In the education sector too, I saw the same scene present itself when I read that the Left has denounced all reforms proposed by the Human Resources minister Kapil Sibal. They claim that this is a move towards privatization and centralization of education and according to West Bengal Secondary Education Minister Partha Dey, this move will actually take education beyond the reach of ordinary and poor families. He is correct; with the average years of schooling of adults a little more than 5 years, education was always within the reach of the ordinary and poor families.
The literacy rate in India is at a dismal 59.6 percent, which can be argued to be better than a lot of countries but lets face it, it is still dismal. We are still following the old educational system which was started by the British to serve their own political and administrative needs. In more than sixty years, all we have done is a patch up job in the education sector and lauded our mediocrity. Many reports such as The Radha Krishnan Commission (1948-49) on University Education, the Laxmanaswamy Mudaliyar Committee (1952-53) on Secondary Education, and the Kothari Commission (1964-66) for the common school system have been tabled without very visible results. I would not be an authority to judge why they failed to bring out the intended effect; however I do think that it was due to the lack of an attempt to change, rather than repair, the present system of education.
Our education system, unless totally revamped, it will become the death of millions of Indian students who would be looking out to develop original ideas in the future. As it has started with the Yashpal report, we need to go forward to shun all old practices and construct new ones. It will be difficult to make everyone follow the lead or believe that a new system is possible.
I request the reformers to not even try.