The Forgotten Agenda

In an interaction with the media on the first day of the new year, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi harped on a range of issues and his vision of a developed Assam. He also hinted at the possibility of a breakthrough in the ULFA stalemate and said that negotiations with the outfit could proceed even if the group’s self-styled commander-in-chief, Paresh Baruah, stayed out of the process. But what Gogoi forgot to dwell on is the pathetic state of education and what road map his government has in mind to bring about a radical transformation in the education system of the State. What he forgot to point out is how the State’s education regime has failed the very cause of education. A frank deliberation by the Chief Minister on education — on the need to make it meaningful, given the level of competition that the students of the State must reach if they are not to be dismissed as misfits —would have been so refreshing on the first day of the year 2010. It is not that Gogoi is unaware of the State’s education reality. It is not that he does not appreciate the education imperative. But electoral politics has its own imperative as well. Be that as it may, what is more unfortunate is that no one in the media deemed it an occasion to ask Gogoi as to whether distribution of computers to students alone would bring about a revolution in the educational arena of the State. THE SENTINEL