The New Education Policy completely ignores the most fundamental issue that afflicts education in our country. It claims to provide education to the historically marginalised, disadvantaged and underrepresented groups but ends up with a strategy that will further marginalise such groups.
It shows no intention to recognise the right of every child to qualify education irrespective of her class or caste. It completely ignores the need to replace the prevalent multiple system of schooling with a uniform school system for children of the poorest to children of the richest. "Our constitution provides for equality of opportunity. But growing inequality in access to quality education has meant that children of the poor would always remain poor.
I welcome the decision of the Government to provide 27% reservation to OBC students in medical education but at the same time I urge to the Central Government and specifically to the Prime Minister to increase the reservation limit from 10% for the economically backward students under EWS category. There is a pool of talents who are denied to pursue medical education because of poverty. But the real talent can get justice if not given a chance to study. The NEP is a part of a strategy to stabilize social and economic inequalities by denying to Dalits, adivasis, peasants, workers and other poor persons any chance of upward social mobility through education. The policy is a blueprint for further privatization and commercialization of education that would take good quality education beyond the reach of the marginalized sections.
The Government seems to have abdicated its constitutional responsibility to provide equal educational opportunity to all, which violates the basic fundamental rights under Right to Life (Article-21). The NEP is highly discriminatory and opens the path for more private investment including foreign investment that would make education too expensive for the poor to buy. Wealthy investors have reasons to rejoice as the expanding education market will fetch them lucrative profits.
What else can be expected of a Government committed to serve the rich at the expense of the poor? I am in doubt whether another Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Swami Dayananda Saraswati, Utkalmani Gopabandhu Das and Utkalgaurav Madhusudan Das will born in this century or not, who had sacrificed their entire life for reforming educational system and given equal opportunity to everybody. Providing the technical and medical education in regional language in my opinion will reduce the competitiveness of the Indian students with the global students.
(Patnaik is PCC president)
