BJP-Linked Student Body Slams Finance Secretary's Education Budget Comment
NDTV
"Pushing more money into education will achieve nothing," Finance Secretary TV Somanathan had said in an interview last week.
A comment by India's Finance Secretary TV Somanathan that "pushing more money into education will achieve nothing" has found an unlikely critic - the student body of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the ideological parent of the country's ruling BJP.
In an interview with The Hindu newspaper last week, the top bureaucrat defended the central government's decisions in this year's budget and appeared to suggest that the country's quality of education will not improve even if the government invests more money.
"It's not quantity in education. It is quality, whether the teacher attends the school. Does he teach well? Does he make the child do homework? Does he not just pass the child whether the child has learned or not? These are not money. So actually pushing more money into education will achieve nothing," he said, arguing that India has more than enough school teachers.
More funding for higher education too will only be "a sop to the conscience of the intelligentsia that we are doing something for it" and what is required, he said, was to "depoliticise the university".
