Recolonization Of India: Circle Is Closing Faster Through New-Education Policy Dictated By WTO-GATS!
By Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle
29 November, 2015
Countercurrents.org
Talk by Dr. ANIL SADGOPAL,
Ret Professor, Delhi university, Member of the AIFRTE Presidium
Date : 30-11-2015 @ 5:15 pm, Venue: CLT
New Education Policy 2015 (NEP), which will be unleashed in Dec. 2015, is being drafted by the Government of India (GoI) on which opinions have been sought. In 1986, National Policy on Education was framed and amended in the wake of implementing neo–liberal policies in 1992. Now, NEP 2015 is a move of GoI towards the implementation of WTO-GATS [World Trade Organisation - General Agreement on Trade in Services] dictates before its ministerial meeting in Dec 2015.. While recolonializing our nation by implementing the WTO-GATS dictate, under that umbrella, Hindutva forces are planning to reestablish caste system and revive the brahminic hegemony. The composition of the 4 member NEP drafting committee itself is revealing in terms of what the government’s agenda: three members are bureaucrats and only one is an academician – who is none other than RSS and hindutva ideologue Dinanath Batra!
The implementation of LPG [Liberalization, Privatization, Globalization] policy and GATT [General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade], for the last twenty five years, has had grave consequences of massive destruction of agriculture, lakhs of farmer suicides, firing of millions of workers, government employees and IT employees, almost elimination of small and medium scale industries, plundering and destruction of natural resources. After destroying productive sectors like agriculture and industry, now the imperialists’ evil eye has turned to the service sector. Essentials of human existence like food, water, land, education, health, sanitation, transportation and climate are now turned into fully tradable commodities under WTO-GATS for the unrestricted loot by MNCs and TNCs. By signing on WTO-GATS, it will be mandatory for GoI to restructure the system through legislative and judiciary measures by drafting policies and passing Bills and Acts accordingly. The New Education Policy 2015 is one measure in this game. Though, the LPG is introduced by the Congress around 90s, and had strived for it’s implementation, the Modi Govt is willing to complete the recolonization phase of INDIA as fast as possible. To the core, Modi’s “Minimum government Maximum governance” imitate the interest of WTO-GATS!
NEP themes mention that the existing educational establishment is incapable of and has failed in supplying skilled human capital to the labour market and complain about its inadequacy in systematic thinking. NEP is a move towards demolishing the academic establishment of the nation phase by phase. Phases will start with grabbing the power of the states to legislate and administer education through the unification and centralization of pedagogy and curriculum; dissolving the power of syndicates/senates and disaffiliating colleges from Universities, turning them into skill instruction based community colleges; stopping fund allocation and dissolving the UGC; free education only for 1 % for the so called meritorious and 1 % needy; liberalization and deregulation of foreign educational institutions, allowing them to grant degrees in India; importing subject experts from the industry and foreign academia through GIAN or ‘Teach in India’ for content generation for online repositories like MOOCs [Massive Open Online Courses] and trashing the job security of local teachers and gradually pushing them out as ‘an endangered species’; digitization of education and networking of institutes through ‘Digital India’, where students are no longer stake holders in education, but foreign universities, multi-national companies, corporates and private industries are (Though, students rush to MOOCs with an idea that it is ‘open’ and a public property which anyone can access ‘at anytime’, ‘from anywhere’, and ‘acquire knowledge as if they wish’ – similar to ‘water’, a decade later, the whole education establishment will be scrapped down, as MOOCs is a ‘disruptive innovation’ for the corporate like Coursera to loot); vocationalisation of school education from 8th std in the name of skill development, pushing majority of the children of toiling masses into informal labour. We need to ask the question whether ‘Make in India’ will ride on the back of exploitation of such unorganized informal labour. Finally it must be said that subjecting education to international trade rules would lead to the loss of authority of the national and the state governments to regulate education according to the nation’s needs and priorities.
Along with serving GATS, the NEP also seems to be a move towards grabbing state governments’ power; abolition or dilution of reservation; and perhaps even a reintroduction of traditional caste based occupation through vocationalisation of education from early childhood; suggesting to institutions to ensure safety of girl students through CCTV surveillance or to provide education through DTH at home, thus throwing girls back to the dark rooms of patriarchy; establishing Indology studies and departments for dead languages to promote brahmanical culture in the name of ‘cultural tolerance’ and imposing Sanskrit throughout India.
GATS removes the legislative authority of parliament and means a surrender of judicial power to trade tribunals, in which only corporations are permitted to sue. Workers, students, environmental and advocacy groups and labour unions are blocked from seeking redress in the proposed tribunals. The rights of corporations become sacrosanct. The rights of citizens are abolished. Re-establishing ‘slavery’ all over again. In this context, the New Education Policy is nothing but the spider’s web knitted over our nation as it terms human beings as ‘human capital’ and knowledge as ‘knowledge economy’ as mentioned in GATS. Perhaps WTO, controlled and directed by the trans-national capital and the Super Power - US, can legitimately be the policeman, guardian and rule maker of the international socio-economic-political and cultural system, which is locally supervised by existing brahminic hegemony.
It is the death knell for the sovereignty of our country. By demolishing agriculture, labour and services like education, health and restructuring it in accordance with WTO-GATS, does the government of India want to serve the lone super power, the US, and aid in a more rapid closing of the recolonisation circle in India? Scrapping of non-NET fellowship, implementation Lyngdoh committee recommendations and code of conduct, UGC’s circular on safety and security in campus and especially girl students, increase of fee in IITs and NITs, contractualization of teaching positions through UGC-FRP and DST-INSPIRE, self-financing of CSIR Labs and IITs, fund cut for R&D, appointment of RSS lackeys in FTII, ICHR, NCERT etc. are tip of the iceberg.
In the condition of systemic crisis, our resolve must be to trash the NEP which serves the interests of imperialists and Hindutva forces and let us strive to construct a new policy on education which is people oriented, indigenous and patriotic.
Kick out WTO-GATS! Defeat recolonization!