It is sad to see that the Supreme Court values national anthem at cinemas more than the need for equal and universal education, academic Nityanand Shetty said here on Friday.
He was speaking at a session on equal education at the 82nd Kannada Sahitya Sammelan.
“People of this country have the right to vote out their governments but not their courts. But then, if the courts neglect an important issue and take up issues such as national anthem in cinemas, then the people will be forced to come onto the streets,” Dr. Shetty said.
Tracing the history of language education in India, he said that successive governments had neglected recommendations of committees headed by S. Radhakrishnan, Mudaliyar and Kothari.
It is interesting to see that bills on GST are taken more seriously than bills regarding equal and universal education, he said.
He found fault with governments of various parties that allowed corporate investment in the education sector.
The former Union minister M.M. Joshi started this by agreeing to GATT agreement, but the governments that followed continued it.
“This has proved to be the biggest disinvestment of our time. That is because democracy has been reduced to a competitive power game by political parties,” he said.
“The Kothari commission cautioned us that educational inequalities will further the existing discriminations if universal and equal education was not implemented. Now we have such a discriminatory system that children from different classes and castes have no opportunities even to meet or interact,” he said.
Dr. Shetty said that the most modern nations had equal and universal education.
Finland emerged top in education as it adopted integral reforms, he said.
Activist Nagaragere Ramesh said that some non-government organisations had succeeded in opening some government schools that were closed for lack of students in Bengaluru and other districts.
V.P. Niranjana Aradhya, Basavaraj Sabarada and Shivaganga Rumma spoke.
