The quality of education depends largely upon the teacher. Hence building teacher capacity through continuous professional development of teachers is critical to the quality of education. Systems and programs for continuous professional development for school teachers in the formal educational system in India are inadequate and often ill-conceived. Apart from other lacunae, they often do not recognize the professional identity and agency of the teacher. Voluntary Teacher Forums (VTFs) that are facilitated by Azim Premji Foundation in different locations of India, as part of an integrated and multimodal approach to continuous professional development, try to address this central issue. This study shows that VTFs are evolving as very useful platforms for collaboration and peer learning amongst teachers in various locations. It shows that given an environment that allows for easy access to meaningful opportunities, teachers will commit their time, talents and resources to their own professional development. The study further recognizes however, that the real issue is to understand how such forums can be made to happen in different locations in a context as complex as the Indian public education system. While this study highlights certain crucial dimensions of the VTFs – including what happens within these forums and the efforts that go behind it – these continue to be subjects for our future research works.

Economic reforms sought to replace the Indian statedominant economy with a liberal, competitive market economy. However, a plethora of recent scams indicate that collusive rentsharing arrangements between business and policy makers are prevalent. A nexus has developed, linking politicians and business, as well as the bureaucracy. These trends signal a breakdown of competitive markets and the accumulation of wealth via corruption. This paper explains crony capitalism within a framework of interaction between four stakeholder groups whose motives and behaviour have altered in the recent context. These are political executives, political parties, business entities and the bureaucracy. Using the coal mine block allocation controversy as a case study, we examine the modus operandi of crony capitalism as a capture of the policy process. We examine the limitations of the present corrective political and legal processes. 

The paper concludes with a set of recommendations for curbing crony capitalism via reform of : 

(a) the political funding system,
(b) the policy process,
© the audit institution and
(d) the business environment

Empirical research in economics and, to a lesser extent, in other social sciences is largely dependent upon government statistics. It is generally assumed that governments are committed to collecting and disseminating correct statistics. As a result, the mutually constitutive relationship between politics, economy, and statistics, and the possibility of systematic manipulation of statistics-driven by the structural features of this relationship, has received insufficient attention within economics. This paper examines the implications of the absence of shared preferences over the quality of statistics within a government. It explores the multiplicity of conflicting maps of the State of Nagaland issued by different tiers and wings of the government to underscore the lack of attention paid to a statistic as crucial as area. The paper situates the cartographic-statistical confusion in its political and economic contexts, and suggests that political-geographic arguments are being used to advance political-economic interests along contested borders. It argues that the confusion is not amenable to a technical resolution as it is linked to the dispute over Nagaland’s place within the Union of India and the border disputes between Nagaland and its neighbouring states.

The paper analyses the debates surrounding ​‘work’ as part, or as an outcome, of school education in India and argues that these have not reckoned adequately the socioeconomic reality of the corresponding times. The outcome of education depends on ideas and resources shaping its provisioning, and the use by the people. Colonial rulers provided a liberal schooling which did not aim at ​‘schooling for all’ or imparting skills as part of schooling. Such an education was attractive to those children who were not working in agriculture or artisanal occupations for their livelihood or who belonged to a ​‘rentier’ class. The lower opportunity cost of time for these children and the probability of getting a job in the colonial administration enabled this small section of society to opt for such a liberal schooling. It is in this context that Gandhi wanted to use work (or agricultural and artisanal skills) as a pedagogical tool for education. However, the majority of children who were bound to do such work then did not view formal schooling, which aimed at imparting these ​‘skills’, attractive.