Change name of HRD ministry to education, says RSS affiliate

(This article was originally published in The Economic Times on 01/10/2018.)
NEW DELHI: Change the name of the Ministry of HRD to Ministry of Education as it was before 1985 — this was one of the key suggestions at a conference organised by a Nagpurbased foundation linked to the RSS.

The idea was mooted by Ram Bahadur Rai, chairman of the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts and also chairman of the joint organising committee of the Conference on Academic Leadership on Education for Resurgence, held here on Saturday.

The proposal was discussed in detail by over 400 vice-chancellors and professors who attended the conference, organised by the Research for Resurgence Foundation, affiliated to the Bharatiya Shikshan Mandal.

Officials of the Bharaitya Shikshan Mandal told ET that the proposal needed to be taken up at the highest levels in the government. PM Modi and HRD minister Prakash Javadekar were present at the inaugural ceremony of the conference.

Suggesting that former PM Rajiv Gandhi had changed the name of the education ministry to HRD ministry in September 1985 under the advice of some “people who may have misled him”, Rai told ET, “Treating education or humans as resource is against Indian values that look at education more holistically.

The word ‘human resources’ reeks of mechanisation and commercialisation... whereas education ministry depicts what the ministry should focus on, making education accessible and universal, not just creating Industry-ready graduates.”

Rai said a lot of effort had gone into finalising the proposal, and that both Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, India’s first education minister and Humayun Kabir, India’s first education secretary, had made it clear in their correspondences to state education ministers and secretaries that “they wanted the ministry to focus on education with moral values”.

Former HRD minister Pallam Raju said the name was changed to the Ministry of HRD to increase its scope to include areas such as overall development and skilling — seen as essential components of education now.