Wrong para in the draft led to confusion: MK Sridhar

Prof MK Sridhar, a senior academician from the state, and a member of the committee constituted to frame New Education Policy headed by Prof K Kasturi Rangan, spoke to Rashmi Belur regarding the controversy over the Policy.

Just a day after the submission of report controversy has erupted across the nation, being a member of the committee what do you feel?

The committee has done its job and provided justice to everything, starting from pre-school to higher education. Now it's in the hands of the people and let them give their feedback. The controversy is unnecessary.

It is alleged that the committee tried to impose Hindi by recommending three language policy?

We have not recommended to impose any language or to make any language compulsory. The three-language policy is a policy of the country and what we recommended was to implement the same in letter and spirit. There were small differences as a wrong paragraph was included in the draft, which is now removed and a revised version uploaded by the ministry. I need to clarify here that the wrong paragraph crept into the draft while we were compiling older versions of the policy. Even we noticed the error after submitting the draft and now it is corrected.

How do you justify the three-language policy now?

The people who are opposing, raising objections and staging protests must read the draft first - especially the part on languages. Even for the states which are Hindi-speaking, we recommend three-language policy and that the students should learn other Indian languages along with Hindi. We just tried to say that all Indian languages should be familiar to kids.

Pro-Kannada activists in the State have planned protests, what is your message to them?

The public is open to submit their opinion. The committee will not give any clarification to any issues raised further. And why should we do so?

It is alleged that there was a lack of public consultation before preparing the draft.

We have consulted over 70 different organisations across the nation and several experts. Even Ministry of Human Resource Development had given us all the earlier reports and opinions collected across the nation by TSR Subramanyam committee. I can just say it was in the interest of the nation.

Why is there mention about only one particular religion and madrasas in particular?

No, it is not about one particular religion. We had consulted all religious leaders who are running educational institutions. As to why we mentioned only about Madrasas, it is because lakhs of kids studying there require mainstream education. So we have highlighted it.

Do you think the report will be implemented?

It was the job assigned by the union government and the committee has completed the task. As it was assigned by them, we hope it will be implemented.