged his humaneness with a no-nonsense approach. His twinkling eyes usually gave him away.

-Raj Chengappa

SIGNPOSTS

APPOINTED: As governors of Nagaland and Tamil Nadu, retired IPS officers Shyamal Dutta (above) and P.S. Ramamohan Rao.

APPOINTED: Kanchan Gupta, former PMO official, as director of the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Centre for Indian Culture in Cairo.

INDICTED: By a probe panel, former Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister V.B. Singh for political violence in March 1998.

AWARDED: The Pratibha Murthy Lifetime Achievement Award, to former prime minister P.V. Narasimha Rao.

AWARDED: The Prince Michael International Road Safety Award, to NGO Institute of Road Traffic Education.

ACCEPTED: By the Union Cabinet, the recommendations of the Mashelkar Committee on auto fuel policy, including taking emission norms, not fuel or engine types as the criteria to control pollution.