Flogging old antagonisms

Let's call her Vidya. This standard eight student was born with hands that end with no fingers but write a beautiful script, the finest in c...

Let8217;s call her Vidya. This standard eight student was born with hands that end with no fingers but write a beautiful script, the finest in class. Ever ready with a smile for even a stranger, Vidya wants to be a doctor. Top of her class in everything but sports 8212; an artificial limb makes running a bit of a bother 8212; little Vidya says she wants to be a doctor. She wants to design artificial limbs that don8217;t pinch when you run or fall apart during monsoons just when the family has no money to spare for a new one.

Perhaps Vidya will never know the recent flurry of correspondence from the school education department in Mumbai to the union human resource development ministry with a rather blunt argument: that CBSE and ICSE students be denied free seats to professional courses in Maharashtra so that local Maharashtrian students don8217;t suffer an academic disadvantage. Vidya studies in one of Pune8217;s 14 Kendriya Vidyalayas.

8216;8216;This sounds like divide and rule. Where will our students go?8217;8217; whispered one KV principal on hearing the news. Isn8217;t it strange how the education department of an industrial powerhouse of a state which tries hard to look attractive as a destination for foreign investment, should suddenly suffer parochial pangs while designing higher education policies?

Rich-poor, English or regional medium, local-outstation 8212; when these distinctions begin to draw an 8216;us vs them8217; line through the beneficiaries of a publicly funded education system, it is time to worry.

You could dismiss the KV episode as an aberration. Or you could jog your memory back to not so long ago this March, when the state budget proposed that children of parents filing income tax returns and earning above Rs 50,000 annually should pay higher fee.

This week that decision became official 8212; only for aided English-medium schools. They promise that the money thus earned and saved in grants will be pumped into rural schools. Official figures bandied around reflect that the state is doling out Rs 2,200 per student for primary education, Rs 6,500 for secondary education and Rs 10,000 for higher education.

Channelising developmental funds for rural education is surely a noble intention. Then why not a reasonable, revised and uniform fee structure for all schools irrespective of mediums? Was any feasibility study conducted to find out whether a huge section of society earning above Rs 50,000 per year really does not send children to Marathi, Urdu or Gujarati medium schools in cities like Mumbai, Pune or Nagpur?

Story continues below this ad

Maharashtra is dotted with rural schools where teachers exist only on paper and 55,000 new classrooms are waiting to be constructed as students study in cowsheds, community temples and the village grounds. If the Rs 40 crore to be thus saved from cuts in grants to English-medium schools can be channelised into rural education, where is the transparent plan of action outlining how the money will be spent?

What is needed is the planning of this strategy, and the sharing of the information. Not the constant flogging of the rich-poor parent antagonism.