Five-star rents could be cheaper than education!

By Batuk Vora
September 5 is gone. Poll promises and glittering helicopters have faded away. Faces of ‘big’ leaders will no longer be seen. Reality once again stares at the rural and urban poor, at teenagers in particular, when the knowledge age of 21st century is fast descending on earth but they will have hardly any scope to study.

Where are the good education facilities for them? Why is the state washing off its hands from its responsibility?

Why can’t the state raise its education allocation to 6 per cent of the budget? Why is the education department bent upon privatising education?

Have they ever thought about the future, when millions of students will have to drop out on account of the rising cost of learning? Why does the education field only come handy to them for economising when crores are squandered behind non-plan expenditures?

Have they ever considered the fate of 50 per cent teenager girls who will be debarred from education due to the cancellation of free education for women?

Just get back on your stool for a few minutes to look at a series of government resolutions (GRs) issued within the last few months from Gandhinagar:

• A GR of August 28,1998 fiats that deposits of Rs Ito 2 lakh taken from private schools will not be saved with the government but will be returned to them within two years of deposit date;
• All the reservation for ST/SC students in schools will be abolished;
• All non-grant schools can levy whatever fees they think fit from the girls and the government will not compensate the students;
• Non-grant private schools will have the power to charge whatever kind of fees they want to and they will not be forced to get a sanction from district education directors;
• No rules will be imposed on such schools about pay-scales of employees-teachers;
• Schools will bear the obligation of pensions and no approval will be necessary for them to increase the number of classes;
• No approval will be necessary for taking any action against teachers, etc.

Some more GRs were issued on this line later on. A GR of September 9. 1998 made the worst of a reactionary statement that "The government would like to save money spent on education so as to spend the same on development." This means, for this government, education is off from the definition of development. Let all the Amartya Sen’s whoop and wail.

A GR of July 2, 1999 ordains reduction of grants to non-government schools; one more GR in continuation of a GR of June 30, 1999 determined new rates of grants to non-government middle or higher middle schools; there is no word or any GR that would ban any forced donation or extortion’s grabbed from new teachers (such amounts ranging from one to one and a half lakh rupees); another GR of May 18, 1999 is even worse.

It reduces the number of teachers in each class and that will increase the number of students under one teacher from originally 30 and 40 to 60!

This means that no teacher will be able to handle such a large number of students and therefore the quality of education will go down the drains.

Such policy decrees actually come from the World Bank and the IMF.

The BJP claims to be Swadeshi but when it comes to using cellulars or Cielos or implementing super power’s policy they won’t mind to biting the dust.

It does not matter if half of the population remains illiterate or half literate or other half technically unqualified. Information revolution or knowledge age will dawn in this case into the houses of only the affluent.

During a recent visit to rural areas of Saurashtra and Kutch, I found that teeming millions of teenagers just loaf around unemployed.

If the state hands off education field, it will be impossible to differentiate between a school and a grocery shop or a college and a hotel. A right to sit in a class will cost almost a high tariff of a three- or even a five-star hotel room! Kudos to those activists of Save Education Campaign who calls for a "do or die" against such new policy.

Presently, the girls number 59 against 77 boys in middle schools of Gujarat, which is likely to go down further to 25 or 30! Bharat Mata ki Jai!