Anger and Vengeance

Anger and Vengeance

Two days ago I heard a story narrated by Sri Sivakumar in Sun TV in a programme called ‘Aanmeega Kathaigal’ in Tamil. I reproduce translation of it in my own words as I understood:

A  sadhu while walking along with his chela  noticed  a man angrily biting his chappal . The sadhu wondered what exactly was wrong. So he asked the chela to enquire about it. The aide went to the man and did his enquiry about the strange behavior of the man. The man said, “Sir I am extremely angry . I bought this pair of slippers 3 days ago and isn’t comfortable.  Not only that, it bites me on my ankle and I am seeing corns develope which hurt me. One slipper of the pair I threw away, and I am taking revenge on this one by biting it and hurting it back.”

The aide narrated the man’s version and added “The fellow is mad, and nothing can be done to appease him and improve him. He is beyond repair. We have to be wary of him”. The guru smiled and asked, “What have you learnt from this?”. The disciple was silent and the Guru went on “When one is angry one loses control over oneself and pushes oneself to take vengeance. One resorts to eccentric behavior which others term as mad”

If there is resemblance of the man’s behaviour to that of  Aam Aadmi Party chief and  of few in Indian National Congress, I assure you it is  coincidence

Jai Bharat

Coat of Arms

Coat of Arms

Two decades ago I worked for a Scottish Company as a senior Installation Engineer for their projects. I had presented a small statue of Krishna  (Venugopal) in sandalwood to my Glaswegian counterpart. He reciprocated by presenting a porcelain plaque on which was printed the Coat of Arms of the city of Glasgow which looks like this:

 

Let me explain the insignia:

There’s the tree that never grew

There’s the bird that never flew

 There’s the fish that never swam

There’s the bell that never rang

You can read the history behind it from the net.

As I was reminiscing by looking at it again, I couldn’t help grinning by replacing the tree, the bird, the fish, and the bell with real life characters. As my wife was passing by I was quick to wipe my grin, because she always secretively thought I was a crackpot laughing when alone. She doesn’t realize the comedy scenes I watch on our English news channels and some stupid panelists calling themselves as experts are real ticklers.

I reproduce the thought in my mind. I thought of the PM who never fought an election. I thought of an MP who never attended a session. I thought of a nominated MP who never spoke in a debate. I thought of a cabinet minister who never attended a cabinet meeting….

There are many more like a journalist who doesn’t read , a general who never fought a war, a writer who never wrote a book, a singer who never sang, a commoner who was never frisked in an air-port, a teacher who never taught, an actor who never acted and so on.

In daily life we come across a cobbler who never mended a shoe, a barber who never dressed the hair, a tailor who never stitched, a baker who never baked, a cook who never cooked, a soldier who never fought, a physician who never used a syringe, a farmer who never tilled a land, an athlete who never ran, a teacher who never taught and so on.

That’s what PM Narendra Modi and yours truly advocate – attaining skills with proper education in all fields including legislation, education, tourism etc. Was this achieved through caste system in erstwhile Bharat. I mean varna by action not birth

Jai Bharat

Government Short-Sighted Policy On Education

The following is reproduction of a very good article by Sajad Santhosh which is an analysis of school fee regulation in India

Hope the central government and all state governments review their myopic views on policies of early education for a child 

Analysis of School Fee Regulation in India

Sajad Santhosh

Centre for Civil Society

Introduction

India’s government schools are often mistaken to be the only option for children from

disadvantaged backgrounds. Private school enrollment has been increasing at rates

comparable to government schools even after the government started implementing its

flagship program, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan for universalising education. The percentage of

children in the 6-14 years age group in rural India enrolled in private schools increased from

18.7 percent in 2006 to 29 percent in 2013 (Annual Status of Education Report 2014). The

figures for urban India were estimated to be around 58 percent in 2005 by the Indian Human

Development Survey and could only have increased (Muralidharan, A Renewed Model of

Education 2014). This is a clear indicator that parents prefer private schools, if they can afford it.

It may also be noted that the number of private schools which charge very low fees and

function in low income areas have been identified to be on the increase, in response to this

demand (Baird 2009).

The focus of private schools on English-medium education and the significance of English in

the social mobility aspirations of the people is one of the primary reasons that poor parents

prefer private schools. But this is only one side of the story. As the annual ASER reports brought

out by Pratham indicate, states with higher enrollment in private schools also perform better in

testing of learning outcomes. Most of these private schools in rural areas and poorer sections

of urban areas function at costs much lesser than what the government allocates for its schools

(Muralidharan and Sundararaman 2014). Thus, due to several such reasons the private schools

in India share a huge load of the education sector—and this is without even considering the

smaller private schools that are not recognised by any education board.

While parents increasingly send their children to private schools, they are also simultaneously

affected by the increasing cost of living every year. Private schools charge fees based on

demand and this serves as a method of eliminating competition to select students. This has

created a situation whereby the students from relatively better-off households get preference

over children from economically weaker sections for school admissions. But since parents want

their children to be educated in a private school, but cannot afford it, they have sought the

help of the government to control the price of the service offered by private schools

(Raghupathi 2010). It is in this context, that some states in India have started implementing

laws to fix the maximum tuition fees that can be charged by private schools. The economic, and

subsequent social, effect of controlling the price of education needs to be further explored,

especially since free government schools exist, which benefit from an increased education

budget every year.

The next section of the paper briefly explains the legal aspects of the regulation of school fees in India, focusing on Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan. The subsequent section will examine, with the help of secondary data, what the current situations in these states are, post-implementation of the Regulation of Collection of Fee Acts. The fourth section will use existing literature on price controls to examine the economic impact of price control. The fifth section will try to understand how private schools in the two states are coping with the problems that these Acts have brought upon them, with the help of both primary data collected from school owners in Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan, and secondary data in the form of newspaper reports. The last section will provide an overview of the major learnings from these sections.

Regulation of Collection of Fee Act in India

This section examines the implementation of the Tamil Nadu Schools (Regulation of Collection of Fee) Act, 2009 by the State Government. The Act can be understood as a reaction to be expected from the government in Tamil Nadu which has a history of ceding to public demand. While complaints from parents and the media about some private schools charging exorbitant fees were cited as the reason for such a move, it is important to understand the unseen factors contributing to this problem. Under the Act, a district committee will decide the maximum fee that can be charged by a private school affiliated to the state education board in the district. The committee consists of a retired High Court Judge nominated by the government, other directors from the state education department, the Chief Engineer from the PWD at the state level, district level education officers, and principals of government schools at the district headquarters.

The factors to be taken into account under the Act to fix the fees charged by schools, other than administrative costs and a “reasonable surplus required for growth” are:

1. Locality of the school, namely, Rural area, Town Panchayat, Municipality, District Headquarters, Corporation

2. Strength of the students

3. Classes of study, and

4. Status of the school, as indicated below:-

a. Schools having minimum infrastructure facilities as prescribed by the Government from time to time

b. Schools having infrastructure facilities more than prescribed:-

i. Schools having more than minimum requirement of lab, more number of library books, classroom facilities and other sanitary and drinking water facilities

ii. Schools having more than adequate classroom facilities, lab facilities, library area, number of books, very good sanitation facilities, highly protected drinking water facilities and other sanitary facilities together with high percentage of results

iii. Schools fully equipped with modern facilities like Air Conditioner with 100% results

While schools may object to the initial fixed fee once, the ruling of the committee is final and the fee is fixed for three years. Schools can apply for a revision of fees after this time period. The committee also has the power to verify whether schools that are already affiliated with the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) charge fees commensurate with the facilities (Tamil Nadu Government Gazette 2009).

The situation in Rajasthan is similar, with the implementation of the Rajasthan Schools (Regulation of Collection of Fee) Act, 2013. The Rajasthan law takes into account the qualifications of teachers as an additional factor for the district-level committees that decide the fees for private schools for a three-year period (Rajasthan Government Gazette 2013). With the Right to Education Act (RTE) 2009, being implemented across India from 2010 as a strong government initiative to universalise education, the private schools in the country have already been under much financial and administrative pressure to comply with the new rules. The imposition of a maximum cap on the fees that can be charged by private schools is an additional burden that exacerbates the problem. Associations of private schools both in Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan have been protesting these Acts before and after their implementation. They have sought help from the judiciary, individually and as groups, to remedy this situation and several court cases remain in motion.

The judiciary has been far from clear on the issues raised by private schools regarding the fixing of fees by government-formed committees. In 2010, the Supreme Court had overturned a stay order that was placed on the committee-decided fees as the result of a petition filed by private schools in Tamil Nadu (Venkatesan 2010). In 2012, the Madras High Court, in response to over 300 writ petitions, advised the committee to review the fees prescribed. The committees at the district still hold the authority on the issue under the Act, and all of the grievances of the private schools which cannot function under the new fees prescribed by the committee have been directed or redirected to the same committee.

Current Situation of Private Schools

In Rajasthan, the private schools affiliated with the state board of education claimed that most schools were already charging very low fees and the new Act would mean that the fees would be charged at a much lower level leading to a situation where they would have to be closed down according to the Daily Bhaskar, a leading newspaper in Rajasthan in an article published on April 21, 2013. But the Act was nevertheless put into motion and of the nearly 30,000 schools recognised by the Rajasthan Education department, more than 18,000 have been forced to comply with the Act by reducing their fees in 2014, according to a representative of the school owner’s association in Rajasthan. However, the Rajasthan court in response to the grievances of the private schools has conditionally allowed the increase in fees, pending litigation on a case which cites Supreme Court rulings to the effect that the government does not have the right to regulate fees in schools that do not receive government aid, based on a report published in the Times of India on October 8, 2014.

The problems with the Fee Regulation Acts in Rajasthan and Tamil Nadu are manifold. First of all, the complaints against unreasonably high fees charged by private schools are relevant for only a small section of private schools. The vast majority of private schools charges very little and function in disadvantaged areas, already bearing the weight of extra compliance costs under the RTE. Secondly, government schools already exist in all these areas and people are choosing to send their children to private schools instead. Therefore, the underlying problem is that government schools are perceived to be worse than private schools when it comes to learning outcomes. But rather than focusing on improving government schools, the government has reacted by making it tougher for private schools, which are already performing better, to function efficiently. Thirdly, even if the regulation of fees in private schools can somehow be justified, the committees formed to decide the fees have no representation from stakeholders. Bureaucrats, who are in charge of the government school system or are part of it, make up the committees. And these committees are set up to be the monitoring system for themselves, considering that all complaints with the decisions of the committee are directed or redirected to the committee itself.

In the states of Karnataka and Maharashtra, an Act that regulates the fees charged by private schools will come into effect in 2015. This is after the state government in Karnataka tried to arbitrarily impose a fee regulation act drafted in 1984 by which no educational institution shall collect more than INR 10 per month per student for 10 months (pre-primary), INR 30 per month per student for 10 months (Primary), INR 40 per month per student for 10 months (high schools) according to a Times of India article published on August 25, 2012. In Maharashtra, the district-level committees are comprised of parents and teachers in addition to bureaucrats andgovernment school principals but private school management representatives still remain out of the picture as can be gathered from the Times of India report on June 9, 2014.

Private schools in both Karnataka and Maharashtra are moving cases against the imposition of the regulation but if the legal proceedings in Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan are any indicator, the government decision will prevail at the expense of private schools. It might also be noted that the Karnataka regulation was initially moved as a reaction to increasing college fees but private schools were part of the legislation that was drawn up under the Karnataka Educational Institutions Act as can be understood from the New Indian Express article on May 25, 2014. The case in Maharashtra is such that if the difference between the fees decided by the committee and the school is less than 15 percent, the committee’s decision will prevail. It is still unclear whether there is an alternate source of recourse if the difference is greater than 15 percent. In Tamil Nadu, the difference is more than 30 percent on an average and goes up to more than 50 percent in some cases. School owners complain that complying with the Act means all kinds of fee waivers and scholarships that they were providing for children from disadvantaged sections will have to be dropped as a part of cutting costs to survive in such an ecosystem.

Price-control: Intended Effects & Actual Effects

The imposition of fee regulation on private schools can be understood to be a reaction to the demands of some parents against large private schools charging high fees for their services. This can also be seen as a direct result of the assumption that these are the only types of private schools that exist, which is not the case. While consumers are always seeking lower costs in any economy, the problem with the welfare state is that its attempts to help the poor, it reduces costs at the expense of the producers. While this artificial reduction of price may be seen as a positive impact by the consumers in the short-term, in the long-run the effects will be disastrous for them as well. Producers, who see no chance of increasing prices end up having to cut costs, are unable to function efficiently and lose incentive to perform better. The regulation of fees therefore has the unintended consequence of lowering the standards of private schools, by destroying the competition in the market.

The regulation of price has always proved disastrous. It is ironic that though the intentions were always to protect the disadvantaged section of the population from being exploited, price control often has the opposite effect. Fionna Scott argues that when price is controlled artificially in one sector, it leads to the talent and entrepreneurs in that sector to migrate towards others that benefit more (Scott 2001). This is the case not just with setting the price at a lower level than the market price, but for setting it at a higher level as well. One of the problems with setting prices at a lower level is that it creates an entry barrier in the market,thus leading to a shortage in the competition. In this case, that would mean fewer entrepreneurs will be willing to start schools since it is not profitable. It is also the case that existing schools will have to close down because they cannot meet running costs, and/or due to a lack of demand because of falling quality as a result of lower fixed fees.

Scott also provides numerous instances in history where the control of prices led to problems for the consumers, that it was actually supposed to solve. The regulation of commodity price in Paris in 1973 resulted in producers reducing the quality of their products and in the rise of a parallel black market to provide services that the legal market could not provide at the fixed prices (Scott 2001). In the case of education, a parallel market would mean unrecognised schools that cannot be regulated by the government. Such schools already exist because they cannot meet the infrastructure requirements that the government and education boards set down, and yet they continue to attract students. This should surely serve as an indicator for the results to be expected from setting more regulations on private schools.

Another analogy is the example David Tarr gives, of television sets in communist Poland. The government kept the prices of television sets artificially low, meaning that there were fewer producers and they alone could not meet the demand generated by the lower price. The situation was such that the cost of regulation of television sets to Poland’s economy was ten times the industry’s total sales (Tarr 2009). Both government and private schools have maximum capacities, and when the prices are lowered leading to fewer number of schools, this means there will be more students out of school simply because there are not enough schools. In the Indian scenario, where more and more parents are sending their children to private schools, the destruction of the private school ecosystem would mean that a large number of students will be out of school because the government school system will not be able to accommodate such a large number of students.

Thus, while the intention of fee regulation is to decrease cost of education and therefore increase the access to education, the effect is that it creates a supply deficit which in turn ends up reducing the access to education for the very population it had hoped to help. Drawing from Tarr’s analysis of television sets in Poland, the logical result would be that the government would have to spend much more than it hopes to, or is able to, on government schools, to offset this supply deficit.

Another problem with artificially controlled prices is that when firms cannot compete on prices, they compete on other factors. This essentially means that bigger and more established firms will survive even though they do not make enough profits to grow substantially, while the smaller firms will be muscled out of the market. When the Civil Aeronautics Board in the United States set price controls in the aviation sector, airlines started attracting customers by offeringfree food, empty seats and increasing the frequency of flights (Scott 2001). Thus, already established airlines survived since they had the resources to offer these extra services, and they ended up having bigger market shares to offset the lack of profits due to regulation.

Applying this to the Indian education sector, this would mean that larger private schools which charge higher fees will survive but the smaller private schools will not be able to compete with them once their primary source of competition, i.e., price is taken out of the equation. This results in a situation where the bigger schools could probably expand to take in part of the students that are out of school because of the closure of smaller private schools, but at a fees higher than what these students were paying at the smaller schools. Thus, while the regulation was a reaction to the higher fees charged by the bigger schools, it ends up benefitting the bigger schools at the expense of the smaller schools which are charging lower fees and catering to the disadvantaged sections of the population.

The effect of price control on a commodity, as can be seen, will ultimately be a costly form of rationing of the commodity because of the scarcity that artificial prices generate by making the market for the commodity less attractive for potential and existing investors. The importance of education to a society is accepted and education is now seen as a necessary service. The attempts at increasing accessibility to these services, while justified, are misinformed. Schools are expected to offer services without expecting profits, as is made obvious from the legislation that requires schools to be registered as non-profit institutions. But the service offered comes at a cost and high levels of risk for the school management. With the imposition of the infrastructure requirements under the Right to Education Act 2009, potential investors are likely to find opening schools to be an almost certain loss. Existing schools have been closed down because they have not been able to meet infrastructure requirements at the low fees that they charge. Price controls on top of this, will make this situation more severe for the education market and ultimately, to the accessibility of a service that is fundamental to the growth of any society.

Coping with Fee Regulation

The regulation of school fees have been in effect in Tamil Nadu since 2010 and the associations of private schools are still engaged in seeking legal recourse. While there are obvious difficulties of not being able to run schools with the same quality as before at lower costs,school owners also raise issue with the process of determination of fees. In Tamil Nadu, the salary paid to teachers is not a factor in the calculation of fees. Several schools which were earlier offering annual hikes for teachers who gain experience are now putting it on hold as a part of cost cutting measures. The schools also suggest that the three-year period for the fixed fee is another pressing obstacle in the implementation of the Act. This is true in both Tamil Nadu and Rajasthan, where the school owners are frustrated at the how annual hikes are designed without the use of any economic analysis. Costs are increasing every year and while most schools are struggling to survive at the current level of fixed fees, school owners in Rajasthan are unsure of whether they will be able to run the schools in another two years.

Private schools which offered extracurricular activities in Tamil Nadu are either removing them or making them exclusive for students who pay extra for them. This move was challenged in court but the Madras High Court upheld the right of schools to charge for extracurricular activities as long as they are optional for the students, as the regulation applied only for admission and tuition fees. School owners also admit that with the demand for admission increasing due to lower fixed fees, there is a larger cost involved in the screening process as the capacity of schools will be limited. The forced lowering of fees means that the chances of growth to accommodate more students are also negligible. Under the RTE Act and the Regulation of Collection of Fee Act, the paperwork required from each school has increased tremendously and while this does help in increasing accountability, it has also significantly increased costs for the schools while not giving them the opportunity to make up for these costs by controlling the fees that can be charged.

Private school owners in Tamil Nadu have an additional factor that has been in play since 2003. According to a report in The Hindu on August 27, 2013, under recommendations made by the S.V. Chittibabu Commission report, private schools need to meet unreasonable land requirements (like 8 grounds if the schools is located in the district headquarters, 10 grounds if it is in a municipality area and 6 grounds if it is located in a corporation area) to be eligible for renewal of recognition. However, the cost of expansion is not covered in the process of determination of fees by the district-level committees, according to school owners and private school association representatives.

School owners suggest that most parents whose children are admitted in their schools understand the facilities that they provide and are willing to pay the fees charged but it is only a few parents who have made it a political issue. The enforcing of different laws, together with this recent move to regulate the fees, overlapping simultaneously has created confusion for the schools on how to comply with all the regulations, and the government is making it a point not to renew the recognition of existing schools that do not meet some requirement and to identify the unrecognised schools to shut them down. While minority institutions have beengiven some respite because the courts have recently allowed them to hike their fees by up to 25percent of the fees fixed by the district committees, other small schools have been reduced to depending on loans and the help of better-off schools in the associations of private schools for maintenance and expansion. This is obviously not a sustainable system.

Conclusion

The regulation of fees collected by private schools would seem like a reasonable move considering the mainstream understanding that all private schools charge high fees. But the problem with the mainstream understanding is that there is a vast majority of private schools that charge low fees and cater to disadvantaged sections of India. What is also worth noting is that more and more parents want to send their children to private schools anyway but the supply does not meet the demand. This is why parents want the fees to be lowered. Private schools generate demand due to a variety of reasons from better learning outcomes, greater accessibility and English medium instruction to provision of extracurricular activities. Consumers want the price to be lowered because there are not enough private schools and the existing ones can charge higher fees and still attract enough demand. If, instead of taking measures to increase the supply of private schools and increase competition among private schools so that they lower the price by themselves to survive in the market, the government moves to force the prices down, it will only lead to a larger supply deficit which ironically ends up further from the consumer need that the supply should meet their demand.

Once this scenario is understood, the regulation of fees seems puzzling. The effects of regulation of fees are basically that schools struggle to meet running costs and look for ways to cut costs when they are already registered as non-profit institutions. On top of this, there are other government regulations like the Right to Education Act 2009, across India, and the land requirement laws in Tamil Nadu that these private schools are expected to meet for recognition. Thus, the not only are the extra costs not considered by the district committees that decide the fees to be charged by every school but the school are expected to meet several government regulations that they do not currently meet, at the same time. This is in sync with the existing government education policy that focuses on input norms like infrastructure but ignore the learning outcomes that schools produce. Private schools generate demand from parents precisely because they meet their expectations of learning outcomes but the government continues to judge private schools based on input norms. In this context, it becomes fairly obvious that the private schools would struggle to survive in an environment governed by policy that is uninformed of the causes and effects that occur in the educationeconomy. The ever-increasing penetration of free government schools is often the only primary premise that drives policy.

A basic understanding of economics will suffice to explain how artificially keeping prices low would mean that there is less competition, which would result in the bigger players dominating the market. In the case of education, the controlling of the fees charged by private schools is a result of the complaints against big private schools charging high fees. The controlling of fees, on top of other unreasonable regulations that private schools are expected to meet, has meant that smaller schools are struggling to cut costs and facing a dip in performance which would mean that they would close down sooner or later leaving the market to only big private schools who are capable of competing on factors other than price. Thus, while the control of fees by the government was intended to help the parents who couldn’t afford the fees charged by big private schools, it ends up leaving these very big schools as their only option.

References

Ahmed, Shafee. "TN fixes fees for pvt self-financing schools." TwoCircles.net. October 7, 2010. http://twocircles.net/2010oct07/tn_fixes_fees_private_selffinancing_schools.html#.VE95vfmUfl0 (accessed October 13, 2014).

Baird, Ross. Private Schools for the Poor: Development, Provision, and Choice in India. Gray Matters Capital, 2009.

Devi, Bhama Rama. "School fee issue: Should TN look at an annual hike structure?" Sify News. May 8, 2012. http://www.sify.com/news/school-fee-issue-should-tn-look-at-an-annual-hike-structure-news-columns-mfjdv1iihbjsi.html (accessed October 13, 2014).

"Matric schools seek relaxation of norms." Chennai: The Hindu, August 27, 2013.

Muralidharan, Karthik. "A Renewed Model of Education." Live Mint. Ideas for India, January 21, 2014.

Muralidharan, Karthik, and Venkatesh Sundararaman. "The Aggregate Effect of School Choice: Evidence from a two-stage experiment in India." unpublished, September 2014.

New Indian Express. "Government to Implement Fee Regulation Act Next Year." May 25, 2014.

"Private schools told to drop development fee in Rajasthan." Hindustan Times. February 28, 2014. http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/jaipur/private-schools-told-to-drop-development-fee-in-rajasthan/article1-1189281.aspx (accessed October 16, 2014).

Raghupathi, Hemalatha. "Tamil Nadu: Creeping Controls." Education World. June 15, 2010. http://www.educationworldonline.net/index.php/page-article-choice-more-id-2273 (accessed October 14, 2014).

Rajasthan Government Gazette. Notifications by Government, Jaipur: Govt. of Rajasthan, 2013.

"Relax land requirement rules for recognition, say school managements." Coimbatore: The Hindu, January 9, 2012.

Sangameswaran, K.T. "State panel has power to fix fee for CBSE, ICSE schools: High Court." The Hindu, September 22, 2012.

Schmitt, John. "Why Does the Minimum Wage Have No Discernible Effect on Employment?" Center for Economic Policy and Research, 2013.

"School fee regulation act: Rajasthan Pvt school and parents at loggerheads." Daily Bhaskar. April 21, 2013. http://daily.bhaskar.com/news/RAJ-JPR-school-fee-regulation-act-rajasthan-pvt-school-and-parents-at-loggerheads-4241602-NOR.html (accessed October 12, 2014).

Scott, Fiona M. "The Problems of Price Controls." Cato Review of Business and Government, 2001.

Tamil Nadu Government Gazette. Notifications by Government, Chennai: Govt. of Tamil Nadu, 2009.

Tarr, David. "The Political, Regulatory and Market Failures that Caused the U.S. Financial Crisis: What are the Lessons?" World Bank, 2009.

Times of India. "Pvt schools go on a day’s strike against fee regulation." July 31, 2014.

Times of India. "Rajasthan High court conditionally allows private schools to increase fees." October 8, 2014.

Times of India. "Regulation of school fees in Maharashtra from 2015-16." June 9, 2014.

Times of India. "Retired judge questions fee regulation act." July 28, 2014.

Times of India. "Schools move against "petty fees": Karnataka HC asks government to reply." August 25, 2012.

Venkatesan, J. "Supreme Court upholds Act on school fee regulation." The Hindu, May 12, 2010.

EARLY EDUCATION - CHILD CENTRIC, NOT CULTURE DRIVEN

Here at our school in Bangalore, when we looked at the cross-section of the children, we had

• ·         a healthy ratio gender-wise (Equal numbers of both)
• ·         a healthy ratio physical structure wise (Some tall, some short)
• ·         a healthy ratio in terms of children's personalities ( some mild, some more aggressive, some quiet, some talkative)
• ·         a healthy ratio of children with varied interests (art, play, language etc)

But I did observe that we seemed very skewed on one aspect. All our children came from South-Indian families. We do seem to have a very South Indian base of parents, not on the basis of language, but on the basis of how long they have stayed in the South.

Considering Bangalore is a very cosmopolitan city with really diverse people, and we have many apartment complexes close by, this was strange. Even the few parents who have visited our school who were from Delhi and around had different expectations from the school. I was quite amazed to see India had such a clear North-South divide in something as basic as preschool expectations.

It seems to be cultural that South Indian parents are looking for the Montessori form of education, while parents from the North seem to be looking for the "play-way" or "fun" way of teaching.

Playways or playhomes are typically a lot of noise, teacher centric teaching and a fairly unstructured approach. We had seen a boom of this form of education in the South many years ago. We have fortunately evolved in Bangalore thanks to the many Montessori houses and more importantly thanks to the number of people who have gone abroad, seen quality early education there and come back realising self-learning is the best way of learning in Early years. Now that they had seen what this did for children, they were convinced about this method.

When parents from the South come to our school for the first time, and if they have never been exposed to a child-centric form of education before, they are quite shocked that this is the way Montessori based schools operate. But they are also very excited, because they sense that this is something that can really make a difference to their child’s education. But when parents from the North come in, they are shocked and cannot understand the merit in the system even after several rounds of explanation. It is high time we create a country-wide awareness on the importance and form of early education that can help young children blossom. We Indians are as a nation loud and also control freaks. We dictate every move of young children leading to an inability on the part of the child to make decisions and encouraging herd mentality.

In the South now we have seen a huge acceptance of the fact that a more steady, child-centric and sober way of education will lead to an academic excellence while in the North there is still a huge conviction that preschools = boisterous way of learning will help their children become more social and smarter. Just like weddings, the North Indian weddings, more filled with pomp, show and fun, while the South Indian ones are duller and solemn, though equally strong on the show of ostentation in the form of jewellery, perhaps in a more subtle way.

However, early education, is not an event. And though cultural expectations maybe right, we have to keep in mind what is good for our child and not what we culturally believe.

Early education is a stage where it is not what the adults / parents / teachers think is important. It is the young child whose personality is blossoming who needs certain stimulus and needs certain environment which will allow him to make himself what he wants to be and not force him to be moulded in someone else's form, be it the teacher or the parent.

For eg. Many play-ways schools have loud singing, in the belief that being loud will overwhelm any child and prevent him from thinking of wandering off or losing interest. This is an overwhelming stimulus which blots out everything else even the child's thought process. Music should stir the imagination and help children enjoy the process. Also language development will happen only when children can learn varieties of songs in a meaningful fashion. Teaching a child “Humpty Dumpty” in India is not only culturally inappropriate, it is violent and probably one of the most meaningless forms of language development that a preschool can propagate to a child.

Cultural norms take time to change and will happen only when there are many people who have travelled and come back, or seen it work elsewhere make a change.

The child is bound to pick up some mannerisms from all adults and peers around him. So it is important that the teacher be a little understated and polished. Being loud or forceful, will make children think that is the way to behave. Though Indians as a nation are generally loud, there is no merit in this behaviour in preschools, because it overwhelms or changes the child's personality without taking into account his/her base personality. So here I justify the form of education that we offer to the child, is suited for the child. We are in favour of creating thinking sensitive individuals who care about what happens to the world around them and have the ability to make a difference.

Perhaps it is time for parents to think what is right for their child and not what they think is right. We must understand that early education cannot be based on the cultural background. It can be culture-modulated but not culture-driven. 

OH GOD TEACH ME, HOW TO TEACH

OH GOD TEACH ME, HOW TO TEACH

My nine years old grand-daughter Aakriti had a conversation with my wife which she narrated to me thus:

Aak: “ Paati, I wish I could vote this time”

My wife:  “You are too young to vote. Any way if you were to vote who will you vote for?”

“I will vote for Narendra Modi uncle”

“Do you know which party he belongs to?”

“Yes, BJP”

“The names are in Kannada, you can’t read Kannada, and how do you know you are voting for BJP?”

“That’s why they have the symbols. I will press on LOTUS symbol”

“Why do you want to vote for BJP?”

“Modi uncle is a good man. He will make broad roads, provide many books to read. With the same pocket money I can buy many more books than now. I can buy more Barbie doll sets for playing”

“What do you mean by saying more?”

“Everything is very expensive. When Modi uncle becomes PM, all prices will go down”

“Why do you think so?”

“ Modi uncle is a good man, he doesn’t take bribes. My friends are saying that all things are costly now because the Congress government takes bribes and we are charged more for that”

“What do you think of Rahul Anna?”

“My friends say he is not intelligent man. He behaves like king. Our country follows democracy, and why should people of same family become PM. Then it becomes monarchy”

“Have you thought of Communists?”

“Yes, in communism, all national wealth is enjoyed by all. That means each person gets a share. India, has very low natural resources and population is high. Our share will be very small”

“How do you know all these”

“They taught us in school”

“Amazing. Alright, now you have to wait till you become 18 to vote”

“Okay, Paatti I will go play with Swarna as of now”

I was astonished to learn about this conversation. She will do well if she studies political science and law when she grows up. May be I will not be alive to see that great day.

Two days later she asked me doubts on partition of India, formation of states etc. I was thoroughly impressed by her uptake and knowledge. I told her about how the rulers were empowered to decide on going to which side etc. Then suddenly I realized, how limited my knowledge was. The limitation came from the distortions made by the media, ruling governments with their own agenda and some fiction writers impersonating as historians.

Then I remembered an old song, sung by Jim Reeves

‘Teach me how to pray’

(Daddy my daddy teach me how to pray)

One night a sleepy little boy knelt beside my bed

He smiled and looked into my eyes and this is what he said’

Daddy, my daddy, teach me how to pray

You brought me home a brand new kite showed me how to fly

And there ain’t no wonder kid whose dad can knock a ball so high

I’d like to thank God for you, but don’t know what to say

So daddy, my daddy, teach me how to pray

I’d to turn and leave his room, he began to cry

I didn’t want my boy to know so did I

His best pal forsaken him, but what was there to say

For daddy, yes daddy had forgotten how to pray

(Daddy, my daddy teach me how to pray)

Oh God save me from ignorant media, historians, politicians. Teach me how to teach

JaiBharat

Immature Representatives

When I was an Engineer in a factory in mid-1990s, the workers were very young. May be the average age was 23, many of them recruited and trained by me for our factory work. They were not exposed to any other working atmosphere. They were enthusiastic workers but had their minor needs. As advised by a labour consultant we formed ‘Works Committee’ to solve their issues. The works committee comprised entirely of workers.

One day when I entered the factory premises I found that the workers were not working and I was told that the problem was there was no water in the toilet block. We soon organized water and they made a pretence of resuming work. They stopped work after half an hour on the pretext that the ‘vade’ supplied weighed few milligrammes than that agreed with the canteen contractor. We passified the workers. Still they refused to resume work and stated that they wanted ‘annual bonus’. We supervisors lost cool and gave them Rs5 and asked them to distribute it. We further told them that that was not the way to strike and there was a procedure. We also promised them to teach the procedure. They continued for 6months.

 One of them was ambitious and wanted to convert it into Workers’ Trade Union. Due to lack of experience he took the help of a professional trade union leader who was active in a nearby factory, a Govt of India Undertaking. This TU leader was a brother of a popular Union Minister. With that man entering the scene the strikes increased in frequency. The factory had to be locked-up. Even the large factory is shut forever.

Analogy: Works Committee : Civil Society

                 Ambitious WC member: Kejriwal

                 Factory: Union of India ie Bharat

Immature Representatives could be interesting to watch while in action but can be certainly dangerous.

Jai Bharat

Dharmameva Jayate

An Open letter to BJP President

‘Dharmameva Jayate’. At our school main entrance there was a polished black granite slab installed. The slab had the inscription “Satyannasti paro dharmah” –there is no virtue greater than truth. I have taken the liberty to put my faith in all inclusive dharma- foremost among them being DHARMA itself – i.e. Spirituality and the sanatana dharma.

 It is distressing and baffling to note the unpreparedness of BJP for the next elections, to the thousands of staunch BJP supporters like yours truly. I earnestly hope all issues were discussed threadbare in the recently held National Convention of BJP at Dadar, Mumbai.  Yet shri LKA’s blog has not been encouraging. It appears many issues remain unresolved and unaddressed.

‘Aam Aadmi’ generally middle class workers and micro-level business persons take pride when the party supported by them comes to power and the expectations are high from such a government. If BJP wins it would be by default due to frustrations of the voters than any achievement of BJP. The following need the response of those in BJP who matter:

·         * You yielded to opposition and media pressure while ShriBSYeddiyurappa was replaced. The same was felt about your reaction to ‘Porngate’ episode

·         * You have not put up any pressure for ouster of Smt.Sheila Dikshit

·         * Your action on reinstating Kashmiri Pandits should be more vigorous

·        * You don’t have separate policies for each state. For instance what will be your stand on Kaveri water issue between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu

·        *  Your stand on Mullai Periyar dam is hazy

·      *  You will lose Karnataka also if you don’t resolve leadership issues amicably. With a result development is stand-still in the state

·         The pitch of your criticism in 2G matters is not high enough

·       *  You make speeches for an enlightened crowd on matters concerning petrol prices, High cost of living and inflation, Value of Rupee. No concrete proposals from BJP

·        * You don’t back up performing CMs and efficient leaders like ShriNarendra Modi to the hilt

·       *  Your stand on Lokpal issue, corruption related matter, Judicial Commission are nebulous to say the least

·      *   You have not made your stand clear on RTE, Telangana, Mining scams, nuclear power, agriculture, Black money retrieval from abroad, tribals (Maoism) in Odisha, Chattisgarh

·       *  Your policies and actions are Hindi-belt states centric. BJP presence is not felt in East/North Eastern states. Their presence in Karnataka also is diminishing. We have to wait and watch Goa. The media is generous to call you a national party though you are present only in few states.

·      *   In general you don’t seem to wish to win the imminent war of election or you have lost it before it even started

As a Bharatiya I wish to state that you as a political party will only get Hindu votes. If your policies are not structured towards pleasing Hindus you stand no chance of winning any election in future. You allow Teestas, Owaisis, Zakir Nayaks too much of lenience. It may be wise to introduce Hindu equivalent of fatwas, with the help of RSS/VHP.  Have a clear understanding in black and with potential coalition partners. Purge out trouble makers from the party. I therefore stress Dharmameva Jayate. The majority of the nation demands ‘Hindu Rashtra’, which does not mean we hate people of other religious faiths. All it means is others cannot be given undue preference and handicap at the cost of Hindus. The recent judgement on marriageable age of a Muslim girl being reduced to 15 is abhorrent. What happened to the Uniform Civil Code? Justice should be based on egalitarian or communitarian (Majoritarian) principles. I watched a programme in NDTV a discussion on consideration of Islamic banking system. What’s going on, one wonders. HINDUS have not forgotten SADHVI PRAGYA still languishing in jail while other terrorists, scamsters, Bastavade are roaming free. Afzal Guru ,Kasab are yet to be hanged.

It has become a fashion for non-Hindus and media personnel to call Hindus as ‘bigots’ while they themselves indulge in bigotry. They have to be taught that Hinduism is not religion. It is Dharma or spirituality. Hindus can be non-believers while it is not so for others. One has to be religious to be a bigot. BJP should take up to avoid such provocations.                

                                                                                                          

BJP ministers, politicians are forced to resign by UPA and media pressure. BJP also shows alacrity in ousting its senior ministers but do not step up the pressure when it comes to asking for the resignation of Sheila Dikshit, P Chidambaram to take up and speed up the trials.

All your TV debates lectures on economics related issues such as GDP, growth, development etc. are not clear to aam aadmi.  You should issue simple clear comprehensible brief talks/write-ups in English and local languages. This is also the case on your policy and explanation for Hindutva. Please educate the common man on your policies and arm him to question the UPA constituents and errant BJP governments, on your behalf. Please realize, long blogs with high technical contents, loaded with jargon will not help aam aadmi understand the matter. None reads the long technical blogs, due to lack of interest, time and other available interesting diversions.  They would rather watch silly reality shows. Whatever news they watch in News channels is also biased versions with half truths.

When Dr.Subramanian Swamy could take on the might of Congress, one wonders why is BJP with a powerful back-up  shy and inhibited. It is also distressing to note that Shri.Ram Jethmalani, Shri.Arun Jaitley representing UPA politicians in criminal cases and this weakens BJP stand. It clearly evinces lack of conviction of these leaders. Many of them are sailing in two or more boats.

The future of Bharat lies in it being declared a Hindu Rashtra and Sanskrit as its language. After all the partition took place on the premise of a Hindu India and a Muslim India. Now politicians are Islamising the nation for dirty vote bank. Political parties want to win the elections for satisfying their personal needs and not for serving the nation. Winning the nation has become an end in itself. Public is forgotten immediately after election. Artha Shastra, Manu Riti shastra/Manu smriti, Bhagwat Gita should be followed and published in Simple format in English and local languages.

It is mandatory for BJP to come to power. They have to strive hard to get majority and harder to retain the power. If a BJP supporter wishes to see shri.Narendra Modi as PM, it is because of his proven record despite heavy NaMo bashing from Media, governments, and some BJP members. He has weathered well. BJP should be proud to have him in the party and all including non-BJP govts have to emulate him.

I earnestly hope all those who matter in BJP will pay heed to this appeal and take steps for lasting peace.

Dharmameva Jayate. Jai Bharat