A circular of the Karnataka state government dated January 28, ordering the managements of the 8,600 unaided private schools affiliated with the state’s Karnataka Secondary Education Examination Board (KSEEB) to buy textbooks for their students solely from the government-promoted Karnataka Textbooks Society (KTS), has been challenged in the high court. The Karnataka State Minority Educational Institutions Management Federation has challenged this out-of-the-blue order through a writ petition which was admitted on February 23 with the government directed to file its response.
The action rose out of a state government circular directing all private unaided schools affiliated with the KSEEB to buy KTS textbooks for classes I-X for the academic year 2010-11 on or before February 28. If this deadline isn’t met, warned the circular, school managements will be penalised for the delay in the distribution of texts as “the textbooks won’t be available in the market”.
“The state government has outsourced the printing of classes I-V Kannada medium textbooks for the academic year 2010-11 valued at Rs.65 crore to a private publishing firm. Now it is openly pressurising unaided schools and parents to buy the texts. KTS has no right to direct managements of private unaided schools to buy textbooks from the society within a limited time period. They have a right to buy them whenever they wish to, if at all,” says G.R. Mohan, counsel for the federation.
According to Mohan, the managements of private unaided schools are not opposed to buying textbooks from the society. But they feel it’s too soon to place orders for books for the next academic year beginning June. “Most schools cannot predict the exact number of textbooks they’ll need as some students may transfer to other schools. Moreover most students also buy second-hand books from their seniors. Textbooks should be available in the market as previously so that parents and students can buy them at their convenience,” says Mohan.
Informed academics in Bangalore discern a hidden motive behind the state government’s unseemly hurry to force unaided school managements to buy and stock KTS texts as soon as possible, unlike earlier, when textbooks were freely available in the marketplace. Its real intent is to indirectly enforce its 1994 medium of instruction policy in all primary schools statewide. Two years ago on July 2, 2008, the Karnataka high court struck down the state government’s 1994 language policy mandating Kannada and/or mother tongue as the medium of instruction in all primary (classes I-V) schools in the state. The high court ruled that the 1994 policy was violative of the fundamental rights of parents and children to opt for a medium of instruction of their choice. The state government’s appeal against this verdict is pending in the Supreme Court. Meanwhile most of the state’s 8,600 private unaided schools are freely teaching in the English medium.
Comments Mohammed Imtiaz, president of the Karnataka State Minority Educational Institutions Management Federation: “Since the high court order of July 2, 2008, all the state’s 8,600 unaided primary schools are teaching the state board syllabus in the English medium, and there are few takers for Kannada language textbooks printed by KTS for 2010-11. However since the general expectation is that the Supreme Court will uphold the high court order, the state government wants to ensure that its 1994 medium of instruction policy will be unofficially extended by one year. We are ready to buy textbooks from the society if they are in English medium.”
Quite obviously fearing that its appeal against the high court judgement striking down its chauvinistic 1994 policy is likely to be rejected by the apex court, the state government/KTS is anxious to make a last killing at the expense of unaided school managements. By issuing the January 28 circular and imposing a tight deadline, it hoped to simultaneously make a killing and punish unaided school managements. But this desperate strategy has been stymied with the high court admitting the federation’s appeal.
Although not often, justice is sometimes seen to be done.
Summiya Yasmeen (Bangalore)