‘Why should I leave a successful model for a proven-to-be-unsuccessful model?: PTR on three-language formula

Tamil Nadu IT Minister P T R Palanivel Thiaga Rajan questions whether it is better to have a limited ambition of teaching two mandatory languages instead of aiming for three languages.

In an interview to DH’s E.T.B. Sivapriyan, the former top banker spoke in detail about Tamil Nadu’s historical opposition to the three-language formula, the DMK’s objections to the NEP 2020, the flagship Chief Minister’s Breakfast Scheme, and why language is dear to the people of the state.

The minister also explained the efforts of Chief Minister M K Stalin in bringing together his counterparts and political leaders from various states on Delimitation and how the Home Minister Amit Shah’s statement on the issue lacked clarity and commitment. Edited excerpts:

What do you make of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan’s remarks that the Centre won’t release funds to Tamil Nadu for not implementing National Education Policy (NEP) 2020?

In a constitutional republic, every officer and minister of the government is bound by the framework of the Constitution. I think the minister, in the heat of the moment, may have gone further than the Constitution allows him, escalating the issue. NEP 2020 is not a Parliament-approved policy mandating states to follow, and there is no clause in the Appropriation Bill that money shall not be released to states unless the policy is implemented. Therefore, it is beyond the ambit of the Constitution, and of the principles of disbursement of funds already appropriated through Parliament's approval.

While NEP 2020 is only a suggestion, the previous two NEPs drafted in 1968 and 1986, which was updated in 1992, had Parliamentary assent. Even they were not enforced with any diktat, threat, arm twisting, or compulsion.

The NEP 1986 did admit that the three-language formula was very hard to implement in any part of India, and exceptionally hard in the northern states.

In some sense, the 1986 NEP’s intent was pure and balanced, as it admitted that the three-language formula failed for many reasons, like lack of resources and teachers. Considering these aspects, it left the execution of the language formula to individual states, acknowledging that they have a better understanding of their capabilities.

Though education is of utmost importance to society, it is a very difficult, time-consuming, and financially draining undertaking. States like Tamil Nadu have been able to do two languages well, while almost all the northern states have been unable to do even one language as well.

This brings us to the question of whether it is better to have a limited ambition of teaching two mandatory languages in a highly complicated and highly resource-intensive area by achieving somewhere near the target or if we should keep on tilting at windmills by trying to achieve the impossible of teaching three mandatory languages to all students.

I ask: Is the curse of too much ambition resulting in abject failure? If you insist on teaching three languages when you are not even performing well in one, the question that arises is how long you are going to keep on condemning yourself to failure.

Many in TN see NEP as a cultural imposition by the Centre, seeking to know why children here should learn an additional language when they are doing well with just two languages. Your comments.

Even if we were doing relatively well before COVID, the pandemic has had a negative impact on education, and the two years of lockdown have resulted in significant retardation.

I won't claim we are doing perfectly well and everything is great in TN. All of us are making efforts to improve the results, and TN is the only state that launched a remedial education program (Illam Thedi Kalvi) for children after the pandemic. I don't think we are doing so fantastically well at two languages that we cannot do better. As a thoughtful person, I want to do better.

But it is beyond rational thinking to try and expand this to three mandatory languages, with huge costs in terms of new teachers, training, and textbooks, even if one assumes that it was a uniform 3rdlanguage, as opposed to several options.

For me (TN) to contemplate changing the formula that has been relatively successful — I am not saying it is perfect — I should have evidence of somebody doing the other formula better, as a starting point for a discussion.

But, all I actually have is examples of others doing much worse with the three-language formula. Will any thoughtful person contemplate leaving a relatively successful model for a proven-to-be-unsuccessful model, solely on the word of the person who has failed with the other formula? No thoughtful person will do that, and we are not going to do that.

Is the DMK’s opposition to NEP limited to the three-language policy?

Our objection to the NEP is much more profound, and it doesn't start or end with language. First, the Union should not be in the business of dictating to states what they should do in a concurrent subject, which was historically a state subject till 1976.

It is irrational to think that one policy across the country will work when the outcomes are so very different already. The average education level in Tamil Nadu (High School graduate) and Bihar (Elementary School dropout) is different, and why should one assume that the same policy will work for both?

The Union aspires to achieve 50 percent GER in Higher Education by 2035, but TN is already at roughly 50 percent. Why would we adopt your policy, to achieve a goal that we have already achieved? We are also opposed to the multiple public exam (starting very young) testing model and streaming students into vocational training very early, among others.

But our opposition starts with who are you (Union) to tell us (Tamil Nadu) how we should teach our children? This was not the case in 1968 and 1988, and my question is why and how you are forcing it upon us now?

The state government has allotted funds withheld by the Union Government from its own exchequer this time. Is it possible or practical to forego funds from the Union Government all the time?

This is the wrong question to the wrong party. If someone breaks into my shop and steals my goods, the question one should ask is why he is stealing goods, not how long I will keep replacing the goods.

Not every government, we hope, is going to continue to break the law and violate the Constitution on a regular basis like the current dispensation. Getting education right is a very complicated thing, and there is no guaranteed correlation between money spent and outcomes achieved.

There are examples of people spending relatively little and getting good outcomes, and people spending a lot and not getting good outcomes.

A few instances of withholding a couple of 1,000 crores of rupees are unlikely to break Tamil Nadu’s progress, just like even an additional Rs 1 lakh crore a year given to UP has not resulted in significant improvement of UP’s GSDP when compared to that of Tamil Nadu. So, money can do some things, but not everything. And it is no guarantor of better outcomes.

The DMK and BJP have escalated their attacks against each other on this issue. Is the DMK being coerced to accept the NEP through the stalling of funds?

The word attack is wrong here. They (Centre) were trying to deprive us of our rights by enforcing some diktat, which we opposed. When we stand up to oppression and say this is not constitutional, it is not an attack but a struggle to protect our rights.

And this is not a one-off incident, but rather part of a very well-established pattern over the last 11 years of the BJP government, indulging in continuous coercion and extra-constitutional actions of incessant interference in the functioning of the State Assembly and States’ finances. As just one example, bills passed in the Assembly are not signed by the Governor for months and sent to the President after being returned and re-passed (the Supreme Court has remarked that there is no provision for such actions in the Constitution, but sadly has not passed a final judgement on the matter yet).

No doubt, the BJP is trying to exercise extra-electoral control over all non-BJP governments through its nefarious, back-door, and anti-democratic authoritarian actions.

Why does TN oppose NEP in total?

This is not a political issue, but one of Tamils. There is not a single party that took root in Tamil Nadu that thinks NEP is in the interests of the Tamil people. That is why one should stop thinking of this as a DMK or AIADMK issue.

The Union doesn't seem to be convinced that it is the issue of the Tamils at large. But the truth is, it is a people's issue.

but the DMK government has also implemented a scheme like the free breakfast scheme, which was part of the NEP?

No. Let me clarify that the implementation of the free breakfast scheme has nothing to do with NEP.

This was a profound policy that came from the Chief Minister’s (M. K. Stalin) mind, and it took weeks of consultations with members of our Economic Advisory Council to design the scheme with unique features.

To the best of my knowledge, our scheme’s design has still not been replicated anywhere else in the country. I am 100 percent sure this is only a Tamil Nadu government project, and I am proud that even in a city like Madurai, the average cost of breakfast (for one child) is about Rs 12.

There is almost no scheme that I know of in the government that gives you this much return on investment.

In fact, in my city, I personally devised a plan, and expanded the scheme to cover all those older students who happen to be in an integrated school that has both elementary and higher classes, with CSR funds.

We discussed at length the cost and quality of the meals and the model’s sustainability. Even the menu was carefully chosen to suit the central kitchen model.

TN fears the three language formula is a backdoor entry for Hindi. Is it justified?

While adopting the two-language policy, our party founder (C.N.) Anna (Durai) said Tamil is to be spoken within my state and English for the outside world. If every part of India had implemented a two-language formula, English would have been a link language for both the international and Indian populations.

Insisting on a three-language formula is implicitly admitting that at least some parts of the country can never be taught English, which ought to be the second language, and that is why some others (like us) need to learn a third language.

Your unachievable ambition can be three languages, and bravado can be five languages, but you should start with being able to implement one language, and then two languages, successfully. Because if they (people in the North) can learn English, there would be no need for us to learn a third language (Hindi) to communicate with any one language (Hindi) people.

There is a profound fallacy in the mandatory three-language formula, which has become highly irrelevant in the age of AI, which helps one seamlessly switch from one language to another. Even if mandatory three languages were relevant in 1950, it is a completely anachronistic and illogical requirement now, unworthy of consideration in 2025.

We must remember that we are talking about three compulsory languages, not three languages by preference. Learning of any and many languages is an individual’s choice, and we do not restrict this in any way in Tamil Nadu.

But three compulsory languages are the antithesis of any mind that is logical, thoughtful, data-aware, history-aware, and technology-aware.

BJP has made this an issue of DMK denying opportunities for government school students to learn a third language. Your response.

I have never seen a machine capable of generating so much false propaganda as this BJP’s illogical whataboutery. They came up with some random numbers about children studying in private schools, but the School Education Minister said more than 1.09 crore study in schools that follow the state board syllabus, while only about 15 lakh students are enrolled in CBSE medium And there is no clarity whether the three-language formula is actually implemented there, or with Tamil as an option.

The second question is where studies are done, which is a decision taken by parents based on their situations. There is no requirement that the Dairy minister should have cows, or that the Union Education Minister should admit his children into an Indian university. He can send them wherever he wants. Policy is policy, and individual choices and preferences are different.

The most indecent, basest, irrelevant, and intellectually bankrupt arguments are being placed to trivialize policy discussions that are about millions of children, like asking, "Where do your children study?"

Delimitation is another issue on which the DMK government and CM M. K. Stalin is vociferous against the BJP. But is it justified to rake up the issue when there is no announcement on the Delimitation Commission?

Thoughtful people act well in time. We are acting now because the 25-year delimitation freeze ends in 2026, and naturally, as the deadline gets closer, our worries increase. Also, there is a government at the Union that has in the past brought profound Constitutional changes through the back door at the last minute without any notice, like EWS and the abrogation of Article 370.

The fact that they have not done something yet, doesn't mean they will not try to do it overnight with the usual authoritarian approach. They have done it before, and they will likely do it again multiple times.

The issue is of profound concern for us because, unlike other countries, in India already 100 percent of the power and money is concentrated in one place – at the Union Government. Since the other levels of government are routinely attempted to be subjugated, extorted, and coerced, then the single source of power vital to our future..

Even the smallest fraction of reduction of representation at that level, should be of huge concern to the people who will be affected. Moreover, since this is a multi-party, multi-state issue, it requires a lot of time and effort to coordinate a coherent strategy and response. That is the reason our Chief Minister has started this initiative now.

Despite Union Home Minister Amit Shah’s assurance at a public meeting that no Southern state will lose seats and a pro-rata formula will be applied, why does the issue continue to be raked up?

Had there been a more concrete assurance in the form of an official statement in Parliament, ideally with a clear explanation of how the Union Government plans to go about the exercise, we might have been more inclined to not be sceptical.

But an off-the-cuff remark, at a political meeting with no documentation, is not enough to allay our concerns, more so given the track record of this Union Government. Our actions to protect the rights of a few hundred million people cannot be held in abeyance based on one 30 second statement, by one Minister at one political event.

Southern states feel they are being penalized for controlling population. What do you think is the ideal solution?

The single motivator for the 42nd and 84th Amendments freezing the number of Parliament and assembly seats was to ensure that the states that achieved the national ambition of population control were not penalized. Population control was not the ambition of individual states, but of the country. We did what India wanted every state to do, and apparently, we did so better than others. That’s why we say we should not be penalized.

My CM has articulated the official position of the government and DMK by demanding that the freeze be extended for another 30 years. The implied message in his statement is that the North should be brought to parity in outcomes (with the south) in the meantime.

The double-engine sarkars of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, and Rajasthan, which are big population centers, should improve meaningfully to change India's trajectory significantly.

The implied belief, in 1971 and 2002 when the freeze was initiated, and extended, was that the time would be used to level up the poorer states through financial transfers from richer states, among others. But on the contrary, the gap hasn’t shrunk or stabilized. Rather it is increasingly widening even now, despite a whole lot of financial transfers.

Even if you take a state like Gujarat, there is no levelling up in the quality-of-life outcomes. The overall pie is growing, but the poor are being left behind. A few people are getting fabulously wealthy, while more than 50 percent of the population is sitting in the doldrums.

This is not an acceptable model for people in Tamil Nadu, as we believe in inclusive growth. We believe everybody should get access, and that is why we went a different way. The problem now is that it is being used as a reason to punish us.

In my own view, I think the North should learn to implement the tenets of universal inclusion and social justice, to bring everybody into the system with equitable access. They should strive to keep girls in school for as long as possible, ideally at least till high school.

Such things that improve human capital and productivity will make them more competitive in a global market, thereby enhancing their standard of living. If they don't do those things, then everything else is an exercise in futility, and they will continue to be fighting a losing battle.