The New Education Policy 2016 of the Union Government is aimed at generating semi-skilled and low-paid workforce for the benefit of multi-national companies, said P.B. Prince Gajendra Babu, member, national executive, All India Forum for Right to Education.
Addressing a discourse on “Implications of NEP” here on Wednesday, Mr. Babu said that the new policy was attempting to reduce education to skill development and employability right from primary to doctorate, whereas education should remain as a tool for human resources development and social development.
The new policy was attempting to defeat the very purpose of right to education to children by making a provision for alternative school for deprived and migrant children. Besides, children failing twice between 6 and 8 classes would be automatically shifted over to vocational courses.
Besides, the national-level talent examination after 10{+t}{+h}class is nothing but an eliminating process where children would be permanently denied opportunity to join mainstream education system. While scholarships would be done away with, he said Union Government would stop investing in setting up new institutions of higher education and also force such existing institutions to become self-reliant to support themselves, thereby withdrawing all grants and aid, he said.
The new policy would also subvert education through regional languages and make English as the medium of instruction and portray Sanskrit as national language, he added.
Speaking on the occasion, P. Rajamanickam, former State president, Tamil Nadu Science Forum, said that the new education policy was contradicting the Constitution of India in many aspects like its secular and pluralistic nature. The attempt to promote guru-sishya parampara had religious orientation. While the present system of education was student-centric, the Government seemed to be wanting to make it teacher-centric.
Former general secretary of MUTA, P. Vijayakumar, said that the new education policy was only to fulfil the agenda of Rastriya Swayam Sewak. All the words like “value and skill” in the policy had different meanings, he said.
“People should not misconstrue that the new policy was against only the minorities, but it was anti-people per se. It is against the interests of the poor, dalits and tribals,” he said.
The education policy was also infringing on the rights of the States on education, he added.
