Page 28 - EW October 2025

Education News

imagination. Bharat Future City is our promise to invest THEY SAID IT
in both,” said Reddy in his BFC foundation laying speech.
No right-thinking citizen is likely to take exception to “Socialism in India has not disappeared. It has
this aspiration. mutated into something far more corrosive:
Priyanka Edupuganti (Hyderabad)
caste-based identitarian politics, a culture
of entitlement and a political economy
TAMIL NADU of freebies that has distorted democratic
Politics-driven SEP 2025 practice and undermined economic

potential.”
fter a big stand-off against the central government Anurag Shukla, director of a policy think tank, in
and back-and-forth debates, on September 8, Tam- an essay titled ‘Why it’s a folly to recycle a failed
Ail Nadu’s DMK government has unveiled its much- ideology like socialism in India’ (Times of India,
awaited independent State Education Policy (SEP) 2025. September 28)
Tamil Nadu’s SEP 2025 differentiates itself from the
National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 presented to the “Teachers do talk about things that are
nation by the BJP-led NDA government at the Centre in key making their professional lives difficult.
areas including language, examinations, and assessment. The sense of helplessness they feel in
But with the 2026 legislative assembly elections looming, the face of bureaucratic aggression is a
a rising number of teachers and educationists statewide common complaint. One might mistakenly
are beginning to wonder if SEP 2025 is driven by genuine assume that bureaucratic aggression and
education reform intent or political calculation.
At the heart of SEP 2025 is the state’s two-language expectations prevail only in government
formula. That school children should also learn Hindi, the schools. Corporatised management of private
dominant language of the populous plains of North India schools manifests in ways quite similar to the
mandated as a compulsory language by NEP 2020 under control that is bureaucratically exercised on
its three-languages formula, is conspicuously missing in government school teachers.”
SEP 2025. Dr. Krishna Kumar, former director of NCERT, in an
Half a century ago, the three-language formula ‘im- essay titled ‘In India, why teachers are walking away
posing’ Hindi upon all in-school children countrywide from the classroom’ (Indian Express, October 5)
aroused fierce antagonism in culturally and linguistically
different peninsular India and Tamil Nadu in particular. In “On October 10 every year, World Mental
the mid-1960s widespread rioting broke out across Tamil Health Day highlights the extent of mental
Nadu protesting adoption of Hindi as the sole official (na- illness in the world – over one billion people (13
tional) language, and for a while there was the possibility percent of global population) suffering from
that Tamil Nadu might secede from India. This prompted
the Congress government at the Centre to postpone the mental illnesses. India is a part of this, with
decision to introduce Hindi as the sole official language a 13.7 percent lifetime prevalence of mental
and indefinitely extend us- disorders in the country.”
age of English as the associ- Samayeta Bal, advocate, in an essay titled ‘India
ate official language and the needs a unified mental health response’ (The Hindu,
language of business, upper October 10)
judiciary and link language of
governance and administra- “Electoral rolls are the bedrock of free and fair
tion between the states. elections. Now, voters are in trouble as they
Since then despite the are being asked to provide proof documents.”
best efforts of Hindi lan- O.P. Rawat, former Chief Election Commissioner, on
guage warriors, a workable the special intensive revision of electoral rolls in Bihar
status quo had prevailed on (India Today, October 13)
Anbil Mahesh Poyyamozhi the language issue. This ar-
rangement was disturbed by “In the globalised world, without English there
NEP 2020 which resurrected the three-languages formu- is no future.”
la, prompting Tamil Nadu (and Karnataka) to reject NEP
2020, and promulgate their own SEP contending that edu- Narendra Jadhav, former Rajya Sabha member, on the
lanaguge war (India Today, October 13)
cation is a subject on the Concurrent list of the Constitution

28 EDUCATIONWORLD OCTOBER 2025