Union Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal’s proposal to establish a National Textbook Council deserves to be spiked immediately because it is a thinly-disguised attempt to impose the will of the Congress on what schools across the country should teach their students. The proposed council is ostensibly supposed to monitor the content of textbooks used by schools that do not follow the syllabus prescribed by the Central Board of Secondary Education to ensure that the curricula does not have material which is ‘insidious’ in nature, but that reasoning is only a ruse for the ‘Congressisation’ of education in the country. The State Governments are, after all, well-equipped with their own education departments to monitor content and take action. Where is the need for a central authority to begin policing the syllabus? Moreover, it is not as if schools that do not follow the CBSE syllabus are free to devise their own content without any sense of accountability to any authority. These schools have either adopted the syllabus that has been prepared by the education boards of their respective States or by other accredited agencies whose content, like that of the CBSE, is accepted nationwide. The problem that Mr Sibal and his party see in this arrangement is that they have no leverage over what is taught in schools that are controlled by the education boards of States which are ruled by non-Congress Governments. The Minister would like schools to become organs of propaganda for his party, which is not possible with non-Congress regimes controlling several States and their education boards. If he is really concerned about the standard of education, he must focus his attention on the functioning of the National Council of Educational Research and Training, which is primarily responsible for the quality of education countrywide.
But, even more dangerous than the Congress’s move to monopolise education is the blow that Mr Sibal’s proposal delivers to the country’s federal structure. Schools, including those run by minority institutions, have traditionally been under the administrative control of the State Governments. Education boards finalise the syllabus based on various parameters, including specific needs of their respective States. If there is any need for a supervisory authority to monitor textbooks, the State Governments can themselves create such an authority. By seeking to encroach on the right of the States to monitor the content of school textbooks, Mr Sibal is effectively proposing to destroy autonomy guaranteed by the Constitution. It is no wonder, therefore, that the move is facing severe opposition not only from States ruled by the BJP and its allies, such as Gujarat and Bihar, but also Uttar Pradesh and Odisha. Even West Bengal, where the Congress is the junior ally of the Trinamool Congress, has tersely asked Mr Sibal to leave schools to the States. The Congress has clearly not learned any lessons from its previous attempts to intrude into the domain of the States, most recently by seeking to (unsuccessfully) peddle the Communal Violence Bill and push the Lokpal and Lokayukta Bill through Parliament. Ever since the summer of 2004, in one form or another, the Congress has been trying to curtail the autonomy of State Governments and impose its own agenda through means more foul than fair. The proposal to set up a National Textbook Council is of a piece with the Congress’s dubious and deplorable agenda.
