News Analysis
Arjun Singh'sdream Marxist education policy punctured
By Udayan Namboodiri
Human Resource Development Minister, Arjun Singh, must be a sad man today. The National Curriculum Framework for School Education (NCFSE), which he tried to push through a hurriedly called meeting of the Central Advisory Board on Education (CABE) on June 7, is today universally recognised as a dangerous gameplan for indoctrination of young minds in the most dangerous anti-national tenets. Thanks to a well-coordinated, brave campaign by activists of the Siksha Bachao Andolan Samiti, a forum of 14 organisations wedded to nationalism and patriotism, the CABE meeting collapsed in a heap under its own weight.
On July 7, no sooner had the meeting of the NCERT'sGeneral Body begun, when Education Ministers of the BJP-ruled states, Shri Ghanshyam Tiwari (Rajasthan), Smt. Anandiben Patel (Gujarat), Rajesh Munat (Chhattisgarh) and Pradeep Yadav of (Jharkhand), rose to make a point of order. The NCERT meeting was convened in the morning by Arjun Singh to put the seal of spurious consensus on the document, ahead of the CABE event scheduled for the afternoon. They demanded to know why the draft had been developed so surreptitiously that they were totally in the dark till three days before the meeting.
?The rules of NCERT clearly state that agenda papers should be circulated at least 21 days before the General Body meeting. Why didn'tyou do it?? Shri Tiwari wanted to know.
?Did you call us here to behave like robots? This is blatant violation of the federal spirit of the Constitution. How could you leave us out of the process of developing this draft?? asked Smt. Patel.
The youthful Chhattis-garh minister, Shri Munat rose to point out that the ?draft? was a voluminous document which nobody, leave alone a responsible minister, could read, digest and analyse within three days which was all the time given by NCERT.
Amid threatening sounds made by Singh'sloyalists in the General Body, Munat pointed to several references made in the reports of the ?focus groups? which were sent along with the ?draft? and which were full of derogatory references to the Vidya Bharati Siksha Sansthan and praises for the madrasas of West Bengal.
?Did you call us here to behave like robots? This is blatant violation of the federal spirit of the Constitution. How could you leave us out of the process of developing this draft?? asked Smt. Patel.
?Do you want us to put our seal of confirmation on your political agenda?? Munat wanted to know. ?We will not oblige,? so saying, he and the others walked out.
Once outside, the ministers circulated a joint statement against the HRD Minister'sdesigns. It was an important document not only from the political standpoint. Mixing politics with education has never been the intent of the Siksha Bachao Andolan. It had highlighted serious flaws in the educational policy of the communist-backed UPA government.
The absence of any mention of value education, an important component of the NCFSE developed under BJP rule by the then HRD Minister, Dr Murli Manohar Joshi, was pointed out. There was also an attempt to dilute the importance of Vocational Education. The importance of Minimum Levels of Learning was brushed aside with uncalled for disdain for the whole concept. Sanskrit was relegated to a mere ?classical language? and mentioned in the same breath as Arabic, Persian and Latin. The absence of any reference to developing an understanding of India'sancient heritage and instill pride and patriotism in young minds was significant. All this revealed a Communist design to weaken the Indian temperament. It was certainly not in line with India'sdetermination to be a world power in the 21 st Century.
Quite logically, the Ministers saw no point in attending the CABE meeting that afternoon. They boycotted it saying the UPA Government'seducational policy would not be implemented in their states. The witch hunt against former NCERT Director, Prof. J. S. Rajput, the renowned educationist who developed the last NCFSE, was also condemned by them.
The CABE meeting was a damp squib. The HRD Minister found himself addressing only his loyalists and toady nominees like singer Subha Mudgul, lyricist Javed Akhtar, pseudo-secular activist Teesta Setelvad, women'sactivist Ela Bhat and writer U.R. Anantamurthy. But the setting had been queered by two developments.
The NCERT'sown academic staff, passed a resolution on the previous evening condemning the ?draft? which was going in the NCERT'sname. This was unprecedented.
Firstly, activists of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) marched to the venue, Vigyan Bhavan, to register their protest against the undemocratic manner in which the Minister and his Communist backers were seeking to thrust an anti-national educational agenda on the children of India. When the police roughed them up, they naturally became unruly and barged into the reception hall. There was total collapse of the security system for a while as the ABVP supporters shouted slogans and damaged some furniture. They were removed in a most inhuman manner and lodged in six separate police stations through the night, denied food and abused by the police. Next day they were produced before a Court and sent to jail custody in total violation of democratic norms.
Secondly, the NCERT'sown academic staff, passed a resolution on the previous evening condemning the ?draft? which was going in the NCERT'sname. This was unprecedented. The people who the Minister and his nominee Director, Prof. Krishna Kumar, tried to present before the rest of the nation as the highly qualified specialists on pedagogy involved in the exercise to develop the new NCFSE, were distancing themselves from the farce ! What better proof could there be of the Minister'sretrograde policies?
The meeting was supposed to be only a four-hour affair. Never before had an important component of the country'seducation policy?one that would affect the future of 200 million Indians ? been so trivialised. The last NCFSE was put through a nation-wide consultation involving more than 3,000 organisations and individuals over a 14-month period. The draconian agenda was exacerbated by the fact that even before the Curriculum was even put out for the perusal of the stakeholders of CABE, the NCERT Director had quietly formed ?Syllabus Drafting Committees?, all headed by Leftists. What is more, the date for the first meeting of the committee to write textbooks had already been set before even the CABE formalities had begun.
The BJP Ministers had certainly roused the conscience of many of those who Singh was banking upon to put the seal of confirmation on his spurious document. Among them were the Ministers of West Bengal and Tripura. Old enemies of the Congress, who are forced by pernicious politics to cohabit with the Congress, these CPI(M) Ministers also raised the same point of order which the BJP Ministers had raised in the morning. Shri Kanti Biswas, the West Bengal Minister, said he had received his copy of the ?draft? just three days earlier whereas the Constitution of CABE clearly states that it should reach the members of the body 15 days in advance.
Singh had no option but swallow his pride. Inspired by the Marxists? show of defiance, some other Ministers from non-Congress states demanded that the ?draft? be translated into the Indian languages and circulated more widely over a longer period. Now irritated with his NCERT chief, Singh ordered the Director to ensure that this is carried out at the earliest. The meeting broke up and the delegates were left with a bitter taste in the mouth. Thanks to Siksha Bachao Andolan'shard work, the nation had been spared, albeit temporarily, of the crush of a debilitating education policy.
But though a battle has been won, the larger war is still going on. Singh is not expected to take this setback lightly. He has ordered the NCERT Director to use threat and coercion to ensure that the NCERT'sacademic faculty withdraws its June 6 resolution. Their combined resolve to secure a stamp of approval through CABE, itself a non-statutory body without any real powers, is expected to continue. But Siksha Bachao Andolan will not make it a cakewalk for him. This war is about India'spride and future. It will be fought to the bitter end.
(The author is Senior Editor, The Pioneer.)
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