R. Bindu, Minister of Higher Education, Kerala. File
| Photo Credit: Thulasi Kakkat
Kerala Higher Education Minister R. Bindu stated the New Education Policy (NEP), launched by the Centre in 2020, will perform as a car for “communalising and commodifying education”. Inaugurating the ‘Assembly on Education’, organised by the All India People’s Science Network, right here on Sunday, she added that the NEP must be considered within the “background of current socio-political situation” the place communal forces are becoming a member of palms with company forces. “NEP urges to impose centralisation, denouncing the federal principles of the country,” she stated.
She demanded parliamentary scrutiny of the NEP. “The NEP has not been subjected to any legislative or social scrutiny; it has bypassed the parliamentary procedure; through a travesty of social audit, it has invited public opinion through UGC and disregarded the replies,” Dr. Bindu stated. “An educational policy should scrutinise the impacts, merits and demerits of the previous policy documents. But the NEP never makes an attempt to study the impact of the previous policy documents. Most of the time, it revels in a remote past in the glories of an ancient India,” she stated.
Dr. Bindu stated Kerala’s experiment is to withstand NEP with a larger education mannequin that fits the particular wants of the State and its folks. “Kerala intends to build a people-centric knowledge society. This model of knowledge society is different from the model projected by the developed, capitalist society. Our model intends to take engagement with knowledge production and research to a larger society,” she claimed.
The NEP, the Kerala Minister stated, is for dismantling of the affiliating system of schools and such a transfer will likely be detrimental for the scholars from the agricultural areas particularly the tribal college students. “Regional availability of educational facilities is important in the case of access. Despite the claims of the NEP, it has failed to identify and address the socio-economic challenges faced by India’s educational progress,” she added.
She stated the phrase “Indianness” is repeated within the doc many instances, however the definition of “Indianness” is simply too slender and constricted. “The repeated assertions of Indianness paves the way for the very narrow concept of the nation in the present situation. The variety, plurality and diversity of our nation is the wealth of India, but unfortunately instead of seeing this multiplicity and cultural polyphony as an asset, the NEP dismisses it as fragmentation,” she alleged.
