 To talk about legacy and not just legacy of freedom struggle but about the end of legacy of freedom struggle is nothing very pleasant to do. It is a very unpleasant task. But I am compelled to do this after almost 30 years of attack of globalization on Indian economy and of course on all social sectors like education, health, employment, social welfare and there is no option but to talk about the end of legacy. This is not what we fought for, what we have today. And to connect it with the present rising pace of attacks on Indian education system. The act making need the National Eligibility and Entrance exam for medical institutions compulsory all over the state in the name of having one India and one test. And there has been a heavy opposition from at least one state which understood its anti-constitutional and anti-people character, anti-education character and that is Tamil Adu. In the process we lost a brilliant girl by the name Anita, 17 year old girl who got 98% marks in state board examination, a Dalit whose father is a wage laborer in a vegetable market. We lost Anita and what she said is going to be part of her history now. She said when nobody gets equal opportunity and she was talking of schools, when nobody gets equal opportunities who are they deceiving by saying single examination for all will do justice. If 17 year old mind can think of such a prophetic description of what we are facing today is amazing. Hence we salute her. We lost a brilliant mind like we lost earlier in the case of Rohit Vemula another Dalit's brilliant scholar who was assassinated by a whole set of institutions of education and law all put together and the university administration also. The other recent attack is what we heard when the prime minister went to for the centenary celebrations of Patna University and when the chief minister requested the prime minister to turn Patna University into one of the 20 odd or 20 plus odd central universities. See chief minister was told almost curtly no this is not going to happen. What we are willing to do is to give you a world class institution. We won't make Patna University a world class institution but will give you a world class institution. So, you can become one of the world class institution for which I will again have to return back to it how it is going to destroy it designed to destroy higher education. Let me go back to 1848 when Savitri by Pooley in one locality of Pune opened four schools for girls from oppressed sections of society oppressed caste and when she started teaching them every day she was stoned by the upper caste of Pune the Brahmanical city she was stoned when she still did not stop teaching the children then feces was thrown at her and but she would calmly go to school change her study put a new study again start teaching nobody could stop her that was a birth of an idea the idea of a common school system for all children where children will study in an ambience of equality and freedom from discrimination. The language used in those schools were not Marathi it was known as Moody. Moody is a form of Marathi written in Moody script and why was Moody chosen I had to investigate this and I found out Savitri by husband Maatma Jyotivaya Pooley advocated Moody to Hunter commission in 1882 to be adopted in Maharashtra that western state because all revenue records were kept in Moody and Jyotivaya Pooley argued if the children can read revenue records then they will be able to challenge all the forces which they have to which are imposed on them they will be able to fight their battles to keep their land intact in their families that is why Moody so say there is a connection between the language you learn and the battles against exploitation operation which you fight language are connected with that and once you start losing your own language you also lose your battles against exploitation and oppression these are the connections with the Pooley couple was talking about in 1873 Jyotivaya Pooley wrote his classic essay called slavery in Marathi Gulamgiri I have just brought this booklet to show you which is a Socrates kind of dialogue between Jyotivaya Pooley and his disciple Dhondiba and Dhondiba keeps asking questions after questions and Jyotivaya Pooley keeps explaining and the process Jyotivaya Pooley has unfolded the history of caste struggle in India is probably the first organic intellectual of modern history in 1882 is a Hunter Commission story where Jyotivaya Pooley presents a memorandum which is applicable even more so to today's India than it was applicable to British India in 1882 I don't have time to describe the whole memorandum is a classic piece of writing we should be right like 1873 slavery should be read in the same way 1882 memorandum should be read by all of us and if it's not a prescribed reading or a sub even a supplementary reading in our classes of history in social sociology and political science then something has to be we have to ask a question what is wrong with our higher education system in the memorandum to Hunter Commission Jyotiva talks of an irony he's a really ironical that the British government raises all his resources from the revenue which is earned by the hard labor of the peasantry and especially the farm of the landless labor but when this money is deployed for education all the benefits are taken away by the upper caste and upper classes and is it true or not true today is a question to be asked is more more true than it was at that time so now there's a design policy to exclude children as early as possible I'll come back to it again but let me at this point share a data to make the point why Jyotivaya Pooley's memorandum is very applicable to modern India the data is that out of 100 children who enter class one today how many children are able to cross class 12 I did not say class 8 which is right to education act talking of class 8 there's no meaning of class 8 has been a watershed for education because it is only after class 12 as all of us know that new doors of careers open up is only after class 12 a child can decide whether she wants to be a doctor or an engineer or become a lawyer or become a teacher or a scientist so the answer to this question is less than 6% of scheduled cast the tribals are able to cross class 12 less than 8% of the list scheduled cast are able to cross class 12 less than 9% of Muslims are able to cross class 12 and less than 10% of OBCs are able to cross class 12 rest of them are pushed out even before they reach 10th class forget about class 12 what does it mean it means more than 90% of the oppressed sections of society have never become eligible for higher education that means they never had the option to decide whether they want to it remain in the parental caste-based occupation or come out of it and choose a new career for their lives they never had this option it also means then more than 90% of the oppressed caste have never had access to reservation because reservation become available only after class 12 less than 10% of the oppressed caste have ever had access to reservation all that you know noise which you keep raising against reservation you must always putting this data in our dialogue that less than 10% of oppressed caste have access reservation so far and in the days to come in the years to come the figure will go down even more rapidly than we can imagine because exclusion is the agenda so back to Jyotiba Phule Jyotiba Phule also talked about curriculum but before talking about curriculum Jyotiba Phule raised the issue of teachers and said to the British Empire what kind of teachers are you appointing you are appointing teachers who are drawn only from the upper classes and upper caste and therefore they are not able to relate with the children of the masses in primary schools upper primary schools they are unable to relate and then he says to the in his memorandum we want such teachers who shall not be ashamed of holding a plow in their hand or holding a saw in their hand and if they are not ashamed of doing these both tasks then there will be good teachers so connects Jyotiba Phule connects productive tasks with education and then describes the whole curriculum based upon productive tasks of the of the times I am not going into that curriculum right now and then says if this curriculum is not adopted the how do you expect to educate the masses of our country and probably you do not expect masses to be educated therefore you are imposing a curriculum which is not connected with their lives almost at the same time the other by noroji was working on the issue of poverty and how the British Empire has looted India and how people have been impoverished and massive data was collected by him put together in a book on poverty in India and then while describing the process of impoverishment he also talks about when the country is impoverished how does the British Empire hope to educate people impoverished country the impoverished people cannot be educated unless they have some level of dignified wages so connects wages issues of wages with education very important towards the end of the 19th century we see a great phenomena happening in India in a small state called Kolhapur now Kolhapur district the Maharaj of Kolhapur Rajasri Shauju Maharaj established India's first common school system not just common schools schools were made available to all sections of society in order to ensure that those tribal children or Dalit children living in small little hamlets may not be able to come to a larger village therefore Shauju Maharaj thought of the idea of hostels first time in India when anybody thought of hostel as part of education system and established hostel so the children Dalit and tribal children from far of small villages can come to a larger village or a kusmai town and study in a hostel we are told time and again by every prime minister and particularly the new prime minister recent prime minister telling us that we don't have money to educate you in fact then latest Mahamantra of the government is study if you can pay if you cannot pay get out so we don't have money to open schools open colleges open universities but we have money to pay to private schools private colleges and private universities that we have but not for public funded system that is public private partnership but we don't have money that's the Mahamantra being told to us Shauju Maharaj spent money on public funded education system which was far more than British Empire spent on the entire Bombay presidency what was the Bombay presidency let's try to recall Bombay presidency included the present day Gujarat present day Maharashtra certain districts of Kalingala and certain districts of Karnataka and recently I discovered some districts of Sindh in Pakistan such a large part track of India such a large region of India had less public public expenditure on education than the tiny state of Kolhapur which means it is not a question of lack of resources at all it's a question of your political priority whether it's a political priority to educate the people or not if it's not then you always talking about lack of money lack of resources and as a we must this is probably right time to also connect with the present economic situation despite demonetization despite GST our GDP has crossed 150 lakh crores of rupees is going to rise whether it is 5.7 wrongly calculated whether 7% will be again wrongly calculated that's the different issue but whatever it is it will rise by 5-6% in the years to come if you invest not 1% of GDP only 0.5% of present GDP 0.5% your investment in higher education will increase by a factor of 2 it will double if you increase if you invest 0.5% in secondary education it will also double if you invest 1% in elementary education from class 1 to class 8 it will also double a state which is not willing to spend 0.5% or 1% of GDP in education and keep talking about lack of resources there is something else going wrong not lack of resources India today my dear friends is a rich country whose people are impoverished