Questions arise over the authority of the TGEC

Hyderabad: Is the new Telangana Education Commission (TGEC) the apex body assigned to prepare a separate and new 'Telangana Education Policy' (TEC)?

This question has been on the minds of many academicians since the state government appointed the TGEC.

Speaking to The Hans India, a former Vice-Chancellor of a Telangana State University wondered how a body headed by an ex-IAS officer could be competent to decide how higher education should be shaped.

Several faculty members from Kakatiya University, Mahatma Gandhi University, and the Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad (JNTU-H), have expressed similar reservations. When asked why they are not raising their objections or suggestions before the authorities in the State Education Department or the State Education Minister and Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy, who was openly soliciting suggestions to improve educational standards, a senior faculty member from Osmania University stated, "Unlike earlier, neither the faculty nor non-faculty members are coming out to air their views openly for or against the government's policy decisions, fearing a backlash."

However, they warn that the handpicked courtier academicians chosen by bureaucrats could have disastrous consequences for education.

For example, a Class VI girl's letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2017 left top officials at the National Council of Education Research and Training (NCERT), Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), and the Union Ministry of Education (UMoE), as well as reputed academicians, some of whom are emeritus professors with decades of experience, writing red-faced. Referring to the incident, the girl, hailing from Assam but studying in Jaipur, raised a simple question after 70 years of Independence that opened a can of worms. It is not for the Prime Ministers, Chief Ministers, or education ministers of the state to respond to questions regarding school or college syllabuses; however, at the end of the day, it reflects poorly on political heads for the omissions and commissions by the bureaucrats heading the education department or entities like NCERT and CBSE.

Additionally, similar questions have been raised about school textbooks in United Andhra Pradesh, where the history and culture of Telangana have either been entirely omitted or only nominally included.

Furthermore, numerous such omissions or even misinformation have been fed to school and college students for decades in classrooms, all of which have been taught as part of educational policies at both national and state levels.

For instance, there is no data in either oral or written traditions available in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Puducherry, or the Andaman and Nicobar Islands indicating that the Sati tradition was ever practiced there. It was only under Portuguese rule in Goa that the Inquisition was noted in practice. However, record-based evidence of the Goa Inquisition was lost following the burning of records with its abolishment in 1812. Yet, school and college textbooks have continued to perpetuate a colonial syllabus and writing style without making any distinctions between regions where Sati was practiced and those where it was not.