THE RECENT victory of the bjp-led NDA alliance which bagged 42 of Maharashtra’s quota of 48 seats in the Lok Sabha, has generated tremors within the tranquil groves of academia in Maharashtra (pop. 112 million) — India’s most industrially advanced state. Now the general expectation is that the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance will sweep the state legislative assembly elections scheduled for October.
Within Maharashtra’s academy, memories relating to the BJP/Shiv Sena’s reckless interference with school and college syllabuses during the time when the alliance ruled the state (1999-2004) are still green. Not a few academics recall that the then Union HRD minister Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi had proposed the introduction of Vedic astrology as a “scientific discipline” in Indian universities, and that the Shiv Sena had forced Mumbai University to drop Rohinton Mistry’s highly acclaimed novel Such a Long Journey from its English literature reading list for allegedly painting the late Shiv Sena leader Bal Thackeray in bad light.
The managements of Christian minority institutions are also nervous following the outburst of Dr. (Fr) Frazer Mascarenhas, principal of Mumbai’s top-ranked St. Xavier’s College, who sparked a nationwide controversy by sending out an open letter to his students in April, highlighting flaws of prime minister Narendra Modi’s much-trumpeted Gujarat model of development. Unsurprisingly, Dr. Mascarenhas was unwilling to conjecture about the future of the academy under BJP-Shiv Sena rule in Maharashtra. “I am confident the new Maharashtra government whatever its ideology, will continue to support education,” he said, when contacted by EducationWorld. However the fact that St. Xavier’s is an ‘aided’ college whose faculty and staff salaries bill is footed by the state government, is undoubtedly a cause for worry.
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Certainly, Maharashtra’s 12.85 million children need all the support they can get. The latest Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2013, published by reputed education NGO Pratham, indicates that primary learning outcomes — particularly numeracy — in Maharashtra are woefully low, and that a swelling number of students from government schools are desperately signing up with private institutions. Moreover the implementation of the landmark Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, is in a shambles. For instance, only 23,099 of 103,000 primary schools in the state are fully compliant with infrastructure norms prescribed by s.19 of the RTE Act.
However, Dr. Vandana Lulla, director of Podar International School, is of the opinion that the BJP is serious about improving and upgrading Indian education. “Narendra Modi, the newly-elected prime minister, has given top priority to clearing several education Bills pending in Parliament. Some of them such as the Foreign Education Institutions and NCHER Bills are very important. I believe if voted to power, the BJP-Shiv Sena alliance will also focus on important issues. We shouldn’t expect less,” she says.
Hope springs eternal.
Nadia Lewis (Mumbai)