WITHOUT A FORMAL NATIONAL POLICY ON EDUCATION (1947-65)
2.01 The educational developments in the post-independence period can be divided into three main periods :
(1) the first is the period between 1947 and 1965-66 when there was no formal Statement of a National Policy on Education;
(2) the second is the period between 1965-66 and 1977- 78 when the National Policy on Education (1968) was formulated and an attempt was made to implement it; and
(3) with 1978-79 begins the third period when an attempt will be made to implement the draft National Policy on Education (1979) in such form as it will ultimately be accepted by the Government of India.
The main events of the first period (1947-65) when Maulana Azad, Dr. K. L. Shrimali and Professor Humayun Kabir were the Education Ministers at the Centre will be discussed in the present Chapter; and the following three Chapters will be devoted to the discussion of the two statements on the National Policy on Education issued in 1968 and 1979 and their implementation.
The Legacy of National Education (1906-47) 2.02 India became free in 1947. This aroused great hopes about many things and especially about a radical reconstruction of Indian education. The Indian national leadership had always expressed great faith in the use of education for modernization and development and had shown deep and continuing interest in a radical transformation of the colonial education system built up by British Administrators. As early as 1906, the Indian National Congress adopted a Resolution on national education which said that the time had arrived "for the people all over the country earnestly to take up the question of national education for both
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boys and girls, and organize a system of education, literary, scientific and technical, suited to the requirements of the country, on national lines under national control and directed towards the realization of national destiny." The movement thus started was kept up throughout the pre-independence period and made three major contributions to educational development.
(1) The first was to clarify the concept of national education and to indicate the broad lines on which educational reform should be attempted. Among the various ideas put forward from this point of view, the following deserve mention :
- Relating education to India's great cultural traditions of the past and to her present needs and future aspirations so that Indian education comes into its own, ceases to be a servile imitation of Britain, and aims at creating, not a lesser England, but a greater India;
- Liquidation of mass illiteracy which Mahatma Gandhi described as the sin and shame of India and the development of a programme of adult education which, according to him, must include political education;
- The provision of seven years of basic education to every child (age-group 7-4) whose content, according to Mahatma Gandhi, would be broadly equal to that of matriculation minus English plus craft;
- The reduction of the over-importance attached to English; the development of Hindi as the link language for the country and as the official language of the Union; and the use or regional languages as media of instruction at all stages ;
- Work with the hands and social or national service to be an integral part of all education with a view to creating a work-based culture and to minimising the large traditional gap between the intelligentia and the people;
- Emphasis on the teaching of science and technology with a view to the creation of a scientific temper, modernization and economic growth ;
- Emphasis on vocational, technical and professional education; and
- Cultivation of patriotism and moral and social values
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(2) The second contribution was to conduct a few institutions of national education at all levels (e.g. Gujarat Vidyapeeth, Tilak Maharashtra Vidyapeeth, Kashi Vidyapeeth and Jamia Millia Islamia) where these ideas of national education were tried out to gain practical experience. It was hoped that these institutions would provide the necessary leadership when, after the attainment of independence, the Government of India would initiate a large scale programme of transforming the existing system into a national system of education.
(3) The third major contribution was that it created a small but powerful band of social workers who had dedicated themselves to education and who would provide the core of the large group of educational thinkers, planners and administrators which the country would eventually need.
2.03 As is to be expected, the attainment of freedom created the hope that all this fundamental work of four decades of struggle would now be systematized, expanded and improved so that a national system of education suited to the traditions, life, needs and aspirations of the country would be created in a period of about 15 years or so. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru showed his awareness of these hopes and the urgency of working for their realization when he addressed the first Conference of Education Ministers held in Free India (1948) and said :
"Whenever conferences were called to form a plan for education in India, the tendency, as a rule, was to maintain the existing system with slight modifications. This must not happen now. Great changes have taken place in the country and the educational system must also be in keeping with them. The entire basis of education must be revolutionized."
For various reasons, this promised revolution in education never materialized. It is not that no educational reform was attempted; in fact, many good and useful things were done. But, in the final analysis, they did not amount to the revolution which Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru had promised. On the other hand, they only meant the one thing which Pandit Nehru wanted to avoid, viz., a linear expansion of the earlier educational system with minor modifications. We must therefore ask the question : Why did this happen ?
The Basic Political Decisions 2.04 Two main reasons can be given for this failure to transform the educational system on radical lines. The first lies outside
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the educational system. As education is a sub-system of the society, it cannot be revolutionized unless a social revolution takes place first or unless at least a simultaneous effort is made to bring about a complementary revolution in society and in education. The basic problem before the national leadership in 1947, therefore, was not whether a revolution in education should or should not be carried out, but whether a revolution in the political, economic and social life of the country should or should not be carried out, and if so, the form that it should take. Here the decisions taken were based on the concept of stability with change and in an evolutionary and reformist perspective. For instance :
-In politics, Mahatma Gandhi had given a radical advice that the Indian National Congress should be disbanded and that all Congress workers should remain out of Government office and work among the people to organize and strengthen the under- privileged groups to fight for their rights. But this advice was ignored. Tile Congress decided to remain in power and also to continue the parliamentary model of government which the British had already introduced in the country with some modifications (e.g. introduction of adult franchise).
-In economic life also, no decision was taken to alter radically the existing highly skewed property structure or the arbitrary and inegalitarian wage pattern. On the other hand, it was decided to leave the property structure as it is (in fact, the constitution made property a fundamental right) with some minor modifications (e.g. a weak attempt at land reforms or a largely ineffective system of wealth tax and death duties). Similarly, the erstwhile wage pattern also continued and, if any thing, became even more arbitrary and unsuited to the economy of the country. The capitalist Organisation of the economy was also continued with the addition of a large public sector.
-Mahatma Gandhi had talked of a new model of development in his book, Hind Swaraj, and had said that India should strive to bring about this kind of development as soon as it becomes free. This advice was also ignored and it was decided to adopt the model of development evolved in the Western nations based on science and technology, industrialisation, modernization of agriculture, and provision of modern basic services.
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-In social life, too, the decisions taken were similar. No radical changes were decided upon and emphasis was laid on two programmes which were the least controversial, though not minor, viz, improving the status of women through the reform of the Hindu Code and continuance of the programmes designed earlier for the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
-In administration, it was decided to continue and consolidate the existing system rather than attempt a radical reform and to make only some minor changes such as the creation of the IAS to replace the ICS.
-In the field of languages also, all major decisions were postponed. English was to continue as Official Language of the Union till 1965 when Hindi was expected to take over. English was also continued as medium of instruction at the university stage sine die.
Why were these decisions taken ? In 1947, it was argued that the partition of the country had created a delicate situation in which the very survival of the country was at stake and that it was therefore essential to postpone all such issues to a later date and to concentrate all efforts on consolidation of freedom and nation- building. Of course, one could have accepted this argument in 1947. But these decisions were not re-opened for consideration even when the immediate problems of partition had been tackled and the conditions within the country had considerably stabilized. The truth is that these decisions were taken because they were in the interest of the ruling groups that came to power in 1947. The British had created a westernized class in India mainly to work as interpreters and intermediaries between them and the people. This class developed a national pride (the inevitable result of the dialectic process of education), had a brief honeymoon with the masses to secure their support in the struggle against imperialism and won independence. It was now fully in saddle (because independence merely transferred power from the Westerners to the Westernized) and was determined to continue to rule with such attention to the welfare of the poor and underprivileged social groups which can be legitimately expected from enlightened rulers. With this basic decision, all revolutionary perspectives in society were ruled out and the country had to settle down to a reformist, evolutionary and gradual process of modernization and development.
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The Educational Decisions 2.05 If the policy adopted in political, economic and social life was thus evolutionary and reformist, and was trying to provide for stability and change in a proper balance, it would obviously be wrong to expect radical reforms in education. In fact, the best that could have been hoped for was a gradual, reformist and evolutionary Perspective in education also. It is, therefore, an idle exercise to blame the leadership of the day for not bringing about a revolution in education of which they talked so eloquently; and by now, we have all been fully conditioned to distinguish between the words and deeds of the political leadership. The real question to be asked is this : Did me at least make the fullest use of the Possibilities of this given situation and do the best we could even within at) evolutionary and reformist perspective ? Unfortunately, the answer even to this limited question is in the negative. The problem therefore needs some careful analysis in detail.
2.06 The first reason for this failure is ad hocism. To make the best use of the attainment of freedom even in an evolutionary and reformist perspective, we needed a good comprehensive plan of educational development which would help us to make the optimum use of all available opportunities and resources. Unfortunately, no such plan was available in 1947 although, as a matter of fact, the need for such a plan was foreseen as early as in 1937 when the National Planning Committee was appointed by the Indian National Congress under the Chairmanship of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. This Committee constituted two sub-committees one for general education under the Chairmanship of Dr. S. Radhakrishnan and the other for technical education and developmental research under the Chairmanship of Dr. M. N. Saha. Unfortunately, the work of the National Planning Committee and its sub-committees could not progress satisfactorily. Pandit Nehru was arrested in 1940 and, under the stress of political events, neither he nor the other members of the Committee could devote adequate attention to its work till 1947 when it was practically wound up. The sub-committee on General Education prepared a broad and a tentative report which was considered by the National Planning Committee; but the report of the sub-committee on Technical Education and Developmental Research could not even be considered. The General Secretary of the Committee, however, brought out a volume on Education in 1948 containing a broad outline of whatever work had been
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done in planning educational development. But the document made practically no contribution to the formulation of national educational policies in the post-independence period. On the other hand, the official attempts to produce a long-term educational plan were More successful. The Central Advisory Board of Education prepared, under the leadership of Sir John Sargent, the then Educational Adviser to the Government of India, a Post- War Plan of Educational Development in India (1944). It proposed to create, in a period of forty )ears, a national system of education for the country. This included the liquidation of illiteracy in a period of 25 years, the introduction of universal elementary education on the basic pattern for all children in the age-group 6-14, provision of secondary education for one child out of every five that completed elementary education and higher education for one young person out of every 15 that completed the secondary school, and a certain provision of vocational, technical and professional connection. The only common element between this plan and the national ideas en the subject was the concept of basic education for all children in the age-group 6-14. On the other hand, its proposal of highly selective secondary and university education would never have been acceptable to the national leadership. What is even worse, the plan avoided all the issues such as language which had occupied public attention. Apart from this, the people would never have accepted the long period of 40 years for implementing the plan nor its basic approach of creating, in the India of 1984, an educational system that would be similar to that of England in 1939. This plan also was, therefore, side-tracked2 so that educational development in Free India had to be planned and implemented ab initio.
2.07 Obviously, this absence of a comprehensive and sufficiently detailed national plan to act upon was neither a difficult nor an insoluble problem. The Government of India could have appointed an Education Commission to advise it on the creation of a national system of education, as it ultimately did in 1964. But this decision was not taken and the development of education in the. country was attempted, for nearly two decades (1947- 65), without a clear. cut national policy and a comprehensive long-term plan of educational development to guide all concerned. This ad-hocisim is certainly one of the important factors responsible for the
1. The National Planning Committee, Education, Vora and Co., Bombay, 1948.
2. The only action taken on this plan was to introduce the higher secondary pattern (8+3) in the Delhi Union Territory.
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inadequate and unsatisfactory progress of education in the country between 1947 and 1965.
2.08 The second reason for our failure to get even the best results possible in the reformist and evolutionary perspective was, that, in the absence of a clear-cut national policy on education, the, basic educational decisions tended to be taken under current social and political pressures. When this happens, educational policies tend to reproduce the status quo, to be geared to the demands of the groups in power rather, than to the needs of the deprived sections, and to emphasize stability rather than change. This is precisely what happened during this period.
2.09 The third reason was a weakening of the earlier commitment, to the creation of a national system of education, although this was not openly admitted for reasons of expediency. In the major educational decisions taken during this period, it was not possible to ignore the earlier attempts to create a national system of education and the significant commitments made to the people therein (e g. provision of universal elementary education or liquidation of mass illiteracy). While therefore the policy decisions taken did include some such concessions to earlier commitments, they were never given adequate emphasis in implementation. At best, they remained pious hopes.
2.10 The fourth reason for the failure was that the expectations entertained from the institutions of national education were belied. As was pointed out earlier, these institutions were expected to provide a leadership in the creation of a national system of education. While the patriotism and sacrifice of the people working in them was greatly, respected, especially as they had refused to lake grants-in-aid from the British Governments, their academic standing was never high and it is open to question whether one is or is not justified in expecting a stimulating leadership from them. They might perhaps have served a more useful purpose had they continued to work outside the formal system and developed their strengths further. But once they accepted grants from government (even though it was the Indian Government) and became a part of the formal system, they lost their earlier position of vantage and became a microscopic group of second-rate and ineffective institutions in a huge system. As one who has worked closely with and for them, I realize that financially they had no alternative at all and that most of them had either to accept State assistance (which was willingly and gratefully offered) or to go out of existence. It would, therefore, be unkind to blame them for
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this decision. But it should not also be forgotten that, in thus playing for stability, they sacrificed most of their potential to influence change.
2.11 The fifth and the final reason for failure was our inability to create a sufficiently critical mass of active and competent workers who could help to plan the transformation, improvement and expansion of the existing formal system of education and to gear it properly to the life, needs and aspirations of the people. The handful of workers trained in the national freedom struggle or in the earlier attempts to create a national system of education were no doubt available. But they could not obviously fill the bill and urgent and fairly large scale efforts should have been made to select competent individuals from different disciplines, and especially from the social sciences, and to train them through an inter-disciplinary study of education. Simultaneously, efforts should have been made to develop a large-scale and high quality programme of interdisciplinary research on education partly to train such workers and partly to deepen an understanding of the education-society relationship. But this was not done and the universities and training colleges continued to equate education, as in the past, with the training of secondary school teachers or teacher-educators. There has consequently been an acute shortage of competent personnel to deal comprehensively and competently with the complex problems of educational reform; and this has made no small contribution to our failure to optimize the opportunities available to reconstruct the educational system.
2.12 With this explanation about the back-ground, let us see what decisions about educational development were actually taken during this period, mostly in the process of educational planning which became an integral part of the technique of planned development adopted in 1950. In this context, the first three five-year plans are relevant; and a careful study of the proposals of educational development included in them shows that the major educational decisions of the period (1947-65) may be briefly summarized as shown below :-
(1) One of the earliest issues that called for a decision was the role of the Government of India in education : this issue had to be decided by 1950 when the Constitution was adopted. In keeping with the general policy of not making a radical break with the past it was decided that education should continue to be essentially a State responsibility, as it actually was between 1921 and 1947, with some special responsibilities (e.g. co-ordination
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and maintenance of standards in higher education, research, and scientific and technical institutions) assigned to the Government of India. Both the radical issues viz. (1) inclusion of education in the concurrent list or (2) decentralization of authority to the local level were carefully avoided.
(2) The next issue related to the priority to be accorded to education vis-a-vis other sections of development. If the statements of the national leadership were any guide, education ought to have received the highest priority as an instrument of human resource development. But the actual decisions taken were different : education came way down in the list of priorities after industry, agriculture, power, transport and family planning. If investment policies are an idea of priority, education must certainly be regarded to have been a low priority item in the first three five year plans because the total allocation to education was comparatively low and the axe of retrenchment always fell heavily on education. This may not have been a wrong decision. But it does indicate the serious limitations within which educational development had to be attempted.
(3) What about the priority between different categories of programmes within education ? It was decided that the highest priority should be given to expansion of educational facilities which were most in demand. Programmes of qualitative improvement would follow to the extent possible. Programmes of transformation of the educational system were, by and large, shelved especially in view of the reformist and evolutionary approach adopted.
(4) What about inter-se priorities between different sections of education ? Here, personal and social factors came into play. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru bad a great faith in universities and in higher education and believed that higher education must be developed on a priority basis in the larger interest of the country. His all too well-known a statement on the subject may still bear a quotation : "A university stands for humanism, for tolerance, for reason, for the adventure of ideas and for the search of truth. It stands for the onward march of the human race towards even higher objectives. If the universities discharge their duties adequately, then it is well with the nation
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and the people." This philosophical and cultural view was also supported by economists who argued that universities were the grandmother machine which produced teachers for themselves, the colleges and the secondary schools and that secondary education was the mother machine that produced the teachers for elementary schools. It was therefore necessary to develop university and secondary education even in the interests of the development of elementary education itself. Moreover, there was a strong demand for the development of secondary and higher education from all sections of society and especially from the upper middle classes who were its principal beneficiaries. What is equally important, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru never showed any deep commitment either to elementary or to adult education. Consequently, it was decided to accord the highest priority to university and secondary education. A University Education Commission was, therefore, first appointed (1948-49) and was followed by a Secondary Education Commission (1952). Universal, elementary and adult education ought to have really been accorded the highest priority because, along with adult franchise which had been adopted, they would have helped to transfer real power to the people. But this was not desired ; and hence both the programmes were given a low priority. Universal elementary education could not be ignored because it was too valuable a commitment to the people made in the pre-independence period. It was, therefore, included in the directive principles of the Constitution which were more like pious resolutions than official policies ; and the programme of adult education (including liquidation of adult illiteracy) was almost totally shelved. On the whole, one cannot but get an impression that the education of the people was regarded not as a crucial factor in development, nor as their right, but merely as a charitable or welfare activity.
(5) It was decided to promote engineering and technical education on the basis of the highest priority because it was necessary for the newly adopted policies of industrialization and import substitution. The same decision was taken about medical education which was necessary for the extension of modern health services and about agricultural education which was
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equally essential for increased food production. It should not also be forgotten that the ruling classes were the principal beneficiaries of these programmes.
6. Science education and research were emphasised with a view to creating an indigenous capability in modern science and technology so essential for agricultural and industrial growth and for modernization.
7. The usual pedagogic issues were considerably emphasized with a view to giving, as it were, a face lift to the educational system we inherited at independence. Improvement in the remuneration of teachers, expansion and improvement of teacher education, improvement of curricula, teaching and learning materials, and methods of teaching, examination reform, improvement of supervision, provision of extension services, and such other programmes received a good deal of attention.It was of course recognized that, these bad a significance of their own, they cannot be equated with 'radical' educational reforms that were needed. Another weakness was that these were often imitative and influenced from abroad, especially USA; which provided considerable financial support, training facilities and experts.
It was these ad hoc policies of expediency and class interests, set up in an evolutionary and reformist perspective, that dominated the scene between 1947 and 1965. They could not be expected create a national system of education; and they did not. They merely led to a linear expansion of the educational system which had been evolved during the British period under a similar perspective with some minor modifications to suit the new situation created after independence.
Universal Elementary Education 2.13 Let us now briefly review the educational developments of this period which can best be described as one of ad hocism. The discussion may well begin with universal elementary education-a programme in which objectives and targets were definitely and clearly laid down : quantitatively free and compulsory education had to be provided to all children in the age-group 6-14 within a period of ten years (1950-60); and qualitatively, it had been decided to convert all schools to the basic pattern. There was thus no ambiguity about the goals and hardly any controversy on the subject. All that was needed was to go ahead and get the job done. And yet we miserably failed to achieve our objectives even in 1965-66. The phenomenon therefore needs a close scrutiny.
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2.14 The programme of universal elementary education is implemented in three distinct but concurrent stages : (1) universal provision of schools, (2) universal enrolment of children' in the concerned age-group; and (3) universal retention of the children 'enrolled until they complete the elementary course or reach the age of 14 years. Each of these stages needs to be discussed separately.
2.15 Universal Provision of Schools : The objective of the programme was to establish an elementary school within easy walking distance from the home of every child. In practical terms, the target was to establish a primary school teaching classes I-V within a distance of one mile and a middle school teaching classes VI-VIll within a distance of about two miles. To assist in the implementation of the programme, educational surveys were organized, for all parts of the country, in 1957 and in 1965. The targets are also comparatively easy to fulfil if the necessary funds are available and the Education Departments are efficiently organized to plan the location of primary and middle schools. But even by 1965-66 we had not been able to reach the target of providing a primary school within easy walking distance from the home of every child and we were far behind in making a similar provision for middle schools. The following data of the 1965 survey will give some idea of our achievements in this sector.
Table No. 1A
Provision of Primary Schools in Rural Areas, 1965
Distance No. of Population
(in Miles) habitations (millions)
0 373,086 283.481
(71.48)
0.1-0.5 300,557 58.880
(14.85)
0.6-1.0 183,173 34.210
(8.63)
1.1-1.5 48,937 8.514
(2.15)
1.6-2.0 38,833 6.413
(1.62)
More than 2 37,665 5.081
(1.28)
Total 982,251 396.580
(100.00)