Vote bank politics stretches its tentacles to school-education

ALL INDIA PARENTS ASSOCIATION (AIPA) PRESS-RELEASE 04.07.2013 A news report which appeared in a leading daily toady reads that the Delhi government is planning to extend “relaxations” in the criteria for eligibility in admission to various streams of Class XII for the benefit of minorities and OBCs. Under the proposed scheme, students belonging to these categories shall be able to avail of a relaxation of up to one grade-point in one of the subjects. The news report further reads that such a relaxation is already available to children belonging to SC/ST and Kashmiri migrant communities. However, the larger question is: what is the logic behind depriving the entire student community of its rights to choose its own fields of interest and then extending peace-meal tokens of charity to select communities, thereby adding discrimination to injustice? Firstly, is it a reasonable assumption that a child who does not seem to be showing signs of becoming a very good doctor, what he wants to be, would automatically have seeds of becoming a good accountant and an even better public administrator, what he never wanted to be? Should he not rather be left free to pursue his interest and struggle out his own way to become a good doctor? It seems that the government is hell-bent upon denying the streams of their own choice, particularly Sciences and Commerce to the vast majority of students studying in government schools, leaving them with no choice but to turn to private schools. Moreover, in view of the upcoming Assembly elections, the government has begun to see even school-education and even choices so fundamental as the choice of career, as means to cater to its vote-banks, by dividing students into categories such as SC, ST, OBC, minority, J & K migrant and so on. While so many categories have been found fit to be given relaxations, why not the entire student community? All India Parents Association demands greater autonomy to students across all strata and sections of society in making their career-choices through considerable relaxations in archaic stream-admission criteria, without any discrimination on grounds of caste, religion, region etc. ASHOK AGARWAL, ADVOCATE National President, AIPA M: 9811101923