Sanjay Thapa Posted online: Thursday, August 12, 2004 at 0940 hours IST Updated: Thursday, August 12, 2004 at 0943 hours IST
Jaipur, August 12: Former HRD minister Murli Manohar Joshi on Wednesday came down heavily on the UPA government and said the latter was hellbent on commercialising education by making IIMs and foreign universities only richer and away from reach of the common man.
“My decision to lower the IIM fee structure was a move to make such institutions affordable for the common man,” he told FE. He was reacting after HRD minister Arjun Singh had called for “de-saffronisation” of the education system at the Tuesday meeting of Central Advisory Board On Education (CABE) in New Delhi.
Mr Joshi said rollback of the IIMs’ fees only went to prove that the government cared little about the common people’s access to such temples of learning. “If IITs can offer courses at Rs 30,000 then why another government-funded organisation like IIMs should not?” he countered.
Mr Joshi vented his ire at developments at the Cabe meeting and said that HRD minister Arjun Singh’s call for “de-saffronisation” of education and detoxification was a move towards taking the Indian education system towards communism - at the behest of the Left allies in the UPA government.
He questioned the rationale of the body - Cabe and said it was defunct since the days of Congress when Arjun Singh was the HRD minister.
He raised doubt over the very composition of Cabe which had “Shabana Azmi, Javed Akhtar and Mahasweta Devi, all Leftists,” and as such there was no justification of their presence on the board.
“The communists had called Lenin as the leader for India’s freedom struggle while Marx had written off India as a country without a history,” he said, adding that Mahatma Gandhi’s killing was done by RSS was the funniest part.
He argued that it was, in fact, the Congress and its leaders who had led to India’s partition. It was leaders like Jai Prakash Narain who had justified China’s attack on India, Mr Joshi claimed.
He charged Mr Singh with playing a double game always and said earlier during Narasimha Rao’s regime too, Mr Singh had pulled in the Ram Mandir issue into controversy after which he and Sitaram Kesri had to apologise.
Jaipur, August 12: Former HRD minister Murli Manohar Joshi on Wednesday came down heavily on the UPA government and said the latter was hellbent on commercialising education by making IIMs and foreign universities only richer and away from reach of the common man.
