change in civics text books by NCERT in India

Anjali Puri has an interesting article on the 12th grade Civics text books published by N.C.E.R.T.

I remember studying it and getting extremely bored with its perspective and lack of opinion on any matter, in its attempt to sound neutral and objective. But things seem to have changed for the better. This welcome change is quite a departure from Murli Manohar Joshi’s attempt to change the history text books to provide a more positive Hindu slant to Indian history.

What are the following doing in a school textbook? 1) A picture of blank editorial space to protest the censorship of newspapers; 2) extracts from the Shah Commission's report on the Turkman Gate atrocities and the custodial death of a student called Rajan; and 3) a statement that the centralisation of powers within the Congress party made it impossible to check the slide into authoritarianism during the Emergency. Find out by reading the new Class 12 textbook on Indian politics since Independence.

What do Ayesha, a bright Baghdadi schoolgirl who lost her leg to a missile, South African Jabu, whose father is pushing him into an MBA programme, and Andrei, a Russian immigrant in Australia who defies his mother by wearing blue jeans to church, have in common? Answer: they are all affected by US hegemony.
These Class 12 books go much further, by drawing teenagers who are or will soon be voters, into the maelstrom of contemporary Indian politics and the politics of the post-Cold War world.

They will be the first schoolchildren to engage critically with epochal post-Independence events, such as the linguistic reorganisation of states, the wars with China and Pakistan, the Emergency, the Punjab and Kashmir crises, the anti-Sikh riots of 1984, the rise of OBCs in Indian politics, the Ayodhya dispute, coalition politics and the Gujarat riots.