Being the nation’s commercial capital, one would have expected the public of Mumbai to have more native intelligence than to elect and again re-elect in 2007 the Shiv Sena — an unapologetically parochial political party promoted by former cartoonist Bal Thackeray in the 1960s which has since degenerated into an extortionist mafia specialising in dispensing godfather justice — to govern the Brihanmumbai (Greater Mumbai) Municipal Corporation (BMC), the country’s richest civic administration organisation. But evid-ently the native intelligence of urbs prima indis is as much on the wane as its formal education system.
Therefore with a political formation dominated by the Thackeray clan having ruled Mumbai (pop.14 million) for over a decade, it’s hardly surprising that the corporation’s 1,200 primary-secondary schools hosting 450,000 students in Mumbai are in a sorry state. The number of children taken ill after consuming adulterated food distributed under the mid-day meal scheme is rising, and learning outcomes are falling. Between October-December last year, 51 students from three BMC-run schools were hospitalised after consuming adulterated food. Moreover according to Report on Municipal Education in the City of Mumbai, released on December 9 by Praja — a city-based NGO — the percentage of students dropping out of the corporation’s dysfunctional primary schools charact-erised by ramshackle infrastructure, forcible imposition of Marathi as the medium of instruction, poor quality texts authored by ill-qualified party ideo-logues, and chronic teacher truancy, rose by 6.63 percent to 27,572 in 2009-10.
Comments Nitai Mehta, founder-director of Praja (estb. 1998): “In its annual report for 2009-10, BMC states that Rs.1,431.14 crore of its annual budget of Rs. 20, 417.31 crore was spent on teacher training, upgradation of school infrastructure, improvement in the quality of education delivered and student welfare measures. But there’s no indication where this money has gone. As it is, there are only 42 secondary municipal schools in the city offering class VIII-X education. The remainder 1,162 are primaries offering class I-VII education. So where is the infrastructure that BMC claims to have been building and upgrading? Moreover what sort of teacher training has BMC been providing if there is a continuous rise in student drop-out percentages, and the class X completion percentage of BMC schools is a mere 62 percent against Mumbai all-schools average of 89 percent? And the recent cases of food-adulteration makes one wonder if the BMC is really concerned about the welfare of students. So where has the Rs.1,431.14 crore of the education budget gone?”
Clearly maharashtra’s education minister Rajendra Darda, who took charge on November 19 from Balasaheb Thorat who had drawn up fancy plans to introduce a child tracking system with unique identity numbers and launch an e-compliant system for parents and teachers to lodge complaints online, has to focus his attention on basic issues such as placing BMC schools back on track and finalising the state Rules to implement the Right to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009. Moreover the tuition fees hike issue in private schools (parents have been demanding a law by the state government to control tuition fees) is also pending resolution with the managements of private unaided schools opposing fee controls as an erosion of their autonomy. Admits an official of the education ministry: “We realise we have a lot of issues to address. But it will take time to settle all of them as the new education minister has recently assumed office.”
In short, in India’s most industrialised state and the nation’s commercial capital, things are likely to get worse for the education system before they get better.
Swati Roy (Mumbai)
Task force visit
According to all indications, the University of Pune (UoP, estb. 1949) is set to get fresh accreditation and rating of the Bangalore-based National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) in mid-January, when the council’s executive committee meets to take a final call on the accreditation and re-accreditation proposals of several higher education institutions countrywide. A ten-member task force headed by S.P. Thyagarajan, former vice chancellor of Madras University, visited the UoP campus on December 21-23 for on-site inspection of the infrastructure, facilities, and allied facilitation services detailed in the university’s pre-visit reports to the council.
Almost a decade ago in 2002 when it was assessed for the first time, UoP was accorded the council’s highest five-star rating. The rating was awarded for a five-year period which ended in 2007. Under the reaccreditation process, NAAC (estb.1994), which has become more demanding in the interim, will assess UoP’s performance, infrastr-ucture and academic development during the period 2002-2009.
Thyagarajan and other members of the peer review team also held wide-ranging discussions with stakeholders including students, teachers, faculty members and non-teaching staff. During their interaction with the task force, students raised issues relating to inadequate infrastructure in certain on-campus establishments, poor canteen facilities, inadequate water supply, and poor toilet facilities in hostels, besides the need for library staff to put in longer hours. The lacuna of an efficient internal transportation service for students within the sprawling 411-acre UoP campus was also discussed, while foreign students called for better and simplified administrative processes.
“We have prepared a draft report detailing our observations and have obtained vice chancellor R.K. Shevga-onkar’s comments on our report which was discussed with him. The report will now be placed before the NAAC executive committee for final approval and rating of UoP,” Thyagarajan informed your correspondent adding that NAAC’s rating will be conveyed to the university in mid-January.
Although all academic civilities were maintained and a certain bonhomie was evident during the peer team/task force’s three day sojourn at UoP — after all the assessment team comprised ‘peers’ i.e. serving academics from other universities — the peer team was not entirely satisfied. Speaking on the sidelines of an interaction with the media, in an oblique criticism of the UoP management, Thyagarajan observed that there was need for universities to file their internal quality assurance (IQA) reports annually to enable smooth reaccreditation by NAAC at the end of the five-year period. He stressed that NAAC’s revised norms for assessment and accreditation make it mandatory for (voluntarily) assessed colleges and universities to install internal and external quality assurance (IQA/EQA) mechanisms. “IQA reports are required to be sent to NAAC every year, while the EQA reports must be sent every three years,” he explained.
Nevertheless within UoP the general expectation is that the 62-year-old varsity will retain its five-star rating. Identified by the University Grants Commission (UGC) as one of the country’s top five universities with potential for excellence in 2005, UoP has over 520 colleges and 300 recognised institutes spread across Pune, Ahmed-nagar and Nashik districts with an aggregate enrolment of 650,000 students affiliated with it. Moreover it attracts more foreign students than any other varsity countrywide — 14,000 according to Dr. Vasudha Garde, director, Interna-tional Students Centre — and its Jayakar Library boasts a repository of 422,000 volumes and 1,000 journal subscrip-tions. These factors undoubtedly impr-essed members of the peer team comprising academics from lesser endowed institutions of higher education.
Huned Contractor (Pune)