All India University Employees Confederation (AIUEC), a conglomerate of different unions of university employees across India, has planned a nation-wide protest on Wednesday opposing New National Education Policy 2020.
Addressing a media conference here on Monday, AIUEC general secretary M.B. Sajjan said that more than three lakh non-teaching staff from all universities across India would participate in the two-hour agitation and submit a memorandum to the President through the vice-chancellors of their respective universities demanding the withdrawal of NEP 2020.
“The NEP 2020 is designed to reduce the quality of education at all levels, widen the disparities in educational facilities and opportunities and reduce the educational access to rural poor, Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and other disadvantaged sections. It does not speak of reservation in education. It is going to sharply centralise the education system, eroding federalism and the rights of the States. It is going to demolish public education and open the door for extensive privatisation of education in the name of true philanthropic institutions,” Mr. Sajjan said.
When asked about the alternative models of education mentioned in the NEP 2020, Mr. Sajjan said that the provision was meant for creating space for irrational education, more specifically, saffornisation of education.
“The purpose of the provision is to make some space for right wing organisations in the field of education to officially enter the academic sphere and inculcate right wing ideology in the young minds right from the beginning. This would amount to distorting history to rewrite it in accordance with the tunes of their venomous and divisive ideology,” he said.