Secessionist groups hijack anti-NEET movement in TN

The same secessionist elements that stirred up the Jallikattu agitation have hijacked the anti-NEET agitation

The same secessionist elements that stirred up the Jallikattu agitation have hijacked the anti-NEET agitation
The same secessionist elements that stirred up the Jallikattu agitation have hijacked the anti-NEET agitation

Secessionist groups and anti-National elements in Tamil Nadu have hijacked the agitation against the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), a qualifying examination for selection of candidates for undergraduate courses in medicine and dental science across India. The agitators got a convenient stick to beat both the State and Central governments when a 17-year-old girl S Anitha of Ariyalur committed suicide last Thursday following her failure to score the minimum qualifying marks in the NEET. Though she had scored fairly good marks in the Tamil Nadu State Board Examination, Anitha, belonging to a Scheduled Caste community failed miserably in the NEET which is the qualifying standard for admission to MBBS and BDS courses.

…Tamil Nadu government (whether it be that of the AIADMK or the DMK) has done nothing to improve the quality of the State Board Syllabus.

Team PGurus had reported about the anti-NEET agitation in Tamil Nadu by secessionist groups and professional demonstrators. The year 2016-2017 saw Tamil Nadu and certain other States managing to get an exemption from NEET from the Centre with a plea that the students in these States were not NEET compatible. Their contention was that the NEET was based on the CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Examination) syllabus followed in public schools while Tamil Nadu and some of the States where following the State Board syllabus, which is of a lower standard. The Centre, based on the recommendations of the Medical Council of India, has been sounding the States to have a uniform qualifying test for selection of candidates to the MBBS and BDS courses.

Tamil Nadu government has been arguing that the students from rural areas in the State would not be able to compete with their counterparts in cities and other States because the city-bred students were trained by private coaching centres for cracking the NEET. The poor rural students in the State cannot afford to attend such elite coaching classes and they would always be at a disadvantage against their counterparts in the cities, argued the Tamil Nadu government. While repeating this argument time and again, the truth is that Tamil Nadu government (whether it be that of the AIADMK or the DMK) has done nothing to improve the quality of the State Board Syllabus.

What went unnoticed and un discussed in this controversy was the fact that the Dravidian chauvinists have been denying the same rural students in the State the option of quality education. Tamil Nadu is the only State in the Union which does not have a single Navodaya Vidyalaya, a concept launched by the Union Human Resources Development ministry in 1985 to provide public school education free of cost to rural children all over the country.

There are nearly 600 Navodaya Vidyalayas in India (except in Tamil Nadu). Each district in the country has one Navodaya Vidyalaya in which 75 per cent of the seats is exclusively reserved for students from rural areas. Students are selected to the sixth standard based on a written test. The medium of instruction in classes 6 to 8 is in regional language. In classes 9 and 10, the medium of instruction is in the regional language and in English. In 11the and 12th standards, English is compulsory. While all States in the Union (Including the red citadel Kerala) welcomed the Navodaya Vidyalaya concept with open arms, Tamil Nadu said a big no to this innovative mission. The reason? “The Navodaya Vidyalaya is an attempt by the Centre to impose Hindi and Sanskrit on Tamil Nadu. These two languages are not welcome in Tamil Nadu,” the government pleader stated in Madras High Court recently when the Court hearing a petition on Navodaya Vidyalaya asked the State government why there were no such schools in the State. This means that there is an undeclared ban on Hindi and Sanskrit in Tamil Nadu. Moreover, the managements of private schools in Tamil Nadu do not want Navodaya Vidyalayas in the State because such schools would put an end to their swindling the hapless parents!

Had there been Navodaya Vidyalayas in Tamil Nadu, Anitha, the girl who committed suicide following her failure to clear the NEET, need not have resorted to the extreme step. The Navodaya Vidyalaya follows the CBSE syllabus and hence the students coming out of this stream would have been able to crack the NEET without any help from private coaching centres. Hence it could be concluded that the governments headed by the Dravidian parties themselves are to be blamed for Anita’s suicide.

Interestingly, the people who challenge the NEET is none other than the management of private schools and professional colleges. Prince Gajendra Babu, a Christian fundamentalist, masquerading as educationist is the prime force financing the agitation against the NEET. It is the private self-financing colleges which stand to lose once the admission to medical colleges is made through NEET. They would not be able to sell medical seats at the rate of Rs 1.88 crores per seat. If there is no NEET, the MBBS seats could be sold at premium rates. Remember, only students born to crorepati parents would be able to make it to medical colleges.

The last three days saw secessionist elements like Naam Tamizhar, May 1Movement, Viduthalai Chiruthai Katchi (VCK) and the Left parties with the active support of the DMK bringing normal life to a standstill. They portray Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the main villain in this episode too. They had blamed him for the Supreme Court ban on Jallikkattu and the decision of the then DMK government to allow hydrocarbon extraction project in Neduvasal. This time they burnt effigies of Modi all over Tamil Nadu.

Readers may kindly note that Anitha was not an ordinary Dalit girl. Her four brothers are all professionally qualified youth. The elder brother is an MBA waiting for a call letter from UPSC for a top job. The second brother, a post graduate is a banker while the third and fourth siblings are engineering college students doing their civil and mechanical engineering courses.

The Dravidian parties and Marxists have bizarre explanations for their opposition to NEET. Thirumavalavan, the virulent anti-India politician, sees the NEET and GST as attempts by the BJP and the RSS to destroy the cultural diversity and religious pluralism of India. Sitaram Yechury, the boss of the CPI-M, is of the view that Hindi stands for Hindutva.

While the consortium of private professional college managements and State Board students have chartered the best legal brains in the country to argue their stance against the NEET, students and parents who want NEET alone to be the qualifying marks have hired Nalini Chidambaram, wife of P Chidambaram for arguing in the Supreme Court. Nalini is a respected attorney with a good standing in the courts. Interestingly, the Congress in Tamil Nadu, which is vehemently opposing the NEET to be in the good books of the DMK, its local guardian, the party is silent over Nalini appearing in the case on behalf of the pro-NEET students…

We are a team of focused individuals with expertise in at least one of the following fields viz. Journalism, Technology, Economics, Politics, Sports & Business. We are factual, accurate and unbiased.
Team PGurus

20 COMMENTS

  1. The present-day TN situation, whose only one aspect is the NEET, is merely an offensive offshoot of its hideous evolution from its heinous, pre-Independence origins. According even a casual audience to the regional multimedia platforms would clearly confirm many brazen facts. Pure poison, flaming with fanaticism and fuming with frenzy, spews out nonstop in all directions from bastions of power welded to religiopolitics. Recognizing most celebrities, activists and militants joining hands up in arms in the fanfare, should reveal the Deep State Establishment sinking TN into deeper and deeper trouble.

    No different at all from this, the widely reported and telecast overseas protest and mourning, too, most likely reflects Dalit-deluding/Christian-missionary/Islamic-jihadic/anti-Sanatana-Dharmic ramifications. Plainly, all this attitude, assertion and activity is part of the deriding and derogating “how-do-you-do”, nose-thumbing, finger-wiggling and making-faces postures countering our ‘awakening’ Bharata Varsha.

    Apparently, pliable and pretenceless people are picked and plucked out from their penurious and prideless lives, propped up and projected about in deluded distinction and disputation, conditioned into and charged up with wanton vehemence and vindictiveness, motivated and trained for pillorying, picketing or even pogroming operations, and then thrown off into the TN Grand Arena, all only to malign, mortify and master the designated, denigrated and decried Devil.

    One reason why, in the midst of all this din, there is no loud clergy, qazi, communist or communal outfits lousing up the TN Grand Arena, could be that the command of all the power as well as performance of these units has always stood usurped. They have been cast off, right from the start, into the Grandstand. They have been summoned only to stay there seated, spectate, speculate, solicit or support, and allowed to stand up, stream down or swarm about only to intensify an applause or an uproar, at best at the behest of those really running the show, namely the Dravidian parties. Of course, everyone gets whatever becomes due, off the stage, scene and sight.

    All the fearsome fissiparity in TN, rolling up unstoppably toward monstrous proportions, incorporates all the previously quoted (= clergy, qazi, communist, communal and other radical Tamil) forces, and operates in the garb of Dravidian and/or Tamil “Race” ideology, integration and ascension. Its single archenemy and/or Devil-designate is the united, what-it-rants-to-be-Hindu/Sanatana-Dharmic Bharata Varsha, which it accuses of talking in Aryan/Sanskrit terminology and working on Aryan/Brahminical terms.

    The majority population has been multiply split, set into epochal stupor and stubbornly seized up in Brahminophobia and/or Bharatophobia. Other activists, including neo-luddites, feminists and casteists, for their part, have never ceased to push as much TNT (= trinitrotoluene, exlosive) as possible into every visible tear in the fabric of the (mainly majority) Tamil society, and wait for explosions to rip open further the societal faultlines. Remarkably, everywhere around the world, it has been no transgression at all for a seasoned (neo-)luddite, communist, communalist, casteist, feminist, minority, or mafia constituent to indulge, behind the mask of social activism, in many a felony, crime or hawala.

    Only an alchemy of sorts can secure TN against and save it from a coming cataclysm and cataclasm. A positive elemental transformation effected through some well-defined reaffirmation, realignment, reassignment, refurbishment and reformation, of all its inspiring, exhilarating, gratifying, unifying and edifying forces, can still manage the re-emergence of a resurgent TN regaining its renowned track of leading Bharata Varsha’s resounding march towards global glory.

    Meanwhile, let us wait in earnest and not allow to wither our hope of any sage and savvy power taking the reins and save TN from becoming a TNT(!), by stearing it (= TN) clear of any troublesome T (= tumult, turmoil, tribulation etc).

  2. I admire Gurumurthy and the work he does for the improvement of our country. However, I have not been able to understand the basis behind his support to Rajinikanth as a politician and his wish that Rajini enters politics. Look at the following link where the director of Rajinikanth’s last film “kabali” speaks at an anti NEET protest. He denigrates hinduism on a platform for anti NEET speeches. I would like to ask Mr. Gurumurthy as to why does Mr. Rajinikanth sign up back to back movies with this director Pa Ranjith and why does Mr Gurumurthy keep talking about his entry into TN politics. Where does the so called spiritual person Rajinikanth fit in this. I would be thankful if Team Pgurus forwards this message to Mr Gurumurthy.

    https://twitter.com/rangats/status/905080195463262208

  3. look at todays “HINDU” where CMC (christian medical college) vellore has “SUSPENDED” ! what ever it means admissions to MBBS citing among various reasons its Miniroty status.
    It is now clear who is sponsoring these professional demonstrators and trying to bridge the people and divide the country.
    FORTUNATE THAT THE HINDU (WHAT EVER IT MEANS) HAS ALSO EXPOSED ITSELF BY DOING A SERVICE TO THESE MISSIONARIES

  4. I once wrote an article on Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNVs) for a business magazine.
    My research for that article did convince me that JNVs are providing to the disadvantaged children in rural areas as good a springboard as the quality CBSE-affiliated government schools of Delhi did until the 1990s when there were widely patronized by the middle classes.
    (I studied in one such government school of Delhi at a time when getting into that school sometimes required the ‘sifaarish’ of a minister!)
    The people I spoke to for that article included a man from Meerut district in Uttar Pradesh who was working for the Citibank in the US. When he got admission in the JNV his father was a ‘thela-wala’ earning a very modest daily wage.
    I visited two JNVs — one in Himachal and the other in Punjab — where I met more children in familial circumstances similar — or possibly more disadvantageous — to that of the boy from Meerut.
    I also surveyed the records showing steady stream of JNU pupils joining every year the most sought after engineering and medical schools of the country.
    I learnt that the JNV scheme at that time allowed only one school per district, which I believe continues to be the case.
    Since Kendriya Vidyalayas (KVs) and Sainik Schools are also CBSE-affiliated and are of the standard (more or less) as the JNVs, they should to be added to the weight of the argument that PGurus is making — with the caveat though that these two school groups are likely to have been catering to much fewer children of the disadvantaged backgrounds than the JNVs.
    So I got the point PGurus is making. For me it’s easy to imagine a student of S. Anitha’s calibre preferring a JNV over state board schools in order to enjoy the advantages it offers.
    That JNVs, KVs and Sainik Schools account for a very small proportion of the needy children is a valid criticism.
    One naturally wonders that if states believe that such schools do provide certain advantages why they wouldn’t look for ways to provide more of their pattern, either through central help or from their own resources. (People who run the “central” government also belong to states; don’t they?)
    Anyway, I won’t take the position that because of paucity of opportunities, the advantage currently being enjoyed by some people becomes nugatory. (It doesn’t appear nugatory for the son of a ‘thela-wala’ in Meerut who became the Citibanker in the US.)
    As for the desirability of NEET, I have never gone into the merits of the issue. I don’t know if NEET completely eliminates other ways of getting into a medical school. If it does I would pose a flummoxed ‘Why on earth’.
    In short the questions I’d pose if I were to get into the merits of the issue would be about understanding why states’ own systems needed to be replaced by a centralized system.
    As for seeing in NEET an RSS conspiracy against cultural diversity, I think it’s stupid politicking engaged in by some stupid people.

  5. If TN students are incompetent and ineligible, how come TN is the most advanced state in India in the health industry? Chennai alone attracts about 45 percent of health tourists from abroad arriving in the country and 30 to 40 percent of domestic health tourists. The medical infrastructure in TN is mostly developed by the state govts over years. Why should they give it up to the centre? After all, India is a republic of numerous states, not a single monarch. Each one should be able to govern their state affairs. If everything is to be controlled by the central govt, why would we need states and state governments? India is a plural country of numerous languages and culture and it’s not ethical to dictate one over everything.

    • Well said. I didnt see any reply from PGurus. Do they justify still CBSE is the best? Just simply check Nobel laureates and scholars are from TN no need to have CBSE or Hi si to perform. Leave everyone with the respect of their region and culture will bring the whole India better not NEET will any good to India. This is another utter nonsense from current govt like new currency and other activities. Also I don’t see much difference between ex-PM and current, and in fact I was surprised the predecessor was criticized for not talking and I’m wondering what’s with the current.

    • I am not sure how you got the figure of 45% medical tourist come to Chennai? are you living in Chennai??? You can check the Apollo or any other leading hospitals – how many doctors from Tamilnadu are working? Last year the only 62 students from the govt schools got admission in Medical!! few years had only 29, 35 students. Here most of the schools were run by Education sellers – who are belonged to both the dravidian parties or they fund them. in all the schools including most of the government schools they do not teach the +1 (first year of higher secondary) syllabus, they directly teach the second year syllabus. There is question bank – mostly the question paper prepared from this only. So the school only concentrates on these questions. Both the parties want to show the percentage, every year the pasing percentage goes high. Infact the language – English and Tamil students scores 100%!!!. how it is possible?? The private schools makes good money by showing the percentage and medical admissions. Apart from this every private college offers free seat to politicians and they sell it in lakhs and crores. Now, even if you pay, you should have the eligibility in NEET. So, the politicians lost huge money. These party say the girl anita from poor family and her father is coolie – then who sponsored her to approach Supreme court? who paid the lawyer fee? She told infront of TV cameras that she prefers the Agri. how suddenly changed? CBI enquiry is needed to bring the truth!!

  6. Thank you PGurus for a very well-informed article. Thanks even more for the new concept of aggressively rebutting every Comment which is vacuous or ignorant. I only wish you had indicated the average capacity of students enrolled in a Navodaya Vidyalaya. It now seems crystal clear that the Anitha tragedy has well and truly pave the entry of Rajnikanth to enter Tamil Nadu politics and demolish the anti-secessionist and horribly corrupt Dravidian ideology once and for all.

    • It is an entrance exam which is merit based. Navodaya has 75% reservations. Anitha’s failure to clear NEET was due to the school (and many schools in TN do this) not covering 11th standard curriculum at all.

  7. Your arguments are very weak. You said Non acceptance of Navodaya as one reason for Anita’s failure. My question is how much percentage of students can have Navodaya seats in a state? Will be less than .2% Then what improvement you expect from it on the overall system.
    Then you said without NEET only crorepatis can study. Are you saying that without NEET only crorepatis became doctors till now. We have live example of many states where state themselves conducted entrance exams and secured lower fees for merit seats ( like West Bengal).

    • If the admission fees are Rs. 1.88 crores, what else can be used to describe the parents/ children? If you have substance to criticize the post, do so. Don’t insult the intelligence of the readers.

    • Jibin: WHat do you think is the percentage of rural people who become doctors in TN under existing system?

      It is less than 0.7%. With navodaya’s even if it is 0.2%, we are looking at a 33% growth of students from rural India. Why is that bad?

    • I once wrote an article on Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNVs) for a business magazine (http://www.businesstoday.in/magazine/in-this-issue/schools-of-hope/story/2228.html)

      My research for that article did convince me that JNVs are providing to the disadvantaged children in rural areas as good a springboard as the quality CBSE-affiliated government schools of Delhi did until the 1990s when there were widely patronised by the middle classes.

      (I studied in one such government school of Delhi at a time when getting into that school sometimes required the ‘sifaarish’ of a minister!)

      The people I spoke to for that article included a man from Meerut district in Uttar Pradesh who was working for the Citibank in the US. When he got admission in the JNV his father was a ‘thela-wala’ earning a very modest daily wage.

      I visited two JNVs — one in Himachal and the other in Punjab — where I met more children in familial circumstances similar — or possibly more disadvantageous — to that of the boy from Meerut.

      I also surveyed the records showing steady stream of JNU pupils joining every year the most sought after engineering and medical schools of the country.

      I learnt that the JNV scheme at that time allowed only one school per district, which I believe continues to be the case.

      Since Kendriya Vidyalayas (KVs) and Sainik Schools are also CBSE-affiliated and are of the standard (more or less) as the JNVs, they should to be added to the weight of the argument that PGurus is making — with the caveat though that these two school groups are likely to have been catering to much fewer children of the disadvantaged backgrounds than the JNVs.

      So I got the point PGurus is making.

      For me it’s easy to imagine a student of S. Anitha’s calibre preferring a JNV over state board schools in order to enjoy the advantages it offers.

      That JNVs, KVs and Sainik Schools account for a very small proportion of the needy children is a valid criticism.

      One naturally wonders that if states believe that such schools do provide certain advantages why they wouldn’t look for ways to provide more of their pattern, either through central help or from their own resources. (People who run the “central” government also belong to states; don’t they?)

      Anyway, I won’t take the position that because of paucity of opportunities, the advantage currently being enjoyed by some people becomes nugatory. (It doesn’t appear nugatory for the son of a ‘thela-wala’ in Meerut who became the Citibanker in the US.)

      As for the desirability of NEET, I have never gone into the merits of the issue. I don’t know if NEET completely eliminates other ways of getting into a medical school. If it does I would pose a flummoxed ‘Why on earth’.

      In short the questions I’d pose if I were to get into the merits of the issue would be about understanding why states’ own systems needed to be replaced by a centralized system.

      As for seeing in NEET an RSS conspiracy against cultural diversity, I think it’s stupid politicking engaged in by some stupid people.

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