THE BJP-LED NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC Alliance (NDA) completed its first year in office on May 26. However, unlike the 200-days-in-office celebrations of December 22 last year when the Union ministry of human resources development (HRD) showcased its initiatives with pomp and ceremony, its anniversary celebrations were relatively muted. That™s because under the stewardship of former television soap star Smriti Irani, the HRD ministry has little to crow about. According to Yamini Aiyar, director of Delhi-based Accountability Initiative, Irani ” the youngest minister in the Narendra Modi-led BJP-NDA coalition which was swept to power at the Centre with a massive majority last summer ” has undermined her credibility by provoking œneedless controversies. œA plethora of schemes have been rolled out every second month during the past year without cohesive thinking and planning. It™s not clear how the HRD ministry intends to fund its many programmes including SSA (elementary education for all) when it allowed its allocation in the Union Budget 2015-16 to be slashed by 24 percent, says Aiyar. Simultaneously, a growing number of politicians and academics are critical of Irani for undermining the autonomy of higher education institutions and ˜saffronising™ education. œInstead of strengthening education institutions, HRD minister Smriti Irani seems bent on destroying them by insulting respected educationists and appointing RSS functionaries with dubious qualifications and reputations to high positions in academia, Congress spokesperson Dr. Girja Vyas told reporters in Ahmedabad on the eve of the NDA government™s completion of one year in office. In support of her charge, Vyas referred to the resignations of Dr. Anil Kakodkar (former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission from the chairmanship of the board of governors of IIT-Bombay), IIT-Delhi director Raghunath K. Shevgaonkar, and NCERT director Parvin Sinclair among others, in controversial circumstances after differences with the minister. Moreover, the selection process for choosing the new director of IIM-Lucknow has been unwarrantedly changed with eminent educationists forced to undergo a humiliating ˜group discussion™ (see p.31) even as Y. Sudershan Rao ” a historian who has spent the greater part of his career trying to prove the veracity of the mythological epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, was appointed chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research last July. Coterminously, notwithstanding that its budget has been slashed without even adjustment for inflation and the ground reality that there™s a massive faculty crunch in academia, the HRD ministry has announced the promotion of five new IITs and IIMs. It has also launched the Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya National Mission on Teachers and Teaching, Padhe Bharat, Badhe Bharat to focus on the quality of foundational learning, Swachh Vidyalaya Abhiyan, Know your College portal, a choice-based credit transfer scheme in universities, a massive open online courses (Swayam) programme and the establishment of a Lok Nayak Jayaprakash National Centre for excellence in humanities in Madhya Pradesh, among other initiatives and projects. Despite having initiated these ambitious projects, while the BJP-NDA government™s first full-fledged Union Budget 2015-16 was being formulated, as indicated by the cut in the ministry™s allocation from Rs.82,771…
