It hardly evokes any surprise when the progressive concept of secularism finds no mention in the new National Education Policy’s statement of vision and purpose. NEP wants to develop among the students ‘a deep sense of respect towards fundamental duties’. But what about fundamental rights: Right to free speech, cultural and religious freedom, education, health and employment? Absolute silence.
NEP stresses on making ‘job creators’ rather than ‘job seekers’. What a way to impart a subtle message that the State will not endeavour to generate job opportunities; rather your mode of subsistence is your headache and you have to create jobs for yourself and for others by taking over the responsibility of job generation from the State apparatus. Concentrate on your duties towards the nation without demanding any rights.
And this overhyped online education. It is sad to see how economically weak families are feeling compelled to sell off their only assets at throw-away prices to meet the demand of smartphones as an avenue to access online education for their kids. So the wife of a labourer had to sell off her only gold earrings worth Rs 15,000 for a paltry Rs 8,000; a milkman had to part with a Jersey cow worth Rs 30,000-35,000 for only Rs 15,000. Already economically-paralysed due to the lockdown after effects , these families not only have to part with their sole assets, they are being deprived of the actual price by the purchasers by exploiting the compulsion of the poor families to get their kids educated.
These families had possessed a pair of gold earrings or a Jersey cow to sell off. But innumerable families lack even a single asset worth selling. So no asset means no smartphone which translates to no online education i.e. no education at all.
Despite the salt of Covid-19 and its after-effects being sprinkled upon the wounds of poverty, how shamelessly can the who’s who of Indian polity zealously beat their own trumpet of India’s super success story in tackling Covid?
And amidst the deadliest fang of Covid, when 100 per cent energy, time and resource should have been devoted in fighting it and providing relief to the economically downtrodden; arrive not only the Rajasthan or Ayodhya sagas, but the National Education Policy as well as if it can’t wait for tomorrow. Still it would have been highly welcome if the new policy had opened up the doors of education and schools for many poor children for free who are engaged in hard labour at such a tender age for supporting the family or had the country affording a Mars mission, bullet trains, gigantic statues, grand temples, brand new capital project procured smartphones and delivered it to the needy children so that they can continue their study in online mode to make the nation prosperous. Just like a lecture on protein carbohydrate fat and balanced diet is meaningless to the starved souls, the educational revolution (that too in current online mode) is irrelevant for millions of underprivileged children. So what is the significance of that National Education Policy which can’t embrace every child of the nation within its ambit?
