Swarajya Punctuations With Union HRD Minister Prakash Javadekar

Ten months into his job, the Union Minister for Human Resource Development has brought in a certain steadying influence to the stewardship of the ministry. Unlike his immediate predecessor, whose combative approach landed her frequently in controversy, the soft-spoken Javadekar has largely stayed under the radar.

In a free-wheeling interview with Swarajya at his home office, Javadekar responded to a range of questions on the education sector. We began by asking him about ideas such as the national-level law capping private school fees that has come to the fore recently. (He ruled out plans for any such law by the centre.)

The minister also shared his perspective on the closure of several low-cost private schools due to RTE (Right to Education) and also the discriminatory provisions of the law that privileges minority institutions over others.

The minister shared with us his plan of freeing education from the control of the bureaucracy, his views on the distortion of history as taught in NCERT textbooks and the New Education Policy. We asked him the rationale behind the continuation of an exclusive educational scholarship scheme for religious minorities (a scheme that Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his earlier stint as Gujarat chief minister, opposed and mounted a legal challenge).

Javadekar also spoke about the transformation initiatives of his ministry, including the MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) platform, Swayam, and the new ‘institutions of eminence’ bill that will keep 20 selected universities free of regulatory shackles with the intention to make them globally competitive.