A Donkey, A Horse
"She (Jayalalitha) is so egotistic. That’s the difference between her and Karunanidhi,” said a lady who has been away abroad for the last six months. She was worked up after her friends had updated her on the confusion among parents and children over Samacheer Kalvi (the Uniform Syllabus Education System). The parents’ dilemma can be seen from this observation by a mother, "The children have been going to school without textbooks for over a month and they have been taught only general knowledge because there is no syllabus as yet."
Now with the Supreme Court also refusing to stay the Madras high court’s order striking down an amendment to the Tamil Nadu Uniform System of School Education (Amendment Act 2011) deferring Samacheer Kalvi, Jayalalitha should keep the children’s interests as her focus, for now at least.
Notwithstanding all the advice from allies and foes (read Karunanidhi) and the Samakalvi Iyakkan (which is a collective of educationists and child rights activists) the Tamil Nadu government had moved the Supreme Court through a Special Leave petition challenging the Madras high court’s order.
The Madras High court had called the AIADMK government’s move "a colourable exercise of power" and directed it to implement the uniform system. Tamil Nadu has over 1.23 crore students in four streams of school education — 45,000 state board schools, 11,000 matriculation schools, 25 oriental schools and 50 Anglo-Indian schools — all with separate syllabus, textbooks and examination schedules. The Samacheer Kalvi scheme was devised to bring in uniform education and was introduced in classes 1 and 6 last academic year while implementation in classes 2 to 5 and 7 to 10 was scheduled for this(2011-12) academic year, but was put off by Jayalalitha soon after taking over as CM on May 16.
Dark theories are being attributed to Jayalalitha’s adamant stand in this case. A former bureaucrat claims, "I hear bagfuls of money talked." A mother says, "It’s the Brahmin lobby that worked because most schools are run by them." However, there are those who say the standards laid down in the uniform syllabus were so basic that they would not be equipped to compete in higher education later. One mother complained, "The history text books ignore the Indus Valley civilization. How can you have that?"
But Karunanidhi repeated what he said earlier: that his poem and other references to him and his family be deleted and textbooks worth Rs 200 crores, that were ready, be distributed. Former deputy CM M K Stalin, said, "It’s painful that the AIADMK is showing resolve in seeing that the rich and poor do not get the same kind of quality education." DMDK’s Vijaykanth (who has been totally silent for the last two months despite being the opposition leader), put it like this: "We have asked for a horse to travel but as of now we have only got a donkey." It’s his way of evocatively saying that USE enacted by the DMK government had brought down the quality of education. But he’s practical: "It would not be wrong to use the donkey for travel until we get a horse. So, even if we need to remove the shortcomings of USE, what should be done immediately is to distribute textbooks so classes can start."
But, are they right when they think it is just amma’s zeal to overturn everyone of Karunanidhi’s policies at work here? Whatever the reason children are looking at the rest of the academic year with dread because many of the holidays — and many are there with the festival season around the corner — and Saturdays are going to be spent in school trying to finish up portions after the Supreme Court delivers its verdict.
Cosmetic changes
"We are only seeing Cabinet changes and nothing else," grumbled CPI state secretary D Pandian, on July 7. He felt there was no significant change in the state despite a regime change except for frequent change of ministers and their portfolios. In the two months since Jayalalitha has been CM, there have been two cabinet reshuffles (she dropped a minister — Essaki Subbiah — for his alleged links with the DMK, inducted a new one and reallocated some portfolios). Incidentally with an AIADMK man (Vengikkal Panchayat vice-resident C Moorthi) accusing Commercial taxes minister S S Krishnamoorthy of grabbing land in Thiruvannamalai, the latter’s position has become untenable in the context of her stepping up land grab cases against the DMK. Is one more cabinet change in the offing?
What this government has done is a lot of cosmetic changes and rejigging of the policies introduced by the Karunanidhi government which was in power between 2006-2011. Pandian pointed out there were areas of concern — the power crisis(11000 mega watt is what the state needs but manages about 7000 mega watts) and a huge public debt that during her first meeting with PM Manmohan Singh she asked for Rs 2.5 lakh crores.
When Jayalalitha went to the governor to stake her claim, she had said, "The state’s economy has been totally derailed and there has been a lot of regression during the last five years. It is almost like having gone back to the dark ages." People would like to see those particular legacies to be erased, but instead Jayalalitha has settled for dropping a few letters to call the Queen Mary’s college administration building "Kalai Maaligai" (instead of Kalaignar Maaligai) and renaming a scheme for women among other things.
Karunanidhi, when he was CM, named a scheme granting financial assistance to inter-marriage couples, after his mother Anjugam Ammaiyar. Now that scheme has been renamed Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy Ninaivu Inter-caste Marriage Assistance Scheme after chopping and changing it. One of the first things Jayalalitha did after taking over is to announce the implementation of several freebies including the existing marriage scheme after enhancing it — an assistance of Rs 25,000 (Rs 50,000 if the girls were graduates) plus four grams of gold (the social welfare department will purchase gold coins from State Bank of India or nationalized banks through a limited tender).
The other schemes — named after women leaders of the Dravidian movement including Moovalur Ramamirthan Ammaiyar, Dr Dharmambal, EVR Maniammaiyur and Mother Teresa- cover different categories including widow remarriage, daughters of poor widows and orphan girls. These schemes continue with no change in nomenclature. Justifying the name change (from Anjugam Ammaiyaru to Dr Muthulakshi Reddy) , social welfare department secretary Sheela Balakrishanans said that the idea behind naming the schemes is so that they would carry the names of social reformers and eminent women who worked for women’s emancipation. "After careful examination, the government decided to rename the scheme after Dr Muthulakshmi Reddy, because she was a woman activist, an eminent legislator, a doctor/ social reformer and also worked for women’s emancipation." You can’t argue with those kind of credentials. And with all due respects to Karunanidhi’s mother, she certainly did not have that kind of gravitas. So, it is a bit naïve of Karunanidhi if he thought that Jayalalitha would let his gesture to his late mother in a government scheme to pass.
No more golden rings
Also while there is gold for girls of marriageable age, there will be no more gold rings for newborns. The civic body had introduced the project in 2009 (on Karunanidhi’s 86th birthday) under which newborns christened with a Tamil name were given a 1gm gold ring. About 4,500 rings were distributed. But after the model code of conduct came into operation, this is one of the civic projects that was put on hold.
Meanwhile, about 500 rings equivalent to half a kilo of gold valued at Rs 11 lakh lies at the corporation treasury. The colour TVs that were bought but not distributed (over one lakh of them) by the DMK government (under its flagship free colour TV for all card holders) were ordered by CM Jayalalitha to be sent to old age homes, orphanages, government schools, etc. What will she do with the gold rings now? Will she give them to the babies brought to her to christen? Or will she just wait for the October municipal elections and then bring back the scheme in another form? While the DMK still runs the Chennai corporation, it seems unlikely that the reign will continue.
Win some, lose some
No matter whatever spin Jayalalitha-loyalists put ("she was busy", etc), she was compelled to stay away last week for the foundation stone laying ceremony for the construction of Alternative Disputes Resolution Centre at the High Court campus here to avoid sharing the dais with Supreme Court and High court judges. Even she preferred not to ruffle feathers when the Madras High Court Young Advocates' Association, in a representation to the court’s registrar-general, objected saying it was not "proper" for her to be present after a special court in Bangalore summoned her before it on July 27 in connection with a disproportionate assets case to record her statement under section 313 of CrPC.
But you win some and you lose some. She has been discharged by the principal sessions judge from several defamation cases filed against her by the Karunanidhi government. They include her statements that the DMK government would unleash violence on polling day of the assembly elections, her accusation that the DMK government had not paid Rs 300 per day to ex-servicemen on election duty, her statement in 2006 accusing the DMK government of delaying installation of MGR’s statue in Parliament and her allegation in November 2008 that the fund and materials collected by the DMK government would be diverted to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
Hindi vs Tamil
Learning Hindi and English will help students to come up in life, AICC member Karthi P Chidambaram has been quoted as saying. "I did not learn it so I am being ignored in my party in Delhi," says the son of Home Minister P Chidambaram who was one of the "big Four" not disturbed in the recent cabinet reshuffle. Should he not be blaming Karunanidhi, one of the stalwarts of the anti-Hindi campaign?
