Tushar Gandhi not happy with Indian education system

PUNE: The great grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and acclaimed author Tushar Gandhi on Sunday said that

Indian education system

was creating the dumbest generation in the history of the nation. Talking about the downward slide in education, he said "We are trying to turn students into robots who are regimented in their thinking. Do we really need that?"

Tushar Gandhi was addressing a gathering of over 150 educationists from all over country during the

National Edu-StartUp Conference

2016 organized by educationist Anees Kutty of

Evergreen Education Foundation

at Hotel Conrad in Pune on Sunday.

Gandhi who was the keynote speaker further said that the higher education in the country is being commoditized. "Attempts are being made for complete centralization of education and it should not be done so. Education has to be customised according to the needs of the people in a truly democratic way as espoused by Mahatma Gandhi. It must be liberating and not aimed at making slaves," he said.

Evergreen Education Foundation President Anees Kutty outlined the core agenda of the conference and said that the conference was about creating a uniform integrated curriculum from Kashmir to Kanyakumari based on the cardinal principles of creativity and experiential learning to the core academic curriculum.

He further said "Our aim is to revolutionize education in India by providing worthwhile informative sessions for educators, educationists and students attending the conference and more importantly following it up with practical methods. The conference also hopes to promote those start-ups that are completely and fully focused on improving the education sector through innovation," he added. The outcome of the conference will be reduced into a handbook and sent to HRD Ministry.

Amongst the other distinguished speakers were Vishwas Mahajan, Manjiri Desai, S G Suryah, Allan Das, Kirthi Jaykumar and Akash Chandran. Former Minister Shashi Tharoor also addressed the gathering via webinar.