‘Communal, coercive agenda’: Sonia Gandhi slams Modi govt’s education policy
New Delhi: Indian National Congress leader and Member of Parliament, Sonia Gandhi has slammed the Modi government’s education policy, charging its core agenda is centralisation of power, commercialisation, and communalization of textbooks.
According to Kashmir Media Service, Sonia Gandhi’s remarks, outlined in an opinion piece titled “The ‘3Cs’ that Haunt Indian Education Today” published in The Hindu, underscore growing concerns over the direction of India’s educational framework. “The consequences of this single-minded push for centralisation, commercialisation, and communalisation have fallen squarely on our students. This carnage of India’s public education system must end,” Gandhi said in the article.
Criticising the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, she says in the article, “The introduction of the high-profile National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 has hidden the reality of a government that is profoundly indifferent to the education of India’s children and youth. The government’s track record over the last decade has convincingly demonstrated that in education, it is concerned only with the successful implementation of three core agenda items the centralisation of power, the commercialisation, and the communalisation of textbooks, curriculum, and institutions.”
She says the most damaging consequences of centralisation have been in the domain of education, noting the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE), comprising Ministers for Education in both the Indian and State governments, has not been convened since September 2019. “Even while adopting and implementing a paradigm shift in education through the NEP 2020, the government has not seen fit to consult state governments on the implementation of these policies even once.”
“The lack of dialogue is accompanied by a bullying tendency. Among the most disgraceful acts committed by this government is the coercion of state governments to implement the PM-SHRI (or PM Schools for Rising India) scheme of model schools by withholding the grants due to them under the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) as leverage,” she said.
Sonia Gandhi has also said commercialization prioritizes profit over accessibility, marginalizing underprivileged students, adding this commercialisation of the education system has been happening in plain sight, in full compliance with the NEP.
The veteran Congress leader has accused New Delhi of following a communal agenda in education. “The Union government’s third thrust is on communalisation the fulfilment of the long-standing ideological project of the RSS and the BJP, of indoctrinating and cultivating hatred through the education system.” She says the textbooks of the National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) have been revised to sanitise Indian history. “Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination and the sections on Mughal India have been dropped from curricula,” she says in the article.
