For Quality Education in Government Schools

Sunday Times of India (June 14, 2009) carried out a revealing report on class X results: “Free Vs fee: Why govt. schools deliver results”. The write-up has been penned analytically by Divya A of Times News Network. A picture accompanying the write-up shows two different worlds of government-run and public schools. On the left side are students of a government school sitting on ill-kept/broken benches under a tree and on the right side are students of a public school sitting in an air-conditioned class room in front of a computer. The picture tells all except the results of this year’s class X examinations.

The Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNV) are government aided schools; though administered by the Human Resource Development ministry, these schools are substantially autonomous. This year JNVs have outshined all other schools with a pass percentile of 97.8 in CBSE class X exams. Kendriya Vidyalayas or Central Schools are a close second with a pass percent of 96.3 whereas the public schools—many of them air-conditioned—have fared poorly with only 92% of their class X students passing out this year’s exams.

JNVs and Central Schools are somewhat “privileged’ schools which are run with special government attention. The government schools which crisscross the country, especially in slums and villages are indeed in bad shapes. It is in these schools where teachers are normally absent and parents of wards studying in them are equally helpless as they suffer from intellectual and economic poverty. These schools, too, have improved with a pass percentage of 80.1 which was 4 or 5 percent less the previous year. The improvement is a direct result of government’s threat to teaches that they deliver or perish.

Anyone who is acquainted with the conditions prevailing in Government-run schools in rural India, knows well that children studying in them are severely handicap on many counts. Compared to public schools, these schools have hardly any facilities. Misery upon misery, most teachers are indifferent to the future of their students; they are either absent or hardly teach when present. The poor students thus hardly get any encouraging or congenial academic atmosphere at schools. Their problem is further compounded when they go home. Their parents are mostly illiterate or semi-literate and thus fail to provide any academic assistance to their dear ones. Being intellectually poor, they also fail to pressurize teachers to do the job that the Government has assigned to them, and for which they are paid. In such discouraging circumstances the poor students perform poorly and gradually march into a bleak and distressing future. They either drop out early or get an education which hardly helps them.

The Government opened JNVs and Central Schools to provide quality education to the under-privileged students. But such schools are few and far between. Therefore, the Government must focus on improving the quality of education in schools located all across the country, mainly in small towns and villages. Bulk of India still lives there and most parents are dependent on poorly-managed Government schools for the education of their wards. Forcing teachers to be present in class rooms has worked to increase the pass percentage from 75 to 80%. Motivating parents to take interest in the education of their wards, saying it alone would secure a bright future for them might be equally or even more helpful.

But the Government’s real job is to equip these schools with necessary facilities. Here the teacher is the most important factor. He needs to be paid properly and on time. He also needs to be motivated to perform. Above all, teachers must be impressed upon to be more than teachers; they must also be the guide of the parents of the wards given in their care. Perhaps only the teachers are in a position to inspire and motivate parents to create an “academic atmosphere” at home by giving their children enough time to do the home works. The problem, in fact, lies at this level and it needs to be solved here in order to prevent children from dropping out of schools. A healthy and quality primary education is necessary to perform well at the secondary level. In the given circumstances, it is a tough goal to achieve which makes it necessary for the Government to pay special attention to it.

One way to address the problem is to provide incentives to the teachers and principals to motivate parents to help their wards remain in schools. They may be further rewarded if their schools perform well. District level schemes, for example, may be launched to give out of turn promotion or cash incentives provided 50% of their students secure first class or no enrolled student drops out of schools due to parental indifference. Many more methods may be thought out to change the fate of the poor through education. This is Government’s duty which it must fulfill. This important work can not be left for social reformers yet to be born. We can not wait for miracles to happen; rather we must create miracles by our performances.
[June, 2009]

Muslims and New Manmohan Government

After getting near-absolute majority in the recently held general elections many Congress leaders have spoken arrogantly. They have specially done so in the context of U.P. where they have reaped rich electoral dividends. The Congress arrogance has been directed towards Samajwadi Party and Rashtriya Janata Dal which were equally arrogant before the polls when they had sought to reduce the grand old party to being a marginal player in U.P. and Bihar. If it were just political tit for tat, no one would raise his eyebrows. It would be, however, alarming if the Congress behaviour is the result of a deeply thought out policy. It is alarming because it smacks of what in plain words is called “use and throw policy”. Congress may have a million complaints against the SP, especially its talkative leader, Amar Singh but it must remember that this was also the party which saved Manmohan government during the confidence vote last year.

It is not our case that one or another party is good or bad, nor do we subscribe to the idea that a political party should always act morally ignoring its long-term strategic interests and considerations. We already know that morality has long been banished from Indian politics, hence talking about the non-existent would serve no purpose. What concerns us here is that a political party or formation, which notoriously lacks internal democracy, is usually prone to corruption and dictatorial attitude. In this context, we feel that a coalition government consisting of like-minded parties is good for the complex and diverse Indian society. Such a government naturally develops a working mechanism of checks and balances to keep it focused on the goals for which it has come into being.

India’s most political parties are in the habit of forgetting the electorate after the general elections. More than other groups, Muslims have experienced it time and again. Since 1952 Muslims have consistently been voting for secular parties and formations which have ruled over the country for a major part, and yet they have been ignored by the very people whom they have been voting to power. This explains the reasons for their all round marginalization.

True, the political parties have used Muslims as a vote bank. There is also no denying the fact that they have been victims of “use and throw” policies of the political parties. But this is one side of the coin.

Common people are normally simple-minded and hold some external agencies/factors as being responsible for the problems or tragedies that happen in their lives. Few indulge in self-introspection to find out the weaknesses within which the outside inimical forces might have exploited to bring about tragedies in their lives. This side of the coin is often hidden from the eyes of the common Muslims. This is especially true about the Indian Muslims.

Over the years we have developed a mentality to find out and blame external enemies for all our problems. It is not our case that our external enemies are sitting idle; they are indeed proactive. But surely they succeed in their inimical designs only when our own weaknesses collaborate with them. While it is important to know our external enemies, it is equally essential to discover the enemy within. And the greatest enemy we have among ourselves is our indifference to higher education. It is clear that the new Manmohan government would create many more institutions of higher learning. The fifteen central universities it set up just before the elections are bound to offer thousands of lucrative jobs. Let us introspect how many Muslims have the necessary qualifications to grab them.

Within days the new Manmohan government will be in place. During his last tenure the Prime Minister gave us a sort of official document in the form of Sachar Committee Report which bears testimony to the all round decline and marginalization of the Muslim community. There was a strong case for giving reservations to Muslims on the line the Congress government has done in Andhra Pradesh. The fear of BJP’s hue and cry over the issue prevented the last Manmohan government from doing it. As a result it created some scholarships etc. to help young Muslims pursuing higher education.

As a part of its long-term policy of winning back Muslims to its fold, Congress, or the Manmohan government has created a full-fledged Ministry of Minority Affairs. We hope the new cabinet will have a relatively young and dynamic Minister of Minority Affairs. There is need to devise a practical strategy to quickly bring Muslims in the arena of higher education. The new Minister of Minority Affairs should specifically be tasked for creating avenues and atmosphere for higher education among the Muslims. Over and above all, it is the duty of the Muslim community and its leadership to devise ways to benefit from the new government. Our failure on this front would be our enemy within which we alone can overcome. The advantage we have today is that the Sachar Committee has already identified the problems of the Muslim community. Surely a responsible government should be duty-bound to act positively in this regard. But as Muslims we also owe a responsibility to think or apply our mind to devise strategies for solving our problems. We must prepare proposals and submit to the government for making the Ministry of Minority Affairs more meaningful. One such suggestion may be to empower this Ministry to open and run good schools in minority-dominated areas. Another may be to open branches of Maulana Azad Open Urdu University in Delhi, Srinagar and Lucknow etc. There are some minority-managed institutions, like Jamia Hamdard in Delhi or Shibli College in Azamgarh, which may be offered special packages to be viable and vibrant centres of higher and quality education benefiting both the minority and majority communities.

[May, 2009]