NEP 2020: The devil lies in the details of implementation strategy

 

The National Education Policy 2020 could dare to recommend some fundamental changes in the very idea and approach of Indian education as many of those who prepared the NEP document thankfully, had no faith in the earlier system of education. However, many of those who have now the responsibility to implement the policy, are products of the same earlier education system. Those who believe in the earlier system, have never been trained or encouraged to think out of box and to explore innovative ideas. NEP 2020 has very efficiently pointed out the deficiencies in our earlier education system and consequently prescribed the remedies. But to achieve the same, the most important issue is to design and develop the implementation strategies. Such strategic issues were not a part of the document since these are bound to be different at different places. It was therefore most judiciously left to the ability of the implementers to decide these concerns.

The fact that our earlier education system was incapable of producing visionaries, thinkers and innovators have got exposed in this process by those who had the responsibility to affect the changes and implement NEP. The earlier education system was such that most of the innovators were necessarily rejects of the system. The human resource product of our earlier education system always looked for decisions and instructions in all the documents that were to be followed but was not explicitly written in the policy. NEP has no such set of instructions but it only mentions the targets. But most unfortunately, academic administrators kept on trying to find instructions in the same even in this case. They were used to finding out instructions in all such documents and therefore searched for the same even in this case. They tried to decipher some kind of instructions from their discussion with the higher authorities who could never be logically expected to have adequate understanding of the exact local status and institutional environment throughout the length and breadth of this huge country.

Many clever academic administrators used this opportunity in getting their vested interest satisfied. As a classic case, I have no hesitation in stating that our the then Head of the Department of Physics of Delhi University misused this opportunity in cutting down the practical lab component in the undergraduate physics course. His famous claim that teachers don’t take practical labs seriously and that is why this aspect must be done away with as far as possible. Imagine how did he arrive at this conclusion from the document of NEP that talks of increasing the hands-on practical approach throughout the document.

Another statement of a similar academic administrator that they are least concerned about the workload of the teaching faculty only highlights that they were very poor in understanding and foreseeing the problems and thereby suggesting a tailor made solution in that particular environment. This is clearly an escapist’s approach and these administrators were able product of our earlier education that was designed primarily to produce escapists. 

Due to this the administrators tried to race through its implementation, while it should have been a slow and consolidating process. The administrators that were product of our earlier system just wanted to showcase their efficiency to their seniors by making all changes in one go which could have never been advisable just because the change this time was not a routine one.

Those who would attempt to go through the NEP document and would look for the need of VAC and SEC courses will be convinced that VAC (Value Added Courses) should have been primarily aimed for school going students and SEC (Skill Enhancement Courses) should have basically targeted students of higher education. But in the race and scoring points, VAC courses were introduced in a big way even in the higher education with an intensity similar to SEC. 

To accommodate VAC and SEC courses and that too without compromising on the core courses led to a situation wherein the attention on core courses have got diluted to undesirable levels. Papers that required 4 to 5 lectures per week are given only 2-3 lectures now. Due to this, for example in University of Delhi, the number of papers to be studied by the undergraduate students jumped from 4 to 7 in each semester. Such an increase can never be balanced by reducing the credits and lectures in each paper since the burden of number of papers itself became too much for the students to absorb. To ease themselves, students started opting for courses not to gain skills or values but to somehow manage them. Courses like ‘Fit India’ & ‘NCC’ became so much sought after that the university had to notify a rule that only those students who were engaged in such activities in their schools will be able to take these courses. Increase in the number of papers to such a level increased the number of events of making assessments at the cost of their time that could have gone in studies. The result is that students are passing out having little skills and that is just opposite to what the NEP 2020 had been prescribed for. Students will pass out having neither the skill of following instructions and nor the skill of carrying out innovations.

If the trend is not arrested, I am afraid, those who wanted this excellent well-meaning NEP policy document to fail, will have the last laugh.

Restoring the tradition of religious evolution: Ram Mandir

In the mediaeval period, for the first time in her history, Bharat witnessed a kind of invasion that was completely different from earlier ones. This land was unaware of such a variety of military invasion that was carried out with an aim to religiously convert the inhabitants of the conquered territory. To accomplish this, the invaders were ready to indulge in any level of brutality and inhuman practices then unimaginable for such purposes. Bharat suffered very heavily for not being prepared to counter this phenomenon of religious fanaticism that was using force and military to spread a religious philosophy. In the conquered territory, normal people were subjected to unthinkable harassments and atrocities to ensure ‘conversion’. Muhammad Bin Quasim beheaded Dahir, the King of Sindh after victory, and then paraded with his head on the roads besides said to have enslaved all his family members. Such open displays of terror by Quasim and others were aimed at creating an easy ground to carry out conversion of ‘infidels’. There are several such accounts written by contemporary historians, narrators and killer-kings themselves, who have openly boasted about having left no infidels  ‘unconverted’ or ‘uncircumcised’ unless killed or enslaved. Quasim, Khilji, Taimur, Tipu, Ghazni, Babar, Akbar and Aurangzeb – none of them can be left out from this list. This brutal form of religious fanaticism was unknown to Bharat by then, since we had no tradition of forcibly spreading a religious philosophy. Such a feature of our ancient tradition, clearly differentiate us from invaders’ culture.

Bharat had a tradition of practicing religious democracy. People of this land had absolute freedom to worship and pray to one’s own choice of faith, liking and understanding. To shift from one religious philosophy to other was considered as evolution and we were unaware of the idea of such a possibility in a forced manner. While change in one’s religious beliefs was perfectly acceptable, but asking for a commitment of not indulging in any change of belief in future, was termed as ‘conversion’ – a concept that never existed in this part of the world. While the tradition of convincing anyone to change one’s understanding of the mysteries of the world existed in the name of ‘Shastrarth’, it never asked anyone to stop evolving again in future. More than providing answers to the mysteries of this universe, religion is known for keeping alive the attitude of knowing, questioning and exploring. Such an attitude has helped us in keeping us open for religious evolution.

'Shastrarth' between Adi Shankaracharya with Mandan Mishra is just one such example of our rich and scholarly tradition of logic and openness. The modern religious and semi-religious philosophies viz. ‘Islam’, ‘Christianity’ and ‘Marxism’ are completely intolerant to the idea of religious evolution and for this reason, they came in direct conflict with our Bharatiya tradition. These foreign philosophies demanded an end to the process of our religious evolution. ‘Religion’ for them was considered to be providing ‘unquestionable’ final answers. The struggle of Bharat in the mediaeval period and after has been precisely for continuing with this tradition of openness that suddenly came under threat in that era. Our understanding of ‘religion’ was completely different from these invaders. The invading forces tried to prove that our religious tradition is not different in any sense and made continuous historical attempts to establish this. In fact, a century old campaign by the colonisers and leftist historians to somehow establish that we are also like them, through their prejudiced understanding of ‘Indian’ history has failed to stand the test of logic and scientific investigations. Our history of the last thousand years needs to be analysed in this way. Bharat continued to struggle just to save its freedom of religious evolution. When Kashmiri Pandits asked the ninth Sikh leader, Guru Teg Bahadur to help them, they wanted to save exactly this tradition of religious evolution, freedom and democracy. The Sikh movement itself was a part of our religious evolution process, wherein we evolved to save this feature.

The fanatic military attack in the mediaeval era was so brutal and inhuman that the struggle to save ourselves demanded innovative responses from the leaders of that era. Bhakti movement was yet another example that proved to be pretty effective also in saving this tradition. Evolution of a Vedic era text ,Valmiki’s Ramayana, to a contemporary Ram Charit Manas in the sixteenth century is yet another instance in support of this understanding. The fanatic attack on the mandir of Ram Janamsthan led to its complete destruction. To make this destruction irreversible, a new structure was built at that place and was called Babri structure. Destruction of Ram Mandir and the attempt to convert the character of that place is representative of the mentality that mindlessly destroyed thousands of such places of knowledge and wisdom. Nalanda, Taxila and other universities witnessed similar destructions and was associated with demolition of temples that were also used as institutions of spreading knowledge and wisdom. Our struggle to restore the tradition of religious evolution has continued since then.

The mediaeval attacks also changed the idea of temples from being institutions of knowledge and wisdom to merely places of worships and pilgrimage. Temples were compelled to become merely tools of forgiving/justifying sins committed by their committed believers. Scientists, known as Brahmins, were left with no choice but to start practicing priesthood to save themselves from the mindless atrocities. The invaders were so much driven from religious faiths and beliefs that they were unable to accommodate wisdom beyond their boundaries of faith. Restricting the history of evolution of earth within a few thousand years, imagining earth as flat and other such dogmatic beliefs hampered our scientific understanding of history and the astronomical mysteries of universe in that era itself.

Restoration of Ram Mandir in Ayodhya shall prove to be our first significant move towards our march to a resurgent Bharat. Revival of temples as centres of knowledge, wisdom, scientific research, societal reforms and upliftment will establish our arrival on the global canvas as a ‘world saver’ in a near future.

Understanding the CUET fiasco

The Central University Entrance Test (CUET) was announced this year to meet the obligation of complying with the new National Education Policy 2020 promulgated by the government of India. The decision was also taken since the earlier system of admissions based on cut-off based calculation had got completely exposed last year by a particular state education board that had very liberally assigned hundred percent marks to a large number of students. It is true that there was no other way left to deal with the situation but to switch on to a common type of entrance test.

However, what has followed since then is not very encouraging and is far from being acceptable as satisfactory. Those who know the extremely complex admission process of Delhi University would agree that our admission process is arguably one of the most complex one in the world. It deals with hundreds of academic and non-academic subjects, core and elective classifications, hundreds of courses and thousands of combinations therein to seek admission into. I have always found it very difficult to make anyone understand the cut-off based admission method who had never followed the process very closely. Only with a great difficulty and some luck on our side, we were somehow used to limit the admissions within the sanctioned seats. But crossing the sanctioned seats and unable to maintain the exact reservation proportions for SC/ST/OBCs and others were also a usual part and parcel of this process. We needed a prophetic vision, statistical expertise and a shrewd calculative mind in each of the colleges and in the University to deal with such a gigantic exercise. Admission process of DU was never a smooth one and we had collectively succumbed to its complexity till about half a decade ago by allowing local freedom within the process. In the era of the earlier VC, Prof. Tyagi, who always lacked the desired administrative skills to run this complex University, an attempt was made to implement a university-wise uniform procedure to straighten the admission exercise using a centralized software. We did achieve some uniformity but we had to pay a huge cost for that. Admissions under the ECA and Sports has almost lost its earlier relevance. They are all now admitted as individuals and not as a team member leading to difficulties in building teams for better performances. While we were struggling with this centralized software, last year the cut-off based admission also lost its relevance in view of a large number of admission seekers having unbelievable and inexplicable level of hundred percent marks.

The decision of opting for a Common Test was indeed a welcome one and it was the only way to deal with the new challenge. But somewhere, we lost the plot probably because decisions were taken by those who did not have the complete knowledge of the complexity involved in our admission process and those local advisors, who were supposed to advise them honestly, turned blind implementers. Switching over to an entirely new and unexplored method and that too completely, was never advisable. The National Testing Agency is indeed the best available agency to carry out this very demanding task but the expectations were beyond their comprehension. The agency that has proven its capability on several other occasions failed to make realistic assessment of all the aspects of this task.

We should not have let the entire admission process that was evolved in more than half a century be dumped in a single stroke like this. One should have asked all the admission seekers to appear for a single common aptitude test, that was already in practice for those who wanted admission into the law and management undergraduate courses. Marks obtained in this one could have then been used as a multiplier to modify the marks obtained by the students in their twelfth board exams. After this modification the new marks could have been used in the same manner for providing admissions as it was being done earlier. Since both these processes, the CLAT/CAT kind of tests and our earlier admission procedure was in operation, we could have done admissions in a much better and smooth way. The modifying factor earned in their aptitude tests could have been used liberally to nullify the differences in the standard of different boards. One could have given as much weight to the Entrance test marks as desired for making the ground even for all the boards. Instead, the university shifted to an entire new approach that was never tested and verified. Keeping different sets and combination of papers for different courses has not only complicated the process unnecessarily but it has thrown us into a blind state wherein no one is sure of the outcome and the mess, we will have to pass through therein. 

Demanding a National Commission on Partition

To the Hon'ble President of India,

Partition of India was one of the most tragic incidents that the world has witnessed in the recent times. A decision of partitioning India on religious grounds was taken by colonial rulers in association with some representatives of the colonized India. They succumbed to the divisive forces and let the country bleed in a manner that has no parallel in the modern times. As a direct consequence to this, the number of persons killed was more than five times of those killed in the combined two atomic explosions in Japan. According to some realistic estimates, around 20 lac citizens were killed and almost 2 crore persons were adversely affected. In a horrifyingly short period, many citizens got unwillingly and forcibly displaced; many lost their bread earner; others lost near and dear ones; or lost their livelihood and ancestral as well as their self-earned property. Life of around close to five percent of the population was pushed to hell with a single decision of partition. The entire nation suffered and continues to suffer on account of its aftermath. Unfortunately, a nightmarish experience of even such a huge magnitude has failed to get the attention that it deserved from the post-partition India. 

Our country can hardly afford another such trauma. But did we do something to prevent another such horrifying experience? Did we ever make any serious attempt to analyze the reasons that led to this disaster? I am afraid, we have done little in this regard. Quite contrary to this, in fact, India seems to have adopted a policy to keep an ostrich-vision on this. To make the situation even worse, this incident has been often ‘misused’ politically to indulge into a superficial blame game. In the absence of any serious investigation report or findings, it is allowed to get twisted and manipulated to suit anyone. Initially this was misused to create an environment against the potential opposition to the ruling government in the independent and democratic India. Officially and constitutionally, the nation has either avoided to find out the reasons that built up the atmosphere wherein partition seemed inevitable or has simply forced the country to accept it as an unavoidable and legitimate fate. With our policy of accepting the partition in this manner, we have indirectly, almost legitimized partition. 

The nation has avoided to find out a probable connection of the demographic imbalance with this tragedy. We have never bothered to see the connect between the rise of an intolerant monotheist religion with this or the connection of our loss of history; wrong choices of heroes and refusal to acknowledge our unique open ancient tradition - with the tragedy that the nation went through. Instead, we were encouraged to live in a hallucinations artificially created by a skewed and wrong understanding of 'secularism'. This helped in developing an attitude of evading uncomfortable questions. And this might have emboldened the divisive forces and shown them a way to go for another kill.

Last year, the Hon'ble Prime Minister of India, gave us some hope in this regard when it was announced that the nation will observe August 14 as the Partition Horrors Remembrance Day.

As the next logical step, we the citizen of India, urge you to form a National Commission on Partition to investigate and find out the reasons that led to partition and advise the government accordingly, so that timely precautions are taken in this regard and the nation feels assured that this will never recur again.

Signed by citizens of India

Please sign the petition by visiting the following link

https://chng.it/YPqdWGStHp