GIVEN HER BLOOMERS AND BLOOPERS, former Miss India contestant and television soaps star Smriti Irani, the surprise choice as Union human resource development (HRD) — aka education — minister of the BJP-led government at the Centre which was sworn in on May 26, is proving less inspired by the day. Morale in the shady groves of Indian academia, particularly Delhi’s academy, is hitting new lows as the aggressive minister commits one gaffe after another and makes media headlines with monotonous regularity, for all the wrong reasons.
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The latest embarrassment caused by the HRD ministry to the seven-month-old Narendra Modi government in Delhi, is the abrupt resignation of IIT-Delhi director Prof. R.K. Shevgaonkar two years before the end of his term. According to the buzzing academic grapevine, Shevgaonkar was under pressure from the HRD ministry to permit the establishment of a Sachin Tendulkar cricket academy on the sprawling IIT-D campus, and also agree to an out-of-court settlement to pay BJP spokesperson Dr. Subramaniam Swamy a lump-sum of Rs.90 lakh.
A former lecturer at IIT-D (1969-72), Swamy has a suit pending against the institute for firing him from his job for being critical of Indira Gandhi some 35 years ago. As is normative in the snail-paced Indian justice system, the case is still pending hearing. According to informed sources, Irani is in favour of an out-of-court settlement of the pending suit.
However ministry spokespersons deny these “rumours”. Instead an elaborate story detailing how Shevgaonkar had unauthorisedly helped the Mauritius government to establish an IIT-D-style technology institute has been leaked to the press, implying that the IIT-D director had committed a grave offence in lending a helping hand to a friendly government in Mauritius which has an Indian majority population.
Just a few days earlier on December 10, the HRD ministry issued a circular to all Central government-funded schools and colleges to celebrate Christmas day, a national holiday traditionally celebrated as the birthday of Jesus Christ countrywide and internationally, as Good Governance Day to honour BJP stalwart and former prime minister (1999-2004) Atal Behari Vajpayee, also born on Christmas day. This brazen bid of the minister to devalue Xmas aroused national indignation and was widely interpreted as an insult to the country’s 24-million Christian community and to the large number of missionary-run schools and colleges across the nation. Confronted with a huge media and academia outcry, Irani was forced to issue a statement that the ministry had not intended to force children to attend school on Christmas day but had invited voluntary online essays on the subject of good governance.
These are only the latest of Irani’s ill-considered initiatives which have aroused widespread suspicion that the new HRD minister is a closet sevak (disciple) of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the cultural parent of the BJP and a motley group of hindutva organisations which aspire to transform constitutionally secular India into a Hindu rashtra (nation).
Although government spokespersons ridicule this allegation, it might perhaps explain Irani’s October 22 circular to all 1,000 Central government-funded Kendriya Vidyalaya schools to drop the study of German in the middle of the academic year and learn Sanskrit, the ancient language of Hindu texts, instead. In this matter as well after a huge public outcry, a protest by the German government and a writ petition filed in the Supreme Court, the minister had to backtrack and clarify that students won’t be tested in Sanskrit this year.
Although a consultation with educators and academics on this issue has been scheduled for January by the HRD minister, academics are critical of “muddle-headedness about decisions regarding education”. “Are there enough trained Sanskrit teachers for Sanskrit classes? Toying with the curriculum in mid-term is unpardonable,” comments Prof. Apoorvanand, professor of Hindi at Delhi University.
Indeed right from the day (May 27) when Irani was sworn in as Modi’s ace in the pack minister for the critical HRD ministry, she has been in the media headlines. First, for having falsely declared in 2004 to the Election Commission that she was an arts graduate, and then immediately after assuming office, for pressurising the University Grants Commission to direct Delhi University to rescind its four year undergraduate programme. Moreover officials in the HRD ministry whisper about her high-handedness and dictatorial attitude.
The 15th anniversary issue of EducationWorld lamented that Shastri Bhavan, which houses the Union HRD ministry and by extension rules the country’s 450 million children, has been obliged to suffer four successive ineffective — a euphemism for incompetent — HRD ministers. The signs are that it’s about to suffer the fifth.
Somdev Thakur (Delhi)
Overdue initiative
Widely regarded as the Achilles heel of Indian education, reform of the country’s moribund teacher training system has appeared on the radar of the seven-month-old BJP-led NDA government in Delhi. To commemorate the 153rd birth anniversary on December 25, of freedom fighter and educationist Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya (1861-1946), a four-term president of the Indian National Congress and Hindu nationalist who founded the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in 1915, the Union government launched a Rs.900 crore scheme for improving teacher quality while posthumously bestowing independent India’s highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna upon Malviya.
Christened the Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya National Mission (PMMMNM) on Teachers and Teaching, and implemented by the Union HRD ministry, the umbrella scheme will create synergies between various ongoing initiatives to upgrade teacher education. The mission will focus on teacher education across the spectrum without fragmenting programmes based on levels and sectors such as school, higher, and technical education. It proposes the establishment of 30 Schools of Education (in Central universities); 50 Centres of Excellence for curriculum and pedagogy development, two Inter-University Centres for Teachers’ Education, a National Resource Centre for Education, five Centres for Academic Leadership and Education Management besides making provision for innovations, awards, teaching resource grants, workshops and seminars, and networks for curricular renewal and reforms.
“The mission envisages to address (sic) comprehensively all issues related to teachers, teaching, teacher preparation, professional development, curriculum design, designing and developing assessment and evaluation methodology, research in pedagogy and developing effective pedagogy,” says a statement issued by the HRD ministry. Against the backdrop of a reported 54 percent faculty shortage in higher education and a shortfall of 1.2 million school teachers, with many primary schools being single-teacher institutions, the PMMMNM has been welcomed by the country’s beleaguered teachers community as an overdue initiative.
“DIETS (district institutes of education and training) don’t have sufficient staff to provide regular training to rural school teachers. New teachers are not recruited and ad hoc appointments are the norm in Indian education across the spectrum. Moreover, 90 percent of pre-service teacher education is provided by private teacher training colleges, most of whom are mere degree vending shops. Therefore, this mission which promises to repair this damage, is certainly welcome,” says Dr. R.C. Dabas, vice-president of the All India Primary Teachers Federation and also principal of Nigam Pratibha Vidyalaya, Janak Puri (New Delhi).
However, while welcoming the attention belatedly given to this neglected issue, seasoned teacher educators express scepticism about grand plans and missions involving huge expenditure. “India needs clear ideas and imaginative plans. The challenge is of effective resource deployment for better learning outcomes. Unfortunately teachers are taught what is teaching rather than how to teach. Moreover most teachers have to cope with large numbers of children and work under the constraints of shoddy curriculums, poor infrastructure and shortage of other resources. We need to train them to work effectively within the context of these constraints. Also we need to find ways and means to rapidly train teachers and provide them continuous in-service training rather than through the formal degree/diploma route. I hope that the PMMMNM programme will be sufficiently flexible to accommodate this requirement of Indian school education,” says Maya Menon, promoter-director of the Teacher Foundation, Bangalore.
With the mission’s examination already started, its implementation and outcomes will determine whether the PMMMNM programme is just a commemorative event to celebrate a forgotten hero, or a well-conceptualised plan to put the country’s fallen teacher education system back on its feet.
Autar Nehru (Delhi)