An alarming social phenomenon is becoming ubiquitous in the sovereign, socialist, secular and holier-than-thou Republic of India.
When women are assaulted and sexually molested in plain sight by anti-social perverts and deviants, post-independence India’s socialist man, shaped by the heirs of the Mahatma and founding fathers of the Constitution, rarely steps forward to protest and protect them. This was most recently evidenced by the case of the Rohtak sisters who fought back against some youth who molested them in a crowded public bus. Curiously, not a single co-passenger spoke up or intervened on their behalf. Likewise, millions of women citizens are subjected to the bad touch, groping, lewd remarks and worse in public transport and on the ill-planned streets and public spaces of the country’s crowded towns and cities on a daily basis, without protest from the citizenry.
The most charitable explanation of this disturbing phenomenon is that apathetic citizens, shaped by the country’s shabby education system which doesn’t teach students the rights and duties of citizens, don’t wish to become involved with the nation’s notoriously corrupt and callous police and the tardy justice system which might be the outcome of intervention. Yet the plain, insufficiently publicised truth is that it’s the duty of citizens who witness sex crimes and violation of the rights of women and child citizens to voice their protest and if necessary make a citizen’s arrest with no more force than reasonably necessary in the circumstances, and frogmarch the offender(s) to the nearest police station. In India, a cowardly populace shaped by the education system and society in general, rarely discharges this duty.
An insulting observation made by several British administrators and chroniclers who witnessed the partition and other communal riots, was that homo indicus is a cowardly and cunning creature exhibiting bravery and courage only in mobs, seldom singularly.
The rising incidence of gender crimes and the unwillingness of citizens to protect women and children from public harassment on a daily basis, seems to confirm the validity of this contemptuous observation.
In this context, it’s important to note that it’s not only the obligation of self-respecting — especially male — citizens to stand and speak up against anti-socials to reclaim India’s streets and public spaces for law-abiding people of both sexes going about their daily business. It’s also the duty and obligation of the teachers’ community in the country’s classrooms to focus children’s minds on issues related to the equal rights of women under law, and drill norms of civil behaviour and good manners into male students from a young age so they mature into responsible adults respectful of the rights of women citizens.
Fudged issue of learning outcomes
A recent recommendation of a committee constituted by the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) to the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry to review s.16 of the Right to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, which stipulates automatic promotion for all in-school children until class VIII, is a positive development for Indian education. According to the committee headed by former Haryana education minister Geeta Bukkal, representatives of over 20 state governments have proposed cancellation of this provision on the ground that it has adversely affected the quality of students entering secondary education.
While the intention behind s.16 — sparing young children exam stress and humiliation of detention — is laudable, there’s emerging evidence that this liberal provision has diluted education standards, negatively impacting learning outcomes in primary schools countrywide. According to the Annual Status of Education Report 2013 published by the highly-respected education NGO Pratham, the percentage of class V children in rural India who can read class II texts dropped from 52.8 percent in 2009 to 46.9 percent in 2013. Worse, the percentage of class III children who can do simple subtraction sums fell from 33.2 percent in 2010 to a mere 18.9 percent in 2013.
These alarming statistics are clear proof that ill-prepared children are being automatically promoted all the way into the nation’s 200,000 secondary schools and subsequently, tertiary education institutions. With millions of children with weak foundational education being pushed into secondary and higher education institutions, there’s intensifying pressure to dilute testing and assessment standards and systems along the education continuum. Unless adequately qualified school-leavers enter colleges and universities, there’s little hope of India’s rock-bottom shopfloor and field productivity improving in the foreseeable future.
Five years after the ill-drafted RTE Act — the UPA government’s sole education legislation — was hastily implemented, it’s now becoming apparent that its provisions, which focus on inputs/outlays (infrastructure, teacher qualifications, etc) to the neglect of learning outcomes, have played havoc with India’s foundational primary education system. Worldwide, countries compete aggressively to top score in international student assessment tests, and institute major education reforms based on their results.
Consequently s.16 which rules out test and exam outcomes as a precondition of promotion has the potential to inflict further damage to India’s already beleaguered secondary and higher education systems. Against this backdrop, it’s apposite that the newly-elected BJP/NDA government at the Centre is considering cancellation of s.16 of the RTE Act. If the Modi government is at all serious about raising teaching-learning standards in Indian education, it will have to start with addressing the hitherto fudged issue of consistently declining student learning outcomes in primary education. The RTE Act urgently needs mid-course correction and shift of focus from inputs to tangible outcomes in elementary education.