Where's the time for this?

Indian Institute of Technology entrance exam bar to be raised

The minister for HRD seems to have too much free time on his hands. What is the need for a minister to dictate how edu institutions select their candidates, when there is a dearth of such institutes in the country.
Had India gained 100% literacy and it's people were healthy and well fed, then it would be easy to conclude that the HR minister has enough free time to meddle in edu. institution's selection process. But, there are so many children with no access to schools, and wherever there are schools there are no teachers or the schools are too dilapidated to pose a health hazard, and where there are teachers there are too few who really give a damn about educating students in schools compared to collecting their salaries and earning on the side from tuitions. With all these issues requiring urgent attention and remedy, I don't feel it is appropriate for a minister to indulge in unwanted activities.

It is important for the priorities of the govt to be set right to avoid such wastage of ministerial resources ( a subset of HR!). The urbane minister is too aloof from the rural setting that issues that are limited to larger cities only seem to register on his radar. He should take a leaf from Rahul Gandhi's book ,and tour the many schools that exist in the hinterland, and then confirm if there indeed is time to worry about elite schools.

As PM I intend to ensure that India becomes a 100% literate country in 5 years. The reason this process has taken too long is because it has been left to the govt machinery to educate the masses. There are other ways.
For example, an idea that seems practical, is to ask school students to teach the illiterate. For this they will be given cash rewards, and it becomes an easy way to earn pocket money. And the kind of education imparted needs to be changed, so that the way to test if a student's pupil has mastered the 2 Rs  would mean simply to read a document taken at random from the internet and write answers to questions based on it. To ensure proper distribution of funds, if needed a student can be asked to register his name and the names of his pupils with the local school or village panchayat. And the test too will be conducted at such a place, at a time of the student's choosing.

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