National education policy hits 4th delay
NEW DELHI: The much-awaited National Education Policy (NEP) is likely to be delayed for the fourth time since it was first announced, with the government-appointed committee entrusted with the task of drafting the policy getting yet another extension till October 2018, officials said.
Headed by former Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) chief K Kasturirangan, the panel was set up by the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry in June 2017. It was supposed to submit its report by December 2017 but was given an extension till March 2018. Later, it was given another extension till August, which has now been extended by another two months.
“... it was felt that greater consultation was required with the states and education ministers. So, a two months’ extension has been granted. The basic work is complete but the committee is now going to hold consultations with various stakeholders, especially experts, and therefore it sought another extension,” said a senior HRD official.
Apart from Kasturirangan, the committee has eight members that includes mathematician Manjul Bhargava. According to persons familiar with the matter, the suggestions that are likely to be made may not be implemented this academic year, as schools have already started their session in April and colleges in Junejuly. “A number of policy decisions have already been taken. So, in effect, it will come into effect by the next academic year,” the HRD official added. NEW DELHI: An itinerant Rahul Gandhi’s incessant attacks on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) had former external affairs minister Yashwant Sinha take to Twitter last week.
The rebel BJP veteran did not name the Congress president but left little to the imagination with his advice: “I appeal to all leaders to refrain from discussing our internal issues abroad. (The) Prime Minister broke the rule first. Others need not follow his example.”
Sinha’s was a cry in the wilderness in a joust that brooked no barriers.
Speaking in Germany and UK, Rahul stepped up his attacks on the PM, the BJP and the RSS. If he drew parallels between the RSS and the Muslim Brotherhood (for their apparent goals of the supra national Hindu Rashtra and Muslim Ummah respectively), he accused the PM of putting the country at risk, chasing power astride an enraged society instead of dousing disaffection caused by joblessness and lack of equal opportunity.
Two wrongs do not make a right. So it’s no gainsaying that the PM’S narrative of demonising the Congress, beginning with his 2014 address to the Indian diaspora at New York’s Madison Square Garden, drew the battle lines for a bitter confrontation. Attacks against domestic rivals in foreign countries do not sketch a happy portrait of India abroad, noted a seasoned diplomat.
Mainline parties taking domestic battles off-shore is a low without precedent in our polity. It is difficult to recall instances of past leaders washing dirty linen on alien territory and in front of foreign hosts.
Barring the odd case, such as the Indian Peace Keeping Force in Sri Lanka in the late 1980s, there was a broad consensus on foreign policy during the regimes of Rajiv Gandhi, PV Narasimha Rao, VP Singh, IK Gujral, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh.
Very much part of diplomatic lore is Rao’s 1994 decision to send Vajpayee, then an Opposition stalwart, to defend India’s case on Kashmir at the United Nations Human Rights Commission (UNHRC) in Geneva. The masterful move led to the Indian team led by the BJP leader, and including Farooq Abdullah and Salman Khursheed, returning triumphant.
At that time, Islamabad’s internationalisation of Kashmir, which was on the boil, was finding traction in the West.