Higher education in India: Does the quality match rising expectations?

Every year we see the beaming (and super excited) face of a 17-year-old Class XII topper flitting briefly across our TV screens and newspapers – this year it was Raksha Gopal, a young teenager from Noida who topped the examination with 99.6 percent. 

The topper lists for the last few years have been dominated by girls and this year was no different - three out of the top 4 students are girls and nationally girls performed better than boys by 9.5 percent - I make a point to mention this because in a country plagued by continuing female infanticide and gender