Did anyone sing Breathless?

Into a head-spinning soup of alphabets and abbreviations that enrich India’s education establishment, two names that will not be lost in the gruel have been tossed: Infosys Foundation chairperson Sudha Murty and musician Shankar Mahadevan.

Murty and Mahadevan will be part of a panel that has been set up to develop school syllabi, textbooks and teaching-learning materials.

Formed last month and notified on Saturday, the panel has been named the National Syllabus and Teaching-learning-material Committee (NSTC), doing full justice to its preceding cousins that carry names that resemble jumble puzzles.

Murty and Mahadevan will exchange ideas with two others who are drawn from a three-lettered panel: the EAC or the Economic Advisory Council of the Prime Minister. EAC chairman Bibek Debroy and member Sanjeev Sanyal will be part of the committee. Er, which committee? The NSTC, of course.

The said committee — that is the NSTC — is co-headed by M.C. Pant, chancellor of the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), and Manjul Bhargava, a faculty member of Princeton University.

And who sired the NSTC? Who else but the more familiar NCERT or the National Council of Educational Research and Training, the national textbook publishing authority?

Some academics feel that “celebrities” are being inducted to shield the Centre from criticism of its perceived agenda.

But who knows? Perhaps it will take the skills of Mahadevan, who made a name for himself initially by singing Breathless without a pause, to string together all these soul-numbing abbreviations and come up with another lung-bursting chartbuster.

Anita Rampal, former dean of faculty (education) at Delhi University and former chairperson of the NCERT’s textbook development committee for primary education, said the government had chosen to announce one committee after another only to escape any scrutiny of the related reports and recommendations.

“It is a travesty of the curriculum planning and development exercise. It seems like strategically putting up a front or facade for the work being done by some people behind the scenes. These public figures may have contributed to several other fields. But their inclusion in the syllabus and textbook committee is intended to deflect any criticism and counter any questioning of the syllabus or books,” Rampal said.

The NCERT set up the NSTC to develop the material for Classes III to XII. The panel will revise the existing textbooks for Classes I and II to ensure a smooth transition from Classes II to III, said a notification issued by the NCERT.

All this while, another abbreviation that was born in 2021 has been learning to take baby steps. It is called (jumble puzzle, anyone?) NCFSE, the National Curriculum Framework for School Education. The NCFSE is in an advanced stage of development. It will act as the reference point for the preparation of the syllabus and textbooks.

The NCERT has set up another committee to ensure the alignment of textbooks, syllabi and teaching learning material. It is called the National Curriculum Framework Oversight Committee.

Not to forget TDCs, the Textbook Development Committees set up by the NCERT and made up of teachers from universities, colleges and schools, independent researchers and writers.

Definitely a treasure trove for Mahadevan’s next big hit.