 In 1911, Gopal Krishna Gokhale presented the first bill of free and compressive education in the imperial assembly. It was not passed, could not be passed, because of resistance from two sections of society. One was feudal, another was emerging bourgeoisie. From the feudal section, Raja of Darbhanga, Maharaja of Darbhanga collected 11,000 signatures from big landlords and big Raja's and Maharaja's. We said, if you ensure that all children go to school, then who will do farming in our farm lands? At least they were honest to say that if all children go to school, there will be no one to do farming. Today's government is not honest in the preceding governments also, because these governments have to not want to acknowledge that more than half of India's children continue to be child laborers. The names will be enrolled, there will be 100 percent enrollment. 100 percent enrollment was, some people wrongly say it, 100 percent enrollment happened after Right to Education Act, no, my dear friend, look at the data, 100 percent enrollment was there from 1990 onwards, it was always there, because enrollment is just recording the names and all had masters are under orders to record the name of every child in the village. So they write the names of every child in the enrollment register, but at least half of the India's children are not in schools. The other resistance came from bourgeoisie, the representative of bourgeoisie then shifting from Kolkata to Mumbai at that time, rose in the imperial assembly and said, don't make haste, India is a poor country, we don't have resources, so let us not rush into trouble. In fact, I'm jumping the ears, the same thing we heard in 1946-47, when constant assembly was discussing what should be fundamental right in the constitution, what should not be. So the fundamental, there was a fundamental right committee, special committee decided whether to accept the proposals coming from the drafting committee led by Dr. Ambedkar. So the drafting committee had proposed that education up to 14 years of age must be made compulsory and free and must be fundamental right. So it was placed in part three of the constitution. The fundamental right committee led by Siddhartha Vallabhbhai Patel addressed his fundamental right committee and said, look this proposal has come before us from the drafting committee and it's going to be very difficult for us to decide whether to accept education as a fundamental right or not and everything under the sun cannot be accepted because after all India is a poor country, we don't have resources, we must be very careful about accepting or not accepting a proposal on fundamental right. So keeping this in mind that we are a poor country, please decide. And when Siddharth Vallabhbhai Patel has spoken, then all the Rai Bahadurs and Siddharth Bahadurs and Khan Bahadurs who are members of the committee, that was a character of the Constituent Assembly at that time, none of them had courage to say that we have the resources. So it was shifted from part three of the constitution to part four of the constitution, never became a fundamental right, until 1993 Unnikrishnan judgment from Supreme Court we declared it as a fundamental right. The interim period between Gopal Krishnan Gokhale's bill and Constituent Assembly not deciding to make education a fundamental right is very important. Many things happened. After Jalliawala Bagh, Gandhi ji gave a call, you know, pained by what happened Jalliawala Bagh, he gave a call to all the young people to quit schools, colleges and universities run by the British government, quit all the British government educational institution, come out and set up national educational institution. It was a revolt against the very idea of a British educational institution because British educational institution was enslaving the binds of our children and youth. So here Gandhi said rebel against them, come out and set up your own educational institution. And a very lovable story is when a young person doing MA in economics quit at the column, Gandhi ji quit, Aligarh Muslim University came out and set up a two room college and started teaching MA in economics course until attention was caught by a Hamdar Dawakana people in Karol Bagh in Delhi and invited the young person to come to Hamdar Dawakana campus and set up a college for teaching economics and that grew along the side of freedom struggle and when we got freedom, it became the present day Jamia Meliai, you know, Islamia and the young person was Dr. Zakir Hussain. In 1928, Bhagat Singh wrote a short article, he wrote many things but one short article only two and a half pages long called Students and Politics, Vidyarthi or Rajanithi. In that article, Bhagat Singh refers to the voice-over visiting Lahore and the school, college authorities forcing the students to go and welcome Vaisarayi. So, he writes in the article, when Vaisarayi comes to Lahore, we are told to attend all his events and be present there. But when Nehru comes to Lahore or Gandhi ji comes to Lahore or Subhash Chandra Bose comes to Lahore, we go to attend those meetings that we are told you are doing politics. Why is attending Vaisarayi meeting not a politics? Why attending Gandhi's meetings of Nehru or Subhash Chandra Bose becomes politics, this question he raises. Then he says, we are told that your task is only to study, not to do any politics. We agree our task is to study in the college. But while we are studying, are you going to keep us away from understanding what is the economic and social conditions of our country and what is happening in our country, you do not want us to understand. If you do not want us to understand, what kind of education are you importing to us? Questions, the very character of education. Then he says, such an education is not meant to educate, it is meant only to turn us into clerks of the British Empire and we are not ready to accept such an education. This is a very rich discourse taking place. And then Ambedkar, Baba's Ambedkar when in 1936 gives a slogan, educate, agitate and organize. One has to apply mind. He is giving the slogan to the Dalits section of society which is about 22, 23 percent of our population. Why a Dalit has to agitate and organize in order to be educated? Is it not true today? Dalits are still fighting. To be educated, they have to fight in order to be educated, they have to form student organization. They form Ambedkar Student Association. When they form Ambedkar Student Association on the campus of Hyderabad Central University, then they are called anti-national, casteist and extremist because they form Ambedkar Student Association. And what are they asking for? They are saying, please pay our UGC scholarship in time because we come from poor families. We cannot support our families if you do not pay us in time because they are asking for scholarship to be paid in fine. Therefore, they are called anti-nationalists and casteists and extremists. So, Ambedkar who talked about Dalits in 1936, today Ambedkar's formula can be applied to all sections of Indian society. All have to fight to be educated, they have to agitate, they have to organize themselves. Whether they are called anti-nationalists or not, that's a different side of the point, they'll continue to be called. And when Kanheya Kumar and Rohit Vemmola are created by the very process of what is happening in the country, then the education minister of the BJP government Rajasthan declares, the education system which we are going to establish shall not produce Kanheya, Kumar, and Rohit Vemmola's. The statement with a lot of deliberate thought and the education system now being set up, of course, the World Class Institute shall never allow you to never allow Kanheya, Kumar, and Rohit Vemmola even to be admitted, forget about creating Kanheya, Kumar, and Rohit Vemmola. They'll not even be admitted. The rules and regulations have come out under UGC guidelines. In 1937, Gandhi organized an All India conference on education in Vardha. And while addressing the conference, he said, when I do, when I spin thread from cotton with takli, while spinning, I'm also measuring its length. While spinning, I'm also weighing it from learning how to calculate. I'm learning mathematics. I'm learning physics. And when I'm doing it, I also learn about history of exploitation by cotton mills of Lancashire. I also think about exploitation of Indian farmers by these cotton mills. And therefore, I learned history as well. And he said, I know only spinning. Therefore, I give this example, but you can choose your own trade and your own productive activity, whatever you want to choose. And, but connect productive tasks with curriculum. And he proposes Naithalim as a totally new concept which will break the dichotomy, 5,000-year-old dichotomy between work and knowledge, 5,000-year-old. And when one a tribal young person dare to challenge this dichotomy between work and knowledge called Iklave here to forego his thumb. Dronacharya took away the thumb. Here was a proposal in 1937. The productive work has to be at the very center, organically at the center of the curriculum in every classroom of independent India. Very few have tried to even understand. It was not accepted by any government from the time of independence, all over up to now. And every time somebody talked about productive tasks, people say, oh, Gandhi must have meant it for poor people. Oh, Gandhi must have meant it only for villages. Oh, Gandhi must have meant it for urban slums. Oh, it doesn't mean he never meant it for us, for our children. He meant exactly for us. Because he saw that as long as the dichotomy between productive work and knowledge is maintained in the classroom and in society, caste system cannot go away. In order to challenge caste system, productive work has to be part, has to become part of education system. It was a revolutionary proposal coming from Gandhi. Instead of developing the proposal and taking it forward and finding ways and means of concretizing the proposal in classrooms of India, it was given up forever. This is a rich history. Curriculum, financing of education, the issue of caste, class, gender, all this become part of our discourse of education, language. And in 1938, in the National Congress passed a resolution, three-point resolution on education. One, all education up to class eight shall be in mother tongue. Mother tongue does not mean state approved languages. It means mother tongue. In Madhya Pradesh, where I come from, people will think it means Hindi. No, mother tongue in Madhya Pradesh means Malavi, Nimadi, Bundelkhandi. These are the mother tongues of mother parades. These are the real mother tongue. So they talked of mother tongue. Second, it shall be entirely free up to class eight. That was immediate agenda. Somehow take all children up to class eight, which we have failed to do even until today. And third, it shall be based upon the laythalim conception of curriculum and pedagogy. We have failed in all three. I'll refer to 1985, where the first evidence of the attack of globalization became evident. Of course, the formal announcement of globalization was in 1991, we all know that. But its evidence was available even earlier. In 1985, the name of education ministry was changed to human resource development ministry. Without any debate in the parliament, without any discussion, it was like, suddenly we know one morning there's name was changed. It was not a change of nomenclature. It was change of the very conception of education. A year later, 86 policy comes. 86 policy passed by the parliament with unanimous vote, not a single dissenting voice. 86 policy declared that half of India's children shall not be provided a school. Instead, they will be provided an evening non-formal center. Then the program of action 86 passed by the parliament said, why evening center, why not a day center for them? Evening center because these are child laborers. And when child laborers return home, they'll be very tired. So they should be given one or two hours to have food and be ready for a non-formal center under candlelight. So that will be provided. The teachers there shall not be regular, properly trained, properly paid teachers. These are poor children, poorest section of Indian society. Therefore, they will be provided underpaid, untrained contract teachers. After 1991, India faced structural adjustment, a conditionality of structural adjustment, which was a essential condition if Indian government wants more loans from the international market. So IMF and World Bank together told Indian government will give you provided you accept structural adjustment condition. What is structural adjustment? Structural adjustment condition told the Indian government that you have to now, for getting loans, you have to give a solemn promise that you shall start reducing public expenditure on education, health, all schemes of social welfare, poverty alleviation, and all such subsidized programs. If you don't, we'll stop giving you loans. You're not only accepted, but we co-told totally. In that towards the end of the decade of 1990, we even made an act in the parliament to ensure that we don't cross the limit set by the IMF and World Bank, and it's called FRBM, Finance Regulation and Budget Management Act. It continues, even Finance Minister Jatly said, we agree with the, despite all the rhetoric, rastrobakti, they accept the dictate of World Bank and IMF, that our deficit will not go beyond three persons as dictated under FRBM, which itself a product of orders from World Bank and IMF. In 1992, 93, World Bank tells us how to run your primary education. You ever imagine, India with the legacy which I'm talking about is being told how to run your primary schools, and they make a program. They give us a program called District Primary Education Program, which within 10 years covered half of India's district in 18 states of India, and that program was designed to destroy public funded primary and upper primary schools. The surprising thing was that when this was happening, the teachers union kept quiet, because the very first step was to make teachers, all teachers to be recruited from then onwards, make them contract teachers, underpaid, untrained contract teachers. And when we go further in 90s, you see, now even the teachers are not just going to be two kinds of teachers, contract teachers are regular teachers, but even the contract teachers will be divided into several layers. Several layers of contractualization will take place. Each layer will become weaker than it was earlier. So earlier, if all contract teachers mobilized themselves together, they'll be trouble. So divide them into Samhita A, Samhita Dho, Samhita Thin, they all happened in Madhya Pradesh, and continues to happen. So every section of contract teacher has to fight its own battle. Then comes the time when single teacher schools were promoted under service at Shabhiyaan, single teacher schools, promoted under service at Shabhiyaan. Never probably heard of it. Those schools were called Education Guarantee Centers. It guarantee everything except education. Education Guarantee Center started from 97, where service at Shabhiyaan started from year 2000. But from year 2000, service at Shabhiyaan accepted the whole formulation of Education Guarantee Centers. It said, in its very first formulation of service at Shabhiyaan approved in 10th five-year plan, it says very clearly, henceforth will provide primary and upper primary education either through schools or through Education Guarantee Centers or from other forms of alternative forms of schools. School is no more going to be an institution through which will provide education. School is meant increasingly is going to mean from 2000 on from nineties onward for better of sections of society, not for the poorest sections of society. Lot of euphemisms were developed and I found out as neoliberalism, this is a neoliberal policy framework under globalization, and neoliberalism attacks us, it chooses many new words for us, beautiful words. At that time, they talked about Shikshak Mitra for contact teachers of Shikshak Mitra. In different languages, they have different names. In the Baal Mitra, all kinds of names were thought of and those teachers of the Education Guarantee Centers, single teacher schools in only for Dalit and Tribal Hamlets, not for any other section of society, only for SD children, that single teacher school, Education Guarantee Center school, that girls were called Guruji as if the rest of them are not Guruji. To give them more respect, the more respect you mean that more exploitation will take place against you. All these formulations became perfect during nineties and then they were, time had come to apply it to higher education. Now the global market learned that they can succeed to destroy elementary education of eight years and nobody really protests. The intellectual class is also intellectual class. Economy is structurally adjusted but intellectual class is intellectually adjusted and not raising a voice. Otherwise, if the higher education academia had raised voice in nineties, we would not have probably seen the day which we are seeing now. So we say self-criticism of the higher education academia also.