Reservation of the Elite

An equal society can never be realized without fighting for equality of education opportunities, asserts Satnam Chana as he argues that knowledge is gradually being concentrated in few hands taking it away from vast underprivileged sections.

According to the report of a sub committee formed to make recommendations on educational reforms by state government, 29.88 percent of children in the age group of 6 to 11 years don't get into schools at all. This in effect means that one third of new generation of Punjab is illiterate.
According to a report of the Planning Commission the literate section of country engaged in service sector is contributing 52 percent to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). But in Punjab only 3.4 percent of the GDP is spent on the educational institutions that produce this sector. This comes to 11 percent of the government budget.
The recommendations committee reveals that during the period 1999 to 2005, the number of students in government schools reduced from 17 lacs to 14 lacs. These 3 lacs children have either gone to private schools or have simply sat home. The children who go to private schools more or less belong to upper- sections. On the whole, in Punjab, 53 percent children leave school before class eight and in the age group of 15-17, 85 percent children get out of schools before class ten. Out of the 15 percent children who pass class ten, further 5 percent children do not go till +2.
Private school children who leave education constitute only 4 percent, the rest of the 96 percent are from government schools only.
Our education system is unique in not only the way it gets children from backward sections out of education in different stages before class ten and doesn't let them enter the portals of the universities, but also the way we have set different standards of education for different sections. We have different syllabi for different sections. For higher classes we have syllabi of higher standards and for backward sections we have backward syllabi. We have different education boards for different classes- CBSE for some and Punjab School Education Board for others. Cheaper syllabus for poor and costlier one for rich. Our education system is predetermined on whom to give what amount of knowledge and whom to not give it at all. There are different schemes and plans to implement this policy.
This is the result of independent India's educational policy, which can be called illiteracy policy, that how to maintain illiteracy. That is why it has emasculated 90 percent of the population as present source of production. These people don't get on to even first step of the knowledge whereas the whole contemporary production system has become knowledge-based.
Total Literacy Campaign is a new joke of the central government on which Rs. 464 crores are being spent in Punjab. Government claims to provide all children born in Punjab certificates of class five till 2007 and class eight till 2010. This part of our national education policy. This gives rise to the question whether by providing them certificates, these children would be able to play better role than illiterates? Would they be able to enter the service sector? Would they go in modern sector or agriculture? Total Literacy Campaign does not have answer to these questions. However this would be beneficial in one way. Just as a person has to show a certificate to prove his qualification, these people would get a documentary evidence to show their lack of qualification or level of illiteracy. They would be able to tell how illiterate they are- up to class eight or class ten.
This is a joke with the definition of education. The purpose of education is determined according to the economy. That type of education is provided for which can be of help in the development of economy and that can provide employment. But there is nothing like that in the Total Literacy Campaign.
On one side are children who are being pushed out of education and on the other side new counters are being opened to issue certificates. While teaches posts are being abolished on one side, campaigns are being mounted to extend literacy. Can anyone make sense of such education policy?
Recently Punjab government abolished posts of 16905 teachers whereas there are no teachers in 2700 schools. There are almost equal number of schools where there is only one teacher. Now the government has decided to do away entirely with its duty to provide education to depressed sections by deciding to give control of 4028 schools to Panchayats. The government itself is shunting out teachers and has asked the Panchayats to appoint teachers. What is seemingly a contradictory policy is very clear on one thing. This objective is to make people bereft of education and concentrate monopoly of education in few hands. While this is a clever move to make hold of ruling classes firmer on monopoly of knowledge, the more dangerous aspect of all this is that all this is being done to entrench casteism further.
We conducted a study done in villages around Jalandhar to ascertain the proportion of the sections that study at government schools as compared to private schools. Consider what were the findings:
At village Lakhanpal elementary school there are 117 children, 112 of these are from scheduled castes.84 out of 110 children studying at Beer village are from scheduled castes. In the middle school of village Tahli, 104 out of 165 studying there are from scheduled castes.
What is noteworthy is that the proportion of scheduled castes population in these villages is around one third of the total population.
One can easily deduct that the government schools are gradually turning into schools for scheduled castes. Even those who leave school belong invariably to what we have come to know as Dalit castes. Whole sections of dalits are being forced out of primary education whereas a battle is being fought to get selected ?Dalits? into ?islands of excellence?.
It seems as if this is the alternative form of that philosophy and economics that proclaims that if a Shudra becomes a scholar he should be inducted into Brahmin caste. The policy of reservation too seems to be a struggle of upper classes to adopt a limited sub-section of scheduled castes which looks like as if a section of scheduled castes is fighting a guerilla war to get into upper sections.
(The article appears in the print edition of Punjab Panorama)