The news as it pours in can’t be good for the Bharatiya Janata Party. It is caught, on the one hand, between a grouping of its supporters that is demanding the government stop grants to English medium schools and, on the other, falling enrolments in government primary schools that have the mother tongue as the medium of instruction leading to their being closed down. Even desperate measures of offering financial incentives to schools for admissions has not worked, and yet, with just months to go before the State heads for an election, its main support group – the RSS and the BBSM – have threatened to field candidates of their own in the 2017 Assembly elections or support a like-minded party.
Until now, the only political party that shared the ideology of the RSS was the BJP, the latter being one of the organizations of the larger Sangh Parivar. What happened that would have made the RSS so bitter about the BJP in Goa that it would threaten to bring it down? On the face of it, the reason is that the government is giving grants to English medium primary schools, which it is against. But how do the BBSM and the RSS expect to make their threat of bringing down this government work? Which segment of the electorate would the RSS-BBSM combine be targeting?
Across the State there are government primary schools closing down because parents are opting to send their children to English medium schools, even willing to pay fees they can barely afford just so that the children can get a head start in the English language. Parents want the best for their children. A parent from Shiroda in Ponda taluka told Herald that since all higher education is in the English language, learning the language at an early stage develops confidence among students. This sentiment of parents is what Herald has been constantly and consistently writing about. No parents sending their children to English language schools can or will ignore the mother tongue or their culture. Merely studying in English does not make one less of a Goan. But parents feel that their children need English for a better future, and it is these parents who will bring down the government, not the BBSM and the RSS.
Look at how schools teaching the Konkani and Marathi are closing down. In less than two weeks into the new academic year 18 government primary schools have been shut down and more could follow suit in the coming days. In the last three years 60 government primary schools have been closed. Seven government primary schools have been shut down in Ponda taluka this month due to a lack of students. It is not the population that is declining in this taluka, it is the number of parents wanting an education in the regional language for the children that is dropping and quite quickly too. If Ponda taluka, an area of Goa which one would expect to be more heavily influenced by the arguments for an education in the mother tongue, is not swayed even by the government’s financial schemes to increase enrolment in primaries that have the local language as the medium of instruction, few other talukas will.
The protests by the BBSM on Revolution Day were token and will continue as the manch has promised to boycott all government functions. The government has to worry more about what parents across Goa will be deciding when they go to vote next year, than the protests and the threats of the BBSM. The silence of the parents is being matched by their deeds – of taking their children out of government primary schools and sending them to English medium schools. They will speak through the ballot box, or rather the electronic voting machine, which will register their protest yet keep the identity a secret. That is what this government has to fear.
