Chennai: Navodaya schools to provide quality education for rural kids

Chennai: Rajiv Gandhi as Prime Minister had initiated the concept of Navodaya Schools to attract the BPL (below-poverty-line) students, particularly in rural areas, by providing them with quality education at affordable cost. “If you see the places where Navodaya schools are located across India, you will find them mostly in rural areas. Rajiv had wanted high quality education to be provided to the poor and downtrodden. At that time, there was no RTE (Right to Education) that provides the poor 25 per cent reservation of seats in private schools”, recalled a senior educationist in Chennai.

Requesting anonymity “for obvious reasons”, he said, “Navodaya schools have Hindi as one of the languages taught. But unfortunately, our people (Tamil Nadu) had misunderstood that Hindi would be the medium of instruction and that meant a backdoor entry of alien Hindi into the Dravidian State. Consequently, our students, particularly from the poor and oppressed classes, have been denied quality education at very nominal cost”.

Another seasoned educationist recalled that Rajiv Gandhi had not wanted to allocate the Navodaya funds to the politicians and chose to have them financially administered by the principals of the concerned schools.

“Hindi apart, one reason why our thalaivars and the vested interests stoutly opposed Navodaya schools was that this system would do away with corruption and commissions we normally experience in most of the government educational institutions.”, said a retired headmaster, who was ‘nervous’ being named.