OPINION

In all his public discourses ever since the notification of the New Education Policy (NEP), Union Education Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank has insisted on having the state governments onboard. He has been generous in saying that since Education was part of the concurrent list, the states have to be persuaded to adopt the policy.

In saying so, however, Nishank hopefully is not conveying the message that each state could go its own way. It’s not to be forgotten that there are autonomous central agencies which lay down the roadmap for education and their guidelines have to be adhered too. For example, University Grants Commission (UGC) is the regulatory body for higher education and the state universities have to follow its guidelines.

However, during Covid19 pandemic, a point of friction came where the state governments-run universities refused to conduct final year examinations despite clear guidelines from the UGC to hold examinations. It was only after the Supreme Court direction that the state universities are now holding the examinations.

We have had typically confused scenario in Delhi, where the under-graduate students of Delhi University, which is a Central University, have finished their examination held online under an open book scheme, whereas students of the state-run Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University (GGSIPU) are still uncertain about their future. It’s a tortuous situation for such students who have been offered admission by the foreign universities but in the absence final year examination results they have not been able to avail off it.

This is pay time. Several online shopping marts usually make pay day offers enticing people to make big purchases in the first week of the month. However, in the Covid times the crediting of the salary has become highly irregular and private sector is not the only segment to be hit.

In Delhi the crediting of the salary of even state government employees has become a matter of court’s intervention. At least two segments – doctors and school teachers have been to the courts and managed to get relief. However, the leaders from the ruling Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) have no qualms in protesting non-payment of salary by the municipal corporations.
The BJP ruled municipal corporations have been crying hoarse citing failure of the Arvind Kejriwal government to release sufficient grants to make the two end meet. The cat and mouse act between the Delhi government and the municipal corporations have been on for more than five years now which has at times led to the spewing of garbage for days together on the roads of Delhi.

However, what has got the goat the people this time around is the non-payment of salary since the month of May to the faculty and administrative staff of the 12 Delhi University colleges, which are funded by the Delhi Government. These colleges are – Shaheed Sukhdev College of Business Studies, Bhim Rao Ambedkar College, Mahrishi Valmiki B.Ed College, Maharaja Agrasen College, Shaheed Rajguru Women’s College, Deen Dayal Upadhyay College, Indira Gandhi College of Physical Education, Bhaskaracharya College, Acharya Narendra Dev Women’s College, Keshav Mahavidyalay, Bhagini Nivedita Women’s College and Aditi Women’s Mahavidyalaya.

Education maketh a man, goes an old saying. In the current context we could say that good education makes good citizens for the country.

There is no denying the fact that any education should be founded on the few basic principles like the curiosity to search for truth or knowledge. Curiosity should be complemented by the desire to comprehend knowledge. In our ancient Indian tradition of Guru-Chela, the search for truth was through the process of academic rigour.

There are questions about our traditions lacking in scientific temper; it was largely part of the British design to establish superiority of the western education pattern. But to give the British their due, they also did not dilute the process of academic rigour.

The biggest folly of today’s education system is constant lowering of the benchmarks. To our generation and the generations before us, getting a first division was an attainment and getting a distinction (75%) marks a rare achievement. However, the standards have been lowered constantly on some pretext or the other but more often than not for the purposes of the political leadership playing to the gallery.

The bitter criticism of the film ‘Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl’ by the establishment and a section of the retired members of the top brass of the Indian Air Force (IAF) has left several admirers of the force asking what was the complaint about. This writer for one didn’t find anything in the film which could qualify for gratuitous depiction of either the IAF or its male officers.

‘Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl’ maps the journey of Flight Lieutenant Gunjan Saxena (played by Jahnvi Kapoor) from Lucknow to the Indian Air Force. She was one of the first two women officers to operate in a war zone. She was part of an early batch of the women pilots commissioned in the IAF and played an exemplary role during the Kargil war, running rescue and supply operations under very challenging situations.

The students of cinema would know that any story or film script essentially examines human relationships, which forms the pivot. The rest of the script is woven around to illustrate the evolution of these relationships. So, does ‘Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl’.

The other day somebody shared a video link of an old television debate where I featured. Then came the query, why aren’t you debating on television these days? I replied that since I am out of sync with the style of the debate which is in vogue now, I opt out of the few offers that come my way especially when they need a dozen people peeping out of the windows on the screen.

The person on the other end of the exchange of conversation was not ready to take my reply lying down. He said it’s a case of sour grapes as I was outdated. Have I become that outdated? I had been mulling over it for some time and was shaken when the news of Congress spokesperson Rajiv Tyagi collapsing after a ‘toxic’ debate came.

On the hindsight, I thought, it had been a wise decision for a hypertensive and pre-diabetic person like me to opt out of these cantankerous shows of abusive persons baying for each-other’s blood, spurred by an unscrupulous cheerleader christened as anchor. With no political fortune to seek, and the channels increasingly tightening their purse strings when it came to paying the panelists, I think it indeed has been a well-thought decision to not put one’s life at risk.

Sambit Patra and Rajiv Tyagi in less worser times

The person on the other end of the exchange of conversation was not ready to take my reply lying down. He said it’s a case of sour grapes as I was outdated. Have I become that outdated? I had been mulling over it for some time and was shaken when the news of Congress spokesperson Rajiv Tyagi collapsing after a ‘toxic’ debate came.

On the hindsight, I thought, it had been a wise decision for a hypertensive and pre-diabetic person like me to opt out of these cantankerous shows of abusive persons baying for each-other’s blood, spurred by an unscrupulous cheerleader christened as anchor. With no political fortune to seek, and the channels increasingly tightening their purse strings when it came to paying the panelists, I think it indeed has been a well-thought decision to not put one’s life at risk.