Creating History
Aamir Khan steers away from mushy romance in lush locations in his first production, Lagaan. The formula-busting period film on colonial arrogance, backed by good acting, promises to give Indian cinema a classy makeover.

Governance On
The Hold
Absent ministers, coalition politics and an unwell prime minister paralyse all decision making at the Centre. With business sentiments diving and industrial growth rate receding, the alarm bells have begun to ring.

Super Clinic Inc.
Patients will be treated as customers with some companies hoping to revolutionise the Rs 60,000-crore private healthcare market. They are setting up a chain of neighbourhood health clinics that will provide quality medical care.

Fostering Ill-will
The arrest of Jayalalitha's foster son may be linked
to the sour relationship.

Crescent Classroom
An organisation has given madarsa education in the state a communal slant.

EDUCATION: NCERT

In 1975, about half a decade after the Kothari Commission put in place the present 10+2 system of school education in India, NCERT framed the first National Curriculum Framework for School Education. In 1988, two years after Rajiv Gandhi's "New Education Policy", the second Curriculum Framework arrived. NCERT has now produced the third.

No Curriculum Framework has evoked the controversy of this one. Eduardo Faleiro, Congress MP and the convener of a cross-party parliamentary forum on the "saffronisation of education", says the Curriculum Framework is "unacceptable to those who cherish the country's secular principles". The larger conflict is about the alleged "pro-Hindutva" tilt being given to NCERT by J.S. Rajput, who was appointed director two years ago.

Rajput's critics say his Framework was never ratified by a conference of state education ministers, as the 1988 document had been. The director argues that, for the first time, NCERT held regional conferences on the Curriculum Framework to which states were invited. In December 2000, the NCERT general body meeting that approved the draft was attended by "nine state education ministers".

Others allege Faleiro and company are being instigated by "left-leaning academics and the real battle may be one for textbooks". In an internal note, Rajput has charged that current history textbooks contain incendiary passages. He quotes from Satish Chandra's description in Medieval India of Guru Tegh Bahadur's killing by the Mughals: "According to Sikh tradition, the execution was due to the intrigues of some members of his (the Guru's) family who disputed his succession." Aggrieved Sikhs sued NCERT, Rajput says, and Jains did likewise for an apparently derogatory reference to Mahavir in Ram Sharan Gupta's Pracheen Bharat (Ancient India).

The new Curriculum Framework amalgamates history with the other social sciences. So fresh, composite textbooks will be needed. Nor will the course now end at 1947, it will extend to today's India. Like Alladin's uncle, NCERT will have to offer new textbooks for old. The implications are obvious.

MetroScape

Pak Unplugged
Fresh-faced youngsters were cheering through qawwalis, pop songs and poetry reading at India Habitat Centre, Delhi. The occasion? A week-long workshop, "Rehumanizing the Other", was all about promoting neighbourly feelings in a period of bad press.
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The Delhi Government's campaign to clean up the Yamuna was impressive but needs to backed up by measures that can weed out the root causes of the pollution. INDIA TODAY's Special Correspondent Sayantan Chakravarty reports in Long Drive