Punjab recognises teacher’s contribution in educating girls
‘Malti Gyan Peeth Puraskar’ will be given to the best performing government schools and colleges for girls in Punjab.
The Conservative Friends of India (CFI) hosted a roundtable at the Conservative Campaign Headquarters in London on 21 September. The CFI is an actively Conservative organisation that seeks closer relations between India and Britain for the benefit of both nations.
Amandeep Bhogal, Conservative candidate for Northern Ireland, chaired and opened the session by praising former Prime Minister David Cameron’s efforts at increasing UK and India’s bilateral relations. Bhogal introduced Lord Jitesh Gadhia, who in 2013 spent half a day with then Chief Minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi. The few hours left him with a lasting admiration for the current Prime Minister. Lord Gadhia spoke about his experiences with Jim O’Neill, Baron O’Neill of Gatley, Commercial Secretary to the Treasury and former chairman of Goldman Sachs, who coined the term BRICS. Lord Gadhia said India had the most potential of all the BRICS countries.
Gareth Bacon, Conservative Member of the London Assembly, congratulated Bhogal’s tireless efforts for the improvement of bilateral relations and complimented Bhogal by saying he was a fine representative for UK, India and the Conservative Party. Bacon also reminded the audience that 27 Indian soldiers have been awarded the Victoria Cross for gallantry in the face of the enemy.
Dinesh Patnaik, the newly arrived Deputy High Commissioner, made an impressive debut, confirmingthat five Indian ministers had visited London in the last two months and the potential for bilateral relations could not be better, but we were still talking about realising our joint potential. Patnaik said a great leap forward, unhindered by bureaucracy, was necessary to take trade links to a whole new level. He suggested that informal post-Brexit talks could begin in preparation for immediate action following the actual Brexit.
Sanam Arora, president, National Indian Students and Alumni Union UK, presented some of the problems facing Indian students regarding visas and proposed the introduction of a two-year post-study visa for Indian students.
M.D. Nalapat, Editorial Director of The Sunday Guardian said Prime Minister Modi was sincere about transforming India, that the PM was a closet liberal who wanted the same freedoms in India as in the UK; that PM Modi had a vision of “Digital India” that would allow Indians to do everything online. He said that in the next six years, 900million people in India will be using mobile technology, but the Chinese were the only people who had recognised the potential of India. Nalapat was concerned that the West focused only on the 13% of the population in Kashmir, who were the troublemakers, not the 87% who wanted a peaceful, prosperous and united state.
Bob Blackman, Member of Parliament for Harrow East, was emphatically looking forward to reaching out to India as an equal partner, not as a post-colonial partner. He said, Brexit would benefit the visa situation for Indians. Blackman supported the Jammu and Kashmir as being an integral part of India and coming under the dominion of India. Blackman said Pakistan had illegally occupied the territory.
In exactly three years from now, the first of the 36 French-manufactured Rafale fighter jets will begin to land in India. These medium multi-role combat jets are expected to give Indian Air Force an edge over its adversaries in Pakistan and China because of the additional weapons systems, including the game-changing METEOR and SCALP missiles that are part of the deal India signed with France in New Delhi on Friday.
This inter- government agreement, sealed at a price much lower than what the former UPA government had been negotiating, comes after Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened fresh channels of communication with France in April 2015. In fact, the finer details of the deal were sealed on a hotline established between the Prime Minister and his French counterpart, President Francois Hollande.
Speaking to the Sunday Guardian, after signing the agreement with French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, Defence Minister Manohar Parikkar said, “This is an achievement that will give the Indian Air Force the required potency in terms of penetration and capabilities”.
It was, however, not easy for the current government to scale down the price of the deal to €7.87 billion (Rs 59,000 crore), given that the previous UPA regime had been discussing the deal with the jet makers, Dassault, for €11.6 billion (Rs 87,000 crore).
It took hectic negotiations on part of Defence Minister Manohar Parikkar and the Indian Air Force to seal the When she had started working as a teacher at a government school for girls in Punjab during the 1950s, she had not aimed to become a symbol of achievement that the Punjab government has now made her. Malti Mohinder Singh Syngle was just another woman who was passionate about education of young girls. She wanted to be of help to as many students as she could as their teacher. Malti’s lifelong struggle for rural girls’ education culminated in the “Malti Gyan Peeth Puraskar”, which the Punjab government will give to the best performing government schools and colleges for girls in Punjab. The Puraskar is in honour of the woman who is recognised as a pioneer in girls’ education across the state.
Though age has caught up with her, Malti, a little hard of hearing, spoke to The Sunday Guardian.“I am not old yet. I still have ideas in my head that I would like to execute.” Among six sisters, Malti was the first daughter in the family to get a college education. She can well be termed as being among the “first wave of women” who started working as teachers in government schools of Punjab. “Nobody could ever challenge me because I was honest with my work. When I started as a government school teacher, there were no girls in the class, though it was a girls’ school. Parents did not care much with a daughter’s education. Skills that help you run your home better helped a woman qualify in the social ladder and not her education. So, I used to go around villages with the school peon or the gatekeeper to different houses and request people to send their girls to school. It took some time, but within a year, our school had registered 500 more students in classes. That feeling of contentment has stayed with me all these years,” Malti said.
Talking about the plight of teachers today, Malti said, “Dedication and hard work are the key for a good teacher. I see today that young people who choose to become teachers look at it only like a profession. The young generation should visit schools in rural areas and see the condition there. There is so much that city kids have to pass on to their rural counterparts. Teachers need to understand their importance in society and must embrace the responsibility that comes along with that. I feel the kind of passion we had in our time towards education is lacking in people now. It was not easy for us to do what we did. For a young unmarried woman to travel 60 km only to ask girls to come to school was not the norm.”
She was one of the first women in Punjab to achieve the Degree of “Bachelor of Teaching” in 1951. She worked for the Punjab Education Service till she retired as principal of Govt Girls Higher Secondary School in 1980. Her favourite subject is Economics.
Malti admits that the lifestyle of women have changed a lot since her young days. “Women in our time had to think multiple times even before taking small decisions by themselves. Character and respect of a person were their only credentials and one wrong step could make you the black fish in the pond. Being a woman was never easy, but women to- day have a lot more mobility and choices which we never had. This should be put to good use. But there is no denying that women must never neglect their responsibilities towards their families. Women are the nucleus of any family; if she falters, the whole family falls apart,” she said.
Even after her retirement, Malti continued to work and with the help of her sons, established a trust to help young girls in Punjab’s villages. She promoted the “Mohinder Singh Syngle Education & Research Society”, in the memory of her late husband, in Sangrur, an economically backward district in Punjab. “I never stopped working for the cause I felt so strongly about, but while I was giving my best to society, I also did my best to maintain a balance at my home. Educating daughters is the only way forward for the ultimate development of our society,” she said.