Volume 1, Issue 1, April 2015, Hyderabad; Contribution: Rs 30/- RECONSTRUCTING EDUCATION for Emancipation
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Volume 1, Issue 1, April 2015, Hyderabad; Contribution: Rs 30/- RECONSTRUCTING EDUCATION for Emancipation An organ in support of free and equitable education from KG to PG and in resistance to all forms of trade in education Quarterly publication of All India Forum for Right to Education (www.aifrte.in) Contents Editorial ...2 AISSY-2014 ...3 AGENDA Campaign against WTO-GATS ...6 Assault of Communalism ...8 Nothing Vedic in ‘Vedic Maths’ ...9 OPINION Caste, Campuses and Contradiction ...10 Jumping the Gun in Rajasthan ...11 PRESS-STATEMENTS Stop Victimising Teachers ...12 Release Prof. Saibaba ...13 Action Against DU Staff ...13 Roll-Back of FYUP ...14 Action Against AMU Teachers ...14 Attack on Students in Patna ...15 Mockery of Teachers’ Day ...15 Attack on Students in Jadavpur ...16 School Closure in Rajasthan ...17 PM’s Mythology of Science ...18 Attack on Students of SOL, DU ...18 IN REMEMBRANCE Sunil Bhai ...19 Com. Pansare ...21 Dabholkar is Done a Gandhi ...22 They Want to Stop Our Songs ...25 We Are All Mukto-Mana ...25 INTERNATIONAL Chilean Artist Destroys Students’ Debt Paper ...27 Editorial Board Executive Editor: Associate Editor: Vikas Gupta Members: Sarwat Ali, Surjit Thockchom & Lokesh Malti Prakash Madhu Prasad • Editorial Contact: [email protected] EDITORIAL movement and successful completion of the All India Shiksha have become super rich while the rest of the population is becoming SangharshThis is Yatra-2014the first issue(AISSY-2014). of the newsletter The Yatra aftercovered the more inspiring than poorerthat they day can by rakeday, andin huge their profits. conditions A small of life percentage are becoming of corporates more and four hundred districts across the country and carried the demand more fragile and insecure. The demand for a state-funded system for a completely free and compulsory Common Neighbourhood of absolutely free education of comparable quality for all, and the School System up to XII class for all children to more than 25 states. Demanding that higher education too should be free and open to all, for it, is a major blow against the pursuit of neoliberal policies and an its slogan of “free education from KG to PG” got a resounding response importantdemand that step the towards state fulfill adoption its constitutional of pro-people obligations policies. in providing from all sections of the people. The Yatra was joined by more than 250 The Government of India’s (GOI) offer to make higher education progressive, democratic organizations of students, teachers, adivasis, part of the liberalized global market economy and be regulated by dalits, women, minorities, disability activists and by trade unions, the rules of the General Agreement of Trade and Services (GATS) of political parties and civil liberties movements from diverse parts of the World Trade Organization (WTO) represents a grave threat to India. Five zonal Yatras started from different directions (north-east, the pursuit of knowledge and to the character of education itself. north, south, east and west) on 2nd November 2014 and travelled To treat higher education as a ‘tradable service’ is to distort its with numerous district- and state-level Yatras until they all gathered transformatory and democratic character which is of great individual together in Bhopal on 2nd December 2014. On the 3rd morning they joined the 30th anniversary rally of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy offer to GATS and is prepared to unite with all democratic forces in victims. Later in the evening a four-hour long “Programme of Cultural defenseand social of significance.higher education AIFRTE to compelhas already the governmenttaken a stand to against withdraw the Resistance” was organized. It was a celebration of the cultural and its offer urgently before the conclusion of the Doha Round of trade linguistic diversity of India and a rare occasion where all its languages negotiations. found rich and free expression. A rousing procession of thousands, with slogans raised in all languages, wound its way through Bhopal in the Lok Sabha, the “Hindutva” forces mobilized around the on the morning of 4th December to reach the Yaadgaar-e-Shahjehani SanghSince Parivar, the NDA’s are aggressively Modi Sarkar and has openly assumed interfering office with in thea majority sphere of education. Promoting irrational, mythological fantasies over the country. District- and state-level yatras continued in many local rationally acquired and weighed evidence and facts, from the prime areasPark for throughout the final rally.the entire The Yatraperiod. had ‘Tributory’ travelled yatras,for five joining weeks acrossin and minister down these forces have made a mockery of the idea of separating out, added to the range and scope of the Yatra. The Yatra dates were chosen to symbolize the struggle of the are not countered academically, then the value of the knowledge Indian people against oppression and for democratic rights and generatedscientific achievement in ancient and and medievalof historical times interpretation. of which Indians If these can forces be Sharmila and Prof Anil Sadgopal as 2nd November commemorates liberties. The North-Eastern Yatra was flagged-off from Imphal by Irom justifiably proud cannot be properly assessed or understood. Vain against the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) in Manipur. The knowledge.and ignorant We glorification are therefore of carrying a Brahmanical in this issuepast someis no newspapersubstitute the day when she began her indefinite hunger strike 14 years ago reportsfor preparing of critiques the byground scholars for andadvancing our own contemporary statement on thescientific prime Srinagar, by Prof Jagmohan, prominent civil liberties activist in minister’s pronouncements on medical science. PunjabNorthern and Yatra nephew was flagged-offof Shaheed from Bhagat Jammu, Singh as and floods Prof hadMadhu devastated Prasad. dangerous form of physical elimination. In Maharashtra it has already claimedThe assaultthe lives on of rational, two well-respected scientific ideas defenders in South and Asia disseminators has taken the knownThe Southern linguist Yatra Prof wasDebi flagged-off Prasanna Pattanayakat Kanyakumari from byBhubneshwar civil rights activist Prof G Hargopal. The Eastern Yatra was flagged-off by well- Narendra Dabholkar and Com. Pansare were brutally shot down inof scientificAugust 2013 rationality and February among students,2015 respectively youth and when the public out for at large.their Bhopaland Western coinciding Yatra with was the flagged-off thirtieth anniversaryat Mapusa inof thenorthern world’s Goa worst by regular morning walks. Shockingly, despite the similar manner of industrialfreedom fighter disaster Bhai emphasized Vaidya and both Sri thePrabhakar callous andArade. reckless The arrival conduct at assassination, the state police claim to be completely in the dark and of multi-national corporations functioning in developing countries, and the spineless attitude of governments like ours which cannot hold them accountable. irrationalism,have been unable and to strongly find even supports a single suspectthe demand in either that case! investigations RE salutes The Yatra popularized once again the constitutional obligation bethese handed courageous to a Special fighters Investigation in the struggle Team against(SIT). The obscurantism recent hacking and of the central and state governments to make full provisions for a to death of atheist Bangladeshi-American rationalist Avijit Roy in national system of common education for all and to be accountable for its proper functioning. The failure of successive UPA and NDA visit his ailing 80 year-old father is part of the murderous aggression beingDacca wheredisplayed he goneby right-wing briefly, despite fundamentalists receiving many against death proponents threats, to collapse of the government school system is the result of their common of secular, reasoned thought. The gunning down of Sabeen Mahmud pursuitgovernments of neoliberal during economicthe past twenty-five policies. This years so-called to prevent “development the total in Karachi is the most recent atrocity in this macabre drama. We are model” has led to the adoption of policies that have dismantled carrying in this issue, obituaries of Dr. Dabholkar, Com. Pansare, Avijit instead of strengthening and expanding state-funded educational Roy and Sabeeh Mahmud as well as reports assessing the impact of and healthcare institutions and the public sector. They have led to rampant growth of the private sector by handing over public assets, including mineral, land and forest wealth, at throw away prices so their work and influence. RECONSTRUCTING EDUCATION for Emancipation 2 Volume 1, Issue 1, April 2015; Hyderabad AISSY - 2014 We are presenting before our readers some glimpses of the 3-day Culmination programme of historic All India Shiksha Sangharsh Yatra-2014 at Bhopal. Special articles, features and photographs of the Yatra as it proceeded across the country will be presented in the next issue of Reconstructing Education. Zonal Yatras welcomed in Bhopal 2nd December 2014 RECONSTRUCTING EDUCATION for Emancipation 3 Volume 1, Issue 1, April 2015; Hyderabad Programme of Cultural Resistance 3rd December 2014 RECONSTRUCTING EDUCATION for Emancipation 4 Volume 1, Issue 1, April 2015; Hyderabad Rally & Convention 4th December 2014 RECONSTRUCTING EDUCATION for Emancipation 5 Volume 1, Issue 1, April 2015; Hyderabad AGENDA Resist WTO-GATS! AIFRTE Initiates a Campaign Against the ‘Offer’ of Higher