Dr Manasvi M. Kamat
The discussion about the Draft New Economic Policy (DNEP) turned out to be a ‘starry’ affair down South. The issue took an ugly turn when the ruling party in Tamil Nadu accused actor Suriya of instigating people against the DNEP and duping them by making false statements.
The Tamil actor Suriya in a press meet organized by Agaram Foundation founded by him, talked against three issues that he claimed the DNEP had brought into focus. Suriya broadly alleged policy errors in the quality of education in regard to entrance exams, the closing down of anganwadi schools with less than 10 students and on the three-language policy. The actor expressed about ‘everyone being angered, anguished and scared about focus of NEP’ claiming that it may have adverse effect on 30 crore students on the country, specifically those living in the rural areas.
Suriya had urged the teachers, students and parents alike to contemplate debate and weigh in on the latest policy draft published by the Government and his remarks received both support and criticism from politicians through the week. Suriya drew critical flak and contempt from the ruling political parties over his views and lots of arguments exchanges among their respective supporters. It is now learnt that the Superstar Rajinikanth has come out openly in support of the actor lending credence to the former, while the other star actor and Makkal Needhi Maiam (MAM) chief Kamal Haasan backed Suriya and slammed the Tamil Nadu government.
Amidst the above chaos, the Union HRD Minister informed in the Rajya Sabha that the DNEP Committee has received as many as 65,000 suggestions from all over the country as on 15th July. The last day for the same is the end of this month. The DNEP is found uploaded on MHRD’s website in Assamese, Bengali, English, Guajarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Odia, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu to elicit suggestions/comments from all stakeholders including the public, central government, and state governments.
There is no doubt that the central government has tried its best to invite more suggestions from all stakeholders and to increase participation of different sections of the society in framing of policy. The unprecedented collaborative, multi-stakeholder, bottom-up, people-centric and participatory process initiated by the MHRD is most welcome. Accordingly Higher Education depts in various states actively initiated consultative meetings to place the deliberations before their respective Higher Education Council’s, for onward submission to the MHRD.
Apart from the State governments, the national-level institutions have also responded and submitted their suggestions. Accordingly in a joint document released by the three topmost science academies in the country; Indian National Science Academy (Delhi), Indian Academy of Sciences (Bengaluru) and National Academy of Sciences, India (Allahabad) said the draft policy does not make a compelling case for why radical alterations need to be carried out to the fundamental structure of the education system in the country. More specifically, these bodies do not particularly agree with the introduction of Semester system in schools, clubbing of last four standards starting with Std IX into one slab and on imposing of the three-language formula.
Other than the above, among the common points of contention about the NDEP echoed nationally is that it does not give enough consideration to the Constitution and social ethos of India.
In one of the panel deliberation on this subject, it was claimed that NDEP lacks goal of critical thinking and deeper understanding by omission of the word ‘secularism’ as an objective in NDEP. It is being alleged that the words ‘secular’ or ‘secularism’ are not found anywhere in NEP and hence designed to inject the ‘majoritarian’ ideology into the educational system of India. It is also believed that NDEP fails to include an unambiguous commitment to reservation in education. The popular suggestion is to extended reservations to private institutions, along with provisions for financial aid and reduced fees for students coming under the reserved category.
Secondly, concerns are expressed over missing intimacy and proximity in education and growing alienation between teacher and student, suggesting the need for NEP to bridge the widening gap between teachers and students. It is a fact that India trails behind several countries in terms of student-teacher ratio in the higher education segment. The present student-teacher ratio of 24:1 for India is lower than 19:1 in Brazil and China respectively. For Britain it is 16:1, 12:1 in case of Sweden, for Russia it is 10:1 while for Canada it is 9:1. Our ratio has worsened over the time due to increasing enrollment rate of the students and low faculty recruitment in the higher education institutes. As per governmental data, student enrollment in higher education institutes in recent years have increased from 32.3 million in 2013-14 to 36.6 million in 2017-18 while the total number of teachers have abysmally declined from 13,67,535 to 12,84,755.
Thirdly, though DNEP states equity as one of its founding goal and gender as a cross-cutting theme, it is felt by the educationists that use of vocabulary renders its intent of establishing gender equality weak and vague. The draft NEP is seemingly guilty of envisioning gender inequality by focusing on female students, with a brief discussion of including transgender children in schools. There is also a feeling about conspicuous absence of any mention of male students’ vis-Ã -vis gender in education and a growing contention that boys and men have been excluded from the narrative.
In addition, NEP also fails to acknowledge gender disparity among teaching fraternity. Take for instance the low number of female teachers at the tertiary level of education. At a national level there are around 72 female teachers per 100 male teachers. The draft NEP was put open for modifications through a participative process. Thus public mucking of the academic suggestion by Suriya and an attempt at politicizing and criticising it was uncalled for. It is hoped that better sense would prevail and the government’s intent of making the process people-centric be followed more sincerely and consciously.
