‘Govt not responsible for school education’

“The situation in the higher education sector is also grim. Most university teachers are still opposing the semester system to avoid work. Today we have over 400 universities connected through the National Knowledge Framework (NKF) and we hope we can connect the rest of 240 soon. We have 220 million students going to school and by 2020,45 million students will reach college. But we do not have enough number of colleges to accommodate all of them. We need to create the infrastructure,” Sibal said.

Talking about the recent Supreme Court verdict that makes it mandatory for all private schools to reserve 25 per cent of their seats for students from economically backward classes,he said that all affluent people who have problem with the mandate,should think about the subsidies like fuel,LPG that the government provides for them.

“If they do not talk about giving up those subsidies,why do they have a problem with this 25 per cent reservation?” Sibal asked.

At the beginning of the lecture,Sibal released the proposal of the 3rd students Parliament of the MIT School of Government MIT-SOG). Later,a memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed between MIT-SOG and Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) for a collaboration on a joint programme that will address issues of leadership in politics and government.

Certain areas for collaboration have been identified for academic training and delivery.

The areas of collaboration will include academic topics constituency development,election management,campaign management. Exchange programmes,design of syllabus and creation of internship opportunities will also be a part of this collaboration.

Vishwanath Karad,founder director,MAEER’s MIT Group of Institutions said,“We look forward to a more evolved curriculum for MIT-SOG with this collaboration.”

S Parshuraman,director,TISS,said,“We hope that with such courses available in India,our bureaucrats will not need to go to places like the JFK School of Government for training. For some course modules under the collaboration,the TISS faculty will come to MIT SOG for classes. TISS is also a part of the NKF. Students from NKF can come down to TISS and access over 8,000 journals.”

Value education need of the hour: Sibal

Union HRD Minister Kapil Sibal on Saturday termed immorality as the biggest ‘tremor’ in society and underlined the need of value education to overcome it.

Sibal was speaking after inaugurating the silver jubilee convention of the Bharatiya Jain Sanghatana (BJS) at the Shiv Chhatrapati Sports Complex in Balewadi. State School Education Minister Rajendra Darda,Dharmadhikari of Dharmasthala Manjunatha Temple Veerendra Heggade,Justice Chandrashekhar Dharmadhikari,founder-president of BJS Shantilal Muttha,national general secretary of BJS Prafulla Parakh and Sarala Muttha were present.

Sibal blamed consumerism for emergence of immorality in society. Highlighting the need of urging people to inculcate ethical values at the school level itself,he applauded the efforts of BJS and Muttha for introducing Mulyavardhan (value education) as a pilot project in 500 schools of Maharashtra. “We will have to create 100 such Mutthas to spread this movement across the country,” he said. He also promised to arrange a dialogue between BJS and NSCERT and SCERTs to take forward the journey of Mulyavardhan in the other parts of the country.

Sibal said,“The present day situation is such that there is no trust between husband and wife,students and teacher and the opposition and the ruling party. We have to bring back this trust in society. The leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Lokmanya Tilak used to have a dialogue with society through their writings. This dialogue between leaders and citizens is vanished. There is need to rebuild it.” Elaborating various initiatives of the government,Sibal talked about use of technology in tackling challenges. He said,“We have been linking 604 universities and 35,000 colleges across the country through national knowledge network. With this project in place,a student in Maharashtra will be able to listen to a lecture of a professor going on in IIT-Kanpur. A time will come when the convergence technology will enable every student in the country to take lessons sitting at home.”

Muttha said the BJS is an action-oriented organisation and not a function-oriented organisation. While elaborating the various projects of the BJS,such as Mulyavardhan,he said,‘We believe in integrating our programmes with the government system. We don’t criticise,but provide solutions. Though there is ‘Jain’ in the title of the organisation,the organisation works for the nation as a whole.’

Books on the various projects of the BJS and its journey so far were released during the inaugural function. . Parakh compeered the event,while vice-president of BJS Prakashchand Surana proposed the vote of thanks.