I congratulate the minister (Kapil Sibal) for one thing. He has been thinking aright on these reformist measures. But, unfortunately, it is not backed up by the kind of implementation machinery it requires. Be it in the Right to Education or the disputes, in all these kinds of things, it is not only the intentions but the wherewithal that you try to carry and organise which becomes important.
To my mind, you place education at the Central level because there is a fashion and a fad now that everything should be of the national level, national perspective or national outlook in a country of a stratified society.
We have been having a multinational approach, forgetting that the traditions of a 100-year-old university are different from the traditions of those evolving their traditions. Take for example, my own State, Andhra Pradesh. We are forgetting that the needs of the hills or Vizag are different from those of Hyderabad.
There is no subject in the entire administrative polity more important than education, which would govern and re-build a nation. Today the academic institutions are not academically-managed; they are man-managed. Who I need as a vice-chancellor is not the one who is academically well-versed, but an army chief or a DGP who can manage my students, who are interested more in the campus rather than academic classes. This often makes us worry and think as to what is happening in our field of education.
According to the standing committee report, the Supreme Court said you could not have a tribunal without a man from the judiciary. The Bill today says, if somebody resigns, you will have an ordinary man to preside over. These are the issues that a learned man, a legal luminary like the minister should understand. It is not one; I can quote 23 such things which violate the rules that exist in our state. It now puts the states against the Centre.
I am the founder of India’s first open university, which is known as AP University. You must have an innovative mind of how to involve people. Education is not what you read in the books. That is why, I say, disputes are many and your Bill does not include all. What is surprising to me is that the standing committee did talk about 20-22 subjects that you just said you didn’t agree with. That is the first objection I raise. Secondly, you are saying you talked with the universities. I am sure, 500 universities would not have come and said yes.
You said this was an experiment. But, if you are really able to understand, it is an experiment which needs mid-term correction. For example, you have introduced one thing. All those PhDs who have done their PhDs in eighties are no more eligible to teach, unless they have the National Talent Certificate with them. Only new people who have done their PhDs now can be lecturers, because their books have changed. I do not understood the rationale.
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Number two, sir, is about the way you have hastened it. Within ten days, you have brought it! And, you wanted us to do within three days what the standing committee did and what your Bill would be! So, this kind of hasty legislation on a subject like education does not augur well for a democracy.
Please look into the shortcomings and correct them. I am always moved by this minister because his thoughts run faster than the deeds that have to come through his own missionary, which is not there. So, there, we try to coordinate with both of them.
Please put yourself to the implementation aspects, and don’t always talk about the quality because quality has never paid us; none of your Bills, RTI or this or any other, that has come before this House has yielded the desired results. Sir, the Education Bill has taken time not longer than necessary. I have never handled a file that talks about the curriculum, etc. All that it talks about is services, transfers, salaries and nothing else but those things. Sir, education minister is nothing but a first-class file pusher of the administrative system.
Excerpt from the speech of Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha, K Keshava Rao, on the Educational Tribunal Bill, August 31