Arjun Singh begins with top tangles: IIMs, NCERT

The National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) curriculum and the Indian Institute of Managements fee cut, two of the bigge...

The National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT) curriculum and the Indian Institute of Managements fee cut, two of the biggest controversies that have plagued the Human Resource Ministry in recent years, are first up on the new minister’s itinerary.

Arjun Singh wants a meeting with IIM directors later this week. And tomorrow, he has convened a meeting with NCERT officials. Controversial NCERT director J.S.Rajput is expected to attend the meeting. Singh has made it clear that he would not be ‘‘starting with prejudices’’ and that even if there is ‘‘detoxification’’ there would no ‘‘witchhunt’’. Singh said he would go through the Shunglu committee report and find out if it could provide any backdrop for discussions with the IIM directors. ‘‘I am always ready for dialogue,’’ said Singh, implying that he would try to dissipate the animosity which had developed between the IIMs and his predecessor Murali Manohar Joshi’s bureaucrats.

The IIMs had suspected that the bureaucrats wanted to use the Shunglu report essentially to exercise their control over the IIMs. In their first meeting with Singh, bureaucrats apparently tried to convince him about the primacy of the Shunglu report. Later, Singh wondered aloud before reporters, ‘‘…but money should not be wasted.’’ The minister reiterated that there would be no assault on IIM autonomy and said, ‘‘I will have to understand the rationale behind the fee cuts.’’

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Singh said after his meeting with the bureaucracy that in the last five years, ‘‘priorities in education have changed’.’ He said he would find out why the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) had not been constituted at all. The CABE was a body meant to be represented by all state education ministers.

Singh aid if there was disillusionment among the academic fraternity, he would ‘‘like to remove that disappointment.’’ Asked whether Vedic astrology would be introduced in the curriculum, he said, ‘‘Only if such courses are demanded by the public.’’

Yogi Adityanath, Shri Ramswaroop Memorial University, police lathicharge, police lathicharge students, Indian express news, current affairs

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