People's Democracy

         We Need More Than A De-Toxification 

 Of Education Policy

Nalini Taneja

THERE is much talk regarding the reversals of the BJP educational policy and what should be done and not done. The minister himself is talking about de-toxification and autonomy for higher educational institutions, while there are already articles in the press saying we should not be in a hurry to bunk everything to revert back to a state of affairs that was not too good even as the BJP took over, and that the educational scene has changed a lot since the Congress last held power, something that the new minister must take into account.

CHANGED EDUCATIONAL SCENE

It is true the educational scene has changed a lot in the last decade, and not only by way of the system becoming communalised. There have been serious reversals by way of access to education. The wholesale drive towards privatization of education is leading to the shrinkage of the base of higher education most visibly, but also to the erosion of our school system.

This drive towards privatization was introduced by the New Education Policy of 1986 under the leadership of the Congress. As with sectors of economy, the BJP can well claim that it has continued in a direction initiated by the Congress, but the new government now headed by the Congress must modify its stand on education just as it has on aspects of economic reform. It must have an educational policy that remains true to the “human” face that it aims to give to its reforms. In short it must have an economic policy that conforms to the needs of the Common Minimum Programme that it is committed to.

A self reliant India needs very different intellectual support from the kind of intellectual labour envisaged by a government that in its enthusiasm for selling out to multinationals could only dream of bringing some outsourced functions of these multinationals into our country. A self reliant India needs an emphasis on liberal education and social sciences and humanities at all levels of education. Along with the increased scope for information technology and computer education, the government must ensure that all those centres for research in social sciences and humanities--many of them centres of excellence - must remain integral to our efforts in higher education. It may be remembered that the earlier Congress and UF governments had looked on many of these centres as white elephants and had brought them to a point of ruin till the BJP decided to flush them with funds for its own sectarian right wing agenda.

A self reliant and democratic India also needs its citizens prepared for the globalised world not as cogs in the wheel, fulfilling some technical function, but as thinking beings able to defend and safeguard democracy. An extension of elementary education through the formal schooling to every part of the country has to be the pivot of any democratic policy on education. There is a need to not just “de-toxify” school education, important as that is, there is a need to take every child to a formal school. There is no short cut that works as well as a formal school. The non-formal centres that have been opened in the name of universalisation of education can at best be support systems for enlarging continuing education in the backward areas, they, cannot substitute the school.

To begin with, therefore, the new government must think in terms of filling all vacant posts in schools and in colleges and universities, and simply do away with the system of para – teaching that is growing at alarming proportions and threatening to make teaching and learning a farce at all levels.

DISTANCE EDUCATION

The entire emphasis on distance learning needs to be rethought in terms of the Indian situation. It needs to be remembered that what is cheaper for the government may not, as experience and fee structures have shown, be cheaper for the student. Those who go in for distance education are mainly from weaker and disadvantaged sections of society, and government policy of using these institutions to raise revenues goes against all norms of social justice where the disadvantaged have to pay the costs for the benefits of those who are privileged.

The Model Act for Universities, which the BJP government intended to implement very fast must be scrapped altogether. The document forms a blueprint for bringing all higher education in line with the dictates of the GATT and WTO regime. There should be no place for it in the scheme of a government that aims for a self reliant India.

The National Curriculum Framework for Elementary and Secondary education, the lacunas in the Right to Education Bill, and schemes to divert students into the technical stream without first completing a basic comprehensive and holistic curriculum, must all be looked into critically by the new government, and what is not in line with the goals of a democratic secular India must be boldly reversed.

SECULAR DEMOCRATIC AGENDA

The reason that the BJP government has been able to mess up with our educational system so completely, and to implement the RSS agenda for education with such ease, was primarily because it saw its education policies as integral to its larger political agenda. The RSS had been planning and preparing for a long time before the BJP actually took over the reigns of government, and it was no chance that the HRD ministry was led by a senior RSS ideologue, Murli Manohar Joshi, who justifiably claimed to have successfully and fully implemented the RSS agenda.

The secular-democratic agenda on education needs to be implemented with the same forcefulness and commitment. For us in the Left there is no consensus worth preserving that does not confirm to the goals underlined in the Common Minimum Programme (CMP) of the United Progressive Alliance. This would necessarily involve some drastic measures of reversal and several new initiatives in education if we are serious about the implementation of the larger political agenda of the CMP. A progressive educational curriculum and an inclusive educational policy with serious emphasis on universalisation of elementary education will give a necessary boost to secular democratic politics, not to speak of the expansion of the arena of left influence among the people.