New Education for new Manipur 3

You are here: Home » education » New Education for new Manipur

E-Pao! Education - Completely new education for a new Manipur - 3

Completely new education for a new Manipur
— With special reference to the hills —
Part 3

By: T. Vunglallian *

It is time to use the surgeon's scalpel and lope off the deadwood and the diseased amongst the schools and colleges of Manipur... and make 'survival of the fittest' and the best, the credo to live by! So that more and more of our young will stay home to study and enrich the land.

The above selected eight points are a few amongst many more, but are enough to prove the overall failure of the planners, controllers, managers and executors of Manipur's education, both school ('lower'?) and college ['higher'(!)] education. And, at the end of the day, three glaring facts regarding Education in Manipur are revealed, viz:

Manipur has proved to be miserably incapable of running its 3000 plus Government schools and 25 general government colleges that together employ about 30,000 teachers! (There being not much to write home about her university and technical institutions, except that the former Vice-Chancellor, Dr. Bijoy Singh and his team did the seemingly impossible, by bringing the much joked 5-year BA/BSc Degree Course and the 3-yr MA/MSc Course back to a 3-year and 2 year course respectively, through the most difficult task of compressing courses and holding the back-log of university examinations in rapid succession... so that today MU is back to the once elusive zero-year!).
Pointedly, as school statistics are unreliable (and so deliberately left out), the above means that the Government has not been able to manage even the fewer 1100 or so lecturers employed in 18 (general) government colleges located in a valley of a mere 2,234 sq. km. and the 7 (seven) government colleges (general) spread out over 20,085 sq. km of hills!
Consequently, Manipur is going through great money and brain drain! And no one seems to care!

This writer, therefore – just as he did three years ago, as a Member of the Manipur State Higher Education Commission – once again, 3 years later, proposes for a serious start with - the creation of two separate services along with a policy of life-time service in one institution ('life-time' meaning a teacher's entire service life).
This writer is convinced that the above are the radical and practical steps that can usher in a new education for a new Manipur.

Even a separate cadre for hills will not do. Nothing less than what he proposes will do!

The two services being–

"Manipur Hills Education Service" (MHES), and
"Manipur Valley Education Service" (MVES)

wherein, the existing teachers who opt for and/or are newly appointed in a Service, remain in that one service till retirement, with no possibility (ever) of inter-change or exchange or mutual transfer or deputation etc.

The corner stones of these two separate Services would be:-

(a) Each Service is to have its own separate Minister (independent-charge), a separate Commissioner/ Secretary, Director and a separate Directorate each.

Note: It is important that such Directorates be manned by a minimum number of school and college teacher-officials, who shall be posted on utilization of services basis, strictly on a 3-year tenure only, after which they must get back to teaching.

This necessitates that such teacher-official be ren- own and respected "teaching teachers" in the age group of 45-50 yrs. i.e. no one below 45 and above 50 yrs. should sit in the Directorate, as the assignment entails touring for 15-20 days of a month, visiting and staying in schools and colleges under the respective Directorates.

(The idea behind having completely separate and independent - of each other - services is that there shall, hereafter, never again be the question of transfers from hill to valley, or vice-versa, at the cost of one. The bane of the old system was that transfers seemed to be always take place at the cost of the hills!)

(b) The two new services/entities would provide the much needed level playing field, also encourage healthy competition between the two services... something that could constantly help raise the bar in Manipur's quest for quality school and quality college education.

(c) Being independent and separate – but still affiliated to MU - each would have ample opportunities to adopt, adapt, reform, restructure, reinvent and innovate etc. for their own and the good of the public they serve... in their own place, speed and time.

Each would be able to set things in motion to suit the students, place/region and society they serve.

Each would be able to inculcate – perhaps even enforce - the much-needed new work culture and the new mind-set amongst all stakeholders... starting with teachers and principals... who, till date, this writer is sorry to comment... have been trying their best to do the least possible work for maximum pay!
(With due apologies to the rare and shining true ojhas that can still be found in a few schools and colleges).

(d) Given the above, for once, the endless exodus of our students and our economic/ brain drain would stand a better chance of being checked.

Perhaps even stopped.

And, hopefully in stead, students from other states could begin to pour in... and Manipur could have an economic boom on and of its own! So that an end to begging for additional central funds could become a thing of the past.

Note: Many in Manipur put the No.1 reason for exodus of our students on the lack of "security" and hint at things all Manipuris are darkly familiar with.

This writer thinks that though there is quite a lot of truth in "security" reasons, the more real truth is that 'security reasons' are a convenient cover-up for Manipur's own systemic failure in planning, managing... everything and anything... to do with its clueless Departments of Education, plethora of uninspiring schools, colleges, teachers and their Heads... the majority having simply become indifferent!

But to get back to the matter, rather the future, which is more important, this writer further proposes, for a good start, an immediate but very long-term Vision.

Read Part 1 | Read Part 2 | Read Part 3 | Read Part 4 | Read Part 5 | Read Part 6 | Read Part 7 | Read Part 8 | Read Part 9 | Read Part 10 | Read Part 11 |

T. Vunglallian wrote this article for The Sangai Express. The writer is a retired Lecturer of Churachandpur College. This article was webcasted on November 14th, 2006.

* Comments posted by users in this discussion thread and other parts of this site are opinions of the individuals posting them (whose user ID is displayed alongside) and not the views of e-pao.net. We strongly recommend that users exercise responsibility, sensitivity and caution over language while writing your opinions which will be seen and read by other users. Please read a complete Guideline on using comments on this website.