?Is it my Fault to be a student of Tamil Nadu??, asks a young student distressed by poisonous Dravidian politics over NEET and NEP

Hooray! Euphoria filled the air, and my excitement knew no limits after I read the New National Education policy. It was a huge dream come true and deep down I knew this is what millions of students in the country have been craving for. Alas! My happiness was short lived and panic attacks hit me as I realised that my state of Tamil Nadu would snatch away this once chance of a better life, thanks to the Dravidian politics of the state. My mind is writhing with agony and my heart is bleeding with pain but I don’t have a voice to shout this out in my state because if I do so, I will be tagged a “Sanghi”. With a heavy desperation that someone reading this might give their voice to bring an end to the fascist Dravidian politics of hate and venom, I have decided to pen down my emotions and reasons.

The DMK party shows “zero tolerance to Hindi” in the state and this has to do with the very nature of the separatist Dravidian ideology that rejects anything connected with the northern states of India and they claim that it is to “protect Tamil language”. It might appear as a joke to the outsiders of Tamil Nadu that the “over-protective” DMK party sees a great danger to the interests of Tamil Nadu in the form of Hindi and Sanskrit imposition in the Policy. Yes, you are right! The party sees strange things out of thin air because firstly the policy has no where mentioned any compulsory learning of Hindi or Sanskrit and has only mentioned a 3-tier language system. Secondly, by the very definitions of the DMK party, the policy must be well appreciated because it makes mother tongue/regional language/local language as the medium of instruction till class 5! This is a brilliant step to protect the interests of Tamil language. Additionally, the usage of mother tongue/local language has been encouraged in more Higher Education institution programmes.

Just to expose the hypocrisy of the “Tamil- obsessed” DMK a bit, according to a report from the Print, DMK leaders and their relatives run over 40 schools in the state including Sun-Shine Senior Secondary school, run by DMK Chief’s daughter Sentamarai Sabareesan, affiliated to the Central Board of Senior Secondary Education that offer Hindi mandatorily till class 8. While the DMK has vehemently opposed the three tier language system in the policy, their own party leaders run schools that offer the same! One must be out of wits to say that DMK hates Hindi!

The Dravidian party has attacked the policy stating that it is against the educational rights of children and rural people of India and has resorted to the age-old practice of attacking it as casteist . Any sane person would know why the claim is not only wrong, but also laughable.

An entire chapter of the policy is dedicated to “Equitable Inclusive Education for every children in the country”, solely for the purpose of bringing attention to socially and economically disadvantaged groups (SEDGs) which include gender, socio-cultural, and geographical identities and disabilities. The policy has recommended that the regions of the country with large population from SEDGs should be declared as “ Special Education Zones and the Central government will provide financial support in the ratio of 2:1 for every rupee spent by the State. With various boosts for the backward communities, efforts have been made to incentivise the merits of students belonging to SC, ST, OBC, and other SEDGs. The National Scholarship Portal will be expanded to support, foster, and track the progress of students receiving scholarships. Private HEIs will be encouraged to offer larger numbers of free ships and scholarships to their students. This is a brilliant step to uplift the lower sections of the society.

Moreover the policy states that a “Gender Inclusive Fund” will be constituted by the government to provide equitable quality education to girls and transgenders. The NEP has also made provisions to serve breakfast to elementary school students, apart from the mid-day meal scheme which is already under operation.

And yet, the DMK party disgustingly, accuses the policy as casteist and and against the rural people! The people of Tamil Nadu are sick and tired of their filthy politics muddled with corruptions and scams that has brought shame to the state and they did all of that under that garb of “uplifting lower castes” and protecting the interests of Tamil!

Just in the name of equitable education, they have mercilessly destroyed the lives of several Tamil students in the state. Without an iota of shame, they politicised the suicide of Anitha, dramatised it, blamed the Central government and above all misled the Tamil people, all under the loathsome façade of “Tamil saviour”. Under the superficial garb of “equitable education”, their government under Karunanidhi introduced Samacheer Kalvi that not only destroyed the competitiveness of students but also snatched away the most priceless value of a student, which is to dream BIG. Their “equitable education system” convinced the brilliant Tamil students that they are not worthy of the competition. I have every valid reason to say they are solely responsible for the suicide of Anitha, whose death has become their electoral gain.

It should prick every Tamil Student that the DMK denied your opportunity to get access to the high quality education of Navodhya schools. Why did they do it? They gave unsatisfying reasons like they can’t accept Hindi entry into the state etc, but their dread towards a high quality education was alarmingly exposed on the face. Even after orders came from a bench of the Madras High Court to set up infrastructure for the Navodaya schools, DMK refused to listen to the Court order and went a step ahead by calling the two judges as members of Sangh Parivar!

My heart bleeds to say this but yes, every state in the country is immensely benefiting from the Navodaya schools except Tamil Nadu, thanks to the DMK’s sickening politics of dramatising Hindi vs Tamil battles. Behind the death of Anitha, I see the smirking image of the DMK party and there is more than valid proof for it. The failure of Tamil Students at competitive exams like NEET and JEE is an undeniable reality and the DMK has been loudly beating the drums to invoke the people to voice against the common entrance exams and it’s not wrong to say that the party has been successful in this deceit. Lets holistically look at the picture.

“Out of the 14183 Navodaya Vidyalaya students who appeared in NEET 2017, 11875 qualified in the examination of which 7000 already placed in various medical colleges”, says an NDTV report of 2017. This is an overwhelming 83.72 percent!  12,654 Navodaya Vidyalas’ students out of 14,500 students cracked NEET in 2019.

Let’s see what DMK has achieved in Tamil Nadu by blocking access to better education. Only one of the 19,680 students from government and government-aided schools who appeared for the NEET 2019, has scored more than 400 of the available 720 marks in the entrance exam. According to the data revealed by Tamil Nadu Government, only 1.6% of Tamil Nadu students managed to clear the NEET exam without attending a private coaching.

With hefty damage already done to the education system, it was too late for the government to revive it and in a hasty manner to improve Neet performance, the government started coaching the students and the inefficiencies of the decision were embarrassingly revealed. None of the 19,355 students from state sponsored Neet coaching centres passed the neet exam in 2019!

The position of Tamil Nadu Students in JEE exams are also worrisome. Let’s take a comparison again to reveal the agenda of the Dravidian politics. According to a 2016 report, Navodaya students recorded 94.8 percent success rate in JEE while opposed to the national average of 16.7%. Last year alone, 966 students from Navodaya chools cleared JEE advanced.

Meanwhile, the disaster wreaked upon the JEE aspirants from Tamil Nadu is pitiable. According to a 2017 report, only 20 out of 8 lakh Tamil Nadu state board students enter IIT. Only 30 students from Tamil Nadu were in the top 1000 JEE ranks last year.

Under the garb of an “equitable education”, the state claims to have improved the “literacy rates”. But at what cost is the big question. The Dravidian parties must be embarrassed with the real outcomes that are reaping the effects today. In 2011, Samacheer Kalvi was introduced in Tamil Nadu, which reduced the quality of education significantly. Between 2010 and 2016, students passing out of the 10th state board exams grew from mid-eighties it mid-nineties while 12th grade state board pass outs also increased from 85-91%. But according to a survey by the Central government’s National Council for Education, Research and Training on the assessment of India’s tenth standard students in 2015, Tamil Nadu’s students were placed close to the bottom in every subject.

It is pretty clear how the Dravidian ecosystem destroyed thousands of student’s dreams. This fascism must end today to save the lives of many more Anithas. The people of Tamil Nadu are sick and tired of their protests and dumb statements to prevent a forward change. Thank god! Because of dire necessity, Samacheer Kalvi is no more, but to give a solid reason why DMK’s rants against education policies must be brushed away; according to study conducted by the Don Bosco Centre for Education Research and Training, along with skill development company Talent Ease in 2014, 98% of stakeholders in school education believe that CBSE is a “much better” syllabus than Samacheer Kalvi. That’s the reason why DMK leader’s run school adopted CBSE. But when it comes to the poor, they will thrust their low-quality education and keep them satisfied.

Today if Anitha from a government school failed to pass the NEET exams, the real reason lies with the toxic Dravidian politics that plays with people’s emotions. It is a very small hope, that through this article, the pain of students of Tamil Nadu must be heard nation-wide. In the midst of all their rants, my excitement over NEP has turned into regret and remorse with only one question in my mind, “Is it my Fault to be a student of Tamil Nadu?”