If Nehru is not to blame, then better to keep him out.
The Assam Higher Secondary Education Council (AHSEC), the state board, has removed several chapters on Jawaharlal Nehru while pruning the syllabus for Classes XI and XII to “reduce exam stress” and make up for the academic time lost because of the pandemic. The 30 per cent reduction in syllabus will be for the 2020-21 academic year.
The AHSEC, an autonomous body, was established on June 1, 1984, to “regulate, supervise and develop” higher-secondary education in Assam. Many, however, pointed out that Assam is ruled by the BJP, which blames India’s first Prime Minister for all that ails India over half a century later.
The topics that have been lopped off the Class XII political science syllabus are “Unit-I: First three general elections”, “Unit-II: Nehru’s approach to nation-building”, “Unit-III: Famine and suspension of five-year plans”, “Unit-IV: Nehru’s foreign policy” and “Unit-V: Political succession after Nehru, politics of and Garibi Hatao”.
Chapters on the Ayodhya dispute and the Gujarat riots have also been deleted.
Nehru was Prime Minister from 1947 till his death in 1964. The five-year plans were launched in 1951 under his watch. “Garibi Hatao” (abolish poverty) was the pet slogan of Nehru’s daughter and Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
“The Nehru years are the defining years of an emerging new India,” educationist Paresh Malakar told The Telegraph. “It is bit surprising,” he added, referring to the removal of the topics related to Nehru.
Asked why topics related to Nehru had been chucked out, an AHSEC official told this newspaper: “There are still a lot on Nehru in the syllabus that the students can learn. We have not dropped whole chapters but only sub-topics. It is only for this session.”
A government official said the AHSEC was an autonomous body that took its own decisions, ruling out government interference in the syllabus changes.
In a brief report uploaded on its website on the reduced syllabus, the AHSEC said the move had been influenced by the decision of the CBSE, the country’s largest education board, to cut down the volume of the curriculum in view of the pandemic.
The report pointed out that valuable time had been lost to the coronavirus pandemic, which had affected 1.6 lakh people and claimed 597 lives in Assam till Wednesday.
All government schools in Assam have resumed physical classes for students of Classes IX to XII from September 21 in keeping with a central government suggestion. However, attendance, which is voluntary and requires mandatory parental consent, has been thin.
The other deleted topics included the Punjab militancy crisis and the anti-Sikh riots of 1984, the implementation of the Mandal Commission report to introduce reservations, the United Front, NDA and UPA governments, and the 2004 elections.
The Plus II syllabus has been trimmed after seeking views from other state boards, experts, college principals and teachers, the AHSEC said. The decision was taken at a meeting held on August 19, it said, adding that subject experts from various reputed institutions had been physically present during the finalisation of the reduced syllabus.
“The main objective is to reduce the exam stress of the students for the 2020-21 session due to this pandemic situation and to prevent learning gaps,” Manoranjan Kakati, the AHSEC secretary, was quoted as saying in the report uploaded on the board website.
