Anganwadis in the healthy development of
children. The draft ignores the contribution
made by the Anganwadi system in improv-
ing the health and nutrition of children. By
2023, state governments are expected to clus-
ter schools together into more viable units
known as school complexes. The proposed
idea of school complexes has completely
undermined the diversity of the nation and
the level of improvement it has achieved in
educational sector. This will only lead to the
closing down of many schools in the name of
being ‘non-profitable or sub-standard’. What
the government has to ensure at this junc-
ture is to take measures to improve the in-
frastructure, academic facilities and proper
teacher and staff appointments in all schools
and develop those to the vibrant centres of
learning instead of adopting a policy which
will crush the fundamental elements of ac-
cess to school education.
Providing an “exit” point from Class VIII it-
self without demanding a complete ban on
child labour is problematic as the current
child labour laws allow children to work in
“family” enterprises from 10 years onwards,
reinforcing both caste-based occupations
and economic exploitation. This will have
a huge social implication and violation of
child rights. According to the NEP, states
will have a very minimal role in preparing
the text books. Centre will be preparing the
framework for the study material. Even the
private sector will have role in this. Such a
move will cause undermining the specific
needs of the states as far as the study mate-
rials are concerned. It is said that additional
textbook materials would be funded by the
public - private partnerships. We demand
that all text books must be prepared by the
academic bodies appointed by the govern-
ment with transparent mechanism in the
relevant department and distributed to all
students freely. Making of text books should
also keep nurturing of critical thinking, sci-
entific temper and secular-democratic ethos
among students as its core objectives.
The NEP recognises that the mid-day meal in
public schools which played a critical role in
the well-being of children has over time be-
come very insufficient because of inadequate
financial allocation by the government. And
it proposes food at all levels of the school to
be improved to provide full and adequate nu-
trition to all students up to Grade 12. This
is a positive approach and already been suc-
cessfully running in states like Kerala. But
more clarity is needed on which department
and authorities will be made responsible and
also the legal mechanism needed to be in-
troduced for the transparent functioning of
mid-day meal scheme. Huge corruption and
malpractices have been reported from vari-
ous states in recent years in the same.Campus DemocracyThere is not even a single mentioning about
campus democracy and democratic rights of
the students in the entire document of NEP.
We have witnessed over and years how did
the de-politization and curbing of democrat-
ic bodies of students lead to increased inci-
dents of chaos, ragging, assaults on students,
administrative highhandedness in decision
making, undemocratic relationship between
teachers and students etc. Education has an
important objective of strengthening demo-
cratic values and training the new genera-
tion to be potential contributors of a demo-14 Student Struggle | June - July 2019