New Education Policy will safeguard the rights of minorities promise parliamentarians.

A seminar was organised by the Consortium of Christian Minority Higher Educational Institutions and Stella Maris College, Ernakulam inviting suggestions on the draft of the National Education policy. These suggestions would be later forwarded to the Ministry of Human Resource Development.

Parliamentarians participating in the seminar assured the Christian missionaries that they would ensure the protection to the rights of the minorities. Participants in the seminar also expressed concern over how the government did not include the opinions of grassroots workers such as teachers in order to arrive at a comprehensive policy.

MP K.V. Thomas and Rajya Sabha members T.K. Rangarajan (CPI-M) and Tiruchi N. Siva (DMK) gave assurances that the policy would be discussed threadbare in the House before being approved. Mr. Thomas went on to recollect his tenure as a teacher and said colleges were forced to seek and depend on donations as government funding was inadequate. Schools had collected donations for noon meal scheme to ensure that children did not drop out of school.

Mr. Rangarajan encouraged the participants to draft a new policy and forward it for discussion. He said the government was attempting to promote “fascistic Hindu Rashtra by replacing Indian history with mythology and Indian philosophy with Hindu theology”.

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Better representation

Mr. Siva said the government should constitute a committee that includes academics, representatives from marginalised sections, minorities, and the people with disabilities to draft a new education policy.

The thrust on regulations and absence of academicians’ view points were a cause for concern, said Joshua Mar Ignathios, chairman of Catholic Bishops Conference of India said.

The policy had ignored the poor and dealt marginally with education of women and girl children.

Images used for representational purposes only

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