Indian Express: New Delhi: Friday,
June 03, 2016.
Former
Cabinet Secretary TSR Subramanian wrote to HRD Minister Smriti Irani today
asking her to make public his panel’s report containing suggestions for the new
national education policy or else he will.
Subramanian
was the chairperson of the five-member committee entrusted with the
responsibility of assimilating feedback collected by the HRD Ministry through
grassroots and national-level consultations on 33 themes and making suggestions
for drafting a new education policy for the country. Former Chief Secretaries
of Delhi and Gujarat, Shailaja Chandra and Sudhir Mankad respectively and
ex-NCERT chief J S Rajput are also members of the panel, which submitted its
suggestions to the HRD Ministry on May 27. The last policy was made almost
three decades ago in 1986.
With the
report not public yet, Subramanian, sources said, has sent a three-page letter
informing Irani that he, after some “soul searching”, has decided to go public
with its contents. The former bureaucrat, however, did not mention when he
intends to do this.
When
contacted, Subramanian declined to comment. An HRD Ministry spokesperson did
not respond to questions sent by this reporter.
Irani was
unreachable for comment.
The 200-page
report, as first reported by The Indian Express on May 28, contains close to 90
suggestions including reinstating detention of students beyond Class V, setting
up an all-India cadre of educational services on the lines of the Indian
Administrative Service (IAS), overhaul of regulators such as the UGC,
inculcating values and nationalistic pride in school students, compulsory
quality audit of all higher education institutions every three years and
allowing foreign universities to set up campuses in the country in
collaboration with Indian institutions, among other things.
The
government, sources said, is studying the recommendations and will prepare a
draft education policy, which will be put in the public domain for feedback.
But Subramanian has urged Irani to make the panel’s report public before
finalising the policy.
Justifying
his views, the former bureaucrat has said that the report is not a “top secret”
document, but one of public interest. He is also learnt to have said that in a
democracy it is good to elicit public feedback before formulating a policy.
Referring to
his association with the Right to Information movement, Subramanian’s letter
states that as the Cabinet Secretary of the Government of India he had drafted
the Cabinet note on the RTI Act and even the Bill placed in the Parliament. He
further adds that uploading the recommendations of the five-member panel will
be in accordance with Section 4 of the RTI Act, under which the government
should provide as much information suo motu to the public at regular intervals.
He also said
that during his meeting with Irani and ministry officials in the past he was
made to understand that the suggestions will be uploaded on the government’s
official website for feedback, but that doesn’t seem like the intention
anymore.
Subramanian
is not alone. On May 30, Common Cause, a civil society organisation, wrote to
Higher Education Secretary V S Oberoi asking the government to disclose the
contents of the report to facilitate “an informed public discussion, which can
provide valuable inputs for the final exercise to be undertaken in the
Ministry.”
.JPG)
.JPG)
