Make residential educational institutions inclusive

Mr PV Narasimha Rao, when he became the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh in 1970s started implementing a great idea which he conceived as education minister - the concept of the residential educational institutions for the bright and the talented from the rural areas. Thus started the first residential schools in the three regions of Andhra Pradesh state - Sarvail in Telangana, Tadikonda in coastal Andhra and Kodigenahalli in Rayalaseema. In 1972, the silver jubilee year of Indian independence, the Silver Jubilee Government College was started as a residential degree College at Kurnool.

Junior residential college came up at Nagarjuna Sagar subsequently linking the chain in full. The concept got further expanded when he became the HRD minister government of India with the starting of Navodaya schools across the country. Today residential educational institutions from primary to degree level in the government sector make a difference to the quality of education to the talented rural students. Both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana states have done extremely well in this field.

I was in the first batch of students of the silver jubilee government degree College in 1972. By design, students from all the three regions of the state in proportion to their population were selected and since by then in addition to the reservation for the schedule castes and scheduled tribes reservation for the backward classes was also in operation, each batch of 150 consisted of students from different socio -economic backgrounds. It gave us a great opportunity of knowing each other broadening our thinking and gave us a more cosmopolitan outlook. One of my roommates was Gabriel Sudhakar from Koilakuntla and his father who was a pastor whenever he came to the hostel stayed with us and made it a point to bless all of us before he left.

Subsequently these residential institutions started coming up exclusively under different departments social welfare residential institutions, tribal welfare residential institutions ,BC welfare residential and minority welfare residential institutions. Though there was in each one of them a certain percentage reserved for open competition, they were not conceived and implemented as residential institutions bringing together students with different socio- economic backgrounds.

Such integrated residential institutions would have been a far better option rather than segmenting department-wise. They also started functioning as one more government institution with all the problems and shortcomings that go with it till for the social welfare and tribal welfare residential institutions Praveen Kumar (an IPS officer) came as a Secretary and started making a great difference.

In 2012, he came in as the Secretary of the Social Welfare Tribal Welfare Residential Schools society by choice. He himself is a product of these institutions and wanted to give back to the institutions, his own services. In the last six years, transformation of these institutions is phenomenal. Now these are institutions of choice for the students.

The students of these institutions get admissions into premier national institutions like JNU, Lady Shri Ram College etc. The level of creature comforts to the students and the quality of education have increased tremendously. Budgets are spent more responsibly. It once more goes to show that a dedicated civil servant given a reasonable span of tenure and freedom can make a difference to the institutions. After division of state he is with Telangana and continues as Secretary, Telangana Residential Institutions Society.

Today in Telangana state there are 842 residential institutions under different departments with close to three lakh students and yearly expenditure of about Rs 3000 crore. In Andhra Pradesh there are 454 institutions with two lakh students with a yearly budget of Rs 1300 crore. After division of the state, Telangana has concentrated more on this sector compared to Andhra Pradesh.

Recently Telangana Chief Minister made an announcement that for the poor from the forward castes also he would like to set up residential educational institutions. Though it’s a welcome development my appeal is not to start one more segmented residential system. It would be far more appropriate to club all these residential institutions together and have a mix of students from different communities in each of them well of course maintaining the proportion as per the political priorities of the government but make each institution to have a mix and bring them under one umbrella for administration.

That would lead to better mixing of students with different socio-economic backgrounds broadening their thinking and horizon. Segmentation of these institutions department-wise or otherwise would only lead to narrowing of one’s perspective and thinking in the long run. Both Andhra Pradesh and Telangana governments can restructure their residential educational institutions on the above lines and of course it goes without saying get the right people to man it with reasonable tenure for them so that they remain institutions of choice to the students as well as to their parents.