Tag Archives: RTE

Where is India’s Hindu Party?

11 Fri Mar 2016

Posted by in India, South Asia

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Pace secularism, it is perhaps India’s longest-running political farce that the Bharatiya Janata Party is a Hindu nationalist political party. Any mention of the party in the print media is usually prefaced with those two adjectives and the international press has also unquestioningly copied the locals in the custom. However, it is difficult to discern any Hindu agenda in the BJP’s governance either between 1998 and 2004 or since 2014. Although the party has used been using the label to its benefit for years, even fed it with wild rhetoric from time to time, the BJP has hardly taken up the Hindu cause as it is so often accused of doing.

BJPlogoIt is disheartening to see that few can even identify Hindu issues, such has been the impact of the jejune blaring from the media houses on India’s public sphere. Were an outsider to peek in for a second, he would assume that the Ram Mandir in Ayodhya and the Uniform Civil Code are two important political issues for Hindus – and he would be wrong. The former is largely symbolic – and yes, symbols do have power – but it does not have a large enough impact on the Hindu community to accord it such primacy among issues. As for the latter, it hardly affects Hindus except in an intellectual way – legal systems of other religions, for all their flaws, do not impact Hindus; the inequality of various communities before a national judiciary is philosophically unpalatable but ultimately of little consequence to the narrower interests of the Hindu community.

Arguably the most important item on the Hindu agenda is the liberation of their temples from government control. The Hindu Religious and Charitable Endowments Act, first passed in Madras in the 1920s, was ostensibly enacted to introduce better management and eliminate corruption in temple administration. The law applied, as its name suggests, only to Hindu organisations; it is farcical to assume that these challenges do not plague religious organisations of other faiths or, indeed, that the government of a weak democracy is capable of better management or is freer of corruption than a private entity.

Although hundreds of temples are administered by the government, it is the rich temples that are the prize. Offerings by devotees run into hundreds of crores annually and the wealth is siphoned off to government coffers. To add insult to injury, the committees in charge of temple operations are not necessarily drawn from the community the temple serves or even pious Hindus. For example, Abdul Rehman Antulay was appointed a trustee of the famous Siddhivinayak Temple in Bombay, and the Marxist takeover of Kerala’s devaswoms is well-known. For all the talk of Hindutva by both, the media and the BJP, the party’s agenda on making temples autonomous is unclear. If indeed there exists such an action plan, it is so vapid that it does not come to mind.

An equally critical arena of Hindu interests is education. Through the innocuously named Right to Education Act (RTE), the government has essentially commandeered private school capacity to further its populist agenda. Although the Act is portrayed as creating a quota for the economically underprivileged, that number is but a small portion of the total reservation which primarily benefits other categories. Minority institutions are exempt from this state hijacking of infrastructure.

It is far more difficult for Hindus to start their own schools, training colleges, and universities than it is for minorities. Even before the RTE was passed, minority institutions also controlled their student admissions and teacher hiring criteria; they were not subject to any quotas or other regulations non-minority institutions have to follow. This effectively changes the divide in Indian education from private/public to minority/non-minority. The BJP has disappointed many of its supporters by not repealing the RTE or even attempting to put all schools minority and non, on an equal footing.

The problem is not simply about quotas, though the social engineering of the Hindu community deserves attention too. It would be quite entertaining, for instance, to see the Indian government take similar interest in Muslim affairs and legislate quotas for Ahmadis, Shia, Zaydis, Sufis, and women in madrasas.

A greater problem lies in the syllabi prescribed by the various boards of education in the country. Although everyone can agree that there ought to be some balance and rigour in the curriculum, dozens of examples of sycophancy to the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty and an overly rosy interpretation of the Islamic conquest of and rule over India’s overwhelmingly Hindu population fill the pages of history textbooks. In this context, it was ironic to see an MP of an allegedly Hindutva party declare in parliament just a few days ago that she was not guilty of saffronisation.

Finally, a third major plank of a core Hindu agenda would be the reversal of a  relentless assault on Hindu customs, traditions, and rituals. The law against superstition and black magic(!), the ban on Jallikattu, the sudden chorus of environmental appeals timed to perfection around Deepavali and Ganesh Chaturthi, the demand to open up temple entry to all, the call to abolish made snana, are all facets of the same agenda to delegitimise Hinduism. The BJP’s record on defending against these assaults ranges from non-existent to abysmal.

It should be noted that there are already pre-existing laws that adequately cover any real damage arising from black magic or whatever else outsiders find offensive. Between them and the voluntary nature of some of the rituals, there really is no need for interference by the state except to socially re-engineer Hindu society; it seems Hindus are the only community not guaranteed protection by the constitution from the arbitrary powers of the state.

Only a party that has a coherent position on these issues can be considered to be a Hindu party. The BJP, sadly, is not such a party although many of its individual members may indeed be devout. For those who support it on cultural grounds, it is seen more as the least anti-Hindu political party than a Hindutva party; it is the tyranny of There-Is-No-Alternative. Interestingly, the demands on these three core Hindu issues is only for equality with other faiths; no special dispensation is sought from other communities nor any largesse from the state. Were any other party to champion these very reasonable causes, it might even put a dent in the BJP’s electoral fortunes. Of course, such a move would also need to take into account media spin and the impact on other votebanks.

As for that other adjective – nationalist – that is hurled as an insult at the BJP, one would hope that all parties that seek to govern India are nationalist. Geopolitics is not a graduate history seminar where one has the intellectual luxury of sitting on the fence, above the fray; rather, it is about clearly picking your team and giving it your full-throated support. So about that Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party… Hindu, I doubt it; nationalist, I certainly hope so.

This post appeared on FirstPost on March 13, 2016.

RTE: Asking the Unasked Question

10 Tue Jul 2012

Posted by in India, South Asia

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The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act or Right to Education Act (RTE) was passed amid great fanfare by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in August 2009, and came into force on, ironically, Fool’s Day – April 1, 2010. The provisions of the Act and its demerits have been discussed abundantly, and there is little that can be seen as positive in the (probably) well-intentioned but train wreck of legislation. In fact, newspapers have been filled with RTE frictions in school since the Act came into force. In this post, I’ll focus on a an equally serious issue that has received considerably less attention (if at all) from the media or critics.

In all the hungama that has ensued, the bureaucratic machinery of the government has succeeded in doing what they are past masters in: changing the topic. The RTE has become more about quotas and minorities than about education. It has become about giving more people the same poor education than actually reforming India’s decrepit education system to produce able citizens; worse, the government is hijacking private infrastructure to do so. Despite constant reminders from industry about the poor quality of students and shameful results of international evaluations (such as PISA), there is little that the Government is doing to actually improve education in India. And the cost of this non-action? A whopping Rs. 1.78 lakh crores (though there are “assurances” that the cost will decrease by 66% within five years).

Here are some of India’s real problems with education: 1. a poor curriculum, 2. poor quality of teachers, 3. insufficient teachers, 4. high truancy of teachers, 5. inadequate physical resources (buildings, blackboards, drinking water, toilets, etc.), and 6. use of teachers to do non-school work, such as election or census work. Low pay, even lower standards, corruption, populism, and the lack of a philosophy of education have leached any semblance of credibility out of Indian education. Lest this be blamed on insufficient funds, let it be known that despite being a Third World country, India is no longer short of money – the education budget has witnessed a rapid climb from Rs. 204 billion in 1997-2002 through Rs. 438 billion in 2002-2007, Rs. 52,060 crores in 2011, to a planned Rs. 61, 407 crores in 2012. Over three-quarters of this is slated for primary and secondary education.

Despite the financial outlays, India’s education, even when done right, is dismal. The lack of Indian professionals at the cutting edge of intellectual endeavours, be it in terms of prestigious awards such as the Nobel Prize, number of patents held, contribution to international efforts such as the space station or CERN, or even scholarly publications in journals of repute, is a simple yet effective indicator of the poor quality of Indian academic training. As has been pointed out umpteen times by many education experts, industry, and even universities, the Indian student survives by rote learning, not genuinely comprehending a concept. The objection to this practice is, or ought to be obvious, and need not be repeated here. To give a glimpse of how badly such obtuseness and myopia can derail a country, Rucha Joshi, a participant in the International Exhibition for Young Inventors (IEYI), 2008, and author of भारतीय बालवैज्ञानिकांची गरुडझेप (Marathi), points out that the average age of Indians at the exhibition was 17, whereas the average age of the Japanese contingent was closer to 10!

Another problem is the state of curricula itself – science syllabi are infrequently updated, and  the humanities are highly politicised in India. In the latter, the emphasis seems to be not to offend any community rather than give students as many perspectives as possible of a controversial issue. Doing the latter, i.e., presenting a multi-perspectival view, not only forestalls bias in the curriculum but also demonstrates to children how to think about a thorny topic. As is often quoted from the Rig Veda, आ नो भद्राः क्रतवो यन्तु विश्वतः (1.89.1).

This wasting away of India’s most valuable resource – its children – does not stop with merely the loss of future pecuniary benefits to the children themselves, but undercuts national growth (not just financial) in the long run. Social problems will remain unresolved; environmental issues will not be taken with due seriousness; economic questions will be slave to petty party politics; and the twin challenges of inclusive growth and quality of life will receive little to no attention. None of these can be genuinely taken up with a closed mind, an attitude that doesn’t question the status quo. But none of this is the focus of the RTE. Aside from the highly politicised issue of quota, here are some more deeply problematic questions that have been raised by Kapil Sibal’s toxic legislation:

  • II.4 – A child above six who has not been admitted to school yet should be found placement according to age, not merit
  • II.3(1) – A child is defined as one between the ages of 6 and 14, yet every other piece of legislation defines age of majority/emancipation as 18. Surely, this is not inconsistency on the part of the government? Furthermore, in such a competitive age, education until the age of 14 (Std. VIII/IX) is simply inadequate and this early end to the programme makes it wholly ineffective
  • IV.13(2)(b) – A prohibition is placed on any evaluation of a child before admission to a school. Had this not been the case, a genuine case might have been mounted that economically disadvantaged children with aptitude would be served by the RTE. However, as it stands, this condition rejects the notion of meritorious admission.
  • IV.23(2) – A teacher is allowed to teach without credentials for up to five years, in which time the required credentials must be acquired. This stipulation spreads the idea of non-merit from children to teachers. Standards have become mere suggestions.
  • III.7(6) does suggest the development of standards for teachers and a national curriculum for students, but this only suggests that either this has not been done in the past 60+ years after independence (!!) or that it has been hopelessly ineffective. In which case, how is restating it going to help?

Obviously, India needs a massive overhaul in not just education, but also the philosophy of education. Universities have become credentialing offices and are seen only in a utilitarian perspective. The notion of paideia has been completely lost. To paraphrase Thomas Browne, no man should approach the temple of knowledge with the soul of a money changer. And yet, with legislation like the RTE, the government is ensuring that more people get poor and incomplete education, most probably at the cost of deteriorating quality for everyone. Piggybacking on private infrastructure as the RTE does is only a few steps away from the nationalisation enacted by Indira Gandhi in the 1970s which brought the country to its knees.

The focus needs to come back on quality, not quantity. Although the latter is important too, one cannot be sacrificed for the other. By distracting the populace with talk of minorities and reservations, the government is only admitting that it is incapable of the, admittedly, Herculean task. The United Progressive Alliance has abdicated all responsibility for governing, while the primary opposition, the Bharatiya Janata Party, is absconding. The RTE has caused bitter opposition across the country which it would not have had the Rs. 1.78 lakh crores been sanctioned to raise teacher pay, raise teacher standards, provide better facilities, and create a functional curriculum (by way of example, I’d suggest something similar to the International Baccalaureate). If even 10% of India’s children can learn to think critically, there is great hope for this mutt of a country. Until then, I cannot help but fall back to an episode of Yes Prime Minister: The National Education Service (Key moments – 4:09-5:46: “Who said about children?,” 11:25-11:36: “Look as if we are trying to do something,” 21:54-22:01: “This is what the DES planned?!”).