Corporatisation of Higher Education - Sign Online Petition to Prime Minister

Please read the petition and sign it if you agree with it.

http://www.petitiononline.com/AIFRTE/

 

Dear All,

 

We are approaching you on behalf of the All India Forum for Right to Education (AIF-RTE). An Online Petition to the Prime Minister regarding higher education is attached for your endorsement. Simultaneously, a signature campaign on university and college campuses is being launched across the country. The petition is planned to be presented to the Prime Minister in the third week of February 2011.

 

The petition is concerned with the crisis that the Indian higher (including professional) education is undergoing as a result of the rapid pace of the neo-liberal assaults. Public funding is steadily being withdrawn. Public-private partnership (PPP), foreign direct investment (FDI) and Foreign Universities are all part of the deeper malaise. Unregulated fee hikes are raising the cost of education beyond the economic capacity of even the middle class and increasingly forcing the parents to sell their property in order to afford higher education for their children.

 

In its latest move, the central government placed four Bills in the Parliament in May 2010, including one on facilitating the establishment of Foreign Educational Institutions in India. At least two more Bills in the same vein are ready to be placed. These Bills seem to be pre-requisites for bringing higher education under the WTO-GATS regime. Indeed, these policy shifts call for a nation-wide public protest and reconstruction of the higher education policy to ensure equal opportunity for quality education to the widest possible sections of society as per the Constitution.

 

AIF-RTE staged a dharna on 26^th July 2010 outside the gate of the Ministry of HRD in New Delhi and presented a Memorandum on these issues to the Prime Minister but to no avail. On the same day, we also presented a Memorandum to the Chairperson, Department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on HRD with request that an AIF-RTE delegation be allowed to explain our stand to the Committee but we have not received any response so far.

 

Hence this online petition. Please read the petition and sign it if you agree with it.

http://www.petitiononline.com/AIFRTE/

 

Also, we need student and teacher volunteers to organize signature campaigns on university and college campuses all over the country. If interested, please email to us at aifrte.secretariat@gmail.com or contact at Tel.: (040) 2330-5266/ M: 09440980396 (Sh. Ramesh Patnaik)/  09431102680 (Dr. V.N. Sharma).

 

Yours sincerely,                

Members of the Presidium, All India Forum for Right to Education (AIF-RTE)

 

Sh. Prabhakar Arade, All India Federation of Elementary Teachers’ Organizations                    

Kolhapur, Maharashtra.

Dr. Meher Engineer, Former Director, Bose Institute, Kolkata.

Prof. G. Haragopal, Centre for Human Rights, University of Hyderabad.

Sh. Kedar Nath Pandey, General Secretary, Bihar Madhyamik Shikshak Sangh.

Prof. Madhu Prasad, Zakir Husain College, University of Delhi.

Prof. Anil Sadgopal, Former Dean, Faculty of Education, Delhi University (Bhopal, M.P.).

Sh. Sunil, Samajwadi Jan Parishad, Distt. Hoshangabad, M.P.

 

 

--

Dr.V.N.Sharma
Cell No.9431102680,
Member, Secretariat, All India Forum for Right to Education (AIF-RTE) 

& 

Working Committee Member, Jan Sansad