By Patricia Mukhim
‘‘The stand of the Government of Meghalaya on the Hindi issue is still ambivalent. The so-called avant-garde of student’s welfare in the state that are otherwise hyper-active about political issues don’t seem to take this issue of imposition of Hindi as a compulsory subject, to be important enough so they don’t wish to quibble about it. Only the North East Students’ Organisation (NESO) expressed its dissent on the matter.’’
Several issues make one feel that India is fast losing its federal structure. The Centre is taking unilateral decisions and literally coercing the states to abide by those. Recently Home Minister Amit Shah announced that Hindi would be compulsory up to Class 10 in the eight north eastern states. He went on to say that 22, 000 Hindi teachers have been recruited for the eight states. Amit Shah was speaking as the Chairman of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee. This implies that Making Hindi compulsory up to Class 10 is a done deal and the Home Minister has got the consent of the states. Education is on the concurrent list so how can the Centre take decisions that are unilateral and tantamount to coercion. What has happened to the BJP today is that it is living in a make-believe world of smug insularity. It believes that it is the sole repository of wisdom and that India’s journey thus far is not credit-worthy so everything has to change and change fast. But at what cost? India is too diverse a country to even consider a national curriculum framework as the only viable one.
Chief Minister Conrad Sangma has defended the decision of the Union Home Minister and advocated that learning an array of languages enhances one’s job opportunities. That point is well taken but why make Hindi compulsory? If the sky’s the limit and the youth need to move to South India which is the destination of many, how does knowing Hindi help? Isn’t English a more universal language and the common currency that makes it easier for those knowing it to fit quicker into a technologically advanced world. The world of Information Technology is an English driven world. If Hindi must be learnt then let it be a third language after English and Khasi/Garo.
The stand of the Government of Meghalaya on the Hindi issue is still ambivalent. The so-called avant-garde of student’s welfare in the state that are otherwise hyper-active about political issues don’t seem to take this issue of imposition of Hindi as a compulsory subject, to be important enough so they don’t wish to quibble about it. Only the North East Students’ Organisation (NESO) expressed its dissent on the matter. There is a huge constituency of parents in the state but they choose to speak in whispers and tend to take everything lying down as if they are non-citizens and hence have no right to open their mouths. In any case, in Meghalaya, there is a conspiratorial silence on issues of public concern. Let’s put it this way – students actually have no advocates. They have been reduced to guinea pigs on whom all manner of experiments are conducted.
In Meghalaya we are silent on critical issues but garrulous on topics such as the insider-outsider conundrum, the Inner Line Permit the Sweeper Lane issue as if these are the only issues of concern.
The latest coercion from the Centre comes in the form of the Common University Entrance Test (CUET) which is pronounced in much the same way as CUTE but is an ugly piece of instrument yet again coming like a sledgehammer on the states and for which quick compliance is expected by the Central Government and the University Grants Commission. The students of Class 12 are writing their exams right now and the announcement regarding CUET has caught them in a bind. They are a worried lot since they don’t have the faintest idea as to how to approach the entrance test. Their parents are a harried lot but also a disparate constituency that have never come together to speak on behalf of the student community. Many parents who are technologically disabled find it a monumental task to download the CUET forms and fill them online. But who cares? Does the State Government care about the fate of the student community, especially those from the rural hinterland?
And then there was this meeting at NEHU to discuss CUET. In the first place NEHU should not have been the venue for this meeting. By attending it the principals and heads of institutions have allowed NEHU to hijack this agenda and to convey to the Centre that they have got full compliance with the exception of a few voices of dissent. Should CUET have been discussed only by principals of colleges and higher secondary institutions and the NEHU faculty? What about the main stakeholders – the parents and the students? Don’t the students have the right to make their voices heard simply because they have not reached the voting age? And what about the parents? Aren’t they the ones that are currently the most agitated lot?
The State Government has failed miserably in guiding this agenda. It has lost an opportunity to show the Centre that it has a spine and a mind of its own when it comes to certain issues. Unfortunately, Meghalaya has now come to a point of such subservience before the Central Government that if they are told to jump they will ask, “How high?” This is where we discern a deep leadership crisis. A leader is one who rises to the occasion and takes the right decision in the larger public interest and not just for short term political gains. A meeting called by the State Government on the issue of CUET would have captured the diversity of thoughts which is inarguably the most important aspect of diversity. When perspectives are unrepresented in a discussion; when some kind of thinkers are absent from the discussion table, the meeting becomes an echo chamber rather than a sounding board. In the end everyone loses. I am not sure what the NEHU faculty present at the meeting spoke about and if they supported CUET simply because they believe the Vice Chancellor wants to steamroll that decision.
University is unlike other institutions, and more especially unlike the politics of the day which is promoting homogeneity of thought as if to differ means to be in conflict. It is in the University that we expect the free flow of ideas. A University requires that people challenge each other so that the truth can emerge. If Universities lose intellectual diversity and create zones of safety that cannot be trespassed and that trump the idea of challenge they will become the dangerous echo chambers where ideas will be killed and slaughtered because any new thinking will be considered dangerous to the political dispensation of the day which is hell bent on ensuring conformity and conformity is the death knell of a University.
The next question is – what about the views of political parties on the CUET dilemma. Have they studied the problem or are they busy with the game of one-upmanship preparing for the 2023 elections? The UDP has a doctorate as its leader. What are his and the UDP’s views on the CUET? And what about the Congress Party? Or the TMC for that matter? The rightful and appropriate role of the Opposition in a democracy is to put the government on the mat but also to come up with viable alternatives. After all, the Opposition is what we call a shadow cabinet that may well be in the seat of power tomorrow. These parties have remained silent on the issue of CUET almost as if they don’t care for the fate of the thousands of students who will be faltering in their entrance test and might miss the bus to the undergraduate colleges.
Those in politics claim to be our leaders but where is that leadership today? The Education Minister has proved to be absolutely unreliable and unwilling to take a definite stand on the CUET issue. He has faltered in the Home Department too. Leaders are not born; they are made out of the crucible of real life experience and they learn to show their spine when that is called for. Alas! The CUET has exposed how leaderless Meghalaya is and how acquiescent the political executives have become and how ready they are to dance to the tune of Delhi.
Many of those who are desperate to get through CUET by hook or crook will of course take crash courses from the coaching bazaars because their parents are able to shell out the money. The poor will always lose out in this game. But why should the Government care? The children of all politicians and bureaucrats are in the best institutions outside the state and country. Let the poor wallow in their poverty and drop out of the university system. That seems to be the verdict of the MDA Government as far as CUET is concerned.