The imposition of a nationwide ban on the screening of the BBC-commissioned documentary film India’s Daughter on March 4 by the Union government, supplemented by its futile efforts to persuade foreign governments to follow suit, is proof of a serious critical thinking skills deficit and reactionary mindset in the top echelons of the BJP/NDA coalition which swept to power in New Delhi with a record majority last summer.

On the flimsy excuse that producer-director Leslee Udwin interviewed an undertrial (whose appeal against a death sentence is pending in the Supreme Court) of the heinous gang-rape of a medical student christened Nirbhaya (‘fearless’) by the media in December 2012, Union home minister Rajnath Singh obtained a magistrate’s order restraining private broadcaster NDTV from screening the documentary on Women’s Day (March 8) and indefinitely. According to a government spokesperson, statements made by Mukesh, one of the convicts interviewed, were disrespectful of Nirbhaya and women in general, and broadcast of the documentary will prejudice the appeal, glorify the convict and show India in poor light.

While it’s disputable whether Udwin’s documentary, which has already been broadcast in Britain and the US and viewed by millions on internet video channels, is disrespectful of the brave Nirbhaya who fought back her attackers and was brutally violated as a consequence, it’s incontrovertible that the documentary does indeed show India in poor light, exposing the ills of a sick society. In the 62-minute film, not only the unrepentant and presumably uneducated rapist, but also qualified and certified lawyers authorised to practise law in the apex court, seem to be unaware of the basic commandments of the Constitution of India and Universal Declaration of Human Rights.   

Dispassionate clinical diagnosis is the precondition of all therapy, including social reform. The BJP/NDA government’s proscription of India’s Daughter is indicative of a reluctance to conduct an honest diagnosis of the gender inequality and patriarchy malaise which has made 21st century India hell on earth for women citizens. And this inhibition is rooted in awareness that the ugly face of Indian society — which a dispassionate diagnosis would reveal — is an identikit of the foot-soldiers, perhaps even leadership of the RSS, the ideological mentor of the BJP and wider sangh parivar, of which the BJP is a constituent unit.    

At a deeper level, the anxiety of the BJP/NDA government to brush the Nirbhaya issue under the carpet is reflective of its unwillingness to examine the connection between rising incidence of misogyny, gender crimes and the country’s rotten education system. Only a perverted education system can produce citizens with the callous attitude of Mukesh and the absurd reasoning of his duly qualified lawyers. There’s urgent need for government and society to make a dispassionate diagnosis of Indian education.

Don’t invite government trojan horse

The proposal of the newly elected Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government of Delhi state to regulate fees chargeable by the national capital region’s estimated 10,300 private schools is a retrograde and ill-advised initiative. For the past few years, parents associations led by the leftist NGO Social Jurist, have been routinely protesting tuition fee revisions of private schools, petitioning the courts to intervene. According to deputy chief minister Manish Sisodia, the Regulation of Collection of Fees Bill, 2015 is being drafted in response to a 2013 Delhi high court order directing the state government to frame a law to regulate tuition fees of schools promoted by private trusts and societies, even if completely independent of the Central and state governments.

Unsurprisingly, pitched battles between parents associations and private school managements over this issue are not unique to Delhi. Parents’ forums protesting tuition and other fee increases in private schools are ubiquitous countrywide. Themselves recipients of heavily subsidised higher education, and their minds scrambled by apex court judgements deploring “commercialisation of education”, parent communities have little patience for arguments advanced to periodically raise tuition fees to keep up with inflation and/or improve institutional infrastructure and teachers’ pay scales. Several state governments such as Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu have already enacted laws to regulate fees levied by private unaided schools. For instance, the Tamil Nadu Schools (Regulation of Fee) Act, 2009 has imposed a strict tuition fees ceiling on all private schools affiliated with the state’s examination board.

Although quite willing to pay market-determined prices for food, clothing, housing and luxury goods, India’s 200 million-strong middle class bridles at the prospect of market-driven school fees. To keep pace with inflation and pay government-prescribed Sixth Pay Commission scales and annual increments to teachers and staff, as also to meet the universal demand for ICT (information communication technologies) education, private schools have little option but to raise tuition fees annually.

Curiously, middle class parents rule out the option of enroling their children in free-of-charge state government schools. Indeed the merest suggestion of availing this free option outrages them. Vernacular government schools with their English language aversion, shoddy teaching and pathetic infrastructure, are not for their progeny, for whom they nurture great hopes and ambitions of assuming leadership positions in society.

Therefore instead of inviting the Trojan horse of government regulation of school fees in India’s small number of private schools which offer globally benchmarked and inspired K-12 education, parents communities would do well to establish strong PTAs (parent-teacher associations) to jointly determine tuition fees and annual increases. Parents who prefer to enroll their children in private independent schools need to accept the ground reality that inviting government regulation is an invitation to institutional corruption, decay and disaster.