The All India Forum for Right to Education (AIFRTE), a platform of students, teachers and academics affiliated with various organisations, held a protest here on Tuesday demanding state-funded, free and equitable quality education for all.
Questioning the recent provisions inviting foreign universities to start campuses in India, the group said the move would now permit repatriation of profits, and charging of fees without regulation or upper limits. “While on one hand, we are witnessing rapid fee hike and promotion of self-financed courses, on the other hand, there has been a massive downward trend in funding for different scholarship schemes catering to SC/ST, OBC, minority and disabled students,” the platform said.
They urged the Centre to roll back the National Education Policy of 2020 (NEP) and said it went against the principle of education for all. They said the NEP was being implemented without a discussion in Parliament or State Assemblies and that it was being imposed on people as an executive decision.
The organisers also questioned the decision to scrap scholarships such as the Maulana Azad fellowship for students from minority communities. They alleged that the exclusion of SC, ST, OBC and Muslim students from education in general, and higher education in particular, was increasing. “With the NEP, the process of privatisation and commodification of education which had begun in the preceding decades has taken on a new and rapid form. Closures and mergers of government schools, de-funding of higher educational institutions, withdrawing of scholarship schemes in schools and higher education, and enormous fee hike, make accessing equitable education impossible for the vast majority of this country,” the AIFRTE said in a statement.
The meeting resolved to fight for increased budgetary allocation on education to ensure the constitutional fundamental right to free, quality and universal education from kindergarten to post-graduation. “Funding of higher education institutions must only be through grants instead of loans that lead to growing personal and institutional indebtedness, and promotion of market-oriented self-financing courses,” the group demanded.
It asked the Centre to withdraw the centralised Common University Entrance Test (CUET) as the mode of admissions to undergraduate programmes for Central universities. “Standardisation has favoured CBSE students over other State boards, which has been reflected in the 97% CBSE student intake this year in Delhi University and a big drop in admissions of girl students,” the platform said.
