The mundane fabric of cultural, social, economic, and political features of any society evolves over a period of time. The marginal revolution on customs and social value systems towards acceptance of universal principles is a continuous process. A society matures as it expands its world view without giving up the foundations on which it is built – language which also forms as a repository of culture.
For having a dynamic education system, the language and its medium of instructions are imperative and should not be stifled narrowly by hollow politics. However, it always turns out to be the case in Tamil Nadu where politicians become resort to shortsightedness without coming to terms with reality or aspirations of people.
It is interesting to note the reactions of political parties in Tamil Nadu from small to big but yet most seem to be by and large on the same side of the dogmatic thinking and fails to test their common senses on the recently announced New Education Policy (NEP) 2020. Going by their comments, it seems that, most of the opposing parties seem to go with rhetoric instead of giving due diligence to read and understand from the perspective of past and present status of the country’s education system vs the rest of the developed economies.
Over a hundred years ago, Swami Vivekananda said “education which does not help the common mass of people to equip themselves for the struggle of life, which does not bring out strength of character, spirit of philanthropy, and the courage of a lion- is it worth the name?”
NEP has many proposals that will usher in long pending structural reforms for making our education more meaningful and useful to children. As things stand today, there is no escaping from digital technology and innovation and therefore, we are compelled by to make our education system more robust and responsive.
Interestingly, most opposing agencies are self-contradicting their assumptions and narratives on the proposed scheme of things in NEP. They need an open mind to accept the ground realities faced by the education system in India amidst millions of Indian students going abroad every year for higher education. But there are people have straight away call for rejecting the policy based on their own assumptions without offering any constructive suggestions.
Children need to be educated and equipped skills to stand on their own feet and not make them dependent on the state. But politically motivated agencies oppose NEP to make poor students continue to be deprived of equal opportunities and make people dependent on the government permanently so that they become their vote bank. On the other hand, all these opposing parties and agencies are good enough to send their children to private CBSE schools or abroad to study in best schools and colleges which they consciously lie and deny for poor children especially from rural and remote areas
Prof E. Balagurusamy, veteran educationist who also served as a member of the UPSC said (Times of India, 11 August, 2020) that “a majority of private colleges in the country are owned and run by politicians, sand and liquor mafia, real estate barons and hardcore businessmen.”
Unlike other academicians who put their ideology before the national interest, Prof Balagurusamy has an open mind and knew the ground realities of what the system needs. He rightly argues (The New Indian Express, 9 August, 2020) that “One of the many laudable objectives of 3-language formula is to maintain the social fabric of multilingualism present in our country. The pluralistic culture and multi-language diversity should be considered as a boon and an opportunity for learning and expanding one’s horizon rather than limiting by narrow political considerations. It is our duty to enrich, enable and encourage our youth to integrate into the national mainstream so as to enable them contribute effectively to the cultural, social and economic growth and progress of our nation,” The fact is many mainstream leaders who fought for our country’s independence were all multilingual and that tradition has been buried soon after independence.
Given the diversity of our country, at least a thousand models should flourish in the education system without diluting the core principles envisaged in the Constitution.
NEP has been announced after detailed consultations and public discourse for three years from 2016-2020 covering almost all the stakeholders of education systems. The eminent subject experts, seasoned scholars, and policy thinkers who framed the foundations and structural reforms with the time-bound implementation of NEP have been lauded across the sectors and segments in India and abroad.
While, few self-motivated political parties, NGOs, academicians are making generic and confusing statements which are mostly self-contradictory using the same playbook: that is against the poor and rural students, it does not strive to achieve equity, and it leads to privatization and commercialization of education. These agencies are also too obsessed with old baggage of socialist, centralized control regime for indoctrinations and failed communist mentality with totalitarian thought processes. It can only be said that these parties are only denying the opportunity of quality education to rural students by opposing this policy mindlessly.
The author is a Research Fellow at Centre for Public Policy Research, Kochi. Views expressed are personal and does not reflect or represent the views of any organizations to which he is attached.