Rev. Dr. Sebastian Ousepparampil, M.A., M.P.H., PhD.
Principal, St. Josephs College, Jakhama, Nagaland. India.
The National Education Policy of Ministry of Human Resource Development of India needs to be reviewed from different perspectives. If we look back at the education policy of successive governments of India, so far, and the way this government looked at our present scenario of education we can easily understand that we have miserably failed in the draft policy to address the most glaring challenges we face in higher education. For we have lost in the Global Competitiveness of our educational institutions. The realisation that our universities figured nowhere in the list of first 200 universities when the Global Professional Assessment was made, is a sobering factor, for us to consider in our contemporary scenario. I think, in the context of the draft National Education Policy, we are not making any serious efforts to bridge the gap between the International and National scenario in education today. Here in India, it is the private sector that can claim the best performance and the draft NEP is just stifling the little freedom that they have and it is true in both - Health and Education sectors. In India, we had successive governments who had the most successful self-defeating policies and that are why today we are in this scenario.
At the dawn of independence we have only 26 universities and 695 colleges and have risen to 574 universities and 35,539 colleges today. We certainly marched forward in the quantity of our educational institutions but the prospects for our students in the National and International arena to be competitive have been lost. It is true that the enrolment rate has increased and so the literacy rate has also showed significant improvement.
Globalisation, privatisation and to a certain extent liberalisation has especially made higher education a commodity beyond the purview of ordinary people. Today we witness the corporatisation of education and have become a segment meant for the cream of the society. Today in India, every sphere of our life is politicised and so to education. Consequent to this factor there is no level playing ground in the educational sector and the new policy has not even considered this aspect. In a country where nothing moves but time and nothing grows but corruption, unless and until, we have a policy of related input and output and the financial support of the government flows to the segment that performs, there will be no substantial change or improvement. When this policy of input and output is enshrined that will ensure a professional approach to education and it will ensure a ground breaking change. And for this we need a government that will not play politics with the lives of our children.
The new Education Policy has made an attempt to segregate students according to performance without taking into consideration their background and consequently gross injustice will be done to students who have innate capacities bud did not have the opportunities for developing the same. So too, the proposal to have uniform curriculum and uniform examination system can do enormous harm to several segments of students. Further the document has a negative tone to the teachers.
Going back to curricula and glorification of Gurugula curricula need to be reviewed according to the impact it had made in the society and in history. The document also has done historical injustice to those segments of the society who had struggled hard to universalise education and to bring modern education to India. It looks as if a deliberate and malicious attempt had been made for some unknown vested interest I suppose.
India is producing highest number of graduates who are unemployable. Sanskritization and Gurugula education will only produce more and more graduates who are unemployable and we need to understand these factors as a historical truth. In this aspect the draft should have looked at the best practices of high performing educational institutions. This most important factor is completely and deliberately overlooked in the draft. There is an unmistakeable eagerness in the draft to interfere with the rights of the minorities to establish, admit and administer minority rights institution. It is a gross injustice to the minority rights and thus negates the basic fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution. In fact, in the given situation the government policy should enable and support to create easy access to education for all sections. The government should have been pro-active to those educational institutions that have been established in educationally underserved areas of our country whereas the government policy is trying to eliminate those who are reaching out to the marginalised and the poor instead of complimenting those who have made tremendous efforts and invested huge amount of resources to create meaningful access to education through their effort. After several 5 year plans and input in educational policies we have not been able to reach out even to 10% of the youth population.
The new policy has endorsed affiliating system of education and everyone who take a cursory look at higher education can easily understand that this affiliating system has not brought quality to our educational institutions. And even when everyone in the world has rejected this system the new education policy is trying to strengthen this policy instead of creating greater academic freedom to the sector. It is high time that we understand this blunder and move towards autonomous system in our Higher Educational Institutions. Only when there is academic freedom quality can improve and there are concrete blocks of historical facts to supporting this stance and needs only a cursory look at what IIMs and IITs have done and their track records. It is terribly disgusting to note that in the document there is not a mention of Autonomous College and Deemed to be University, institutions that had made tremendous contributions in modernisation of quality education in the globalised world and this kind of self-defeating policies are denying basic bare minimum opportunities to our students to be a competitive graduate in the Globalized world of today and any right thinking person will understand the depth of injustice that can be perpetuated through this policy.
Internationalisation should be left to the individual institutions and government should support these initiatives by the competent educational institutions that can stand up to the competitive institutions in the international arena.
Strange enough, the document does not speak about professional education, and that is one of the key areas that need to be addressed. Our post graduate educational institutions failed in grading up in the arena of international education mainly in this important sector.
Community Colleges around the world have prepared employable graduates and thus have created useful citizens and our policy document is completely silent on the community college. This document is again silent on professional education. I really do not understand how the policy document can be silent on these vitally important aspects of Higher Education.
There is a clear attempt to corporatize higher education and we certainly know that, who are going to get higher education, and at what price. In the globalised world, internationalization is the only way to measure and improve standards and limiting the international education just for 200 institutions is a blunder and will only increase corruption in the field of higher education.
After 69 years of independence, education and health remains inaccessible, unaffordable and not-sustainable. And in the ultimate analysis this policy will not help to improve any of these situations and so we need to make radical changes in this policy. We have come to a state where we need to base our policy on the philosophy of universal education rather than look at the past. However, we need to understand that we need to take into account the cultural ethos of our nation. One single truth outweighs the whole world and this document has not been true to the history of education in India and it is tilted towards the rich and has offered practically nothing to the marginalized and the poor. The analysis of the problem in the educational sector was in right direction but the policy has, just moved away, from working out solutions. Accreditation and assessment has to become scientific and quality will not be achieved without it.
The policy has to embrace an inclusive outlook and not narrow minded approach. All through the document this narrow minded outlook is present. It is here we challenge the focus of the draft policy and we need to restate that inclusive education is much more than - big institutions. The policy should steer education and its support mechanisms of health care and transport towards small towns and villages and to be focussed on the needs of the poor and the marginalized.
The greatest harm that has been done to this country was the licenceraj policy we followed for the first five decades after independence. This draft policy carries the hangover of that policy in its depths, especially when our country needs the greatest decentralization at this moment.
The minority rights have been trampled without any qualm of conscience and thus have made the constitution void. There has to be an insistence on constitutional values and ethics.
The draft policy is highly bureaucratic a factor that had denied and destroyed every opportunity for Indians to progress in the past and made our society corrupt beyond description.
