The Hindu : CPI(M) criticises Government's education policy

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Mar 21, 2004

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National

CPI(M) criticises Government's education policy

By Our Special Correspondent

Members of the CPI and the CPI(M), led by the CPI secretary, D. Raja (left), and the CPI(M) politburo member, Sitaram Yechury, staging a demonstration against the occupation of Iraq by the U.S. and its allies, in New Delhi on Saturday. - Photo: V. Sudershan

NEW DELHI, MARCH 20. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) today charged the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance Government with "commercialising and communalising'' education and also questioned its claim about expansion of education.

Stating that the policies of the NDA Government vis-à-vis education had been "highly controversial, the party said that with "a faithful swayamsevak'' like Murli Manohar Joshi at the helm of the Human Resource Development Ministry, the agenda of "saffronisation of education'' was pursued with full vigour over the past five years.

"From rewriting of the NCERT textbooks to the move to introduce astrology and Karmakanda in universities, the Ministry has made relentless efforts to restructure the Indian education system according to the ideological needs of the Sangh Parivar,'' the party politburo member, Prakash Karat, and the Rajya Sabha leader, Nilotpal Basu, said at a press conference.

The party disputed the claims by the Vajpayee Government that three-crore out of school children were brought back to schools since the inception of the Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) in 2001 with an expenditure of Rs.16,000 crores.

The Tapas Majumdar Committee, appointed by the Union Government, had estimated the total financial commitment required to bring all Indian children in the age group of 6 to 14 years under the purview of school education would be Rs. 1,36,922 crores over a ten-year period (1998-99 to 2007-08) which came to approximately 0.72 per cent of the estimated gross domestic product during the period, the party said.

"The Government is claiming that it has achieved over 60 per cent (three crore out of nearly five crore of school children brought back to school) of the target in universalising elementary education by spending only 0.11 per cent, that is Rs.16,000 crores spent against the Rs. 1,396,922 crores suggested by the Tapas Majumdar Committee)."

Commenting on the "hollowness'' of the claim, the party said that as against the statement that the Government actually spent Rs.16,000 crores on the SSA, the total allocation for SSA had been to the tune of Rs. 3,078.11 crores up to February 21, 2003 according to the annual report of the Ministry. If the Central allocation of Rs. 2,732.32 crores for 2003-04 under SSA is added to the earlier amount, the total figure stands at Rs. 5,810.43 crores. "This is only around one-third of the claim of Rs. 16,000 crores spent on the SSA."

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