Education: Now a frontier of Centre vs States war?

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M K Stalin recently made a passionate plea for bringing education back on the State List from the Concurrent List of the 7^th Schedule of the Constitution. He argued in his Independence Day speech last month that the state governments should have absolute control over subjects directly concerning people.

The DMK government in Tamil Nadu has been in conflict with the Centre on several issues in the area of education. So have been the governments of the other states ruled by the opponents of the BJP, which has been leading the ruling coalition in the Centre since 2014. While most of them have been opposing the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, some have been up in arms on other issues as well. Tamil Nadu has been resisting the national-level entrance tests like the NEET for admission into medical colleges. The LDF and the Congress governments in Kerala and Karnataka respectively opposed deletion of certain chapters from school textbooks by the NCERT.

Like Pinarayi Vijayan’s in Kerala, Mamata Banerjee’s government in West Bengal too has of late got into a conflict with the Raj Bhavan in Kolkata over a move by the Governor C V Ananda Bose to appoint interim vice-chancellors for state-funded universities. The governments of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and West Bengal got Bills passed by the state legislative assemblies to curtail powers of the governors to appoint the VCs of the universities. The Bills are awaiting the ascent of the governors though.

Education has indeed turned into a battleground in the war between the Centre and the states and it has the students caught in the crossfire.  

Karnataka was the first state to implement the NEP 2020 from the 2021-2022 academic year itself. But after the BJP was voted out of power in May this year, the new Congress government moved to scrap it from the next academic year, as the party had promised in its poll-manifesto. Chief Minister Siddaramaiah said that the NEP undermined the federal system of governance and democracy. D K Shivakumar, now the state’s deputy chief minister, had earlier called the NEP the ‘Nagpur Education Policy’, hinting that it had reflected the views of the BJP’s ideological mentor Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), headquartered at Nagpur in Maharashtra.

Credit: DH Graphic

The government led by Siddaramaiah and Shivakumar also decided to set up a panel to frame a state education policy, which would be brought into effect from the next academic year.

When the NEP had been implemented in Karnataka, arguments for and against the policy were exchanged thick and fast. Even now, several academicians objected to withdrawing the policy without consulting the stakeholders.

The Congress government in the state entered into direct conflict with the Centre by withdrawing the policy and alleging that the BJP had been trying to impose the ideology of the Sangh Parivar through it. However, the BJP leaders in the state, including the state’s former higher education minister C N Ashwath Narayana, who had led the implementation of the policy, advised the chief minister and his team to understand the difference between the curriculum and the policy. "The chief minister thinks that the NEP means textbook, so I request him to read and understand the policy,” he said.

Thousands of students, who got admission under the NEP, would reach their final semester by June 2024 and the withdrawal of the policy made them anxious about their future.

Several students took admission aiming to pursue four years honours course, some were attracted by the multiple exit and entry options, and some were fascinated with the inter-disciplinary options available under the NEP. Now, as the policy has been officially withdrawn, the students are worried.

“The NEP is a visionary, philosophical document envisioned by the educationists of this country. This is not a political document,” Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan said, reacting to the decision of the state government of Karnataka.

Meanwhile, the higher education institutions are also worried about the possibility of losing central assistance as the state government had rejected the policy framed by the Union government.

Another confusion haunting the universities in Karnataka is what curriculum they should follow while framing the syllabus. The current syllabus is based on the National Curriculum Framework (NCF). It is provided based on the NEP. The syllabus for higher education will be framed at the universities level based on the NCF.

The BJP government which implemented the policy had not released any budget to provide infrastructure.

Even for the current academic year the admissions have been closed and the universities themselves are confused whether to continue with the interdisciplinary study option provided by the NEP with no clarity about the continuation of the honours courses and the multi entry-exit option, said the vice-chancellor of a public university.

Kerala has not implemented the 5+3+3+4 school education structure recommended by the NEP and kept the minimum age for admission to Class I at five instead of raising it to six. The state’s LDF government also recently brought out a supplementary textbook for higher-secondary students by including portions like Mahatma Gandhi's assassination and Mughal empire that were removed by the NCERT.

“Those who eliminate portions like Mahatma Gandhi assassination from textbooks for their vested interests may even try to glorify Gandhi assassin Nathuram Vinayak Godse in future,” said Vijayan. “Eliminating portions of the Mughal empire are part of attempts to create an impression that the country belonged to one section only,” added the chief minister of the state.

When it comes to the NEP, the state is yet to implement the 5+3+3+4 school education structure. Practical difficulties in shifting to the new structure all on a sudden has been the major hindrance. While a student can be admitted to Class I at the age of five as per the existing system being followed over the decades, the new structure prescribed by the NEP will permit admission to Class I on attaining the age of six only. The shift to the new system all of a sudden would lead to a lack of students in one batch. Hence it was facing stiff resistance from various quarters, especially school managements.

The new state education policy that the Trinamool Congress government in West Bengal has of late notified has also retained the existing 5+4+2+2 pattern instead of adopting the NEP’s 5+3+3+4 structure in school education.

The Kerala government, however, decided to introduce the four-year undergraduate courses, but with only one exit option after three years, contrary to what was recommended by the NEP. The West Bengal government too decided to introduce four-year undergraduate courses in the state.

Tamil Nadu, probably the only state to have a two-language policy in the country, has refused to implement the NEP and is in the process of drafting a state education policy. However, it has become the first state to implement a key aspect of the NEP, the breakfast scheme, for primary school children.

“The NEP 2020 is all about thrusting the opinion of the administrators in New Delhi, unlike the earlier policies released in 1968 and 1986 and the revised one in 1992, which had given the states a broad framework on education,” Prince Gajendra Babu, general secretary, State Platform for Common School System in Tamil Nadu, says. “The document (NEP 2020) is authoritative which has scared the states. They fear the infrastructure that they built over years will get damaged. Their rights have been encroached by the Centre. So, they oppose the policy to defend their rights.”

While the DMK vociferously demands for bringing education back on the State List, the fact remains that it had not made any serious attempt when it had shared power at the Centre with the BJP and the Congress for over 15 years. Though the Congress, under the then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, had moved education to the Concurrent List, it had in 2019 promised to transfer school education to the State List.

P Wilson, DMK MP and senior advocate, accuses the BJP of “arm-twisting” the states with the help of the governors, who “sit on bills” without any reason.

“The Union government somehow believes that the states provide inferior quality of education. Why do they think so?” he asked, adding: “The states like Tamil Nadu have achieved 51% Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER), but still the Union government thinks it is the best in providing education.”

“The Centre is poking its nose in everything without knowing its implications. They are mindless about the consequences,” he told DH.

Babu said that the framers of the Constitution kept education in the State List as they were aware that the learning process would differ from state to state due to differences in the culture as India is a diverse country.

“It is the states that interact with the people directly, not the Centre. It is a fact that states have better expertise in running schools and universities. What has the Centre achieved since 1976 when the subject was brought to Concurrent list?” he asked. “So, States should get back Education subject to draft better policies by looking closely at what students need,” he said.