Tamil Nadu Minister for Information Technology and Digital Services, P. Thiaga Rajan, has made clear that the state government and the Union government are “deadlocked” over the National Education Policy 2020, which the former government believes is an attempt to subordinate and subjugate through the imposition of Hindi.
In a 50-minute-long and comprehensive interview with Karan Thapar for The Wire, the Tamil Nadu IT minister discusses the differences and dispute between the two governments over NEP 2020.
The minister says that Tamil Nadu’s education system does not have the “bandwidth” to expand its time-tested and well-performing two-language education policy into a three-language formula. He does not believe that there is any state where the three language formula has worked better.
In the second part of the interview, Mr. Thiaga Rajan spoke about his government’s fears of and opposition to the delimitation in 2026. He says that the threat of delimitation is “deeply alarming” adding it “drives me into a panic”.
Rajan said that a short-term solution to the issue of delimitation is a further 25-year freeze during which time serious and effective steps must be taken, through promoting education and health in particular, to ensure that states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, with far higher population growth levels, catch up with the southern states.
