New Delhi: The death of three civil service aspirants in flooding at a coaching centre basement in New Delhi’s Old Rajinder Nagar reached parliament on July 29, with the opposition and the treasury benches trading barbs on the state of education in the country.
In the Rajya Sabha, where Vice-President and chairperson Jagdeep Dhankhar allowed a ‘short duration discussion’ under Rule 176, Union minister for education Dharmendra Pradhan passed the buck to states for not implementing the Union government’s advisories. Pradhan also said that opposition members who had raised questions on the education system were suffering from “pseudo-intellectual extremism” and were “haunted by Macaulay’s ghost”.
Opposition members, on the other hand, also raised questions about the speed with which the issue was taken up for discussion in the House, since it was raised by members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as opposed to those demanded by the opposition on other issues including the ethnic strife in Manipur and recent paper leaks in competitive exams like NEET.
In his reply, Pradhan in the Rajya Sabha also said that accountability needs to be fixed, adding that education comes under the Concurrent List.
“Advisory was sent by the government in January 2024 to states. Advisories were also sent in 2017, 2019, 2020. The advisory that was sent on January 16, 2024, had the state governments followed it, this unfortunate incident would not have happened. Responsibility has to be taken. States have to implement it. Responsibility cannot be evaded,” he said.
In his response to opposition MPs questioning the education system including coaching institutes in Rajasthan’s Kota, which has reported rising cases of suicides, Pradhan said, “There is pseudo-intellectualism in the mind of some people…Some people are still being haunted by the ghost of [Thomas] Macauley. That is why they think they have the capacity to think. There is no answer to this pseudo intellectualism extremism.”
Macaulayism refers to the practice of applying the English education system to British colonies.
“Here, some members have an issue when the PM is giving tips to students appearing before board exams.… what do I say to this?” Pradhan added.
BJP, AAP trade barbs over responsibility
Earlier, BJP MP Sudhanshu Trivedi who opened the discussion in the Rajya Sabha lashed out at the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) which is in power in the national capital terming it “criminal negligence” as several complaints had been filed prior to the incident including on June 26.
“This was not just negligence but criminal negligence under which children’s lives were put in danger,” he said.
“Those who are in power for such a long time…earlier they would say, ‘We don’t have this, we don’t have that.’ But today you are in power in the government as well as the MCD [Municipal Corporation of Delhi]. Those who had promised to bring a new form of politics…people’s lives have been endangered but they are only putting out political statements and nothing else,” Trivedi added.
AAP MP Sanjay Singh said that while allegations and counter allegations will continue, there has been a long drawn demand to regulate coaching centres and the central government needs to do it.
“This is not the first time that basement classes are being held in coaching centres. This has been going on for over 20 years and at that time BJP was in power for over 15 years in the MCD. In every work in Delhi you have to create obstructions. And for the first time in history a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court said that the transfer, posting of officers in Delhi should be in the hands of the elected government but you took away that right,” he said referring to the ongoing tussle with the BJP-led Union government and the AAP government in the state, over the control of services in Delhi.
Last August, parliament passed the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (Amendment) Bill, 2023, which replaced the contentious Delhi ordinance on the control of services in the national capital. The ordinance overrode an order by the apex court which ruled that only Delhi’s elected government has authority over civil servants.
“Action should be taken against those officers who have not acted despite our directions. Our condition now is that you have tied our hands and legs and thrown us into the swimming pool and asking us to score points and we will assess you,” said Singh.
‘Show same speed for other issues’
While opposition MPs welcomed Dhankhar’s move to conduct a discussion on the issue, they also raised questions about the speed with which the request was taken up as it had originated from the Treasury benches.
Congress MP Randeep Surjewala said that the politics of allegations and counter allegations is condemnable.
“In this muddle of politicking we have digressed from one of the most fundamentally important issues. This is a good beginning. We will bring a similar motion on occupation of Indian territory by China, and how 24 lakh students have been affected by NEET…I only hope that issues like Manipur, Jammu and Kashmir, occupation by China, and infiltrations and government’s failure to protect our borders will all be discussed,” he said.
TMC MP Derek O’Brien said that he hoped that “notices brought by Congress, TMC (the second largest Opposition party in the House) and DMK (third largest) are also accepted in the future”.
“We have shown concern, alacrity, speed to stop all business including the budget convert a 267 notice and bring it to short notice. Good. This is the first time we are seeing this in two years. But my conscience questions as we condole those students, did we the Rajya Sabha stop business to discuss railway accidents, 24 lakh boys and girls who suffered because of NEET, 60,000 people of a proud Indian state called Manipur? Did we show the same alacrity when 100 people died in floods in Assam? Or when parliamentary security was breached or to discuss an issue like unemployment? All of us need to ask ourselves this one question,” he said.
‘Political economy of coaching centres’
Other opposition MPs of the INDIA alliance also referred to the GNCTD Act, and said that the Centre had unleashed “confusion and mayhem.”
CPI(M) MP John Brittas said that the students had been victims of “rampant commercialisation of exams”.
Brittas said that it is not the education minister but Union home minister Amit Shah who should to the parliament and respond.
“Who is the actual malik [ruler or owner] of Delhi? None other than Amit Shah ji. I don’t think Dharmendra Pradhan will be the competent person to respond to this,” he said.
Brittas added that with the Delhi services act, the centre had unleashed “confusion and mayhem.”
“You want power without responsibility,” he said.
RJD MP Manoj Jha too said the “political economy” of coaching institutes lay at the root of the problem and students want to know what parliament has to say about its structure rather than seeing an AAP versus BJP debate.
“When the GNCTD Act was being passed I had warned that you are creating a notion of responsibility without power. What can we tell these children? Those children who don’t want to see a AAP vs BJP debate, they want to know what the Parliament has to say about the political economy of coaching institute, its structure and urban edifice,” he said.
