Patna,(BiharTimes): On the occasion of Teachers’ Day Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, rather unnecessarily, thanked the media for exposing the Inter Toppers’ Scam.
Speaking at a function in Shri Krishna Memorial Hall on Monday he, while highlighting the achievements of his government in the last 10 years, vowed to improve the quality of education in Bihar.
No doubt his government did distribute uniforms, bicycles and books to students, which helped increase the enrollment of students. But occasions like Teachers’ Day demands honest introspection too.
True, Nitish Kumar appointed lakhs of para-teachers. But today the question is not that schools have no teachers or no building. They have much more things than in the past––even the central government’s Mid-day Meal scheme.
However, it is not out of place to mention that these teachers never got their salaries on time. They strongly raised this issue on this occasion this year too.
What has happened in the last 10 years is that the quality of education has worsened. It was not good during the Lalu-Rabri raj, but was certainly better than now. It is good that the chief minister has on this occasion promised to improve the quality of education.
But where Nitish has erred in his speech is when he thanked the media for exposing the Toppers scam. The truth is that if the education has deteriorated in Bihar to such a level, media too is to be blamed. Instead of showing the mirror to the government and highlighting the real situation at the school level in the initial years of the JD(U)-BJP rule journalists were busy showering praise for all the populist schemes of the state government.
There is nothing wrong in giving due coverage to the positive news. But it should not be denied that some other states too have taken such initiatives.
What should have been highlighted at the same time was deterioration of education standard in the government schools.
The culture of distributing free cycles, books and uniforms opened a flood-gate for corruption. Students enrolled in private schools got admitted in government schools too and thus are entitled to all these freebies. So naturally the enrollment ratio increased, when the truth was something else.
It was the media which continued to look the other way round all those years when rampant unfair means used to be adopted in Matric and Plus-2 exams.
Several years back eight of the 10 toppers came from the native village of a senior bureaucrat. No story was done then when everyone was aware of it. Instead they were treated as if they are success stories.
However, all these changed after Nitish Kumar grew politically weak after snapping of ties with the BJP on June 16, 2013.
Suddenly newspapers and television channels started showing photos of large scale practice of unfair means. The one in Vaishali district became viral. The truth is tht such scenes were quite common all these years.
Another big question is: why the education minister, Ashok Choudhary did not become suspicious while announcing the Plus-2 result of Bihar last May when most of the toppers came from the same private college.
Does he need the help of the media for this? The journalists too, instead of raising question, went to interview the toppers.
This was something outrageous. Instead of questioning the chairman of the Bihar School Examination Board, Lalkeshwar Singh, the Arts and Science toppers became scapegoats.
Ironically, the same main accused, Lalkeshwar, summoned a dozen or so toppers to re-appear in a test on June 3. Who is he to do so? The media never asked this, but kept ridiculing an underage girl, Ruby Rai. Initially she did not appear in the test, but when she actually did a few days later she was arrested. But why not her parents?
Lalkeshwar was arrested only hours after Bihar Times raised the question as to why the main accused and his former JD(U) MLA wife, Usha Sinha, are not being arrested?
Should the media in Bihar be credited for catching a small fry? The Nitish government did not fail only here. The police after arresting Ruby sent her to jail, when there was enough documents which confirmed that she was under 18 and should be sent to Remand Home.
Should journalists be thanked for introducing a wrong trend. From now on the scribes with camera in their hands would go after all the toppers to ask some questions. And if they do not answer correctly, the media would indulge in smear campaign.
Ashamed of this some of these ‘toppers’ may fall into depression or may even be driven to commit suicide. Should we thank media for not taking on the real culprits?
