Role of Government in Education in India
June 16, 2015
Published in www.elections.in (http://www.elections.in/blog/role-of-government-in-education-in-india/)
There has been a raging ongoing debate over alleged attempts to ‘saffronise’ education by the Hindu right wing Bharatiya Janata Party government. BJP’s ideological guru – the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh – has been at the forefront of a complete overhaul of the education system.
Now, at a time when the Union Government has hinted at a need for a new education policy, the RSS has upped the ante to force its demand on the union government. At a recent conference of Hindu Education Board, an RSS-affiliate, Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) general secretary Krishna Gopal, in the presence of Union Human Resources Development minister Smriti Irani, called for a “complete overhaul” of Indian education system and argued that “only assimilation of Hindu thoughts into country’s education can provide perfection of means and finish confusion of ends”.
Irani consented: “We are ashamed of our own inherent strength, cultural heritage and glorious history. This is only possible in India. You have ancient mathematics, which is explored and applauded across the world”. She went on to lament that although there was a need for new education policy “which will help India leap forward…any effort made in this direction is seen as saffronisation attempt”.
Irani seeks to introduce ancient mathematics in classroom. Her senior Murli Manohar Joshi had introduced astrology as a science subject in colleges when he was the HRD minister in the Atal Behari Vajpayee led NDA government more than a decade ago. Fair enough. Yet, a major component of Sangh’s dissatisfaction is in the context of History that is being taught in schools. It wants Hindu mythology to be taught as part of history and it is here that the controversy of ‘saffronising education’ starts.
Consider how much ruckus was made when Gujarat’s BJP government introduced a set of eight books for supplementary readings in schools in July last year that sought to mix historical facts with mythology. Authored by Dinanath Batra – a member of the RSS’s education cell called Vidya Bharti – these books sought to propagate theories such as “stem cell technology found mention in Mahabharata and motor car existed during the Vedic period”. Pushed to a corner because of wide protests in the academic circles, Gujarat’s BJP government had defended these books on the grounds that “These are only reference books for children about Indian culture (and) ….not mandatory and not part of the syllabus. We only want children to read material by eminent and knowledgeable authors”.
Obviously the Sangh’s support to these theories to be taught in schools is based on the belief that children must learn about India’s ancient culture and knowledge so as to develop their self esteem. Fair enough, but legends cannot be treated as facts. This is where the whole debate starts.
It goes without saying that education plays an important role in a democracy and without a minimum degree of literacy and knowledge, democracy can never succeed. Yet, it is also important that education imparted to the citizens is not partial to any ideology or ‘ism’ for a pluralistic democratic society to function.
Irani too, seems mindful of this fact when she recently said on a television channel, “I never ask students about the religion as we do not discriminate the right of a student to education on the basis of caste or religion”.
These are reassuring words. But they lead to a much larger question about the role of government in education in any country.
Some Facts and Stats
Consider that in India today, four per cent of the children never start school; 58% don’t complete primary schools; and 90% don’t complete school. Definitely, it is here that the government has a distinct role to play in promoting education.
Long ago, India moved from the days of the ancient system of Gurukulas, where the students stayed with the teacher who taught them everything – from Sanskrit to the Holy Scriptures and from Mathematics to Metaphysics. All learning was closely linked to nature and to life.
The British introduced the modern school system in the country known as the Macaulay system named after Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay, in the 1830s. The new system introduced class rooms and the curriculum was confined to “modern” subjects such as science and mathematics, and subjects like metaphysics and philosophy were considered unnecessary.
After Independence, although the Directive Policy in Article 45 of Constitution provided for universal and compulsory education for all children in the age group of 6-14, the objective has remained elusive. It is here that government has taken some crucial steps and still needs to take more such steps to make education easily accessible to all.
It was through a constitutional amendment in 1976 that the parliament brought education to the Concurrent List from the State List to expand the role of the Centre, which till then was confined only to coordination and deciding on standards of higher education. The national policy on Education was first promulgated in1968 and ever since it has been reviewed twice – in 1986 and then in 1992.
There have so far been mainly two comprehensive statements of the National Policy on Education – those of 1968 and 1986. The former contained decisions of the Central Government on the recommendations of the National Commission on Education, 1964-66. The latter was a result of the renewed priority assigned to Education by the Rajiv Gandhi government. The 1986 policy was reviewed by a Committee constituted in 1990 under the chairmanship of Acharya Ramamurti. On the basis of the recommendations of this Committee, certain provisions of the 1986 policy were modified in 1992.
It is noteworthy that recommendations of these Committees largely remained unheeded. Consider that the Acharya Ramamurti Committee had then recommended the building up of a common school system over the next ten years, through both persuasion and essential legislation. It proposed vocationalisation of all education from elementary to university education. Acharya Ramamurti had then even stated that “We will now say goodbye to the Macaulay tradition of education for good”.
The Macaulay system still thrives
In recent past, the government, though took some drastic measures such as making primary education a Fundamental Right of every Indian citizen. However, the Central government expenditure on school education in recent years has come to just around 3% of the country’s Gross Domestic Product, which is very low and needs government’s intervention.
Of late, because of larger participation of the private sector in education, Higher Education sector in the country has witnessed rapid growth and the number of Universities has increased 34 times from 20 in 1950 to 677 in 2014, including 185 State Private universities and 129 Deemed to be Universities.
However, improvements are slowly being implemented and disadvantaged groups may still not have adequate access to education.
Irani acknowledges that the education system should be such that it has enough scope for promoting a career in one’s chosen field, “Education should not be confined to campuses only. It should have enough scope where students can develop interest in sports and become a politician like me one day”.
Irani acknowledges that the education system should be such that it has enough scope for promoting a career in one’s chosen field, “Education should not be confined to campuses only. It should have enough scope where students can develop interest in sports and become a politician like me one day”.
The government needs to be a facilitator and leave education to the academicians with good credentials who are guided by a set of values secluded from any ‘ism’. But is this possible? Isn’t History important too, to lure the future
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