The Hindu : Task force on education to examine 'contentious issues'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 05, 2003

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National

Task force on education to examine 'contentious issues'

By Anita Joshua

NEW DELHI MARCH 4. After "cleansing" school textbooks of the `Macaulay, Marx, madarasa' influence with considerable success, the Union Human Resource Development Ministry has seemingly set its eyes now on higher education. Or it would seem from the mandate given to a task force that has been set up to examine a wide range of education-related issues.

Couched in the sweeping mandate given to the task force are "contentious" issues such as making military training a compulsory part of education, and "dovetailing the education curriculum to national culture, needs and aspirations''. This apart, the task force has been asked to examine student-related issues, including commercialisation of education, expansion of professional education and the impact of inflation on recipients of scholarships.

Set up on February 26 by the Department of Secondary and Higher Education, the task force is being billed as the Ministry's response to the representations that have been coming in from different organisations/student communities/unions/fora on different aspects pertaining to education. The task force — headed by the former Education Secretary, Anand Sarup — has been given six months to submit its report.

In the six months, the task force — packed with apex-level functionaries of the educational establishment — will have to cover a lot of ground as its mandate is wide-ranging if not a trifle disconnected. For, along with conscription and "dovetailing the curriculum to national culture...," it will have to explore avenues to rationalise the fee structure, link scholarships to the price index, exempt endowments for education from Income-Tax, establish women universities and women hostels in each district and improve the condition of hostels for the SCs/STs.

While the mandate of instilling "moral and physical strength and discipline by making social service works and military training compulsory part of education" is bound to raise eyebrows within the education network given the textbook controversy, educationists are also questioning the "incongruous mixture of issues" and the logic/feasibility of having women universities in every district.

Other members of the task force — which is yet to begin work — are the Chairman of the University Grants Commission, Arun Nigavekar; the Chairman of the All-India Council of Technical Education, R. Natarajan: the Vice-Chancellor of Hyderabad University, K. Harinarayana; the Vice-Chancellor of the SNDT University, Mumbai, Rupa B. Shah; the Vice-Chancellor of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow, G. Nancharaiah; the Vice-Chancellor of U.P. Technical University, Lucknow, O. S. Chauhan; the Chairman of the Central Board of Secondary Education, Ashok Ganguly; the Executive Committee member of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, P. V. Krishna Bhat; and the Joint-Secretary (Planning) in the Ministry, C. Balakrishnan.

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