Mr. T. Muralidharan is a national executive committee member of FICCI and a member of the National Board Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (NBMSME) . He is the founder of India’s first ‘Employment Van’ which connects youth to local jobs through mobile technology. His current vision is to connect a million youth every year to sustainable jobs and his passion is to bring disruptive ‘Waste to Energy Technology’ to India. He writes as an accredited independent journalist on issues related to career, education, employment and governance in major newspapers and magazines such as The Hindu, Telangana Today and Sakshi.
Muralidharan has studied the entire draft of the NEP 2019 and has spoken on the pros and cons of the proposed draft. P Shenbaga Saravanan, Editor, The LearnED Talk recently caught up with Mr Muralidharan at one such event. Excerpts from the conversation that followed:
What do you think are the toughest challenges to implementing the NEP 2019?
The biggest challenge is that the government has control of everything. I believe the government is ill-equipped to manage and cater to multiple roles. It’s imperative to hand over some control to the private sector. The other big challenge I see is funding. The budget proposed by the government is not enough to resolve the challenges identified.
You have mentioned that the Government cannot be regulator, operator, funder, curriculum provider and assessor. What is the implication of schools being made autonomous?
I feel that the government is in the way of quality education in India. Taking everything upon itself won’t solve the problem. The government can be the policy-maker and regulator but not the operator. This has been happening for a long time and we haven’t derived any output from that. The state of Indian education remains the same. The operation part should be handed over to the private sector. They will be able to provide students with the facilities needed.
Among your many suggestions to improve education you have suggested the concept of an ‘Educational Coupon model’. Can you elaborate on this?
One way to reduce corruption is to make the children choose the school or college they would like to study in. This can be easily implemented as an ‘educational coupon model’ wherein each child will get an educational coupon for a certain value and the child can submit the coupon to any school of choice and top up the balance required. This way the poor-quality schools will be punished and the high-quality schools will get encouraged by the community. These coupons must be given by the Government as part of the educational expense or cost allotted by the Government per child.
The drafting committee claims the draft NEP 2019 focuses on ‘India-centered education’. Your thoughts on this?
It’s baseless. A global approach should have been used. ‘India-centered education’ won’t help our children from the perspective of their future. If we look at the numbers, every year we are generating 28 million qualified youth and the number of jobs we are offering them is four million. This gap will be bridged by exporting our youth globally for employment. To ensure that they meet the global standards of employment, an ‘India-centered education’ approach would not meet the requirements.
What do you think of the focus on extracurricular activities in the NEP?
The draft does focus on the extracurricular activities and soft skill development that needs to be taken care of. I suggest that a one-year programme for skill training should be considered so that students get a chance to work on the skills on which they want to pave their careers.
What are your comments on the mother tongue being the medium of instruction? Will it make our kids less competent?
I believe that language learning is one of the most important parts of education; sadly, missed upon. From an early age, children should be taught at least three or four languages. This is because it is easier for children to pick up languages when young. Also, it prepares them for global opportunities. The other subjects can be done in the later years as well.
Murlidharan says implementation of multiple language learning can be made compulsory, whereby the students can choose one foreign language along with English. The choice of medium of instruction being either English or the mother-tongue should be made by the student. However, considering the mother tongue for the medium of instruction seems a little impractical as it is possible that all children in the classroom may not be familiar with the same regional language.
Further insights…
He also talks about the drawbacks of NEP in regard to which he says that “there is no representative of parents, industry or common citizens in the Committee and this is truly reflected in the recommendations in the NEP. All in all, there are a lot of challenges in our struggle to provide quality education in India. Being rigid and considering the private education system a foe will only worsen the scenario.” So, instead of looking at private schools as anti-establishment, the Government should look at them as partners in nation-building.
