Tamil Nadu: Commonality verdict

Sixty days of uncertainty at the start of the new academic year of an estimated 12 million K-10 students enroled in Tamil Nadus 63,312 government, aided and private schools affiliated with the state, Matriculation, Anglo Indian and Oriental school examination boards over implementation of samacheer kalvi or common school curriculum legislated by the ousted DMK government in June 2010, finally ended on August 9. A three-judge bench of the Supreme Court directed the newly elected AIADMK government to implement the common school curriculum mandated by the state govern-ments Uniform System of School Education (USSE) directive in all K-10 schools and distribute the prescribed textbooks within ten days. Private schools have been permitted to use textbooks of state government-appr-oved private publishers, at their option.The bench comprising Justices J. Panchal, Deepak Verma and B. S. Chauhan dismissed the Jayalalitha-led AIADMK governments appeal against a Madras high court order of July 18 upholding the Tamil Nadu Uniform System of School Education Act (TNUSSE) 2010, and quashed an amendment to s.3 of the Act introduced by the Jayalalitha government deferring implementation of the common curriculum. Citing 25 reasons for upholding the high court judgement, the Supreme Court judges held that a predetermined political decision had been made to scrap the TNUSSE Act by the AIADMK government, as tenders had been invited by the government to print books under the old syllabus even before the first cabinet meeting of the new state government which assumed office on May 15. The bench also stated that the objective of the TNUSSE Act, 2010 was to provide uniform education statewide in the interest of quality education to all children, and that any objectionable content in textbooks could have been deleted by the Jayalalitha government as per directions given in the high court judgement by issuing executive direc-tions instead of staying implementation of the Act for an indefinite period. The Supreme Court verdict has ended two-month-long litigations for and against the common school curriculum since May 18, after the newly sworn-in Jayalalitha government postponed the implementation of samacheer kalvi by amending s.3 of the TNUSSE Act on the ground that the common syllabus and textbooks prescribed were sub-standard. While the deferment of samacheer kalvi was welcomed by private Matriculation school managements, it angered activists of the State Platform for a Common School System (SPCSS). Since then, a battery of lawyers representing the state government, Matriculation schools, and SPCSS have filed writs in the high court and Supreme Court. Meanwhile 12 million children were stuck in limbo for 60 days after start of the new academic year since the Tamil Nadu Textbook Society had printed 90 million samacheer kalvi texts whose distribution had been stayed by the AIADMK government. In Chennai, its hardly secret that the AIADMKs freeze of the predecessor DMK governments USSE legislation was driven more by spite and the deep antagonism between the DMK and AIADMK which supplant each other in Fort St. George — the seat of the state government of Tamil Nadu (pop.72 million). Little…