Its been 5 years since ‘Aam Janta’ of India has chosen Narendra Modi as their Prime Minister. The 7 phases of Lok Sabha Elections 2019 are over and it seems like the saffron flag is yet again to rule India.
According to the revelation of most of the exit polls released, BJP led NDA seems to be ahead in the election race. Though, its not the final one, many news channels are yet to reveal the accurate results.
In 2014 BJP, before coming into power released its manifesto ‘Ek Bharat- Shreshtha Bharat’ and promised to recover India in the fields the country is lacking. Education development also remained one of the agendas.
Education #Analysis- Promises made in the BJP Manifesto (2014)
How far have they succeeded?
- Pubic spending on education raised to 6% of GDP
Though, the GDP rate was promised 6% but the data released by NDTV exposed that after BJP came into power the total amount of percentage spent on education of GDP was as follows-
- 2014-15 (2.8%)
- 2015-16 (2.4%)
- 2016-17 (2.6%)
- 2017-18 (2.7%)
However, the BJP might have forgot its promise after coming into power, which results in the similar promise of raising 6% spending on education from GDP, in 2019 manifesto ‘Sankalp Patra.’
- Universalisation of Secondary Education and skills development
No new legal provision or plan for universalising secondary education was introduced. Though in year 2018, NITI Aayog launched ‘Transformation of Aspirational Districts Programme’ to empower developmentally backward districts.
- Beti Bachao- Beti Padhao- national campaign for saving the girl child and educating her
The campaign was launched in 2015 by three ministries including Human Resource Development. By 2018, it covered 161 districts with the lowest child ratio.
- Reduce burden of books on children without compromising on quality of education – using technology.
The National Council for Educational Research and Training is reducing the context of textbooks and in some cases deleting the entire chapters. In November, the Ministry of Human Resource Development issued guidelines on ‘How much school bags should weigh’ by class.
Also, ‘Operation Digital Blackboard’ was mentioned at the meeting in 2018 but not launched formally till Feb 2019 for classes 9th and above in schools.
- National E-Library- to empower school teachers and students
The government fulfilled the promise and set-up National Digital Library at IIT-Kharagpur, but its target audience is not restricted to teachers and students.
- Centres of Excellence at various sectors in partnership with the industry
Model Training Centres were set-up ‘Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Kendra,’ one for each sector.
- Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) and virtual classrooms
Government established ‘Swayam’ – Study Webs of Active- Learning for Young Aspiring Minds, which was used even for the crucial pre-service training of school teachers.
The National Programme for Technology Enhanced Learning, NPTEL, an initiative of the Indian Institutes of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science set-up under the previous government, has received much encouragement as well.
Above are just the glimpses of the promises made by ruling party during the 2014 elections. Plenty of them are still to be analysed. Though, even this year both BJP and Congress have come up with their individual agendas to achieve the applause from students . BJP manifesto ‘Sankalp Patra’ 2019 and Congress manifesto ‘Jan Ki Aawaaz’ both have mentioned in it to contribute 6% of GDP in education.
Though, it seems difficult to predict, who is gonna make the educational future bright in India or even this year the promises will be left folded in the papers just for the evaluation after 5 years’ tenure.