Education News

Violent reaction

The landmark August 12 judgement of the Supreme Court reaffirming the abolition of the policy of admission reservations and government quotas in private, unaided minority and non-minority professional colleges, has provoked a verbally violent reaction from the Tamil Nadu state government.

Jayalalithaa: nationalisation threat

Meanwhile the Tamil Nadu govern-ment has filed a petition in the apex court seeking a review of its judgement. Jayalalithaa has also written to prime minister Manmohan Singh to take urgent action to restore education to the state list of the Constitution so that every state can determine its own policy framework.

The mercurial chief minister’s violent reaction to the seven judge bench’s judgement in P.A. Inamdar & Ors vs State of Maharashtra is hardly surprising. Tamil Nadu (pop: 62 million) has 220 private unaided engineering colleges affiliated to Anna University, two private medical colleges and an estimated 100 dental and para medical colleges. The Tamil Nadu Act 45 of 1994 provides for the reservation of 69 percent of total capacity in these institutions for scheduled castes, tribes, backward castes, most backward castes, and other notified communities.

During the past decade, the number of seats available in government aided institutions has been only a small proportion of the total since most of the growth in technical and medical education has been in the private unaided segment. This year the number of seats available in government and aided engineering colleges is a mere 4,850 of a total of 78,000, of which about 40,500 were hitherto available to the state government for allocation according to the reservation policy. But when the Inamdar’s Case judgement comes into force next year, merit students in the reserved categories will have to compete for the 4,850 seats with the rest of the seats to be filled by institutional managements. According to Jayalalithaa this effectively shuts the door upon scheduled castes, tribes and MBC (most backward caste) students.

"Opening these seats up again for government quotas ahead of the next state assembly elections scheduled for 2006, will translate into a huge bonus in terms of the non-urban and minority votes for the chief minister. That’s why the Tamil Nadu government has filed a petition in the apex court seeking a review of the Supreme Court judge-ment," says D. Victor, former director of collegiate education in Tamil Nadu and currently director of the Chennai-based Academy for Quality and Excellence in Higher Education.

Understandably, the managements of unaided or self-financing colleges (as they are known in Tamil Nadu) are glad to be free of the Tamil Nadu Professional Courses Entrance Examination (TNPCEE) and the single window admission system of Anna University. They also welcome the abolition of the complex reservations matrix. "Now we will admit students purely on merit and concentrate on development of our colleges. We are not unduly worried about state takeover of private colleges. When the government does not have the finances for welfare measures, how can they afford to takeover private colleges?" asks Rathnasabapathy, principal, Vellammal Engineering College, Chennai.

All said and done, educationists in this prospering southern state have welcomed the Supreme Court judgement as fair and reasonable. Even though it has abolished state government quotas in unaided institutions, the apex court has reinforced state supervision of academic standards and of merit and transparency in the admission process for the benefit of the student community. It has also recommended that admissions be regulated through a centralised common entrance test and the single window procedure while imposing a strict ban on collection of capitation fees and profiteering by colleges. The general sentiment is that the Tamil Nadu government should respect the judgement and negotiate voluntary quotas for scheduled caste and tribe students in unaided professional colleges and get on with the other business of government.

But in the overheated crucible of Tamil Nadu’s caste-driven politics, good sense is seldom good politics.

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)

School health initiative

In a marked departure from their excessive academic focus, Delhi’s private schools are beginning to pay attention to the physical and mental well-being of their stressed out students. Some 20 schools in the national capital have signed up for a Good Food Programme (GFP) enlisting the services of nutritionists at the All-India Institute of Medical Research (AIIMR) and renowned ecologist Dr. Vandana Shiva. The programme — which will devise a balanced, palatable alternative to oily traditional canteen food — will also prescribe healthy snacks for sale in Delhi’s school canteens.

This major initiative to keep "unhealthy junk food" out of schools will soon be extended to all schools in Delhi and later to the whole of north India. GFP will also offer an alternative for street children and provide advice to schools in neighbouring Pakistan to eat healthy. "The idea behind the exercise," explains Dr. Vandana Shiva, "is to introduce healthy eating habits to genext. India has immense bio-diversity in terms of nutritional grains, vegetables and fruits which is getting lost amidst the new fast-food culture. We want to sensitise young minds about this natural wealth."

GFP will also redesign school canteen menus, conduct health check-ups for students and organise health quizzes. Moreoever it plans a novel "edible school yards" programme to include creation of biodiversity gardens, inform students about ecology, biodiversity, health and nutrition. But clearly, the most interesting component of GFP will be its Little Chefs programme which will teach students to rustle up simple, healthy snacks and meals. As part of the programme, students will also be kept updated about latest dietary fads and how much to exercise.

The GFP initiative is overdue considering urban India is ranked among the top 10 most obese communities of the world and has the largest number of diabetics of any country. "Our study has shown that in Delhi 50-80 percent of obese children — especially in private schools — go on to become obese adults," says Dr. Anoop Mishra, head of the Diabetic Foundation (India chapter) which is a partner in the GFP initiative.

Keeping a similar concern in mind for students’ mental health, about 150 private schools in Delhi have committed themselves to setting up mental health clinics on their premises. The project is being finalised by the schools in consultation with the Adolescent and Child Care Centre of VIMHANS (Vidya Sagar Institute of Mental Health and Neurological Studies) under its Expressions programme. A six-year survey conducted by VIMHANS has indicated that 5-10 percent of Delhi’s students need clinical care for mental health problems including depression and anxiety. The study also found that only 10 percent of surveyed schools had their own counsellors.

Shiva: natural food wealth

Comments Dr. Jitendra Nagpal, a renowned psychiatrist and in-charge of the Expressions programme at VIMHANS: "The programme will be ongoing and will help teachers to assess children. Students will also be involved in peer education while regular feedback will also be sought from parents. Hence, all three parties will form a holistic and integral part of the intervention."

Neeta Lal (Delhi)

Muslim facts file

Post 9/11 and more recently 7/7, rife and high-pitched voices against the evil ideology (as British prime minister Tony Blair describes it) of Islamic extremism have kicked off a serious debate within the Muslim world on the issue of terrorism. Moderation, democratisation and integration of Muslim minorities into host societies is increasingly being regarded as the antidote against terror perpetuated by Islamic terrorists around the world.

With the second largest Muslim population in the world, India suffered from Pakistan sponsored Islamic terrorism much before the world started acknowledging it. Though Muslim issues have remained at the heart of Indian polity since the bloody partition of the subcontinent in 1947, the great majority of Indian Muslims, fully integrated into the mainstream, make valuable contributions in all segments of the economy. However there’s no denying that this major minority has had to suffer more than its share of discrimination in post-independence India.

Consequently prime minister Manmohan Singh’s constitution of a high level committee to compile a socio-economic and educational profile of India’s 120 million Muslims is being widely welcomed. "This is the first time in 58 years of independence that a Muslim facts-file is being prepared for identifying, formulating, planning and implementing specific government interventions, policies and program-mes," says Dr. Syed Zafar Mahmood, officer on special duty in the prime minister’s office who has been seconded to the committee.

"Muslims are the largest minority community in the country. The satisfaction of minorities in any country is the test of a civilized society. This committee’s job is to make a factual presentation of the Muslims’ status in India. We have been assigned the task of collecting material and statistics and submitting it in a consolidated form to the government," says Justice (Retd) Rajinder Sachar, a former chief justice of the Delhi High Court and well-known human rights activist who heads the committee.

Apart from Sachar, the committee includes Saiyid Hamid (chancellor Hamdard University), T.K. Oommen (professor of sociology JNU), Ramesh Basant and Abu Saleh Shariff (economists), Akhtar Majeed (dean Hamdard University) and M.A. Basith (chief planner, government of Karnataka). The committee, announced in March this year became functional in the last week of May and will submit its report by June next year. "One only hopes that the document will reflect the true socio-economic status of Muslims. It will stop to a large extent the politicisation and exploitation of Muslims in the country," comments Naseem Aalam, a Delhi-based political activist.

The issues of education of the girl child and modernising madrasas are high on the agenda of the committee. There’s a general consensus that schooling of girl children is critical for advancement of the community as is banning child marriage. "Modernisation does not merely mean installing computers or appointing science teachers. Madrasas need to be affiliated to regular education boards," the committee was told during a recent visit to Uttar Pradesh.

Yet the issue of Muslim education is becoming increasingly politicised. Sachar was recently quoted in the Indian Express as saying that since benefits of modern education do not percolate down, and madrasa modernisation initiatives are strangled by red tape, "Muslims perceive reservation as an instrument of upward social mobility".

Meanwhile the committee is examining access to education, dismal literacy and high school dropout percentages, and provision of education and health services in Muslim ghettos which suffer high infant and maternal mortality rates. But pronouncing on the volatile issues of job reservation and OBC status for Muslims will be the most contentious task before the committee. "People fail to acknowledge that Muslim society is not homogenous. It is like any social group — with all the characteristics of heterogeneity — rich, poor, educated, illiterate, physically challenged, discrimination against women etc. The sooner we stop identifying the entire Muslim population of the country solely by religion, the better it would be for not only mainstreaming Muslims but for the prosperity and harmony of the country as well," says Prof. S.M. Sajid sociology and peace studies lecturer at Delhi’s Jamia Millia Islamia University.

With a stream of heterogenous advice being poured out before the Sachar Committee, it clearly has its task cut out.

Autar Nehru (Delhi)

Curious adamancy

Although the global movement for inclusive education of physically and other challenged children into mainstream schools is gathering momentum and has won a commitment from Union human resource development minister Arjun Singh who made a statement in Parliament to this effect on March 21, some educationists who head renowned institutes of education in Mumbai, seem to be stuck in a time warp.

This has come to light following a public interest litigation (PIL) filed in the Bombay high court against the well-known St. Mary’s CISCE-affiliated boys school by petitioner Vincy D’Silva. The mother of a child with learning disabilities, D’Silva has waged a long battle with the school, which she claims, has not given her son the concessions due as per the directives of the state government. The 12-year-old boy, whose name has been withheld by court order, was detained in class VI, after being denied the exam-writing concessions allowed to children with learning disabilities (LD), in spite of his condition being certified by Mumbai’s well-established child development centre and clinic Umeed.

"After my child was unwarrantedly detained, I petitioned several people before moving the high court. I even requested the auxiliary bishop of Bombay to intervene and he wrote to the principal of the school Fr. Evarist Newnes regarding the matter, but to no avail," says D’Silva. Following the refusal of Newnes to review his decision D’Silva took the case to court. "I informed the school that I would be doing an injustice to my son if I did not take up his cause," she says.

Comments advocate Rajiv Kumar, counsel for D’Silva, who has taken her brief in the larger public interest. "The affidavit which St. Mary’s filed in response to our petition is evasive and vague. While it mentions that it had given the due exam writing concessions to the child, it does not clearly state what those facilities were. It also contends that the circulars issued by the government of Maharashtra stipulating the concessions for children with LD pertain to SSC schools only. However, it is a perfectly well known fact that the CISCE board has its own, clearly laid down, set of exam writing concessions including extra time and aid of a writer for challenged children."

The obstinacy of the St. Mary’s management in providing the government mandated exam writing concessions to challenged children is testified by Zomi Irani, a reputed special educator in Mumbai who has been imparting remedial education to children with LD for over ten years: "I have had a couple of challenged students who had to drop out of St. Mary’s because the principal just refused to give them concessions clearly set down by the CISCE board for children with disabilities. These are children who could flower given the education due to them. After all, some of the greatest achievers experienced learning disabilities, Bill Gates and Richard Branson to name just a few."

Meanwhile managements of more progressive schools in the city which routinely provide government mandated exam writing concessions to challenged students, express bewilderment about St. Mary’s adamancy on this sensitive issue.

"In our school we ensure that children with learning disabilities are allowed every exam-writing concession in the rule book as well as given extra tutoring and mentoring by the teaching staff," says Vandana Lulla, principal of Mumbai’s Podar World School.

Quite evidently it is time for the St. Mary’s management to emerge from its antediluvian time warp.

Gaver Chatterjee (Mumbai)

First medical college

The tiny north-east state of Tripura (pop. 3 million) which is separated from the Indian mainland by Bangladesh, has got its first medical college. The Agartala Government Medical College (AGMC) was inaugurated on August 1 within the massive premises of the G.B. Pant Hospital complex in Agartala. The first academic session of the college — the fourth in north-east India — has began with its first batch of 100 students (including 31 scheduled tribe and caste students) attending classes.

Earlier, following clearance by the Medical Council of India, the Union health and family welfare ministry accorded permission for AGMC to utilise the infrastructure of the 600-bed GB Pant Hospital in Agartala which has been transformed into a teaching hospital. Dr. Dilip C. Das who retired from Guwahati Medical College recently has been appointed the first principal of AGMC and 97 teachers from different parts of the country have come aboard.

Tripura chief minister Manik Sarkar who formally inaugurated the institution said admission to the 100-seat medical college for the academic year 2005-06 began as per the provision of the Graduate Medical Education Regul-ations, 1997. For 100 students, the capacity of the hospital is required to be 500 beds, a requirement which AGMC meets. "This (the college) is a culmin-ation of democratic movements and sustained efforts for decades. I believe the college and hospital will one day become one of the best in the country," says Sarkar.

Inaugural class of AGMC: sustained efforts

Meanwhile the Tripura state government is hopeful that its endorsement of the north-east’s first private medical college at Hafania on the outskirts of Agartala will soon be cleared by MCI. The state government has already signed an agreement with Kerala based Global Education Net (G-NET) which will construct the state’s first private medical college scheduled to admit its first batch of 100 students next year (2006). Twenty five percent seats in the college will be specially reserved for students from Tripura. Christened the Tripura Medical College, it will be attached to the 500-bed Ambedkar Hospital which has been leased to G-NET.

Syed Sajjad Ali (Agartala)

Illusionist charade

As in Tamil Nadu, so in Karnataka the Supreme Court’s judgement of August 12 in P.A. Inamdar & Ors vs State of Maharashtra & Ors has had the miraculous effect of uniting the perpetually warring political parties in the state.

In the long-awaited judgement, a seven judge bench of the apex court upheld the judgement of an 11-judge bench in the TMA Pai Foundation Case (2002 8 SCC 481) and abolished all government quotas in private unaided medical, engineering, business manage-ment and professional education institutions. The judgement, which will come into force from the next academic year 2006-07, allows all private unaided (minority and non-minority) colleges to conduct their own entrance exams and determine tuition fees. For the first time in history the apex court also permitted a 15 percent NRI quota in private unaided colleges allowing them to collect higher fees "to be utilised for benefiting students from economically weaker sections of society".

In Karnataka, the state government, which had hitherto enjoyed a 50 percent reserved quota for its nominees in the state’s 27 medical, 38 dental colleges and 65 percent quota in 119 engineering colleges totalling 3,345, 2,400 and 36,958 seats respectively, is now left with only 450 medical, 60 dental and 3,150 engineering seats. This is because the state government can allocate seats only in four medical, 12 engineering and one dental college owned or aided by it. The remaining 23 medical, 37 dental and 107 engineering colleges are privately promoted unaided (financially independent) institutions and as per the new Supreme Court verdict, the government does not have any right to allocate seats in them.

Private unaided college managements in the state grouped under the umbrella body Comed-K (Consortium of Medical, Engineering and Dental Colleges-Karnataka) are jubilant about the apex court’s verdict because they will no longer be required to surrender 50-65 percent of their capacity to state government nominees at arbitrary (government determined) tuition fees. However as a "gesture of social responsibility" Comed-K member institutions have resolved to allot 25 percent of their seats for socially and economically backward students. "The Supreme Court order has ushered in clarity by defining the role of managements and the government. The 15 percent NRI quota will help us cross-subsidise the education of economically backward meritorious students admitted into our colleges," says Dr. S. Kumar executive secretary of Comed-K and principal of M.S. Ramaiah Medical College, Bangalore.

Expectedly students who have been receiving below cost education are critical of the apex court’s order. "The Supreme Court judgement is biased against students. Parliament should nullify the judgement and pass Central legislation to empower the state governments to mandate quotas in all professional colleges. Moreover Central and state governments must start building new government medical and professional education institutions," says B. Rajashekhara Murthy, president of the Students Federation of India, Karnataka.

Quite clearly as indicated by the furore in Parliament, the political class egged on by the subsidies addicted middle class is dead set against accepting the Supreme Court’s August 12 verdict. For the simple reason that doing so will show up how little governments at the Centre and in the states have invested in higher education. In Karnataka, the state government has built only four medical, one dental and three engineering colleges in 57 years as against 23 medical, 37 dental and 116 engineering colleges built by the private sector in the same period. It is much easier to appropriate large quotas in privately promoted colleges and pass them off as its own. In short, rob Peter to pay Paul.

This illusionist charade has been exposed by the Supreme Court’s August 12 judgement. Hence the furore.

Srinidhi Raghavendra (Bangalore)