“The glass, half-empty or half-full — depending on one’s perception — is the best metaphor to describe the skilling scenario in India, Much has been done, but much remains to be done. Less than 2 percent of our workforce has formal skills.”

Sanjeev Duggal, CEO of Centum Learning, on India’s skilling challenge (Business Today, January 17)

“To make this kind of investment when the government is pulling out investment from health and education when millions are undernourished and uneducated is not called for. It is a differnt matter altogether that bullet trains will serve only the affluent.”

Harsh Mander, social activist, criticising the decision of the Union railways ministry to fast-track the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project (Outlook, January 18)

“If Ekalavya’s dismembered digit has haunted the Hindu schoolyard from time immemorial, Rohith Vemula’s tragic suicide lays bare the deep inequality undergirding the modern state and its institutions of higher learning.”

Ananya Vajpeyi, author, on the tragic death of Rohith Vemula, a Dalit student of the University of Hyderabad, who committed suicide because of sustained discrimination on campus (The Hindu, January 20)

“It is the “licence raj” existing today that leads to proliferation of ‘fly by night’ operators that give private sector education a bad name in India.”

Gopa Saxena, educationist, on why the government should loosen its grip on the education system (Deccan Herald, January 20)

“Bad schools are like poisoned wells from which very few recover. Those who survive live sub-optimally, and in humiliation, well into their college years; some are even driven to suicide. While all poor people face this handicap, it is scheduled caste children who suffer the most.”

Dipankar Gupta, well-known social scientist, on the need to address the root evil of abysmal quality school education for the underprivileged in particular scheduled caste and tribe children (Times of India, January 30)