CPM says govt trying pvt push in education

The CPM On Thursday claimed the NDA government's push for creating a new higher education architecture in place of the UGC was aimed at "appeasing" corporate interests, influencing the way Indian youth think and enforcing the "fascistic" ideology of the RSS.

Releasing a letter, the party wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi against the draft Higher Education Commission of India Bill, CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury said his party would strive to build a broad-based movement against it and listed "secular" parties like BSP, SP, RJD, NCP, JD(S) and DMK among others as supporting their stand. The CPM will also rope in teachers, intellectuals and students in this fight.

Asked about the Congress role in such a scenario, he said, "we will approach everybody. What the Congress will do, we have to see. It is up to them whether they want to emulate what Jawaharlal Nehru said (about universities)."

Objecting to the draft bill, he said, "the Bill is guided by twin concerns that threaten to destroy the foundations of Higher Education in independent India and impede the salutary role it has played, over decades, in empowering the common people with learning, jobs and social confidence. The twin concerns are privatisation and social exclusion."

Yechury felt that the Bill will open the education sector to foreign universities with almost little regulation. "They will decide what our students should study. We will lose control over what is being taught. Education should be in confirmity with what our Constitutional values are," he said.

With the government getting more control over universities, he said the RSS would be able to push its agenda. "They will change the character of education. They want to influence the way Indian youth think. That they will do through the assault on thought process and reason."

"It does not require an external enemy to destroy a country; destruction of its education system is more than adequate to ensure that outcome. I am afraid that the present draft Bill needs to be withdrawn to avert that eventuality," Yechury said in his letter.