Editor
The article by Albert Thyrniang (July 1, 2013)on the need for more science and commerce education in the schools in rural Meghalaya has captured the issue perfectly. Our rural students are deprived of choices in education for the usual reasons of official apathy, poor policy planning and lack of teachers and infrastructure. The figures he quoted are a telling example of the skewed school education system in our state. Out of 46,703 HSSLC candidates in 2013, 41,007 were arts students (88%), with science and commerce students accounting for only 7% and 5% of the total candidates respectively.
The national figures for +2 students are 37% science, 34% commerce and 29% in the arts stream. Even these figures are considered inadequate. In China, the percentage of students in tertiary education in science and engineering is 53%, compared to only 25% for India. So Meghalaya is way behind. The human resource needs of the state to ensure economic growth and development will rely on mostly on management and scientific manpower, so this does not augur well for the future of the state.
Teacher shortage is one of the clichéd reasons trotted out for this situation. But at the same time, there are 1400 graduates and postgraduates in science, commerce and education who are listed in the unemployment register of the state.
A letter in the same issue of the Shillong Times bemoans the outdated syllabi of MBOSE. Surely in the education hub of the northeast, there are many education and curriculum experts among the numerous highly rated colleges and universities, who can design an up-to- date and enlightened curriculum. I wonder if MBOSE would be open to their contribution, or does it rely mainly on technocrats and education hacks.
Yours etc.,
Glenn C Kharkongor
Pro-Chancellor, MLCU
When legislators manufacture consent
Editor,
Apropos the term ” Manufacturing consent or platform for dissent” in the article by Patricia Mukhim (ST May 31, 2013) I too believe that it contradicts the very spirit of democracy that allows for debate and dissent on every subject, especially those that are sensitive and critical to public interest. Stretching this term further, I find that even our elected representatives across political parties have manipulated public consent on more than one occasion to achieve whatever objectives they pursue or to suit their political, collective or self interest.
Examples of how ‘consent’ is ‘manufactured’ in our legislative assembly, is the passage of the private university bills, where the relevant rules for conduct of business in the Assembly were suspended, allowing little or no debate, let alone dissent, on the merits and demerits of the concerned bills. The bills were simply introduced and passed or should we say, pushed through. When debate and dissent is not allowed on such important legislation dealing with the lives and future of young people of our State, the end result is what we see today in the form of the CMJ University controversy and possibly in many more private universities in our State because the Act for their creation was hurriedly passed without any debate and discussion, thereby imperilling the future of their students.
The other case relates to the introduction and passage of the bill to amend the definition of ‘Forests’ on the last day of the winter session of the Meghalaya Legislative Assembly in 2012, by suspending all rules that would have allowed a serious debate on the pros and cons of such a move. This is another example of ‘manufacturing consent’ by our elected representatives in power in order to suit some vested interest, but which I strongly believe will have serious repercussions on our environment and lead to rapid deforestation in our state even though our government celebrates ‘Environment day’ every year.
If our law makers/ elected representatives lead the way in ‘manufacturing consent’, it will create a bad precedence and an unhealthy practice that will have a negative impact on the growth of a vibrant democracy necessary for the development of our State.
Yours etc.,
Michael N Syiem,
Via email
Negative aspects of training in NEPA.
Editor,
The on-going training activities in North Eastern Police Academy (NEPA) are not meeting the holistic training needs of police officers in the region. Recently two friends and I attend a short term course there. We were impressed by the infrastructure of NEPA but were worried at the poor training activities in the academy. The present Director is not interested in outdoor training activities. Taking advantage of his indifference all outdoor staff are running training programmes at their own whim. Indoor training is chaotic due to lack of experienced faculty. Some newly appointed faculty members are entrusted with the teaching of various police science subjects which is not up to the mark. The Director is busy conducting regular classes for these faculty members who were selected by the UPSC to bring them up to a satisfactory standard. Hence the training of trainers (TOT) has become the sole preoccupation of the Director at the cost of the police officer trainees of the Academy. If the Director spends quality time to conduct regular classes for the faculty then it follows that he has no time to manage the Academy. This also exposes the inappropriate selection of faculty by the UPSC which derogates the image of this Apex body of recruitment in India. It would be appropriate for the Academy to send the inexperienced faculty to some higher training institute rather than for the Director to conduct classes for them. This would demoralise the newly appointed and ‘highly qualified’ faculty in the eyes of the trainees as well as the general public.
We hope that NEPA will not only develop its physical infrastructure (hardware) but that it will lay more emphasis on good policing strategies (software) in future.
Your etc.,
Reisang Padu
Itanagar, (Arunachal Pradesh)