50 leaders re-shaping Indian education

Slowly, perhaps imperceptibly but inexorably, awareness that quality education for all is the prerequisite of national development — and the uninterrupted publication of EducationWorld for the past six years may have something to do with it — is impacting itself upon the collective conscious. Consequently in spite of the worst efforts of the political class and other regressives who have a vested interest in mass illiteracy, education is steadily moving up the national agenda, even as champions of education are emerging from the shadows of public life.  On the eve of commencement of the new academic year, EducationWorld profiles 50 individuals re-shaping the education landscape of the contemporary world’s largest child population (415 million Indians are below 18 years of age). The following list of people redefining Indian education was compiled after careful deliberation and nationwide consultation with eminent social scientists and educationists.  Raja of quota Arjun Singh, Union minister of human resources development. A former princeling of the principality of Manda in Madhya Pradesh, this septuagenarian has had a long and chequered career in Indian politics. A die-hard Nehruvian with unwavering loyalty to the Nehru-Gandhi family which has dominated Indian politics for the past half century, Singh is former chief minister of Madhya Pradesh (1980-85 and 1988-89) who moved to the Centre in 1985 and rose to the position of Union home minister in the Rajiv Gandhi administration (1984-89). Sidelined during the Narasimha Rao, United Front and the NDA interregnum (1991-2004), Singh is believed to have played a major role in the emergence of Sonia Gandhi as leader of the Congress party in the new millennium, and was reportedly disappointed by the allocation of the HRD ministry portfolio in 2004. Singh has hit the media headlines and created turmoil in campus India by advocating reservation of an additional (in addition to the 22.5 percent reservation for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes) 27 percent capacity in Central government promoted and aided institutions of higher education for OBCs (Other Backward Castes). Moreover in December last year he piloted the 93rd Amendment to the Constitution which empowers the Central and state governments to decree discretionary quotas for SCs, STs and OBCs in all unaided or private education institutions, including schools. For better or for worse — probably the latter — Arjun Singh’s backdoor nationalisation will radically impact Indian education in the new millennium. NCERT saviour Dr. Krishna Kumar, director National Council for Education Research & Training (NCERT), Delhi. A former professor of education at Delhi University and widely acknowledged as an authority on foundational school education, Prof. Krishna Kumar was inducted into NCERT by the Congress-led UPA government immediately after it assumed office in May 2004. His brief was to undo the damage inflicted upon the school education system by the ham-fisted attempts of former Union HRD minister Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi to inject his hindutva agenda into the textbooks of NCERT, the country’s largest school texts publisher. Since then Kumar has excised most of the right-wing Hindu propaganda and mythology from NCERT social science textbooks and has played a major…