Educating Joshi

Schools without roofs. Schools without teachers. Schools perched on filthy junkyards. Schools that are not schools but memorials. A series ...

Schools without roofs. Schools without teachers. Schools perched on filthy junkyards. Schools that are not schools but memorials.

A series on Uttar Pradesh8217;s temples of learning run by this newspaper should have made Union Minister of Education Murli Manohar Joshi recoil in horror and rush to make inquiries for himself 8212; because it8217;s important that he doesn8217;t take us at our word. But, from all evidence, the HRD ministry continues to remain an oasis of calm. And for good reason perhaps. What8217;s new about all this anyway?

But Joshi must respond to this crisis in elementary education that is staring him in the face if he wants the nation to take his much-publicised Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan seriously. After the rhetoric he has employed to describe it 8212; 8216;8216;the most valuable investment that we can make in India8217;s future is to ensure that every child gets education8217;8217; 8212; the least we can expect from him is to signal his serious commitment to a project that ambitiously sets to impart education for at least eight years to every child in the country by the year 2010.

As it is, this year8217;s Economic Survey had indicated that his government is not prepared to put its money where Joshi8217;s mouth is 8212; that far from the 6 per cent of GDP promised years ago, expenditure now stands at some 3.66 per cent, and falling.

Of course, it would be most unfair to place the entire onus for the situation on Joshi8217;s shoulders. The state government which had rashly vowed, among other things, to transform the life of the Dalit child, is also guilty of an apathy so manifest that even schools in Mayawati8217;s birthplace 8212; which should stand high in terms of emotional resonance for a leader who takes her birthdays so seriously 8212; and, in fact, even her old school, remain empty shells where little or no learning takes place.

It8217;s not as if her political adversary, Mulayam Singh Yadav, fares much better, despite having set up two schools in the village of Saifayi. There is a lesson here for politicians of every persuasion. It takes more than tokenism to ensure literacy. If they are serious about education it8217;s time for them to go back to the blackboard.