People's Democracy

SITARAM YECHURY’S SPEECH IN RAJYA SABHA

Amendment Necessary For Equality & Secularism

Following is the full text of the speech delivered by CPI(M) Polit Bureau member, Sitaram Yechury, while participating in the discussion in Rajya Sabha on the Constitution Amendment Bill on Education on December 22, 2005.

I RISE in support of this Constitution Amendment Bill. And the reason why I rise in support of this bill is that two essential elements, which, in my opinion, constitute the essence of the republican character of the country, are the questions of equality and secularism. But in our country  s context, equality and secularism cannot be separated from each other. And that is precisely why I think we must recollect today that during the last days of the Constituent Assembly, Babasaheb Ambedkar had warned all of us saying that the Constitution that we are adopting gives one man, one vote  , but the economic and social structure that we have in our country does not give one man, one value  . And unless you convert this one man, one vote   into one man, one value  , the entire political structure that we have built, even that is perilously threatened. This warning was given more than 50 years ago, but, unfortunately, we have still a long way to go on this. Reservation for the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and the OBCs is only a part measure in our opinion. Though we support it fully, it is not the final solution for the upliftment of these sections, without whose upliftment we cannot really preserve even the political democracy we have, forget the question of equality. Therefore, I rise to support this principle of reservations in these private institutions from the point of view of the fundamental tenets of our Constitution. I think that is the basis on which this amendment has been made.

SPENDING & RESOURCES

Secondly, I think, while making these provisions, it has been rightly pointed out earlier as to why this menace has actually occurred in the field of private unaided educational institutions, particularly, the professional colleges. I do not want to repeat what has already been said. But the basic point, unfortunately, has not emerged in the debate. The privatisation and commercialisation of higher education in our country is taking place precisely because of the abdication of the state and the central governments in spending in this sphere. The more the State is withdrawing, the greater is the space you are providing for privatisation and commercialisation of education. Now since they have come, they need to be brought under social control. We want that to happen. We support this. But, at the same time, we should also wake up to the fact that during the last ten years, the amount that is being spent on higher education is less than 0.5 per cent of the GDP. The National Common Minimum Programme today talks of allocating six per cent of the GDP for education as a whole. It is good. Last year, the government put an educational cess. But what it is going to do with the money, we don  t know yet. We want that to be clearly stated. But the point is: When are we going to achieve spending on education this six per cent of our GDP? Unless we achieve this, we will not be in a position to actually tackle the problem of privatisation and commerciali-sation in our country. And that is where I want the minister and the government to give us this assurance that we will move in this direction. I say this also because of the fact that we have to remember that demographically, today India is one of the youngest countries in the world. Fifty four per cent of India  s population is below 25 years of age. This is our asset and, unfortunately, I don't know whether the government is thinking about of laying of more emphasis on controlling the population and treating it as a liability. But unless we treat our population as an asset, unless we educate them, unless we empower them, India cannot be an emerging country in the world. We have this vision of India being such a country in the 21st century. That can be translated into reality only when we empower our youth; and to empower our youth, we have to invest in it. Professor Radhakrishnan, when he headed Radhakrishnan Commission, said, those who say this is an unnecessary expenditure, I would like to warn them that this is the investment in our country  s future. And it is that investment in our country  s future that is lacking today.

In spite of that, today, the world has woken up and is a little worried that during the last year, India has produced more professionally trained manpower than the whole of the European Union put together. In spite of our meagre resources and decline in spending, we still have that intellectual manpower which can take on the world. If we want to strengthen that, we will have to move in the right direction. I want this government to give an assurance that we will have six per cent of our GDP for spending on education. To give this argument that we do not have resources, I would like to mention and want to go on record to state that during these last ten years of liberalisation we had in our country, our tax-GDP ratio is reduced from being close to 11 to 8. I am sure Jairam Ramesh is here and he will confirm. Every single percentage point of your GDP is close to Rs 40,000 crore, that is every year, we are losing Rs 1,20,000 crore which used to be our revenue. These are the concessions you are giving to the rich. Instead of that, in this Rs 1,20,000 crore, in every year, we could have built, at least, 15 IITs in our country. We once built all the five IITs in one plan period. After that, we have to immediately address ourselves. We will not be able to solve this problem of privatisation and commercialisation unless we are able to expand our financial allocations for education.

FISCAL FUNDAMENTALISM

We want the government to give us an assurance because we have seen, in the recent past also, the rise of religious fundamentalism. I am not going into that now. But there is also, I am afraid, something called fiscal fundamentalism  . Our government often says that there are no resources and they do not want to enter into a fiscal deficit. But the point is, resources can be invested and economists will tell us that deficit will ever be a problem if you do not have supply constraints. You have huge foreign exchange reserves; you have huge amount of foodgrains in you godowns. Why is this government afraid of spending on a sphere like education? That we do not know. My point here is that we support this amendment because we think that all these educational institutions must be brought under social control. We consider this as an enabling amendment and enabling provisions, on the basis of which the states that means, the parliament and the state legislatures must enact laws. In doing so, I would urge the government that we want the government to bring under the ambit of legislation the element of social control, whereby not only the question of reservation and admission policy, but the question of meritorious students begin admitted, the question of fee structure and the salary structure of the teacher, and the question of course content are included. All these must be brought under social control through appropriate legislation. This sort of a social control and legislation must follow soon and no delay must be brooked so that by the time the next academic session begins, we have this law in action. And then when we have this law in action, according to that, these institutions must be brought under it.

PROTECT ARTICLE 31

My other point here is regarding Article 31. Much debate has taken place and I do not wish that any provision in the Constitution or any amendment to the Constitution, in any way, either directly or indirectly, undermines Article 31. The reason why I am saying this is because equality and secularism are two fundamental pillars and it  s a matter of our pride.

There are a greater number of Muslim minorities in our country even after the partition, in fact more than the population of Pakistan. We are the second largest in the world, after Indonesia. It is a mater of pride.

How can we stop this misuse? Ho do you prevent the commercialisation of education? The commodification of education, the profit making through education by misusing this provision of Article 31 of the Constitution is a matter of concern to which we must apply our mind. And when this legislation comes through with the legislation that must follow, what we would urge is that since this is an enabling provision, the state legislatures when they enact the law must have the right to decide which are the institutions that will be prohibited by this amendment, and which are the institutions which may be permitted by this amendment and given that minority status, and which are the institutions where reservation need not apply. But that should be an exception rather than the rule. To that extent, the state legislatures will have to take up this matter when they make their laws. So, therefore, what I am urging the government now, while supporting this amendment is that, we should think about the genuine concerns, and how this amendment should not be allowed to be misused must be kept in mind.

This provision of the minority institutions and adequate legal position for it must be taken up in that regard. In saying this, I would like to draw the attention of the House to another aspect. When I said the reservation alone is not the final solution for the actual social empowerment and economic empowerment of the backward classes and the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, there should also be a provision whereby these sections can be drawn towards the education system. The facts and the statistics are actually very miserable. Despite reservations, today, in many of these institutions, the number of people from these sections who are actually availing of this benefit and coming up is abysmally low. Now, for this, a certain amount of monitoring or a certain amount of economic support would also have to be conceived in order to achieve this purpose, which is very crucially needed in our country. Therefore, I repeat that they are our assets. Our youth is our asset that has to be socially, economically and intellectually empowered, and for the intellectual empowerment, which is our biggest asset, in the future to come we will have to take adequate measures through a legislation, which this amendment will enable us to make. Hence, I would like to urge upon the minister that all these provisions must be brought under this legislation, and let us not get bogged down on the question of the definition of minority institutions. As I said earlier, the legislation will have to take care of that particular aspect because, it is a matter of serious concern that they should not misuse this provision. And, I would finally ask the government to also ensure that the Directive Principles of State Policy that we have in Article 46, which states that the State shall promote with special care the educational and economic interests of the weaker sections of the people, and in particular, of the scheduled castes and the scheduled tribes, and shall protect them from social injustice and all forms of exploitation is implemented. Now, this is a Directive Principle, yet I urge that our aim should be to implement all these noble ideas that are there in the Directive Principles. In order to implement them, we want the government to come up with a specific legislation soon enough so that in the coming academic year we will be able to implement this. With this in mind, I once again state that I support this amendment.