Education at home scheme to be launched soon in Tamil Nadu, says CM Stalin

Chennai: A new scheme called ‘Education at Home’ would be launched formally in six months to teach children after school hours at places outside the classrooms by NGOs to enable them compensate for the loss due to the pandemic, Chief Minister M K Stalin said on Tuesday.

Addressing the second meeting of the State’s Economic Advisory Committee, Stalin recalled the advice given by the committee in the first meeting on teaching children after school and said the scheme would be started at a cost of Rs 200 crore.

He asked the eminent economists, Raghu Ram Raja, Esther Duflo, Jean Dreze, Aravind Subramanian and S Narayan, to find ways to rescue the people pushed to the brink in the post-Corona era and on the departments for which the government should seek investments in future.

The Chief Minister also wanted the committee to guide the State on using its special strengths particularly to generate jobs for the educated youth and also to reduce its debt burden.

Drawing the broad outline for the economic policies, Stalin said the government was for the poor and common people and hence whatever was done should be beneficial to the downtrodden people.

He also told the committee as to how the advice given by them earlier had helped the government devise schemes. The government had approached the Reserve Bank of India to work out schemes for the MSMEs and had shifted to e-governance in a big way, he said.

The advice given by Duflo on taking decisions based on data had prompted the government to rework its plan to write off jewel loans, which was an election promise, he said.

Based on data, it was found out that there were irregularities in the issuing of loans and the beneficiaries were identified based on evidence, he said.