Page 75 - EW July 2022

Postscript

Inappropriate propriety largest banks in 1969 by prime minister Indira Gandhi
In particular, the nationalisation of the country’s 27
has proved to be the most egregious error in India’s
HE SEEMINGLY PLACID IMPLEMENTATION
pace of the National Education Policy (NEP) 2020, economic history. The shift from risk assessment and
Twhich has provoked EW’s July cover story, is decep- project evaluation based lending to bureaucratic banking
tive, according to a deep-dive investigation conducted by influenced by phone calls from venal politicians in Delhi
the Delhi-based daily Indian Express (June 21). and state capitals, totally ruined the economy and almost
Twenty-four obscure academics with strong links with extinguished India’s ancient spirit of private enterprise.
the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), the ideological In light of this dismal history of India’s nationalised
mentor organisation of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) banks, while on a brief vacation in the Maldives, your
ruling at the Centre and in several states, are members correspondent learned of a public tribute paid to the State
of 17 of 25 focus groups currently finalising content for Bank of India by Qasim Ibrahim, founder chairman and
inclusion in school textbooks published by the National managing director of Villa Shipping & Trading Co. Ltd
Council for Educational Research & Training (NCERT), which owns Paradise Island and several other excellent
a subsidiary of the Union education ministry. NCERT resorts and successful businesses in the island republic.
textbooks are prescribed for 26,284 primary-secondary Ibrahim began his career as a clerk in a government hos-
schools affiliated with the Delhi-based Central Board of pital in Male and with a loan of $2,000 advanced by the
Secondary Education (CBSE) and serve as models for State Bank of India transformed into the wealthiest busi-
school texts published and prescribed by SCERTs (State ness tycoon and philanthropist of our neighbour nation.
Councils for Educational Research & Training) in the And to this day, SBI remains the Villa Group’s primary
country’s 29 states. bank. It was a pleasant surprise to hear good words about
The focus group members include Dr. Bhagwati a public sector bank.
Prakash Sharma, national convenor of RSS think tank
Mishra, former national secretary of ABVP (RSS-affiliated Clever apology
Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM); JNU’s Prof. Vandana
students union); Dr. Ramakrishna Rao, former national
president of Vidya Bharati, the education wing of RSS, LTHOUGH THE MIGHTY BRITISH EMPIRE on
plus RSS acolytes in other focus groups — all appointed which the sun never set has been reduced to the
last December by Union education minister Dharmendra Astatus of a lonely nation exiled to the periphery
Pradhan, a former RSS karyakarta. of Europe following Brexit in 2020, there is something
The revision recommendations of the 25 focus groups admirable about the tenacity with which Brits are hanging
packed with RSS academics will be forwarded to a in there by drawing on their indisputably momentous
12-member steering committee chaired by Dr. K. Kasturi- history and soft power. The BBC is still very much in
rangan — a former space scientist and chairman of the the reckoning and gamely claims to be the world’s most
Kasturirangan Committee whose 484-page policy draft widely watched television news channel; Wimbledon con-
shaped NEP 2020 — for approval. A stickler for old- tinues to be the most glamorous global tennis tournament
fashioned propriety, Kasturirangan declined to comment and test cricket at Lords is unmatched in grandeur al-
on the Express investigation, and on the progress of NEP though in tennis and cricket, Britain’s glory days are over.
2020 implementation in EW’s cover feature of this issue. And to this list, one could also add ingenious television
Sir, given that a massive RSS-BJP conspiracy to serials such as Downton Abbey and Bridgerton which
rewrite Indian history and hijack Indian education by have monetised the windswept island’s enduring upper
twisting your report is underway, this is hardly the time class pretensions and snobbery into reel dramas which
for political correctness and propriety. have hooked global audiences.
The international success of Bridgerton owes much to
SBI surprise the strategy that its multi-racial storyline and casting is
in effect a clever apology for pernicious racial prejudice
and discrimination that imperial Britain’s upper classes
EADERS ACQUAINTED WITH THE volumi- practised in the heyday of Empire. The plain truth is
nous features written by your editor in disparate that racial and colour prejudice was deeply embedded
Rpublications including Business India, Business- in this ugly tribe given to covering their plainness with
world and EducationWorld (estb.1999) are certain to be extravagant uniforms and braid. Even East End cockneys
well-aware that I’m not an admirer of the country’s 256 fortified by Lord Macaulay’s infamous dismissal of
Central government public sector enterprises (PSEs). all literature of the subcontinent produced over five
And an equivalent number of PSEs promoted by state millennia not being equal to the domestic library of
governments across the country. Continuous investment an English pastor, were persuaded of their racial and
of national savings in post-independence India’s black- intellectual superiority over highly-educated Indians and
hole PSEs was the greatest mistake in Indian history subcontinentals.
which has wiped out the modest material aspirations of In essence, colour-blind Bridgerton with its multi-ra-
three generations of free India’s children, and heinously cial cast and inter-racial romance is a belated apology for
delayed this nation from reclaiming its premier status as blatant race and colour prejudice that Brits practised for
the world’s most prosperous landmass that it was a mere more than two centuries in India and around the world.
two centuries ago. Hence its global acceptance and success.

74 EDUCATIONWORLD JULY 2022