Tamil Nadu’s ongoing tussle with the Union government over the National Education Policy (NEP) has flared up again as Chief Minister MK Stalin and Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan exchanged sharp words on the social media platform X.
On September 9, Stalin shared a news report by The Hindu that highlighted how the Union government was withholding funds for the Samagra Siksha (SSA) scheme from five non-BJP states including Tamil Nadu and Kerala as “punishment for refusing to accept” either the PM SHRI scheme or the NEP.
In his X post, Stalin said, “Denying funds to the best-performing states for refusing to bow to the #NEP, while generously rewarding those who are not delivering on the objectives – is this how the Union BJP government plans to promote quality education and equity? I leave it to the wisdom of our nation and our people to decide!”
The Hindu report cited data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) to point out that five states — Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, Punjab, and Delhi — are top rankers in the country across various vectors such as school attendance rates in relation to gender, caste, religion and age; access to necessary amenities; teacher training and others.
However, these five states are being denied SSA funds due to them, leading to issues such as unpaid teacher salaries. By delaying the funds, the Union government “has penalised the states that are at the forefront of achieving the SSA’s major objectives, such as bridging social and gender gaps, ensuring equity and inclusion in school education, promoting vocational education, ensuring school provisions, and training teachers,” the report further added.
Earlier, on August 29, Tamil Nadu School Education Minister Anbil Mahesh told media persons that the Union government had not released Rs 573 crore that was due to the state for June this year and was still withholding Rs 249 crore from the final instalment due for 2023 — both from the SSA scheme. He alleged that the Union government was pressuring the state to accept the NEP as a condition for releasing these funds.
Both the Tamil Nadu and Kerala governments have been opposed to bringing in the NEP on the grounds that the policy is exclusionary, unjustly takes education out of state control, and is opposed to federalism. It has also been pointed out that the NEP’s targets such as ensuring that at least 50% of youth aged 17 to 24 are attending high educational institutions in the coming 15 years are inapplicable to states like Tamil Nadu. The state had reached 49% attendance in this age bracket in 2018.
Responding to the CM, Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said, “Healthy competition amongst the states is always welcome in a democracy. However, pitting states against each other to make a point, goes against the spirit of the Constitution and the value of a unified India. NEP 2020 was formulated through a wide range of consultations and has the collective wisdom of the people of India.”
He further asked if Stalin was opposing education in students’ mother tongues including Tamil; the conduct of exams in Tamil; publishing textbooks in Indian languages and so on. He also added, “I urge you to prioritise the interests of the students of Tamil Nadu over your political gains and implement NEP.”
It should be noted that the opposition to NEP is also due its three-language dictum, which non-Hindi speaking states allege would ultimately become indirect Hindi imposition and unfair advantage to Hindi-speaking states. Tamil Nadu’s opposition to the three-language policy goes as far back as 1937 when then Congress CM C Rajagopalachari issued a government order mandating Hindi as a compulsory language in state government schools. Since then, Dravidian politics has viewed the imposition of Hindi on the state as ‘language imperialism’.
Read: The history of anti-Hindi imposition movements in Tamil Nadu
Earlier, in 2022, the Tamil Nadu government also set up a high-level panel under former Chief Justice of Delhi High Court D Murugesan to frame a new State Education Policy (SEP). Chess grandmaster Viswanathan Anand; musician, author, and activist TM Krishna; and former Vice-Chancellor of Saveetha University L Jawahar Nesan are among the members of the 13-member committee that also comprises experts from various fields including academics and the state Planning Commission.