How to crack UPSC preliminary examination 2016

All the hard work that civil service aspirants have put in the past months or years will culminate on August 7 when the preliminary examination conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) will be held.

Here are a few important tips for taking the prelims this year:

Take mock or simulated tests:

They help you practise time management and handle pressure. They also help you realise the mistakes you will possibly make while taking the real exam. You can learn from your mistakes and do not repeat them in the real exam.

Mock tests give you clues about easy questions on which you can make silly mistakes or questions which you could not understand during the mock test but could be easily cracked later with a fresh mind.

The reason could be that you are either not concentrating enough or you need to develop the stamina to use your brain for two continuous hours. You can study for longer periods of time without much-needed breaks. It is a marathon, prepare accordingly.

However, do not take the results of your mock tests to be an absolute indicator of how you may fare at the real exam. Basically, do not get discouraged by a low score in your mock/practise tests. Most of the mock tests available in the market are deliberately made difficult (more technical than required from a generalist standpoint) and fail to capture the real essence of the prelims.

Do solve the previous years’ tests to get a more accurate feedback on your score and a clear idea about your comparative preparation of various topics as well as the nature of questions asked in the real exam.

However, your score on the prelims will depend not only on your knowledge, intelligence and attitude but also on certain requirements that become clear only when you take mock tests. You cannot afford to make mistakes in the real exam.

Mocks are a valuable tool to understand what is missing in your preparation, and, later, to realise the changes you still need to make in the way you handle yourself during the real exam to get an optimum score.

Read more: UPSC panel wants govt to reduce age limit for civil services exam

Balance out

A clear idea about your comparative preparation of the various topics and the delicate balance in your preparation between static and dynamic topics is a must.

Some mock tests, as well as previous years’ tests, will also give cues about the relative weightage of straight-forward questions that can be solved with conceptual clarity in conventional topics like history, geography, polity and economy vis-à-vis analytical questions based on current affairs from both static and dynamic sections of the syllabus.

Divide the revision time before the exam into two halves. Spend the first half in revising the core knowledge across all traditional topics of the syllabus and the other in revising topics like science and technology, environment, ecology and biodiversity and current affairs in all syllabus topics. Study of current affairs is also prompt for what core knowledge may be tested in the exam.

For revision of conventional topics, refer to your class notes and study material or a book you have used earlier. Do not venture out to read from multiple or alternative sources.

Science and technology, environment, ecology and biodiversity and culture have shared maximum weightage in the past few years. These sections cannot be neglected; rather, good knowledge in these can make the difference between selection and rejection. Read on the lines of previous years’ questions.

Read more: Delhi’s Tina Dabi tops in UPSC 2015 exams | List of other toppers

Work hard and smart

Nothing beats hard work but towards the later stage of your preparation, you need the edge of smart work to rise above the others. Revise and master the concepts and rules taught in study material and classes. Attempt practice exercises and mock tests according to stipulated time and have the attitude – How can I get even a single question wrong?

The practice material that you have is not to be covered for the sake of being covered. It is not a formality – You have to learn from your mistakes. If you get a single question wrong on a practice exercise/test, then this question has something that evaded you.

Analyse the question to figure out how does the right answer compare with your wrong choice and why did you get attracted to the wrong answer.

Figure out:

1) Is there a certain rule / concept that I did not know?

2) Is there a rule/concept that I knew but I could not apply as I did not get the hint or keyword?

3) Did the question just evade me and I just do not know how to crack the question?

The solution for all three is to research the question, learn or revise the concept.

Mental preparation

Even though you have spent the last several months preparing for the exam, you are probably feeling slightly anxious about the prelims. In addition to developing an approach to every section of the exam, you need to be mentally prepared for the challenges presented by the exam. Most test takers feel some anxiety, and the most prepared are those who have worked hard and learnt to manage that anxiety. Having a plan to manage stress is essential for achieving your optimal score.

Be positive

If you encounter a situation expecting to be successful, you are much more likely to be successful than if you expect to fail. Consider the following two statements by two students:

1) I am never going to get this. If I mess the prelims, I will be a failure in life.

2) I am well prepared and deserve to do my best. I know what to expect and I am ready to succeed.

You will take no time to figure out which student is going to do better. Whether it is looking in a mirror and saying affirming statements or writing a positive thought on your rough paper on test day, it is very important to go into the actual exam expecting to be successful. If you expect to fail why would you be at the test in the first place?

This can be a difficult exercise at first, but you must get yourself in a frame of mind to succeed. When you dwell on negative thoughts, your mind is not free to work on the test. Trust that you are well prepared. If you have attended all the classes, done self-study and put the requisite hard work, you are better prepared than most of the population. Have the confidence that you are going to be great!

Know the test

When you take an aptitude test such as the civil services prelims, you have a lot of work to complete in a limited amount of time. Mastering the huge quantum of the syllabus, by its very design, makes the civil service exams a stressful experience. However, you have worked hard and learned how it works, and you know what to expect.

To keep in mind:

• Handle the easy question with extreme caution. Most of the aspirants will get an easy question right. Even you will get it right, but even on an easy question, there is a chance of you making a silly mistake. So, if a question seems easy to you, take a moment extra to double check on the answer, before you finalise and choose the answer.

• A hard question on the test is a good sign, not a bad one. A bulk of students would not have prepared properly for the exam and such students will not be able to handle a difficult question. Remember that you have to “earn” the hard questions on this test. The hard questions are the differentiating factor as they separate the grains from the chaff. By getting difficult questions right, you ensure your selection to the next stage.

• If a question looks really strange or too difficult for you, take a breath and remain calm. Try to figure out what is it testing, and apply the appropriate technique. If you are absolutely stumped, just move on. Maintain the pacing and approach you have learned from your mock/practice tests. Do not let a horrible question shake your confidence.

• Accuracy vs attempts: Your selection does not depend on attempting more questions, but on getting more questions right. The sword of Negative Marking also hangs on your head.

• As much as mock tests serve as “dress rehearsals’, practice tests are not quite the same as the “real” tests. This is where visualisation techniques come into play. If possible, visit the test centre a day your actual exam. Get a feel of the centre’s layout. At most test centres, you will be able to see the testing room through a window in the lobby. This will help you simulate the actual exam in your mind in your last few days of preparation. There are two important keys to visualisation: See yourself succeeding and imagine yourself overcoming every obstacle. You are unstoppable. You have prepared hard to be successful and you deserve to be successful.

Control physiological responses to anxiety

It’s normal to feel a little nervous on the day of a big event. Your breathing gets shallow, and you may even feel a little sick in your stomach. Take a deep breath to overcome these symptoms. Close your eyes and imagine that your torso is an empty cylinder. Take a deep breath, filling the cylinder. Slowly release all the air from the top of the cylinder to the bottom. You will feel that you have started to relax within the first few breaths. Your breathing should be deep and regular.

This exercise will generally take about half a minute. It is time well spent because folks who are highly stressed are not going to give their best performance. Once you have given your brain that little extra oxygen and focused on the task at hand rather than on your stress, get back to the test and start cracking the questions.

Take care of yourself

In the days leading up to the test, try to get regular exercise and adequate sleep. Exercise, even a short walk, helps you manage your stress. You may have a little trouble sleeping the night before the test, so you want to be well rested in the days leading up to the test. To be at your best, your body must be conditioned to be awake and ready to work at the time that your test paper is given.

Become accustomed to waking up at the proper time for the entire week leading up to the test. It is also important not to go to bed at a ridiculously early hour the night before the exam. Fourteen hours of sleep the night before the test is not necessary, and any deviation from the sleep schedule you have established in the final week is a dangerous idea.

Continue with visualisation techniques

The final week leading up to the prelims can inspire all kinds of negative thinking. Being excited about the test is normal, even helpful. Letting the importance of the prelims inspire feeling of dread is not. Use your stress management techniques to keep yourself in focus through the end of the exam: Now is not the time to start thinking that you are going to fail.

Night before the test

Do not over study the evening before your test. Your performance depends on your work over the last several months, not in the last few hours before the exam. Have a light dinner or watch a movie. Do not do any more practice work because you are as ready as you are going to be.

Final word

It is important that you chase success in the exam with the single-mindedness of a cricketer who wants to win at least the man of the match award, if not the man of the series award. What is most important is just to retain your cool and take the exam with the attitude of a winner. You can be the master of your destiny if your attitude is right.

(Gupta is the director of Rau’s IAS Study Circle. The views expressed here are personal)

Source: Hindustan Times, 5-08-2016

Education Above All

MAULANA WAHIDUDDIN KHAN





According to a tradition, one night in 610 AD, the Prophet of Islam was secluded in the cave of Mount Hira. Suddenly , the angel Gabriel appeared and said, “O Muhammad, read!“ Prophet Muhammad, being unlettered, said, “I cannot read.“The angel again said, “O Muhammad, read!“ The Prophet repeated his answer. For the third time, the angel said, “O Muhammad, read!“ But again the prophet said he could not read.
Then the angel embraced him and he began reading the revealed words. This story gives a great lesson: a lesson of struggle. It should be interpreted as meaning: read even if you cannot read, learn even if you cannot learn. From then on, the prophet and his companions availed of every opportunity to acquire learning and education. Later, after the migration to Medina in 622 AD, the Prophet and his companions were attacked by the Meccans.
The Prophet and his companions won the war and were able to capture 70 of their opponents. But the Prophet of Islam did not mete out any punishment to them. They were educated persons. The Prophet told them that if any of them could educate 10 of Medina's children, his service would be accepted as ransom and he would be set free.
It was more than likely that these people might again start a war against the Prophet. But judging by this incident, the Quranic message is that even if you are unlettered, try to learn, and learn even if you have no teachers other than those with whom you do not have good relations.

UGC amends anti-ragging regulations

The changes are incorporated in the Curbing the Menace of Ragging in Higher Educational Institutions (third amendment), Regulations, 2016, which have come into force.

Harassing a student from the north-east on the basis of ethnicity or a Bihari student on the basis of regional background can now lead to expulsion or rustication, among other punishments, in higher educational institutions.

The University Grants Commission has amended its anti-ragging regulations to include physical or mental abuse on grounds of ethnicity, caste, religion, colour, regional background, linguistic identity, nationality and sexual orientation. Earlier, ragging was defined as teasing and physical or psychological harm of different kinds.

“There are plenty of complaints of such harassment on campuses. They range from the use of a particular derogatory word to address students from the north-east to the seemingly innocuous ‘Bihari’ or ‘Bhaiyya’ being disparagingly used for students from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh,” an official of the UGC told The Hindu. “All these can now be seen as coming under the ambit of ragging and can attract punishment.”

Publicity

The Human Resource Development released Rs. 5-crore to the UGC in the last financial year to publicise this, sources say. The publicity material includes an FM Radio message on calling a student “rustic” (ganwaar) to a film featuring cricketer Virat Kohli, said an official. Posters and messages have also been dispatched to universities and colleges to spread awareness. 

Wider meaning

Officials said the UPA government had set the ball rolling after an Arunachal Pradesh student, Nido Tania, died of injuries he suffered in an assault at a market in south Delhi.

The changes are incorporated in the Curbing the Menace of Ragging in Higher Educational Institutions (third amendment), Regulations, 2016, which have come into force.

Ragging now means not just physical or mental hurt caused to a fresher. It covers “any other student” too, meaning a senior student inflicting harm on another senior student is also ragging. The rules kick in if the harm is caused anywhere on a campus or even in a campus transport facility. The anti-ragging committee of the institution can debar violators from classes, fellowships and examinations, withhold results and order suspension from hostel, rusticate and even order expulsion from the institution, depending on the severity of the offence. 

Press Release Source | The Hindu | 3 August 2016

 

Amendment available at | http://www.ugc.ac.in/pdfnews/7823260_Anti-Ragging-3rd-Amendment.pdf

Communal violence deprive minorities of their sense of belonging: SC

Religious minorities are “as much children of the soil as the majority” and nothing should be done by the majority community to deprive them of a sense of belonging, of a feeling of security, the Supreme Court observed in a judgment condemning repeated incidents of communal violence targeting minority communities.

A Bench of Chief Justice of India T.S. Thakur and U.U. Lalit said the State’s actions should never cause minorities to fear the extinguishment of their “consciousness of equality."

The measure of civilisation prevalent in a nation is the extent to which its Minorities feel secure and are not subject to discrimination or suppression, the apex court held in a judgment directing the re-investigation of 315 cases of communal violence against Christians in the 2008 Kandhamal riots in Odisha.

Over 230 Christian religious establishments and 39 people were killed in the riots. The State Police arrested 6495 persons and registered 827 cases of communal violence. However, chargesheets were filed in only 512 cases. The police concluded that no offence or offender could be detected in the remaining 315 cases.

The apex court expressed its chagrin at the snail-paced delivery of justice to the victims even though eight years have passed since the violence. “Trials have been completed only in 362 which resulted in conviction in 78 cases while 284 cases ended in acquittal and only 15 appeals have been filed,” it noted. But it refused to order a CBI probe.

In a judgment authored by Justice Lalit for the Bench, the apex court pointed to the case of the 2013 Muzzafarnagar riots in Uttar Pradesh to hold that both the Centre and the State where the communal violence occurred were obliged to shell out additional compensation to be paid to the victims.

“Incidents of communal violence had occurred in and around Muzaffarnagar in the year 2013 and that the State itself had decided to pay compensation… We have considered the scales at which compensation has been granted and disbursed in the present matter. In our view the ends of justice would be met if the State Government and the Central Government are directed to pay additional compensations,” the apex court observed.

The judgment is the last in a series of orders passed by the Supreme Court since 2008 on a batch of petitions filed by several persons, including Arch Bishop Raphael Cheenath, highlighting the failure on part of State of Odisha to protect innocent people whose human rights were violated after the unfortunate assassination of Swami Laxmanananda Saraswati and some others on August 23, 2008 by Maoists.

The apex court orders over the past years spans a variety of issues which followed the violence, including proper and adequate facilities in refugee camps, steps to prevent communal violence, to provide adequate compensation to the victims of communal violence, to order institution of a Commission of Inquiry, etc.

Keywords: Kandhamal riots, attack on minorities, communal riots

Source: The Hindu, 4-08-2016

Reforms and the disabled

The history of codification of the rights of the disabled coincides with the era of reforms.

Any assessment of the economic reforms of the past 25 years could well do with some understanding of their impact on people with disabilities in India. Indeed, in view of the negligible levels of participation of people with various impairments in economically productive activity, the influence of these sweeping policy changes would seem at best minimal. In the event, even the staunchest critic of liberalisation would have to acknowledge that the greatest legislative and policy changes since Independence that affect such a large section of our population have been initiated in the post-privatisation phase. A plausible explanation of this post-protectionist paradox may be found in the need for greater regulation under more market-oriented conditions.

Codifying rights for the disabled

Most curiously, the history of codification of the rights of people with disabilities coincides more or less with the commencement of the era of economic reforms. Even though legal guarantees enshrined under the Constitution were read into judicial and executive decisions during earlier decades, they were notably few and far between, informed largely by an ad hoc approach to addressing issues, or at times a spillover from an activist judiciary.

It was the landmark Persons with Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995, over four years after the reforms, which stipulated specific provisions concerning equal opportunities to basic education, employment, and accessibility. Every policy advance, or its absence, witnessed since that path-breaking legislation has turned on these three fundamental ingredients critical to a better quality of life. Since the passage of that comprehensive law, the lot of the disabled had moved, one might say, from a mode of thinking akin to the Directive Principles of State Policy discourse, to a more robust, Fundamental Rights approach to matters.

Any serious evaluation of what people with disabilities have gained in these past 25 years would probably have to begin with showcasing the political will India’s leadership displayed to generate the very tools to arrive at such an independent and impartial assessment. That was the bold decision the National Democratic Alliance government took to canvass disabilities in the 2001 decennial population census. The real import of the measure becomes apparent when we consider that the 1981 census was the lone exception to the otherwise routine exclusion of this category from the countrywide exercise since Independence.

As per the 2011 enumeration, India is home to 26.8 million people with disabilities, whereas other estimates put the figure at about thrice that number. Census 2011 also shows that 54.5 per cent of people with disabilities in India are literate — a 5.2 percentage point improvement over the previous decade.

Jobs and the open economy

Under liberalisation, employment opportunities have expanded into the private sector, almost unthinkable hitherto. Employers such as ITC, Lemon Tree Hotels, Mphasis, Wipro, and so many others have seen the economic wisdom behind playing on the strengths, rather than the impairments, of our manpower. Notable here are also the equality and diversity norms that the corporate sector is beginning to incorporate in its hiring practices. It would be hard to overlook the direct benefits flowing from the adoption of an open economy in these respects.

In the arena of state employment, the more industrious and enterprising among the disabled have, aided by the Supreme Court’s proactive interpretations of the equal opportunities provisions in the 1995 law, entered the corridors of the administrative services. There are athletes with disabilities who have brought laurels to the country. Access at polling booths seems to have become almost irreversible since the apex court’s landmark 2004 ruling stipulating easy access through ramps. The greater visibility for disability-related concerns in our media is also part of this broad picture of inclusion, howsoever restricted.

The Government of India has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and corresponding domestic legislation is in the making. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flagship initiatives such as the Sugamya Bharat Abhiyan — designed to bridge physical barriers — are encouraging signs. Yet, they cannot conceal the impatience among disabled people with the glaring disparities that stare us in the face every day.

The census and other data discussed above in fact capture this dismal reality. Of the literate among the disabled, only 8.5 per cent boast a graduate degree, as per the 2011 census. A mere 21.1 per cent of Indian schools adhere to inclusive education for children with disabilities; just 1.32 per cent of teachers have been equipped with the relevant special skills training. This finding of a survey by the National Council of Educational Research and Training points to the challenges in relation to employability. As much as 73.9 per cent of disabled people in the employable age are either non-workers or marginal workers.

These are the numbers that should worry us, and prod us into action. Women with disabilities are most vulnerable to exploitation, as also people with psycho-social impairments and those hard of hearing. The revised National Building Code of India and the corresponding revision of State bylaws can potentially break many of these barriers provided elements of universal design are incorporated.

Javed Abidi is Honorary Director of the National Centre for Promotion of Employment for Disabled People and founder of the Disability Rights Group.

Keywords: UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act 1995, open economhy, National Council of Educational Research and Training, NCERT, National Building Code of India

Source: The Hindu, 4-08-2016

The everyday violence of technology

The gadgets we use everyday are a seduction that takes us away from dealing with the messiness of relating with other people.

It is difficult reading newspapers these days or watching the news on TV. News is disproportionately full of stories of terror, wars, and of people killing each other. Between these stories are those of people dying in road accidents, children falling into borewells, or drunken rich kids driving over people instead of on the road.

These events seem to be happening outside us, but we are an integral part of this continuous mayhem through our common use of technology. Almost all the gadgets we use as part of our everyday ‘peaceful’ life have some relationship to violence and war. Today’s wars (and there is a war being fought every minute of the day somewhere or the other in the world) are not only fought on the ground, with lumbering tanks and infantry soldiers. They are fought through communication and digital technologies. As the Gulf War showed, soldiers participated in wars as if they were playing video games.

The gadgets we use everyday — mobiles, laptops and tablets, for example — have all benefitted from research that has been, in one way or the other, linked to military technology. More importantly, it is the impersonal character of technology that makes modern-day war so detached, much like a game being played on a screen, and it is the same impersonal character that is greatly influencing our children and the younger generation.

Sense of alienation

Our fascination for technological gadgets does not seem to be constrained in any sense. I have seen doting parents and grandparents who are proud of two- and three-year-olds who know how to notionally operate their iPads even before they can speak properly. Children in better-off schools are more comfortable with their laptops than with their textbooks. This, in itself, is not a problem but what is a problem is the unthinking use of technology, as if every technological product is a great boon for humankind.

The real problem with these new technologies is the alienation and individualisation that they create in their users. As most middle-class parents would attest, it is becoming more and more difficult for them to conduct conversations with their own children since the kids are either on their phones or on some fancy digital gadget. When children meet each other today, it is not to sit around and talk, or physically play with each other. Rather, it is often a collective sitting around one of their phones or watching a video site.

Being immersed in the world of gadgets, children tend to grow up without knowing how it is to relate to other people without the mediation of such gadgets. A child, and increasingly adults, now relates to another person only if there are common technological markers between them. We are increasingly losing the skill and practice of being with others, just sitting with another, laughing at a joke or even talking about something without it having to be exhibited in a handheld machine. Now kids play cricket and football lounging on their beds without ever knowing what it is to smell dust or get their skin grazed on the ground.

The latest craze of the Pokémon Go game is another illustration of the danger of the unthinking consumption of technology. When you look at hordes of people running around with their phones in their hands, literally searching for ghosts around them, you have to wonder at the state we have come to. Ironically, there are many articles on the positive effects of this obsession. One player claimed that he now goes for walks thanks to this game; another noted that she has discovered the park near her house because of this game. Others argue that this game not only makes people physically active but also makes them more social — as if we need these gadgets to perform these basic human actions.

So what really is the problem in this immersion in the technological world? The first problem is that of autonomy. Scholars have for long argued that one of the central tenets of modern society is the legitimisation of individual autonomy. This autonomy is merely the right of each one of us to reason for ourselves, to decide what we want to do, and to recognise that we are the final judge of our decisions. The greatest danger about technology is the danger to this sense of human autonomy. Those who say that the Pokémon Go game makes them go for walks are basically saying that they cannot on their own decide to go for a walk. One would have thought that deciding to go for a walk is a simple example of autonomous action. But now it is the game that functions as the agency for this decision.

Present-day mental health

Do we really choose our technology in any sense? We, as common people, do not. We have very little choice in creating the technologies that we want. Not only that, personal technologies are so designed so as to make them addictive. Those who believe that technologies are created for the good of humankind must realise that almost no technological product appears in our world today without the motive of profit. We close our eyes to the addictive nature by saying how functional technology is, but our use of technology always transcends the functional. Today, addiction to email, Facebook, the Internet, cell phones and digital gadgets are medical conditions which afflict an increasing number of people leading to new challenges for mental health. And those who are not afflicted as yet are not really too far behind — just imagine how we will respond if our phones, TV and computers stop working as of this moment!

Technologies are a seduction that take us away from dealing with the messiness of relating with other people, that allow us to indulge in our desires without any mediation or control, that give us a sense of power which transcends limitations. In desiring these, in allowing ourselves to be seduced by gadgets that increase the power at our fingertips, we are not asserting our autonomy but merely acting without a sense of responsibility.

Sundar Sarukkai is a philosopher based in Bengaluru.

Keywords: everyday violence, technological development, mobiles, laptops, tablets, common use of technology

Source: The Hindu, 4-08-2016

The new child labour law will pull children out of classrooms

When it comes to children, India continues to be an uncertain nation. It can’t decide whether its vast population of children is a responsibility, a resource or a liability. Our national confusion has found its latest expression in the new child labour law passed by both houses of Parliament in July. Between this law and the various noises currently being made in draft policy documents, there is a vast gap. Apparently, the ministry of human resource development (HRD) has chosen to ignore these gaps. Perhaps the task of drafting a new, coherent policy on education has proved much too exhausting under the circumstances.

Two years ago when the former minister for HRD, Smriti Irani, mooted the idea of a new national policy, it was welcomed. Details of the 1986 policy had faded, therefore no one thought of assessing its performance and status. Views were gathered from village and district levels, and a committee chaired by TSR Subramanian was set up to draft a document on the basis of this vast amount of data about what ordinary people want to see in a national policy. A few months ago, reports stated that the drafting committee had submitted its report, but the ministry declined to release it, saying it must first gather feedback from the states. Unhappy with this argument, Subramanian went ahead and released the report himself. As if these developments were not disconcerting enough, Irani , who had initiated the policy drafting process, had her portfolio changed in a Cabinet reshuffle, and a new minister — the fourth in seven years — took over HRD.

A new document has been uploaded on the ministry’s website. It has a strange title: Some Inputs for Draft National Educational Policy 2016. Normally, governments don’t provide inputs; they receive inputs from others. One wonders what message the ministry wants to convey by saying that it is providing ‘some inputs’. The phrase can be interpreted either as a sign of unusual modesty or something ominous —that only the ministry can provide inputs. Several of the ideas included in the “Inputs” document are drawn from the Subramanian committee report. The difference is that these ideas have now been put across more mildly. A common weakness in both documents is the absence of a string to tie the various ideas together into a coherent whole. There are sections where the second paragraph contradicts the first. One example is the section that first critiques the examination system and then recommends annual exams after Class V. This will violate the Right to Education (RTE) law promulgated six years ago.

The absence of a coherent vision has intensified with the passage of the child labour amendment Act. If the President gives his assent to this Act, the agenda of educational reforms will receive a body blow. The Act not only legitimises children’s involvement in lucrative activities, but also opens the door for all kinds of industries to hire adolescents. Even younger children, who are covered by the RTE can now join the income-generating activities of the family after school hours or during vacations. All these allowances have been made in the name of “practicality” or adjustment with the so-called Indian reality — a euphemism for poverty. The new child labour law will make RTE a pleasant memory and the dream of extending it to Class 10 a foolish dream. It will also take the last shred of substance out of the rhetoric of India’s demographic dividend. India’s vast population of adolescents and youth will now serve as an army of semi-educated workers available at low wages for low-tech industries.

With the passage of the new child labour Act, India has taken a giant leap backwards. The gains made over several decades of research and advocacy, judicial intervention and political mobilisation are being tossed away. The idea that children have rights took a vast global effort to get established as a UN Convention. The fact that India signed it was no routine matter. Our preparedness to shift millions of children from the labour market to schools was poor. It took two flagship national missions, sustained over two decades, to achieve a semblance of universal enrolment in the early primary classes. Universalising enrolment at the upper primary stage, i.e. Classes 6 to 8 posed a tougher challenge. And now, when this prolonged effort was approaching success, the revised child labour Act moots the facetious idea that schooling and earning can go together. Millions of little boys and girls can now join the two ends of a glass bangle over a burning candle when they return from school in the afternoon. I saw this activity in several homes in Firozabad a few years ago. It gave me an idea of what hell might be like. Bangle-joining is predominantly a family-run business. Along with beedi rolling, it has now been deleted from the list of hazardous occupations in the new child labour law.

As for girls’ education, the new Act implies a terrible setback. The permission it grants for letting children work in family enterprises after the school hours will soon pull the daughters of poor parents out of school. The exhaustion of work, compounded by chronic malnourishment, can be guaranteed to affect their performance at school. If the new educational policy brings the “pass-fail” system back to upper primary classes, we can easily imagine the consequences. Children, especially girls, belonging to labour families will “fail” and get disqualified for further education.

Krishna Kumar is professor of education at Delhi University and former director NCERT

Source: Hindustan Times, 4-08-2016