People's Democracy(Weekly Organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) |
Vol. XXXIV
No.
35 August 29, 2010 |
INTERVIEW
WITH M A BABY
Overcoming Vested
Interests and
Providing Quality
Education for All
One of the
remarkable
achievements of the four year Left and Democratic Front (LDF)
government in
Kerala in the field of education has been the significant improvement
in the
quality of education at the school and college level. Also, its efforts
to
exercise social control over the self financing private institutes, in
the face
of stiff resistance from the vested interests, are noteworthy.
Below we give
excerpts from
the interview given by M A Baby, education minister in
government of
Kerala, to N S Arjun during the extended meeting of the
central
committee in
(Q) The
LDF government
has taken many steps to have some sort of social control over private
educational institutes in Kerala. Will you please explain them and what
has
been their impact?
The coming up
of self
financing private institutions, especially in the professional sector
like
medical and engineering colleges, is a new phenomena. According to me
the
primary problem in this sector is that the government should have
established
through legislation clear cut rules and regulations for these private
players.
The central government and the then UDF government in the state failed
in doing
this. As a result a strange situation emerged where the private
education
institutes existed without any regulations and rules to control them.
Moreover
the UDF government failed miserably in arriving at some agreement with
these
self financing institutes. Had that been the case we could have held
them
accountable.
The situation
is further
complicated as a result of continued verdicts given by the Supreme
Court in the
T M A Pai case and the Inamdar case. The Supreme Court virtually gave
these
institutes managements a free hand in conducting admissions, charging
fee etc.
Although it was qualified that the fee structure should not be
exploitative or
exorbitant, there was no regulation. This was the great handicap the
state
government had to encounter. Notwithstanding this difficulty we have
introduced
a comprehensive legislation. While introducing this legislation, we
stated that
since the Supreme Court verdict prevails, what is required is central
legislation to overcome the limitations set by the Supreme Court.
Therefore we
knew there would be difficulty in some of the provisions of our
legislation
being upheld in the court. The court struck down some of the very
crucial
provisions of our legislation despite it
being passed unanimously in the legislature with both LDF and UDF
agreeing to
the provisions.
The most
important
achievement of the Kerala LDF government in the field of self financing
sector
has been that through this legislation and its political determination,
it was
able to force the majority of the private self financing medical and
engineering colleges to come to an agreement with the state government
to
concede 50 per cent of seats to be filled by the government on the
basis of
merit, reservation and a fee structure that is affordable to students.
This is
in place for the last four years. A similar arrangement could not be
achieved
by the UDF government. So the people are able to see that this
government means
business despite the many difficulties created by legal hurdles and
Constitutional limitations.
(Q) You
faced strong
opposition from the educational lobby and vested interests. How did you
deal
with them?
They were
very forceful.
But since we did not have any vested interests to protect, we withstood
it. We
never recommend for a single seat in these self financing institutes.
We never
ask for apportioning the enormous ill gotten money that comes to their
coffers.
There were allegations during UDF tenure that their leaders demanded
from
institutes which applied for No Objection Certificate that they must be
“taken
care of”. This came out in bourgeois press also.
But because
of our firm
commitment against corruption, we had the moral authority to tell them
that
they have to discharge their social responsibility by conceding 50 per
cent
seats to the government so that the scheduled castes, scheduled tribes,
minorities, backward communities, the economically backward etc are
provided
education. We could succeed in this because of our clear cut
understanding.
(Q) What
differences
does the LDF government has with the central government over bringing
minority
status institutions under social control?
It is a very
sensitive
issue because in Kerala we have over 45 per cent of population
constituted by
two important minority groups, Christians and Muslims. It goes without
saying
that it is the Left forces, especially the CPI(M), that defend all
genuine
rights and interests of the minorities. But what happens in educational
sector
is that in the name of minority institutions, they are doing various
other things.
They are not necessarily furthering the educational interests of the
minority
communities. We are campaigning in a systematic way that all minority
institutions must clearly state how they are going to protect the
educational
interests of the minorities in whose name they are setting up these
institutes.
Most of them are not doing anything. Most of them are accepting
capitation fee
and are no t giving any weightage to minority candidates to absorb in
faculty.
So, we made it clear that they should give priority to minority
students and
after that if excess seats are available they must be filled up on the
basis of
merit. But why are they not prepared to do this? In this context we
want the
central government to come clear and clean on this issue. They are
hobnobbing
with commercial forces who masquerade as protectors of minority
interests.
(Q) How
much is the
management quota in these minority institutes at present?
As of now
there are some
professional institutes with minority status conceding 50 per cent
seats to
government quota. And there are some other groups in minorities,
especially the
upper crust of Christian minorities, who are not cooperating with the
government on this. They are filling all the seats by themselves. This
is very
unfair. If they fill these seats with particular minority students, we
have no
objection. But they are admitting non-minority students by taking in
high
capitation fee. Whether the admissions are being held in line with
regulations
or not, the state government has every right to look into. But in the
name of
minority institutes, they are escaping from such State scrutiny.
(Q) Recently,
a section
of the Church has made overtly political statements. Do you see a
linkage
between this and your efforts to have social control over education?
In fact,
sections of
Christian church, I repeat sections, take very undemocratic approach.
They went
to the extent of propagating that in the elections the voters must
chose
between believers and non-believers. People have to vote on the
yardsticks of
what happens to their wages, whether food security is there or not,
whether the
plight of people is being ameliorated by the political forces, employment, education, health etc. But
sections of Church want to divert the entire discourse from issues
related to
mass of people to non-issues like theism or atheism. Whether someone
believes
in God or not, or whether someone takes this religion or that, whether
he
smokes or not .. these are all personal matters. But if on such matters
political divide is forced, then it would be end of democracy. We have
to
systematically expose this nefarious game of a very miniscule section
of
Christian minority.
(Q) What
steps are
being taken for improvement of the quality of education at school and
college
level?
During the
last four
years, the most creditable achievement of the LDF government in
education field
has been the improvement of education quality in schools and colleges.
In the
year 2000, the SSLC pass percentage had been 40. During the last three
years,
it has consistently increased significantly to 90 per cent. This
everybody is
acknowledging. In fact, it is to divert
the attention of the masses from the remarkable achievements of the LDF
government that these non-issues are being brought in. In the field of
higher
education, we have instituted a Higher Education Council through a
legislation
with renowned historian K N
Pannicker
as vice chairman. We have successfully implemented a choice-based
semester system
for under graduates. This is indeed a revolutionary change in
undergraduate
level education and Kerala is the first state to do so. There was lot
of
opposition, some sections tried to politicise it but we stuck to the
decision
saying the entire world has changed over to this modern system of
education.
Basically there is freedom for students to select subjects outside the
narrow
range. For example a student with Physics as main subject can chose
Music as
subsidiary. It will take a minimum of 10 years for this changeover to
stabilise
but we have initiated it. Then we have introduced higher education
scholarship
fund to ensure that no needy student who is meritorious is denied
higher
education for want of financial resources. We have set a target of
generating a
corpus of Rs 100 crore and the state government has already earmarked
Rs 15
crore for this. The rest of the amount will be collected through
donations. I
appeal to all to donate liberally for this fund.
As a whole
there has been
remarkable progress in improvement of quality of school education and
higher
education. We have been involving outstanding scholars from IIT, IISc
and other
institutes. Professors like M S Ananth, Romila Thapar, U R
Ananthamoorthy etc
have agreed to take part in the efforts for improving the quality of
education
in the state and are involving fully.
(Q) Since
education is
in concurrent list, what has been the role of the central government
vis-a-vis
Kerala education?
You see, this
was an
atrocity committed during Emergency when education was shifted from
state to concurrent
list. Now, centre is not coming forward for necessary help for various
states.
Or they are putting various conditionalities. But during the last four
years,
we have been reasonably successful in forcing the centre to sanction
some projects sanctioned for Kerala. We
got Indian
Institute of Science Education and Research (ISER) and Indian Institute
of
Space and Technology (IIST) sanctioned for Kerala. We also got our
first
central university in the state during this period. All this was
possible because
of our perseverance and pressure on central government. But we are
unhappy that
our legitimate demand for sanction of an IIT in Kerala has not been
accepted.
We will continue to mount our pressure on this.
(Q) UNESCO
has
appreciated intervention of Kerala in promotion of free software in
school
education. Can you please throw some more light on this?
We are very
happy that in
the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) we are in the
forefront. We
are introducing free software in education as well as in conducting
examinations. Nearly 3.5 million students use free software in their
education.
Now, for the first time in the country, we have developed
ICT curriculum for standards V, VI and VII.
To help in the maintenance and proper use of computers, we have opened
'hardware clinics' at zonal level where experts demonstrated to invited
teachers of schools on the common trouble shooting for computers. The
teachers
who came from schools developed the confidence and skills to deal with
computers. This has helped in increasing the usage of computers in the
schools.
We are stressing more on ICT enabled education. There are schools which
are
having e-journals, blogs etc developed by students We are calling upon schools and local bodies to develop their own
models in an imaginative manner. There is no single model imposed from
above.
We are happy with the results.
(Q) Do
you think free
software has helped in this process of localisation and development?
The
localisation has been
possible to a great extent because of free software. Otherwise had it
been
proprietary software, we could not have changed, developed or improved
upon.
So, the changeover to free software has immensely helped us to go in
for new
innovations.