Education today: moving towards

commercialization and saffronization

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INDEX

Introduction 5
Education today 4
 Education today:
moving towards commercialization and
saffronization
S ince the early periods of human society, education has been
a tool to set norms and values according to societal demands. At first
it was learning to hunt, then to rule the land, and now to be able to
participate in a democracy Education is not just a process aiming to
achieve a single concrete goal, but a transformative process for
constructing equitable and sustainable social development. Education
should promote nation building, upholding constitutional values of
secularism and non-discrimination between different religions,
languages and ethnicities that form part of Indian democracy.
Education is therefore a process that is fundamentally societal
in the broadest sense of the term. As experts have said, “within the
highly complex world of human activity in the given social environment,
the child enters into an infinite number of relationships, each of which
constantly develops, interweaves with other relationships and is
compounded by the child's own physical and moral growth."
However, archaeological, documentary and other historical
evidence tells us that education in earlier centuries was very elitist and
biased in favour of upper echelons of society especially so-called
higher castes. Teachers belonged only to some sections or castes, and
students from some sections were privileged enough to receive any
form of education. Contemporary education is, or should be, in
principle accessible to all sections of society so that society as a whole,
rather than just a small elite section, can benefit. Rather than advancing
this goal, and striving to overcome the many barriers to widening the
social base of education as will be discussed in this booklet, the New
Education Policy recommendations of the TSR Subramanian

5 .................
Committee as released by the present government seeks to put the
clock back, hailing Vedic Education and the Guru-Shishya Parampara
as an example of “knowledge sharing between the teacher and the
student.”
The British colonial period saw modern public education
controlled by the Inspectorate. The Macaulay Commission framed a
new educational policy for British India with the objective to “do our
best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions
whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but
English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we
may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich
those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western
nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying
knowledge to the great mass of the population.” The freedom struggle
and its stalwarts like Gandhi, Tagore, Aurobindo, Ambedkar however
threw away the colonial yoke and called for a National Education system.
After Independence, Dr.Radhakrishnan’s University Education
Commission (1948-49), National Science Policy (1952), Sri Mudaliar’s
Secondary Education Commission (1952-53), Dr. Kothari’s Education
Commission (1964-66) which was made into National Policy on
Education (1968), the National Commission on Teachers I & II (1983-
85) and The National Policy on Education 1986 (revised in 1992) were
the major government policies in education. Now the Government is
preparing a new National Policy on Education-2016, thirty years after
the last policy.
Despite the many efforts made, the effort for education in India
to be inclusive for women, dalits, adivasis and minorities has remained
a distant dream.
The earlier Reports and policy documents stressed the role of
education as a process of human liberation and all-round social
development, dissemination of scientific temper, secularism and
democracy and advancement of the knowledge, skills and capabilities
of all sections of population. Education was seen as primarily the
responsibility of the state, with private institutions playing their role.
However, a shift could be seen in the later documents. Under the
growing influence of the neo-liberal ideology permeating governance
systems in India, the government began to gradually withdraw from its

Education today 6
responsibility and private institutions, particularly those with an
entrepreneurial disposition, being assigned major responsibilities.
Considerable changes have taken place in the structure and
functioning of the education system during the past two decades.
However, an examination of the actual performance of these schemes
shows that there is much to be desired.
Literacy
According to government data, literacy rose from 52.2% in 1991
to 64.8% in 2001 and further to 74% in 2011.
The Peoples Science Movement in India, and its specially-created
arm the Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti, played a seminal role in placing
literacy as a paramount agenda of the nation. A huge public mobilization
campaign was organized all over the country through a Total Literacy
Campaign which resulted in seeding the government’s National Literacy
Mission in the 1990s.
The number of illiterates declined in absolute terms by 31 million
and the number of literates increased by 218 million. Literacy rate of
India in 2011 was 74.04%. The Male literacy rate is 82.14% and Female
literacy rate is 65.46% according to the Census. Increase of Literacy
rates for women reduced the male-female gap from 21.59% in 2001
to 16.68% in 2011. Yet these figures show that a substantially large
number of children are still first generation learners. Gender and regional
disparities in literacy continue to remain high.
School Education
Most people have had an average of only 5.12 years of school
education in India. This is well below comparable figures in other
emerging economies such as China (8.17 years) and Brazil (7.54 years)
and significantly below the average of all developing countries (7.09
years).
Enrolment of children in primary classes has picked up,
particularly since the implementation of the Right to Education (RTE)
Act, but the drop out rate is still high. Gross and Net Enrolment Ratios
continue to fall sharply after Class 8, showing that a number of children
drop out after primary education or when they complete 14 years, and
presumably thereafter enter the labour market to financially assist their
families. The drop out rates is sharper among SCs and STs.
There has been an improvement in the enrolment of girls into
primary education, but drop out rates after primary education is still
7 .................
high. This shows that the stress on UEE (Universalization of Elementary
Education) has not resulted in establishing education as a continuous
process such that all children reach a socially acceptable level of
knowledge and practical skills so as to play useful productive roles in
society.
Despite the stress on a ‘mission’ approach, various centrally
sponsored schemes and substantial intervention by NGOs and private
agencies, achievements have been less than expected.
Even though the 1986 Education Policy statement stressed access
to education, the bedrock of programmes for realization of Education
for All, access is not 100 percent. Further, States that have been backward,
still remain backward in terms of access.
Quality Education
The character of education in India assumes interesting dimensions
when we take into account quality rather than quantity alone. The results
of the recent National Achievement Surveys of the NCERT (National
Council for Educational Research & Training) conducted in 2010 show
that learning abilities of children at the primary level leave a lot to be
desired.
Results show that about 31.5% of children surveyed scored less
than 40% in language, 35.8% failed in mathematics and 35.1% failed in
environmental studies or EVS. Even in Kerala, a state with otherwise
creditable educational achievements, 39.6% of students scored less than
40% in Mathematics and 29.7% did the same in EVS. Interestingly,
only 2.7% in Mathematics and 2.9% in EVS respectively scored more
than 80% (which is about one-sixth of the National average at the
same score which itself is poor)! It is clear that when the quality at the
foundational levels is average or poor, quality at higher levels is likely to
be abysmal.
Data also shows great diversity among different regions and
States in India, both in terms of access and quality.
In general, both the Southern and North-Eastern States have
performed better, whereas Northern India has lagged behind. This
diversity is nothing new, but government policies during the past quarter
century has done nothing to change the pattern, which shows that the
malady lies deep in the economic and socio-cultural structures in these
regions rather than in the education process alone. In fact, the
performance of Uttar Pradesh, where only 15% of students scored
Education today 8
less than 40% marks overall, in the National Achievement Survey
illustrates this point. Such diverse performances also beings up the
question of the overall centralization of curricula, management, and
policy directions visible in recent policy documents, as they tend to
ignore such economic and socio-cultural variations in different regions
and often tend to underplay regional initiatives in favour of central
policies or programmes. Whether such policies have themselves
contributed to continuation of disparities needs to be examined.
Unfortunately, this element never finds itself seriously considered
either in the educational literature or in the documents of policy makers.
Diversity of our national economic and cultural forms finds expression
in the use of language, environmental knowledge and even in
computation. Other elements of social knowledge have been ignored
in the educational system even by NCERT.
It appears that policy makers do not care whether children know
the history of their own land, understand their living conditions or
know their Government. This means that the great diversity of Indian
population can be safely ignored by the policy makers, educational
institutions and even teachers and students. From such a position, “quality
education” can be enjoyed only by a privileged few termed as
“meritorious” students, and even the present set of documents call the
real problems of Indian education mere “gaps.”
Vocational Education
The Central Government had initiated vocational secondary
education from 1988, but this programme has never shown appreciable
results. In its present form, Skills Education has been conducted since
2009. In order to make the secondary level more inclusive, the idea of
vocational education to go along with Socially Useful Productive Work
(SUPW) is being given importance these days.
Educational experts have been emphasizing employability as a
criterion along with equity and excellence in education, but experience
over the past quarter century has not been good. Unfortunately, this
experience in vocational education has not been reviewed and research-
based policy directions have not been developed. There have been
major problems with integrating the vocational stream with the academic
stream. In fact the numerous streams of vocational education, technical
and polytechnic training and recently introduced skills training have only

9 .................
added to the confusion and lack of purpose of vocational education
at this important stage of human life.
Higher education is primarily tasked with creating a cohesive
and well-integrated citizenry that will help sustain the values of
democracy, secularism and scientific temper in our nation and society.
It is not meant to instill a narrow emphasis on physical skills to the
detriment of intellectual knowledge. In fact, in the modern high
technology environment, physical skills without intellectual advancement
will never deliver what is required in different categories of the working
population. Just think of information and communications technology,
bio-technology, nanotechnology, renewable energy and so on which
are at the cutting edge of industries and therefore integral to the
advancement that counties want to pursue. Skills in any of these disciplines
can be acquired only by combining technical knowledge with physical
skills. Therefore, a narrow emphasis on physical skill-training is inimical
to the very essence of higher education in a society that is modernizing
and looking ahead to the future. The proposed NEP adopts and
recommends a narrow interpretation of “skills” and “training” as if
these are disconnected from “education” whereas “know-how” and
“know why” are equally components for modern vocations.
Emphasis on physical skills and professional competence cannot
be at the expense of Critical Learning Skills.
Higher Education
There are three segments in higher education viz: ?central
institutions, which account for 2.6% of the total enrolment? state
institutions which account for 38.5% of enrolment, and ? p r i v a t e
institutions that cater to the remaining about 60% of students Expansion
of higher education during the Eleventh Plan (2007-12) was led by the
private sector which now accounts for 58.5% of enrolments.
Numerous reports on higher education have been submitted to
the Government in recent times. Of these, the report submitted by the
Yashpal Committee of 1993 took cognizance of the varied conditions
of educational development and suggested a degree of autonomy in
the functioning of Universities and decentralization of power.
Regrettably, it was here that the concept of foreign universities starting
collaboration with Indian private educational institutions was seeded.
The idea was that India has low costs of living which would help

Education today 10
attract foreign students to study in this country which could thus earn
foreign exchange while bringing in top quality education.
The 12th Plan document therefore contends as follows: “Private
sector will be encouraged to establish larger and higher quality institutions
in the Twelfth Plan. Currently, for-profit entities are not permitted in
higher education and the non-profit or philanthropy-driven institutions
are unable scale up enough to bridge the demand-supply gap in higher
education. Therefore, the “not-for-profit” status in higher education
should, perhaps, be re-examined for pragmatic considerations so as to
allow the entry of for-profit institutions in select areas where acute
shortages persist”. Clearly, educational institutions would in future work
mainly with a profit motive.
In order to guard against the apprehension that mediocre
educational entrepreneurs will invade the country, the Report
recommends that investment be sought from the “best two hundred
Universities” (as per various rating agencies in the World). There is no
indication regarding what such Universities are going to do in our
education system, and how such investment is going to benefit the
average student, who admittedly still suffers from lack of quality and
access. Inevitably, this will lead to creating a few islands of “premium”
education accessible only to those with ability to pay huge sums as fees,
and about whose quality or relevance to Indian conditions nobody has
any idea. This will further exacerbate the inequalities already prevalent
in the Indian educational system as regards both access and quality. This
is a completely unacceptable policy, and must be vigorously opposed.
Other reports too have drifted in this direction. The Birla-Ambani
Report says Higher Education is not a public good but a private good!
The National Knowledge Commission Report and the
recommendations by N.R. Narayanamurthy have treated higher education
as a money-spinning enterprise which places knowledge and expertise
in the marketplace, and treats students and the feeder community as
consumers.
The growing emphasis on so-called self-financing educational
institutions, which further means high fees and hence providing access
only to the better-off, is very much like the slogan of “user charges” in
health services and public utilities such as water, power and other
infrastructure. These are all part of the neo-liberal policy framework
wherein the state withdraws from services for the common good, and
11 .................
instead leaves it to corporate bodies guided by market forces, which
inevitably pushes these services towards higher-paying sections of the
population and exacerbates inequalities in society. This increase of high-
fee higher education institutions, aided and abetted by central apex
bodies such as the All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE),
Indian Medical Council (IMC), National Council of Teacher Education
(NCTE) and National Council of Vocational Training (NCVT) have
rendered higher education out of reach for students who find it difficult
to take loans. Even those middle-class students who do manage to
take loans, get tied up for many years in repaying the loans. Such policies
have wreaked havoc in developed countries including the UK and USA.
In the US, total outstanding student loans have crossed $1300 billion
(Rs.90 lakh crores) and students often have loans hanging over them
for over 25 years!
The NEP Report has recommended merit-cum-means
scholarships covering fees and living expenses for up to 10 lakh needy
students, but this is not expected to meet real needs or alter the basic
problems outlined above.
Such market-led higher education is also killing the diversity
desired in higher education. There is a kind of “academic cloning”
now taking place, where the same kinds of courses in disciplines such
as engineering, medicine and management were being cloned and taught
everywhere in an attempt to capture the cream of the “student market”.
In the process, other important forms of knowledge such as basic
sciences, social sciences, humanities and languages have lagged behind,
because they are not thought of as commercially attractive, where
students will not pay high fees and not take large loans for fear of
being unable to pay them. Even major Universities are being forced to
run or recognize only the former types of “new generation courses.”
This trend mirrors similar trends in the US and Europe where the
same neo-liberal policies hold sway.
Studies on the academic performance in such courses have
demonstrated an absolute decline in quality, indicated by a sharp fall in
examination results, in spite of such screening processes such as entrance
examinations. In fact, the admissions processes in the numerous self-
financing institutions that have sprung up everywhere have become so
complicated that entrance examinations do not serve as a screening

Education today 12
instrument anymore. This is further complicated by the emergence of
numerous ‘coaching malls’ that openly resort to malpractice.
Strategies of “quality assurance” such as accreditation and rating
devices have not helped in improving the conditions of higher education.
Many colleges and Universities have managed to get high ratings, but
only in order to attract more funds, not to improve the teaching-learning
process or to ensure academic excellence.
No amount of “corporate social responsibility” or corporate
profit recycling can hope to replace the role played by the State in the
running of an education system that caters to interests of the Indian
population and society as a whole. Corporate funds and “for-profit”
institutions by their very nature will move according to the profit motive,
not as per the greatest social good.
No wonder moves are under way to make education a tradable
commodity and place education among services governed under World
Trade Organization (WTO).
New National Education Policy (NEP)
The present Central Government has drafted a new National
Education Policy 2016 based on a report submitted by a committee
headed by retired bureaucratic T.S.R.Subramanian. Our understanding
and critique of the suggestions made in this Report are briefly presented
below, along with reasons for such a critique and alternate viewpoints
that would support universal, quality education in India.
Performance & Merit
Performance of the student and of schools should be determined
not only in terms of learning outcomes based on examination scores.
Instead, quality should be assessed, prospectively, by the process through
which the child acquired her knowledge and skills, and also the ability
to produce new knowledge and, retrospectively, by the way in which
she reproduces her knowledge in actually existing social conditions of
life and work. The concept of merit in fact contains hidden biases,
for example variations in the social and family background of the
student, and in the learning environment at school and at home including
the additional assistance available to the student from parents or private
tutors. Often “merit” reflects examination performance of the urban
elite rather than of the average student especially in rural areas. High
quantitative scores in controlled examination conditions based on
stereotypical questions and rote learning can also be manufactured by
13 .................
training and coaching prior to actual testing, itself a big business, from
small towns to metropolitan cities and “coaching malls” in special service
centres like Kota. Thus “merit” as defined in the NEP supports only
one kind of learning, rather than the well-rounded accrual of knowledge
and life-skills.
Value education
Value education is addressed as religion and religious morality,
rather than the principles and values of secularism, freedom of religion,
pluralism and freedom of opinion, democracy and critical thinking as
called for in the Constitution, and not a word is said about academic
freedom stressed by all educational thinkers. No mention is also made
of the fact that in some States such as Gujarat and Rajasthan, Hindu
scriptures and mythological epics have been introduced into school
curricula and textbooks, and observance of Hindu rituals and quasi-
religious performances such as recital of Vande Mataram, performance
of Surya Namaskar and Yoga are being made compulsory, even though
there are many cross-cultural and non-sectarian prayers, cultural
performances, observances, parables and lessons in humanistic ethics
and morality that could have been included in school curricula and
routines. The effort to impose majority community
Role of Students’ Unions
In a country where voting age is 18, where multi-Party democracy
prevails, and where participation of citizens in governance and policy-
making is norm but a duty or responsibility, active participation of
college and university in student union and other such representative
bodies is natural and should be welcomed. However, despite the fact
that all political parties have links with student bodies on college and
university campuses, at the government level and among the bureaucracy
there has always been an active dislike for student unions. This is reflected
sharply in the TSR Subramanian Committee’s recommendations
towards the NEP, as well as in the prevailing Lyngdoh Committee’s
rules regulating students’ union functioning, elections etc. This aversion
is partly based on the perception that students unions divert students
away from their primary academic responsibilities by encouraging them
to “engage in politics,” and often mirror party politics even with active
engagements of Political Parties including in conduct of elections, and
thus bring in various malpractices associated with party politics in India.

Education today 14
 It must be made clear that there is nothing wrong in principle
with students “engaging in politics,” if politics is understood in its correct
sense of the conceptual underpinnings of governance, policy-making
and civil society. All aspects of social, economic, cultural and civic life
involve politics which guides the very functioning of nations. In
democracies in particular, it would in fact be unnatural if any section
of the citizenry, especially adult and enlightened students, did NOT
engage politically with all issues including those they study and those
they observe and interact with outside their classrooms. Indeed, as we
have seen in this booklet, educational policy is a deeply political subject.
Party politics is only an organized reflection of politics in general. If
students aged 18 and above are expected to understand issues and
vote intelligently in national elections, they there can be nothing wrong
in their having an active political engagement with issues within their
campuses as well.
The NEP visualizes various administrative measures to “deal
with” this problem, On the contrary, all experience show that self-
regulation by the student body along with the academic community at
large is the best defence against undesirable elements or activities on
campuses.
Recent events in various Universities and Institutions of higher
learning in India, such as in JNU, University of Hyderabad, IITs in
Chennai and Mumbai, and the Film & TV Institute in Pune only highlight
the contrast between the enlightened and vibrant participation of student
bodies in the democratic life of the country, and the draconian and
bureaucratic measures taken by the political leadership to crush opinions
they do not like.
India Education Service
The NEP recommendations include the suggestion to form an
elite cadre called the Indian Educational Service (IES), similar to the
IAS, to administer and over see educational policy. While a prestigious
cadre of teachers and educators would indeed serve the cause of
education well, it is highly doubtful that an administrative cadre would
achieve the desired results. This is part of a number of administrative
measures advocated in the Report, clearly revealing its bureaucratic
inclinations and a perception that sees educational institutions as
administrative entities with teachers and students at the bottom, governed
from above by such an elite cadre, perhaps drawing from the role the
15 .................
Committee sees being played by the IAS “ruling” over the general
population!

In fact, such bureaucratic functions will not serve the very

principles of academic freedom and autonomy of higher education
institutions that numerous expert committees have recommended and
which the government itself professes to agree with.
Centres of Excellence
The Report has no specific recommendations to improve the
functioning of state Universities. Instead, the Report recommends the
establishment of new “centres of excellence” that provide quality
education and facilitate. This proposal, made earlier too under the UPA
government, has not led to either more research or innovation Instead,
such centres have caused State Universities to follow their own paths,
often leading to loss of direction, faculty members leaving, and the
decay or death of many departments.
Innovation is used here as a catch-word for outputs that could
be patented and commercialized. Such programmes leading to
innovation have long been recommended by various bodies, but no
assistance has been forthcoming from the Government especially to
State Universities and other Institutions to build an ecosystem necessary
for truly encouraging students, researchers and faculty to explore new
ideas, question established notions, and engage in critical thinking and
problem-solving. Instead of supporting a lower-grade kind of
interaction with industry and defining “excellence” accordingly, efforts
should be made to stimulate knowledge creation in existing Universities
and reward the display of exemplary capabilities, especially of those
from downtrodden classes and rural areas.
A policy that nurtures special “centres of excellence” contradicts
the vision of a socially inclusive and democratic system of Higher
Education in which all citizens get equal opportunity to access the best
quality of education. Such a proposal will promote an unwarranted
hierarchy in the quality of education and training in institutions, and
freeze exclusivity in students and faculty.
Teacher Quality
The NEP Report has suggested putting in place a mechanism
of assessment of academic performance of teachers including peer
review so as to ensure academic accountability of public-funded
Education today 16
institutions. The Report also suggests assessment of teacher performance
by looking at the examination performance of students. However, an
enlightened education system would have a more rounded assessment
methodology looking at all aspects of the study environment along
with teacher and student performance judged over a period of time.
Judging teachers purely by examination performance of students may,
in fact, put a premium on the teaching methods of coaching malls as in
Kota and reduce teachers to mechanical operators! Teachers are induced
to reach their full potential in an environment of democracy, operational
freedom and freedom of expression befitting an academic professional.
And students would reach their full potential when provided with quality
teaching, a challenging learning environment and encouragement to
question, apply acquired knowledge to solve problems, and invited to
open up the horizons of her curiosity.
Pre-school education
One welcome recommendation is that pre-school education be
declared a right, and that cadres of pre-primary teachers be developed.
Similarly, pre-primary education also does not require a common
curriculum, as indicated by the Report, but a common perspective
based on Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) for which
specific curricula will have to be devised as per concrete local conditions
by States. The common schools will be the mainstream of school
education at the secondary level as well, the role Central Board of
Secondary Education (CBSE), Indian Council for Secondary Education
(ICSE) and other streams will have to be regulated on the basis of a
common concept based on the RTE, instead of being indiscriminately
organized as they are today.
On Curricula
Given the diversity of the education system in different States
and between different types of schools, it is clear that a centralized
curriculum is not feasible. Only curricular guidelines should be worked
out at the central level, with the States being asked to develop detailed
curricula. For Higher Education, the same task should be entrusted to
the Universities as is the practice today.
Regulating Higher Education
The NEP recommends a “comprehensive new legislative
framework” for regulating higher education, the underlying principle
of which would be to provide financial support and full autonomy to
17 .................
institutions ranked at the top and “to weed out institutions, which are
on the lowest rung of the scale.” Autonomy for highly ranked institutions
would mean providing incentives “to raise additional resources by
starting new programs on cost recovery basis, employment of part-
time and contractual staff on market-determined salaries, optimum
use of buildings and other assets, and regular increase in fees without
Government approval”. This virtual division of higher education
institutions into an elite category that would be financially supported
and encouraged including through autonomy, and an ordinary category
that would be slowly weeded out or in other words closed, would
mean a sharp restriction of access to higher education, as discussed
under “Centres of Excellence” above and “Accreditation” below.
New approach to Accreditation
So far, the concept of accreditation and quality evaluation was
aimed at deciding eligibility for Government grants, as the NEP 2016
itself records. Now it recommends a reorientation towards assessment
of quality and the promotion of competition between institutions for
funds. This means needs of institutions w would be ignored and, instead,
focus would shift to their ability to raise funds which may be attracted
for a number of reasons unrelated to quality of education provided.
Such accreditation would also work against the effort towards
social inclusion. For instance, public-funded colleges and universities
are required to function in very different conditions compared to well-
funded private or foreign universities. The former admit more students,
have typically under-funded infrastructure and under-staffed labs,
libraries and offices. Yet, they play an important role towards ensuring
a more inclusive environment for both students and faculty, which
should be encouraged. The social, cultural and intellectual diversity in
these institutions should be utilized to lay firmer foundations for social
justice and democracy.
Accreditation as proposed in the NEP Report will effectively
push public institutions towards privatization due to the very criteria
of ability to attract funds. In fact, if Government notes that certain
institutions are not well managed, it should take appropriate measures
to rectify the situation and improve these Institutions instead of devaluing
them and permanently relegating them to some inferior grade.
Right to Education (RTE)

Education today 18
 If one accepts the spirit of the RTE act and wants to implement
it seriously, then the only possibility that emerges is that the entire
education from 6 to 14 is integrated under a framework of common
schools, without gradations such as KVs, Navodaya Vidyalayas, various
transitional schools to CBSE and other Board examinations and so on.
The common school, will strictly work on a neighbourhood principle
admit all children without caste, class, gender, religion or region teach
children in the mother tongue as the medium.. Furthermore, worldwide
the common school has helped society advance and provide quality
institutions for all the people.
Two other suggestions also militate against the spirit of the RTE.
The NEP Report attempts to make a proviso that all minority
schools should admit 15% of students from economically weaker
sections which, minority institutions assert, will work against their minority
character and dilute it. On the contrary, effort should be to actively
assist the endeavour of minority institutions to reform and improve
themselves instead of imposing external conditions.
The second is to amend the no detention policy, with the policy
being limited up to the fifth standard, and after that a suitable form of
remedial teaching being adopted for children who lag behind. Such
compromises are cumbersome and unwarranted.
Over-centralization and bureaucratization
India has come a long way as regards the organization of its
education system. One of the dominant trends has been to gradually
centralize the system with the Union Government playing an ever greater
in framing the system and regulating it. This trend is further accentuated
in the NEP Report which seeks to centralize all ideas and processes,
based on the premise that performance of State governments is poor
and that only the Centre can deliver. The Constitution provides
considerable autonomy to the States in education and this need to be
safeguarded.
If left unchecked, this trend will be a major impediment in the
development of local and regional initiatives which are very important
in the growth of education in a country of great diversity such as India.
This becomes even more important as education is a field that is
essentially participatory and democratic, which cannot be carried out
without the active participation of the teachers, students and the
neighbourhood community. The very dynamics of this process is
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impeded if the whims and fancies of a group of individuals in the
capital are imposed on the States, however brilliant or innovative these
individuals may be. In the present context, this also sharply increases
the dangers of imposition of a saffron agenda with religious, linguistic
and caste-based biases being thrust upon States, regions and communities
with very different cultures and backgrounds. Disturbing trends along
these lines are already visible in both school and university education.
For instance, the emphasis being put on Sanskrit and Vedic–
Puranic traditions, with both being associated exclusively with ancient
Indian culture to the exclusion of all other cultures and traditions, is a
dangerous trend. An understanding of the ancient Indian civilization
which consists of many religious and cultural strands, and includes both
indigenous and international inputs, are extremely important for
cultivating a multi-cultural pluralist national identity and building a
humanistic value-system for India’s precious democratic system.
Imposition of an idea of India based on unitary conceptions of Indian
religion, culture and language, and a false history deliberately constructed
to promote such a view point, is not only contrary to the real history
of the Indian civilization and nation, but also to the direction in which
modern India needs to go. The educational system in India must be
protected from such wrong ideas so that the citizens of tomorrow are
not brought up on distorted ideas.
The New Education Policy as currently structured does not offer
a new vision of the school and university as required for playing a
critical role in the development of a modern India.
Hidden agenda in the New Educational Policy?
It is true to say that all educational policies serve certain ideological
purposes or, put another way, serve to embody and promote certain
developmental ideas of the government of the day. In that sense, one
could say that the Education Policy of 1968 sought to build a large-
scale school education programme and a higher education system aimed
at producing the scientific, technical, managerial and academic needs
of India’s then growing state-sector and private industries, visualized as
constituting the basis of India’s planned economic growth with the
public sector at the commanding heights. The Education Policies of
1986 and 1992 were designed to cater to the demands of an economy
being liberalized and globalized, with greater role for private enterprises,
market forces and managers suited for this environment. The NEP
Education today 20
2016 is based on a neo-liberal policy frame and an economy clearly
operating under the LPG framework which requires an educational
system that not only caters to, but is also itself governed by, market
forces and a globalized economy.
In the present context, it is visualized that need is for professional
and managerial personnel particularly for the burgeoning service sector,
as well as skilled and unskilled workers again including the service sector.
The corporate sector both Indian and foreign/MNC is constantly
complaining about the shortage of skilled workers and professionals
in India as required for this kind of economy, and that the products of
the existing higher education system are not employable without a huge
amount of retraining by user-entities in the absence of a suitably
structured education system. Added to this is the demand by Hindutva
forces to take advantage of a BJP-majority government to impose
that ideology throughout the country utilizing the educational system
and cultural institutions.
Experts have argued that the era of globalization of capital brings
in its train a process of the destruction of education understood in its
broadest sense as a system for promoting broad-based knowledge,
critical thinking and innovation in all spheres. In India, the destruction
of education occurs from two directions, the commoditization of
education, and the “saffronization” of education.
It is significant that almost every document prepared by the
present government on education emphasizes the need for privatization,
and for “public-private partnership”. Education is thus being converted
into a commodity sold by private profit-making institutions and
conversion of the educated into products that are socially insensitive
and thus open to “saffronization.”
Corporate capital requires “skills” not “knowledge,” the latter
being essential for critical engagement of the world. Hence, the world
over, there is a neglect of the social sciences and the humanities right
from the school curriculum, and an overemphasis on mechanical
application of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics)
skills.
Serious reservations have also been expressed by educators and
intellectuals on the rowing trend of stifling dissent, free thinking and
pluralism in Universities across the country. This on-going endeavour
by the ruling dispensation is aimed not only at imposing a singular view
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of Indian history and culture, nationalism and the “idea of India,” but
also at crushing all efforts at building and promoting critical thinking, a
scientific outlook and pluralism of thought and action, the very
foundations of a modern, democratic society.
It is noteworthy that targets include all manner of progressive
ideas and concepts promoting social justice. The crushing of discussion
for a run by the Ambedkar Study Circle at IIT, Madras, and the series
of events at Hyderabad University culminating in the tragic suicide of
Rohith Vemula are just a few examples. The students’ resistance
movement in Delhi, “occupy UGC”, aimed precisely to protect social
justice in higher education and publicly-funded socially useful research
which the government was terming “unproductive.” The prolonged
struggle against victimization, saffron intimidation and false allegations
of “anti-national” behaviour by students and faculty of the prestigious
Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi is another example of the
destructive and pernicious attitudes and actions of the Hindutva forces
as well as a tribute to the fighting qualities of the broad democratic
movement against the efforts of the present ruling dispensation to
crush all criticism and to enforce the neo-liberal system on the educational
system.
Role of the People’s Science Movement
PSM has been intervening in Literacy and Education since its
inception. The National Educational policy-2016 is detrimental to our
educational system in numerous ways, and to our very democracy itself.
PSM should oppose the NEP 2016 and fight for inclusive education
with critical thinking and a scientific temper.

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