What are words worth?

Driving in any large city these days is fraught--with frustration due to delays in driving, with potholed and beaten up roads, with the sight of exclusions of all kinds and the spectacle of development gone crazy. In Hyderabad, driving west is particularly fraught. That's where the city is bursting forward...with promise for some and pressure for others. Of course there is promise that often creates pressure even for those who ostensibly benefit from it--the building of new roads, the breaking of small mountains to make way for traffic helps us get to work somewhat faster and sets up expectations of increased efficiency and the submission of even more time to the growth machine. Maybe all this sounds like so much we hear all the time. What do we do once we (or some larger force we have unwittingly set in motion) are on a certain path? How do we stop to take stock when stopping implies we might have to see, understand, and take into account the real meaning of this high-speed jou...

Thirty years ago, an orange-bannered tabloid made its way quietly into the mailboxes of a few hundred teachers and the desks of a comparable number of principals and librarians. It got put into the folders of workshop-attending teacher-educators and book-buyers. It had a set of ambitious goals: to create conversation among a largely ignored constituency, to spark a sense of agency and a can-do spirit in a tired profession. Around twenty years ago, the two-tone masthead turned full colour, but the driving force remained the same. And a little over a decade ago, the tabloid morphed into a slick folio-sized magazine. Still the goal stayed constant. From its point of origin in the Hyderabad corporate office of Orient Longman Ltd (now Orient Blackswan) to its rocky mid-years in the sun-filled home office of Spark India to its two-roomed operation in my home, some things about Teacher Plus have not changed. It continues to keep a focus on the teacher, that person who is responsible f...