People's Democracy

TEACHERS all over the country are up in arms against the renewed attacks of the BJP government on education and educational institutions. These attacks have taken the form of disinvestment in education through various means, both at the level of school education and higher education, an attack on the autonomy of educational institutions and their statutory bodies, and the saffronisation of syllabi in school education while also pushing through of saffron courses in the universities. These attacks are rooted in the government’s bid to saffronise and privatize in keeping with its over all policy of liberalization and cut in subsidy on all welfare expenditure.

Teachers’ bodies have registered the fact that these attacks not only undermine the service conditions of the teachers, but are a reflection also of the government’s bid to change the equations between an educated-literate elite and the polity by creating a pliant society and divesting the large majority of the Indian people from the right to a meaningful education. Protest has been expressed through statements by various teachers’ bodies all over the country, notably the AIFUCTO and the FEDCUTA, apart from the school teachers federation and teachers associations of universities like the Delhi University and the JNU.

Disinvestment in education comes in the form of actual budgetary cuts in education, and in the form of willingness to go along with the World Bank-WTO regime in opening up the education sector to foreign players. By becoming party to the system of supra-national ‘agreements’ that seek to divide the world into buyers and sellers of knowledge, and in the name of offering a so called level playing field to everyone interested in ‘promoting’ (read investing for profit) education the state can happily withdraw from the educational sector, and in the process hand over our key areas of learning to foreign corporations out to transform education into the highest profit making service sector. Despite not officially adopting it, the government has in effect been following the prescriptions of the Ambani–Birla Report in promoting private funding in higher education, gearing higher education to needs of the corporate sector and forcing self-financing market friendly courses in universities at the cost of liberal education which has to bear the brunt of the effects of the much flouted "resource crunch".

What is not so well known is that even school education has been brought under the ambit of this ‘opening up’. The Doha ministerial meeting on November 21, 2001, had resolved that "Participants shall submit initial request for specific commitments by June 3, and initial offers by March 31, 2003." However, while negotiations under GATS are still in progress, the ministry of human resource development by a circular dated January 24 2002, circulated by Eduardo Faleiro Congress MP in the context of his "Special mention" in parliament, granted permission for foreign qualifications to be provided in schools. Apart from adversely effecting national priorities in educational content, the process would create enormous disparities between the existing public schools that will become the first to be geared to such networks and the more ordinary schools that will wilt in the face of resource crunch and withdrawal of the state from education and whose students will not be able to shell out the kind of fees required for hitching on to such bandwagons should they also desire to emulate their more privileged peers.

The much flaunted 93rd Amendment Bill making Education a fundamental right falls short of its stated aim through the provisions that it failed to provide for despite popular protests, but even so such as it is, it has little chance of becoming a law. In other words it falls short even on stated declarations as despite being passed by both houses of parliament it has been decided by the government to not put it up for approval to the president and even were that to be achieved in some late future, the Bill states that it further has to be incorporated as a law before education becomes a fundamental right even on paper (leave alone in practice and in policy). Given that so many months have passed since its passage through both houses, no allocations of funds have been made for it.

Related to withdrawal of the state from funding education is the cut in posts, refusal to fill up existing posts, increase in workload of existing teachers to artificially create surpluses where in actual fact there is requirement for more teachers, refusal of re-employment to teachers, and more shockingly a directive to make do with guest lecturers in colleges and universities, and para teachers in schools. To top it all is the declared policy to dismantle the entire formal system of education in favour of the non-formal stream or distance education. All recent moves of the government in regard of these must be seen in this context.

In universities and colleges throughout the country, teachers have been forced into increasing the number of periods per week in the name of academic accountability. This has unfortunately been accomplished in most state universities, while central universities are being intimidated now to accept the same. In the case of central universities, the UGC has recently declared that posts lying vacant for more than a year are not to be filled. If a college or university has managed without these posts for a year it can jolly well continue to do so as it has already shown that it can manage without filling the vacant posts-that seems to be the understanding of the education ministry.

The letters sent by the UGC to the Delhi University and all its colleges dated July 19, and July 23, directing them to only fill 80 per cent of the vacant posts on a temporary basis only and announcing a freeze on recruitment, ban on creation of posts at all levels, 10 per cent cut in staff strength along with abolition of all posts vacant for more than a year have caused a complete panic because all this added together means the government sees 35 per cent teachers in the university as already surplus. In practical terms there is already a stalling and cancellation of appointments and selection committee meetings in many colleges, and the regular academic programme of the colleges has been severely affected from the beginning of the academic year itself as several of the scheduled classes cannot be met for lack of teachers. Ostensibly to ensure maintenance of standards of instruction, the above-mentioned letters are having precisely the opposite effect and their timing at the beginning of the new academic session just after thousands of new students have taken admission to courses prescribed by the Delhi University has only added further to the academic disruption.

The UGC’s attempt to impose arbitrary workload norms, unmindful of academic requirements, undermines the very basis of the university system. Through gross abuse of its powers as the funding agency, the UGC has threatened colleges with cuts in grants in case they do not submit to its directions in the matter. Several colleges have willingly or reluctantly surrendered to daily intervention by the UGC in their affairs. As a result, a large number of posts that are required to be filled under the workload norms laid down by the Academic Council are not being filled. More alarming is that a large number of teachers who have been working on ad hoc / temporary appointments, often for several years, would face retrenchment and a sizeable section of permanent teachers have already been declared surplus. Such downsizing of teaching posts and similar cuts in non teaching posts and refusal to grant teacher status to librarians will inevitably mean an absolute decline and down grading of the educational system as a whole, and difficulties in the maintenance of educational standards and efficient administration. It is also the most brutal form of disinvestments in education.

In school education, posts have not been filled over the last decade. In each state the number of such posts runs into thousands—in some cases forty to fifty thousand—which have been filled by so called para teachers from the area (in the name of community participation) who do not have the requisite qualifications and are paid a fraction of the salary due a teacher. One does not need much imagination to work out the consequences, particularly as it is quite well known how many other state and other social duties the teachers are required to perform, including election and census duties. This is massive and open disinvestment in school education, besides a huge cut in employment possibilities in the educational sector.

The so called National Curriculum Framework document, as well as the 93rd Amendment Act making education a fundamental right, are very clear that the state will only provide for such education as it can and that forms may vary. The government preference for the non-formal stream is very clear in the two documents, as is the provision for differential education "suitable" for different sections of students (vocational education for tribals and the backward classes and castes, and home making for girls); and with all the talk of gearing education to the needs of globalisation and provision for the state of the art technology in schools it is very clear that disparities even between and within the different streams of the government schools are being consciously designed so to increase, with the state concerning itself only with the privileged.

The real and very valuable benefits of a moderate and judicious use of educational technology can be completely undermined in a set up where the majority of the students have no access to the internet and computer at home, and in a context where disinvestments and privatization of electricity and telephone, the breakdowns of electricity and massive power cuts could render all such euphoria unworkable, and where the language of such communicational signals is completely divorced from the everyday language of the majority of the students, and even teachers.

It is important to see the policy linkages between such ‘advanced’ priorities and the cuts in educational allocations, between the huge allocations of funds for ‘linking up’ and creating computerized networks and the cuts in teaching posts, between those envisaged as givers of knowledge in such a pattern of educational set up and those envisaged as its recipients. It is all part of a grand conspiracy that will yet enable the government to determine and control syllabi far more easily than it does today, just as private channels on the TV are but a replay and rehash of the government view.