In solidarity with JNU, teachers’ organisations hold protest march

NEW DELHI: Delhi University Teachers' Association (DUTA) along with Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachers' Association (JNUTA) and the Federation of Central University Teachers' Association (FEDCUTA) came in solidarity with the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on Thursday and organised a march against the Draft National Education Policy (DNEP) 2019 here.

Along with the teachers, staff associations of various colleges, students, and karamcharis of various universities also participated in the protest. The march witnessed support from Delhi University (DU), Jamia Milia Islamia, School Of Open Learning (SOL) among other groups.

“We are standing with all universities who are seeing this hike in fee, whether it is IIT, IIM or universities in Uttarakhand,” said Sai Balaji, former president of JNU Students' Union.

The final draft of DNEP is likely to be sent for the Union cabinet approval this month and is going to be tabled in the winter session of the Parliament.

A member of DUTA, while addressing the crowd said that the whole country is moving towards privatisation, which is problematic.

“The root cause of all the issues we are facing right now is the policies of the current regime, we have to address that,” he said.

The draft proposes a education policy that aims to address the challenges of access, equity, quality, affordability, and accountability. It also proposes to set up a Rashtriya Shiksha Aayog/national Education Commission as a central advisory body to see the Indian education system, by replacing the existing Central Advisory Board on Education (CABE). The body will be chaired by the prime minister himself.

“The draft aims to privatise and commercialism the education system and it has to be rejected as it will make education system inaccessible and exclusionary to students coming from economically deprived and marginalized sections,” said DUTA.

Speaking about the draft, a member from SOL community said that the current regime doesn't want marginalised people to get good education.

“Most of the people who study in DU or JNU are poor farmers' or labourer's sons and daughter. This regime doesn't want them to get educated. They only want a handful of rich to get good education, so that they do whatever the authorities tell them to do,” said Rohit member of SOL students' committee.