Days After NCERT Asserts Right To Modify Textbooks, 33 Academicians Urge It To Remove Their Names From The Books

Within a week after Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar dissociated themselves from the rationalised political science textbooks of the National Council for Educational Research and Training (NCERT), 33 academicians who were part of the textbook development committee (TDC) have followed suit.

They have written to the Council, requesting the removal of their names from the books.

This comes despite the Council last week asserting its right to make changes based on copyright ownership.

The 33 academicians were members of the textbook development committee in 2006-07, when the political science textbooks (currently being used in schools) were drafted.

In a letter addressed to NCERT director Dinesh Prasad Saklani, they expressed their concerns about how the recent rationalisation exercise has jeopardised their "creative collective effort."

“Since there are several substantive revisions of the original texts, making them thereby different books, we find it difficult to claim that these are the books we produced and to associate our names with them,” the letter written Wednesday reads, reports Indian Express.

Among the 33 academicians, are Kanti Prasad Bajpai, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Rajeev Bhargava, Niraja Gopal Jayal, Nivedita Menon, Vipul Mudgal, KC Suri, and Peter Ronald deSouza.

The letter by 33 academicians comes within a week of Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar's missive to the NCERT, where they sought to have their names removed from the books due to what they described as "irrational cuts and large deletions".

They stated that the recent textbook rationalisation exercise lacked any pedagogic justification and expressed embarrassment at being associated with what they termed "mutilated and academically dysfunctional" books.

In response to Yadav and Palshikar's letter, the NCERT released a public statement on 9 June highlighting that the textbook development committees, of which Palshikar and Yadav were members, ceased to exist once the books were published.

The copyright for the educational materials has since remained with the Council independent of the committee, it said.

It further stated that all members of the textbook development committee had agreed to this arrangement in writing.

"During the year 2005-2008, Textbook Development Committees (TDCs) were constituted by the NCERT for development of textbooks in various subjects for all classes. These committees were purely academic in nature and existed until the textbooks were developed," the NCERT said in the statement.

"After the textbooks were published by the NCERT, their copyright remained vested with the NCERT independent of the Textbook Development Committee (TDC)," it added.

"All members of the Textbook Development Committees (TDCs) had given their concurrence on this through written undertakings. Therefore, the roles of the members of the Textbook Development Committees in various capacities.... was limited to advising how to design and develop the textbooks or contributing to the development of their contents and not beyond this," the council said.

Textbooks at the school level are ‘developed’ based on the state of our knowledge and understanding on a given subject, the council said.

The Council had conducted a rationalisation exercise last year in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, which led to several changes in the textbook content.

The exercise involved dropping several chapters, paragraphs, and even sentences across subjects to reduce the curriculum burden on students.