Dear BJP, You Can’t “Ensure” Voluntary Participation

The latest HRD ministry circular on celebrating Good Governance Day illustrates the party’s twisted relationship with the notion of compulsory and voluntary.

WrittenBy:Arunabh Saikia
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Merry Christmas? Maybe, not. If you’re in school, you may as well forget the usual festivities and get down to writing an essay on “good governance”.  For, according to the latest diktat by the powers that be, Christmas will now also be marked as Good Governance Day.

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As the storm over the Human Resources and Development (HRD) Ministry’s latest circular settles, the question again is: whether it was voluntary or not? We try to get to the bottom of it. But first things first: there’s something about the current dispensation that leads to it tying its knickers (the colour of which increasingly seem to be khaki) in a knot each time the discussion veers into the domain of what is voluntary and what is compulsory.

It happened in September this year when the HRD ministry just couldn’t figure out whether it was compulsory or not for students to listen to our Prime Minister pontificating about what a noble profession teaching is, on Teachers’ Day. Instructions in official communication, had then, curiously changed from one official notice to another.  In another instance, a bill that makes voting compulsory, personally drafted by the Prime Minister when he was the Gujarat Chief Minister, was passed by the state’s legislature in October.

The Prime Minister, then, had maintained a conspicuous silence but had earlier said that compulsory voting is akin to making studying compulsory for children – a practice, needless to say, necessary.

Then there are the conversions on which the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) stand has fluctuated, depending on the person and the setting. In Parliament, the party’s stuck on to the “law will take its own course” line, people like Yogi Adityanath (who for, one final time, is a Member of Parliament, much as the likes of Sambit Patra would have us believe that proponents of any religious bigotry have “nothing to do with” the party) have said there’s nothing wrong with the conversions as long as they were, wait for it, voluntary.  Yes, nothing wrong, but an elected Parliamentarian could do better than advocating religious conversions and this brilliant illustration by the Spanish artist Luis Quiles’ says it better than anyone else.

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Let’s go the other way round this time – that is, let’s see how the BJP’s dealing with that all-important question, after The Times of India carried a page-one lead, which stated that the government intends to celebrate Christmas as Good Governance Day.

Smriti Irani, who heads the HRD ministry, lashed out at The Times of India.


When we contacted Mausumi Chakravarty, Director (Media and Communications), Ministry of HRD, she told us that the essay competition will be online and schools will remain closed.

In the Lok Sabha, Venkiah Naidu said exactly the same: the essay completion is online and voluntary.

Now, let’s take a look at the circular that the Commissioner, Navodaya Vidyalaya Samiti, HRD Ministry, which runs all Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas (JNVS) sent to all regional offices on December 10.

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The notice, very clearly, has two portions. The first states that December 25 would be celebrated as Good Governance Day to celebrate the birthdays of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and educationist Madan Mohan Malaviya. The circular goes on to say that “in order to mark this occasion in its true spirit, it is decided to have the following activities in JVNs”

  1. Declamation contest on the topics related to Good Governance
  2. Quiz Competition
  3. Screening of documentaries and films on best practices in Good Governance- Organisation of various activities through Child Cabinet in the schools.
  4. Innovative programmes pertaining to problem solving relating to day to day functioning of the school.”

It is only the second part of the circular that mentions the word essay.  What the notice essentially says is that, in addition to the aforementioned programmes in JNVs, the Central Bureau of Secondary Education (CBSE) will also organise an online essay competition, which will be open to all students studying in schools that are affiliated to the CBSE.

But the best of the circular is saved for the end and comes in the last two paragraphs. These two paragraphs seem to be so well thought out that they almost encapsulate the current government’s twisted relationship with the idea of voluntary and compulsory. The second last paragraph urges the regional office to “encourage” participation. Now the word “encourage”, you’d assume, veers more towards voluntary than compulsory, but wait, there’s more to go within the distance of less than an inch in the same circular. The last paragraph asks regional offices to “ensure” that Good Governance Day is celebrated. It also directs regional offices to submit a consolidated report specifying all activities carried out along with “photographs”.

After the Twitter angst, Irani told reporters outside the Lok Sabha that the “Times of India report is absolutely baseless and misreported”. She reiterated again that the “essay competition is voluntary and online”.

Now, that we know enough about the “voluntary and online” essay competition, here are a few queries that none of the reporters present there seemed to ask.

What about the declamation contest? Will that be online too? That’ll take some doing, or is a certain industrialist with huge interests in 4G technologies, going to exercise some Corporate Social Responsibility?  The same goes for screening of documentaries and quizzes. Great if that’s the case, of course.

While the HRD ministry has put out a press note, which states that there is no case of the day not being a holiday, since JNVs are residential and students stay on campus, it is strange that the ministry should assume that students would not have more Christmas-related plans on the day of Christmas – a holiday. More importantly, December 25 is a holiday, and having been a part of residential educational set-ups, I can vouch for the fact that students don’t enjoy documentaries about good governance on holidays. Also, doesn’t a carol-singing competition make more sense than a declamation on good governance on Christmas?

The government can argue and has argued that that it is all about choice, but the messaging in the circular suggests exactly the opposite. When authorities, whose jobs depend on pleasing their masters, are asked to “ensure” that the day is celebrated in schools, the bit about students’ choice sounds highly unconvincing. More importantly, the programme, according to the circular, is day-long, from 9 in the morning till 5 in the evening – which means schools have to cancel any other Christmas-related activities they would normally have.

Jingle Bells and not Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas is what most students – even ones living on campus – look forward to on Christmas. Surely, Vajpayee and Malviya wouldn’t mind. Also, with all due respect to Vajpayee and Malviya, what about celebrating Good Governance Day on Sardar Vallabhai Patel’s birthday – another favourite of the Right – on October 31. That, may, though, coincide with Navratri every second year or so. Shouldn’t be a problem though, as celebrating it won’t be compulsory in any case.

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