 Hello and welcome to People's Dispatch. A few days ago, the Narendra Modi-led government in India has introduced what is called the National Education Policy. Now this policy is a framework. It comes after many decades and it has introduced a lot of new proposals, a lot of new plans to completely change the way education is done in India. That includes the teaching side, that includes the financing side, that includes the future of students itself. So there's been a lot of controversy over it. Teachers' organizations, students' organizations, especially from the left, have posted a draft. They have opposed the way it's being implemented and they have opposed the kind of implications it will have on the country and its future. So to talk more about this, we have with us Professor Abad-e-Hawib. She's a professor at Delhi University. She's a member of the Democratic Teachers' Front and she's also an office member of the Delhi University Teachers' Association. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. So before we go into some of the specifics, I wanted to begin by asking about the general direction or the general friend of this policy itself. We know that the right wing in India has been very keen on influencing education so that it can push its ideological agenda. So overall, what is the direction of this policy? Yeah, you know, the cabinet note which has been passed and which was posted on MHRD website only yesterday morning, we saw it, is based on 2019 draft education policy. And we see that this policy document is going to lead to extreme centralization and commercialization of education. And while in whatever is written may look like, you know, that we are moving towards something, but finally the implementation will lead to extreme commercialization of education. And that is why students and teachers have been opposing it. And on the both 2016 draft inputs to draft new education policy 2016 and 19 there has been a lot of agitation by students and teachers and a lot of feedback was given on the draft new education policy 2019. What we are finding extremely upsetting is that while universities and schools have been locked down because of the COVID situation, the government is passing a very important document, which is going to affect each and every household. This is not the time to push a new education policy. You know, it is very interesting that I was looking at one of the TV programs where they say that you know RTE Act 2009 will now be implemented from age three to 18. And this is a very big step and this is very good. I went to a TV program recording where ABVP person also claimed this and this was based on the document which was available in the public domain on the on the day cabinet note was passed. So something which was circulated was called NEP final for circulation. Okay, this is 60 page document and rightly so on page number 29 8.8 clause. It says that RTE Act will be implemented for all the children from age three to 18. And this looked like a, you know, a very important thing. And yesterday I saw a RTE activist saying that in the final thing which is there on the MHRT website, this clause has been dropped. This is how this government works. On the day a cabinet passed there was this 60 page document which was circulated. And that is the document which was with the reporters. That was the document which even ABVP was quoting from. And then on yesterday, the MHRT site showed another document which was 66 page. And that in clause 8.8 RTE word has been dropped completely. The government is completely silent on what will happen to RTE Act. Will it be there at all, or whether that has been also repealed. Right. And the whole idea that it will be there for for all children from age three to 18 has been completely dropped RTE word has been dropped. So this is the gap and which this government will have even on the written document and what will be implemented. Okay. So this is a, you know, I was aghast because no government should do this. I mean, how do people believe you if your documents can change overnight. So the other key question to start with when it comes to higher education is there's a lot of major changes that have been proposed. And one of the key changes is that the UGC that is the university grants commission which used to regulate higher education is being scrapped. The All India Council of Technical Education is being scrapped and there's a new body that is going to be coming into place which is called the HECI. Now this comes along with changes in the structure of education itself. The MFIL degree is going to be removed. The bachelor's degree is going to become a four year degree and students can opt out at any point of time. And all of this has been given this progressive, you know, framework of its students having more choice. But in reality, what will be the implications? See on the issue of repealing of University Grants Commission, I want to say that this is not the first attempt. And if you remember, in UPS two time, there was a higher education research bill which wanted to repeal. Again, you know, Club Merge, UGC, AICT and the National Teachers Education Council, National Council for Teachers Education into one body. And that attempt was also stopped through the Rajasabha. The bill could not pass through Rajasabha finally. And in this Modi government also, we see that an attempt was made even in 2018 to repeal all these bodies to bring them under, again, higher education commission of India. And that was again shed because of the constant opposition of coming from educators and from across the country. You see the problem which we see is the single window of negotiation. It is a case of extreme centralization and without saying that why just merging of these bodies will result in something better is beyond our comprehension. There is no study to say why UGC has failed and what is needed to strengthen it. It is important to find out the loopholes and see whether within the existing framework that can be done or not. And we see that all these bills do not provide. The earlier attempts also did not provide a framework of study to say how repealing them and replacing them will help to overcome the shortcomings which exist today. In the four year undergraduate program also, I want to say that Delhi University has been treated as a lab for experiments and during UPA 2, in 2013, four year undergraduate program was imposed. And a similar kind of framework where it said that students will have choice and the choice is that they can exit after one year or two years or three years or they can complete four years of undergraduate program. And we see similar recommendations coming right now. And I see that you know, a few things here that if you have a common structure, which allows multiple exit point, then educators will tell you that this cannot be done, because a framework, the coursework is made thinking about the length, the duration of the coursework. You cannot have such a flexible system. It is possible that the university offers courses which are which run for a year, which run for two years, or courses which run for three years or four years. But to have all of them together in one framework means that you have a very loose kind of coursework where you waste the time of the student. And this has already, we have experienced this in FIUP where the first year was made completely useless. It was rendered completely useless and any certificate coming out of that certificate after first year exit would mean nothing in the, you know, for as far as employability is concerned, it will not mean anything. The two year thing coming out of the same coursework would also not mean anything. Yet, but the impact was that you were wasting a student's time when the student would have completed four years, first two years were completely lukewarm, settled with meaningless courses. And this is the mistake which we are going to repeat again if we want the same coursework to give you multiple exit points. So the one, this is wastage. The other thing which I want to say is that it is in these things you see that this document is actually about exclusion and not inclusion. Because if you have a framework which creates a hierarchy of degrees, you know, same coursework, providing three different degrees, I mean three different, you know, certificates or diploma and then a degree. Then the hierarchy you are setting up between these, you know, degrees which students can get. And therefore, over time, the market will demand that the student should have completed four years if it was possible. And therefore, you will leave the certificate course coming out of the same coursework framework rendered useless. You will also have second two year diploma course coming out of the same structure useless and the three years. So, and also we look at the situation around us, we see that you know today but when we calculate the expenditure towards education, we should not only look at what the student is paying in terms of fees, maybe in the public funded city like Delhi University, JNU and all. The student pays very less fee towards education. But for Delhi University, you will also have to look at how much money the student spends in living in a city like Delhi. We have to understand that state universities have been sort of marginalized completely because their funding has been reduced, the states do not have funds to give because the teaching costs have been kept vacant. And therefore students have to leave their hometowns and come to a city like Delhi and stay here. Now, therefore the expenditure of the student in trying to live in Delhi, expenditure towards rent, towards food, all that has to be seen as a family's expenditure towards education. So when you are adding a fourth year and which will soon become a necessary thing. You are asking parents to spend more towards education and therefore when students experienced FIUP and saw that the first year was completely useless. And it is for this kind of year that the student is made to spend extra. There was a revolt by the students and it is really, you know, but can I say, I mean, I don't need that, you know, it is responding to the popular movement by students and teachers of Delhi University that when BJP came into power in 2014, Smriti Irani as an education minister took the call and set aside FIUP for Delhi University. Today they want to impose it on the entire country. I want to understand with which what wisdom and also earlier it is during UPA 2's time whether it is about foreign universities, whether about other bills. It is along with the BJP that other people, the left of course was opposing, but even BJP helped to stop these bills. Today, when they are running the government, they want to bring the same draconian sort of policy on education. But one thing which is a change scenario is the following that today when the parliament is not in session, a big huge change is coming for the education sector. At least in UPA 2's time, the processes were there and we could enter those statutory processes as stakeholders we could voice our concern as university community which we had a greater handle to voice our concern. Today, that freedom has been taken away. And in this context, there's also the issue which you raised earlier that's commercialization and one of the aspects of the policy is that foreign universities are supposed to be given more space to enter. So could you talk a bit about what are the disadvantages with this policy? Why we are saying that it is going to lead to commercialization? One is of course they are looking at public-private partnership. But more than that for higher education and for school education, if they will say that there is too many institutions present in a fragmented manner and therefore what we are going to do is consolidation. So the first attack which will come is on public-funded institutions. Now even in the school education they said that there are schools running with one teacher. Now they have to understand that it is as per the government policy that for 60 students, on a 60 students, you will give only one teacher. That the schools are forced to run with one teacher and instead of strengthening the school system in terms of relaxing those things and providing more teachers to those schools, what you are saying is that we will consolidate. So without producing any study to say what will happen if you will scrap schools, government schools in villages and a name of consolidation have one school for five villages. What will happen to women education? What will happen if a school is scrapped in a village? Will that space be taken by a private school? And we know the answers. Now a similar thing is happening for higher education. The draft new education policy 2019 on which this document is placed is drawn says that today higher education takes place in 45,000 institutions. These are small units also. They are fragmented and therefore we want consolidation. We will have to reduce the number to 15,000. We will increase the student intake in each unit. Now one study they should have done as to say how many institutions are already running with 3,000 and 5,000. They need to understand that already institutions were created at one particular time. After OBC expansion, I'm talking in terms of public funded education by the state or central after OBC expansion already institutions were forced within those areas to expand. Okay, they found it very difficult to create more classrooms and all, but that expansion happened after that now EWS is happening. And it took, for example, Belly University Teachers Association to fight for constantly 10 years to get the post of OBC expansion, which were promised to us in 2007 to get them now when EWS was being implemented in 2019. So our post, it took us 10 years to get those posts. Now EWS post have yet not come. You are already a college like Miranda House, they are saying college has 6000 students, we have 3000 students. So how much you can really expand us. I mean that has to be seen what will happen if four year undergraduate program will come, will we get more teachers, will we get more funds to create more building to accommodate for the fourth year. What is your policy for implementation. So once again, if first universities to be closed down under this kind of consolidation business are public funded universities, then you are again creating vacuum in many parts of the country, which again means that players will come in or you will push students to go for distance learning mode. Actually, that is the push. And we think that this will lead to commercialization. We all understand that when it comes to distant learning mode also the students want to only go for modules which have marketability employability and therefore it is a setback to, you know, pure sciences humanity courses. Once again, if you see that from 45,000 if we have to come down to 15,000 units. This means that students will have to necessarily move out of their towns, their cities, their villages to get education, which again means that they will have to spend more. The other thing which has happened is that the shift from grants to loans to institutions and this whole thing of autonomy. I want to say that how the word autonomy has been completely eaten up. You have to understand that the document has autonomy written in so many places in terms of, you know, freedom to create your own modules and autonomy to decide administrative autonomy and all and financial autonomy. And I want to say what the same government has done. We need to understand the gap which will remain in terms of what is written in the document and its implementation. We have understood how this, and you can, you know, see what happened to the academic autonomy. In terms of choice based credit system was imposed on all universities, a same curriculum was imposed earlier university had had their own right to design course curriculum. But as soon as this government came in 2014 with the phase one and they impose choice based credit system on all universities taking away academic autonomy of the universities. The other autonomy which went away was in terms of holding seminars, in terms of administrative autonomy also there was a clamp down and universities were told that they will whatever agenda they bring to academic council, executive council first has to be sent to the UGC MHRD. Now this never happened. And the third important thing ever since this government has come the financial autonomy is not something which we are asking for. For them the financial autonomy means that if your grades are good, if you are graded as a good university if you have a high rating and ranking, then you are given autonomy. And the autonomy is that you start your courses, you can start on your centers, you can have foreign faculty, you can have differential based system, but for everything you will ask for fees high to fund those things. You have to find your own funds. Now the only way in which the universities can fund is through the student fee. So if you see that the commercialization is not only that you will have private shops, but you are creating a situation where even the public funded universities are looking at the students fee to fund to run themselves to create the structures to pay the difficulty. And this is how you are even rendering the public funded sphere as you know totally commercialized. And the other key question just connected to this is of course is that like you mentioned over the past few years, we've seen a very sustained attack on the teacher and student communities, especially the organized teacher and student communities. So do you see this policy also in some ways trying to have an impact trying to affect the organization and the mobilization of students and teachers. Absolutely and I want to tell you that you know in Delhi University was created in 1942 many other universities were created either earlier or later, and each university had its act. And you know, when I reached today that the university is at, I see how democratic that act was it, it understood that more than a person or a small body you have to bring in more people of the unit in the policy making. And the entire framework is to give space to common teacher. Okay, through either direct involvement or through representation. And then when in 2009, during again up. When certain Central universities were set up through 2009 act, we saw that in the act it was written that you will have to have choice based credit system that you will have to have semester system. This is not how the university act says I mean it says gives absolute freedom, you choose and you have representation of departments you have representations of faculties in the policy making you know bodies and the bodies are huge and they give representation and vice chance of the PDC directors of campus whatever these are just officials, the decision making bodies are called the main bodies. Okay, okay, and now we see the whole changes. Things are changing. This policy also wants units to remain small and to be governed by board of governors. And we think that that is a great attack on the democratic setup in the way in which policies are made at the local unit and the impact we will have together on the government policies also you have to understand that the university teachers association is a very vocal body and the strength comes because we have large number of undergraduate colleges, we have a large number of colleges, and we have a huge strength and within the unit, even if this teacher does not find strength, they find strength together. Now this this act wants to break each affiliating university, all units will be stand alone in the 66 page document which the MHRD has uploaded. This framework is not given, but when we read a draft a new education policy 2019, it said how VOG will be formed. And it said there will be one third people from the college or from the unit in the board of governors, but they will be handpicked. The board of governors will pick the vice chancellor or the director whatever the name may be. And that is again then if because they're handpicked, and because the units would have become smaller, the clamp down is easy. So you are increasing the administrative layer. You are increasing putting a heavy body administrative body on each unit and controlling people's life much more. And therefore, you know, there will be no space for teachers and students. I want to say that best of the private university's philanthropy in the name of philanthropy may have also come up. All new units, whether it is state universities which have come up in last few years or central universities, you will see that students have not been able to come as unions that teachers unions are not there. This is because the framework is such because when you have two smaller unit. And you have a fast moving student strength. I mean the student population moves fast. I mean they enter and move out. Then do not form a stable union. And while you may have seminars on, you know, union is on all these people's movement, you will not give that space to your own students and teachers. This week is the democratic setup, because there is no also grievance redress outside the system. Today, for example, I want to say Delhi University, there is a huge, you know, levels. I mean, there are one level after another where if I do not find justice within my college, I can go and appeal to the Delhi University Vice Chancellor. If that doesn't work, I can go to the Chancellor, then I can go to the visitor. Today, the new framework wants you to be devoid of all those frameworks. They want you to be much more in the clutches of the Board of Governors and smaller units where you can't really voice and fight. And Prasabha, finally, one last question very, very quickly. This is regarding the funding for all this. Now, this policy also says like earlier policies at 6% of the GDP will be allocated. But what has been the government's record on this so far? So, I mean, one interesting question, which I want to ask everyone, I mean, our viewers also, do you need a policy document to say it's 6% GDP will be spent on education? I want to tell you that first Education Commission, which was said committee, which was said Kothari Commission in 1964, and they deposited their report maybe 1968. They've said 6% GDP. Now, it is really, I mean, something I do not know. I mean, it is something to laugh at or cry at that today after so many decades. And this has been retreated in between by even UPI-1 and all. Today, we have government which again brings 6% and while the things have changed today, 50% population is below the age of 25 years. Now, for a very young country, unless the government puts in much more money and educators across the country have been asking for 10%. You know, I mean, we want to compare our research output. But if our research input remains 0.6% of a GDP, whereas all other countries are putting in 3%, 4%, and we remain at 0.6%, do you think we will have any research output? Our GDP for this government, and you should look at the data, has only been remaining around 4% of GDP. Now, this government wants a policy document to say 6% they will put in. Did they need that? The answer is no. So I do not believe that this is going to happen. And I see that, you know, maybe some political leaders may say that, you know, the government should find innovative ways and 6% is too much. And 6% has always remained, but we were not able to do. I want to say that for the last five years, this government has foregone 10 lakh crores. I don't even want to count 10 days to count how many. Okay. I mean, so 10 lakh crores worth loan has been written off for corporate sector. So where you're finding well, we can all see. So I mean, can't you increase input and, you know, our take away from this COVID situation has to be for all countries, I will want to say, but especially for the countries who are doing very badly and we are on the third top countries as far as COVID cases go is that we have to put in money in public health and education. And this is the right of every citizen. And unless we do that, I mean, we are not going to achieve for our people, the freedom, the rights which the Constitution has promised. So our take away has to be that and this government is doing something else. I also want to say that this whole push towards online education and even this government wants to when you will say that education will happen only in 15,000 units. This means that people who will find it difficult to leave their hometowns will be pushed towards online teaching, towards distance learning mode. That is not a holistic learning mode. That is not which can shape individuals that leaves much more responsibility on the person to create that infrastructure for education. The government is washing off its hand and providing teachers and creating the human resource and creating buildings. And again, through this stratification, you will have people going to universities and colleges getting education getting one kind of jobs. And you will have another kind which will try to see what course they should do through distance learning mode and get low paying jobs. While they would have spent maybe they're up from their own pockets, much more and creating laptops and this when only 28% people have connectivity in this country. And through our, you know, experience in this pandemic we have seen how badly we were not able to reach people, our students, and today you want to take this in a big way at what cost. The whole idea is to to unlearn and learn. I mean this cycle has to go on if you want to look at holistic this and also socializing is a very important thing you learn from peers. You learn much from outside classroom thing but that outside classroom should remain to take education at home is basically pushing them in the same environment and that environment overrides whatever education could actually do. Thank you so much for speaking to us. Thank you. It was nice talking to you. Thank you. That's all your time for today. Keep watching People's Dispatch.