Prakash Javdekar – the minister who dared to defy the education mafias # 2

In the article published last week, I had delved upon some of my initial experiences with Prakash Javdekar in my capacity as Secretary, School Education, Government of India. This one relates to some such experiences during the second half of my tenure.

Most of the private schools have been contributing enormously towards imparting quality education. However, some of these were also bringing a bad name to this august segment. There were some extremely powerful individuals who have been able to get away with blue murder. They violated various norms, legal and ethical, with impunity because, having been part of the official machinery at some point of time, they knew the tricks of the trade. Irrational hiking of fee, charging huge sums of money to lend their brand, harassing the brand assignees, were some of the many tricks they had been practicing. Rajesh Chaturvedi, an outstanding officer, Chairperson of CBSE, who chose to take them on was not only shown the door but was harmed subsequently by the influential lobby. His successor, Anita Karwal, one of the finest civil servants, was also set to be sacrificed. One of the school education mafias went after her when a couple of papers of CBSE Board examination got leaked. I got to witness a different side of Prakash Javdekar during this crisis (details outlined in the chapter “Cauldron on Boil” in “Ethical Dilemmas of a Civil Servant”). He initially took this crisis casually and once it got out of hand, he wanted to salvage the situation by sacrificing Anita Karwal despite admitting that she was not at fault. He finally came around and Anita Karwal continued to function as Chairperson, CBSE.

Baba Ramdev, a well-known Yoga guru who had given renowned FMCG multi-nationals a run for their money, was now venturing into the field of education. He was perhaps already into it, but now he wanted to make a difference. He revealed that there was no better way of influencing young minds in the country. He was perhaps right. His idea was to set up a Vedic Board.

Nothing was inherently wrong with this idea as, in a free country like ours, there were already a few independent Boards (Indian Council for Secondary Education is one of them). The problem arose when Baba wanted ‘his’ government to formally endorse it. Ironically, there was no provision under any extant law for formal registration of any Board by the government. The Boards, like the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), and those in the States were set up by the respective governments (CBSE by the Central Government and State Boards by their respective State Governments). However, Baba was insistent that the endorsement should come from the Central Government.

The issue had been going on for a while but gained momentum during my tenure as Secretary, School Education and Literacy, Government of India. The key questions were:

In the absence of any law or regulation, under which provision would the government provide the desired registration?

• Why should the government enter into an area that was hitherto unregulated?
• Should legislation be enacted to facilitate a Board that was strictly a private entity?
• Would it be advisable to create a regime of registration of boards when it wasn’t really required?

Prakash Javdekar was keen to help and find a way forward but understood the sensitivity of the issue and the implications of such a move. A firm believer in greater autonomy to educational institutions, he did not want to create an additional regulatory regime that would require registration of school boards.

There was urgency and impatience evident on the part of Baba and his team. Meetings were held at various levels, including the one at the level of Amit Shah who was then the President of Bhartiya Janata Party to push the issue. I was surprised to see that Prakash Javdekar stood his ground. He reiterated the point that there was no provision for either endorsement or registration of such a Board under the present dispensation. Baba was free to set up an independent Board like anyone else. He also made it clear that bringing out a legislation would add to the chaos that beset school education.

There was nothing strictly illegal about what Baba was suggesting. The problem was that there was no law and, if a law was to be enacted, it would unnecessarily consume time; as there were many other pressing issues lined up for consideration and action. Moreover, if such a law was enacted then the fate of all such private Boards those were already in existence would hang in balance.

The biggest mafia in school education was the one relating to pre-service school teacher education colleges. There were around 16,000 B.Ed and D.El.Ed colleges in the country. A large number of these existed only on paper. If you paid them well, you could get a degree without an effort. It was rumoured that if you pay them more, they could even arrange for a ‘Sarkari Naukri’ (government job). Action was initiated by Santosh Mathews, the then Chairman of the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE), an upright officer with enormous experience, by issuing notices to all the colleges to furnish the details of their existence on affidavits. The idea was to ensure that only those that actually existed got recognition and in case of wrong information, they could be prosecuted. It worked initially but the colleges realised that quite a few of them could be in trouble. Despite the support he got from most of the States, Santosh Mathews was put under enormous pressure by the mafias who took the ‘judicial’ route to pin him down. Prakash Javdekar supported this move initially but when Judiciary got into “business” and put pressure, he caved in and even castigated Santosh Mathews in a meeting. This was the last straw for Santosh. He quit the service. For me, it was the biggest failure in my career spanning 38 years. I couldn’t prevent an officer from resigning.

Also Read: Prakash Javdekar– the minister who dared to defy the education mafias #1

Prakash Javdekar was the last and one of the finest Ministers I had the occasion to work with. He never imposed his views and never appeared to do so. Hence, he allowed free flowing discussions wherein everyone contributed. It came as a surprise to me when he was shifted out of the Ministry and dropped from the cabinet. He may not have been an educationist but certainly one who was clear headed and worked hard to put school education on track in the country