Within two weeks of taking charge as Union minister of human resource development (HRD) following a Cabinet reshuffle on July 5, Prakash Javadekar — former minister of environment, forest management and climate change in the BJP-NDA government which was swept to power in General Election 2014 — met with top leaders of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the acknowledged ideological parent organisation of the BJP, and leaders of affiliated hindutva organisations such as Vidya Bharati, ABVP, Bharatiya Shikshan Mandal, Vigyan Bharati etc for a six-hour conclave in Delhi on July 29. According to reliable HRD ministry sources, the RSS top brass is less than satisfied with the draft of the new National Education Policy (NEP) 2016 prepared by Javadekar’s controversial predecessor in office, Smriti Irani, who has been moved to the textiles ministry. Even Javadekar’s first public outing after assuming office was to an event organised by the Bharatiya Shikshan Mandal on NEP 2016. “We need views from all ideologies. We need each and every suggestion because I believe education is a national mission to take the country ahead,” said Javadekar, who announced extension of the deadline for public comment on NEP 2016 to August 15. The general expectation is that like his predecessor Irani, Javadekar will continue to be heavily influenced by the RSS while discharging his duties as Union HRD minister and NEP 2016 will have RSS fingerprints all over it. This is bad news for Indian education because although Irani toed the RSS/sangh parivar line by appointing RSS nominees to highly-reputed higher education institutions, they failed to do the BJP’s reputation any good. The appointments of RSS nominees such as Prof. Y. Sudershan Rao as chairperson of the New Delhi-based Indian Council of Historical Research; Gajendra Chauhan as head of Film and Television Institute of India, Pune; former editor of RSS mouthpiece Panchajanya Baldev Sharma as chairman of the National Book Trust, invited a volley of criticism from academia and the media. Nor during Irani’s two-year tenure in Shastri Bhavan, Delhi, which hosts the HRD ministry was the BJP/NDA government able to notch up any notable successes in education. Pratham’s Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2014, released in early 2015, revealed a declining trend in student learning outcomes countrywide. Institutions of higher education continue to experience a severe faculty crunch (30 percent of faculty positions are vacant countrywide). Only two of India’s 800 universities are ranked in the QS Top 200 World University Rankings 2015, and even the top-ranked, globally respected Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) weren’t spared Irani’s reckless interference with their administration and autonomy. Unsurprisingly, civil society groups and academics aren’t particularly enthused by the change in leadership of the HRD ministry. “The new minister is unlikely to bring about the reform the education system needs. With the Centre’s expenditure on education slashed from Rs.82,771 crore in 2015-16 to Rs.72,394 crore this year, and casual approach towards implementation of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education…
