It is rather unfortunate that the State Education Department, which is supposed to be the beacon light of spreading education among the vast urban and rural masses of people in the State, is behaving in certain areas in a manner that can be minimally called only anti-student. Why it does so remains a mystery. The Department has come under the scanner in a variety of areas and the bright and dark sides of those issues are discussed in the media. However, what is officially reported to the Legislative Assembly on the floor of the house by way of response to questions posed by the members, is to be taken as authentic and, therefore, very serious.
In these columns we have repeatedly maintained that the State Government has proved in so many instances that it is incapable of implementing a variety of Central sponsored and financed projects and schemes for reasons that do not seem tenable any more. Either there is dearth of proper planning and vision or there is shortage of manpower and logistics or otherwise there are subversive elements working from hidden quarters that become catalysts to disruption and failure of the Centrally sponsored schemes. One thing is very clear. It has been found that whenever a Centrally sponsored project is conveyed to the State Government, it does not necessarily look at it from general and national prism but from regional and parochial prisms. The rank diversity in all walks of life in the three regions of the State more often than not has bearing on the implementation of Centrally sponsored schemes.
We have the case of 400 Middle Schools in the State that were slated to be upgraded to High Schools under the Central scheme called Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA) floated way back in 2009. Seven years have passed by and the scheme is still hanging fire. Imagine how many deserving students particularly from rural areas have been deprived the opportunity of higher education and at least passing matriculation. Who is responsible for violation of their right to education? Who is knowingly and overtly depriving them of the ornament of higher education? The Government is answerable. By dragging on the task, evidently there is cost escalation an amount of 40 to 35 lac rupees earmarked for upgrading of each Middle School to High School has now escalated to 60 to 70 lac rupees. When the Education Department was not able to undertake and complete neither the task when the cost was not more than 35 lac rupees, how will it be possible for the Government to raise the amount double of what was sanctioned.
It has been revealed that the entire scheme was handled with abject lack of vision and planning. The schools selected for upgrading were not selected according to a definite criterion that has been discussed thoroughly before the implementation of the scheme. Evidently, politics has had a role in making the selection of these schools. What we find now is that most of these have no requisite qualifications to be upgraded. There is lack of space or non availability of space and logistics as well. The R&B too has made its contribution in delaying and almost paralyzing the scheme because it has failed to build roads and ensure connectivity to these schools.
Government’s inertia, lethargy and irresponsibility are not visible only in the case of upgrading of schools but also in not completing the related project of 85 hostels sanctioned under Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya scheme of the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development. While the RMSA scheme was launched with the objective of enhancing access to secondary education and improving its quality, the scheme envisaged providing additional class rooms, laboratories, libraries, art and crafts room, toilet blocks and drinking water provisions etc, the hostels for the girl students were to facilitate rural population access to higher education and thus make education popular among the rural and backward people of the State. In its reports on the progress of these structures all that the department says is that plinth work, stone work, foundation work etc is going on and then progress stops there.
This is a sordid state of affairs. The Education Department is callously depriving the students of their rights to education. The responsibility of failure of the Centrally sponsored schemes mentioned above has to be fixed and administrative action has to be taken.
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