Education for all with special emphasis on women and children education

As this is the root cause behind many social problems. Our special emphasis is on women and child education as mother is the first teacher of a child and if you teach a woman you teach one whole family. The level of primary and secondary education must be boosted. All the problems start from primary level itself, if a student does not have a strong base, then he or she cannot complete higher education successfully.

The government should make effort to uplift backward classes by strengthening the educational base of these classes at the primary level. The government should start a campaign to ensure that students from all sections of society are encouraged to pursue studies at least till 12th standard. The number of seats in premier institutes may be increased, but then the quality of education should not be hampered. To attain this, it will be necessary to increase the teaching faculty as well along with the infrastructure. The unavailability of seats is not as big a problem to the SC/ST/OBC as their financial crunch is. Assistance may be provided in the forms of scholarships.

The expenditure on higher and technical education is 0.4% and 0.1% of GDP respectively. This should be raised. Progeny of those who have got a position through quota should be denied the same privilege. One ‘quota-case’ in every family is sufficient. The misuse of the quota by the powerful and the rich should be taken care by proper investigations and checks must be undertaken.

The essence of our effort is to ensure that every child has an equal opportunity, not to become equal but to become different – to realize whatever unique potential of body, mind and spirit he or she possess.

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Casteless society i.e. society where there is no discrimination on the basis of birth mark

The Indian Constitution guarantees equality to all citizens and thus establishes a rule of Non-discrimination by the state in any manner. It ensures and inures the state to treat all citizens equally and allow equality of status and opportunity to all and specifically provides that discrimination on the basis of religion, sex, color, caste, race or the place of birth etc are impermissible.

The pious objectives with which our fore-fathers decided and embarked upon the framing of the Constitution – Secularism was one of the guiding principles. Secularism entails not just religious but also casteless egalitarian society. The high objective and the final goal was to convert a society fragmented on the lines of religion, caste, economic status etc into a homogenous society where identification of a person was not on the basis of the religion he professes or caste he belongs to but was on the basis of what he is or what he has made himself into. This is aptly clear from the statement of Pandit Jawahar Lal Nehru made by him on the floor of the Lok Sabha on 13.6.1951. He said

After all the whole purpose of the Constitution as proclaimed in the Directive principles is to move towards what I may say a casteless and classless society- (Lok Sabha Debates Vol XII-XIII (Part II) Page 9830-31)

The caste system is the greatest hindrance in the way of our progress towards an egalitarian society and a strong nationhood. On 25th November, 1949, in Constituent Assembly, Dr Ambedkar spoke:

In India there are castes. The castes are anti-national. In the first place because they bring about separation in social life. They are anti-national also because they generate jealousy and antipathy between caste and caste. But we must overcome all these difficulties if we wish to become a nation in reality. For fraternity can be a fact only when there is a nation. Without fraternity equality and liberty will be no deeper than coats of paint.

 

Youth For Equality

Students, citizens and professionals of different shades were involved in various campaigns before the Youth For Equality appeared on the scene in May 2006. These campaigns were reform in education, justice for all, against the criminalization of politics, and campus oriented problems to make India vibrant. Sixty percent of Indians are youth and despite that the government is apathetic to their aspiration.

The Central Government mooted a divisive as well as illogical OBC reservation policy in April 2006 and this aroused the collective spirit of students, citizen and professional across India. A month long sporadic protests were organized across the country. Solid ground had thus been prepared for the establishment of an all-India organization. The final shape to this idea was given by a group of medical students in Delhi, who were active in mobilizing leading institutions of India and with their support started a bigger struggle against the Government’s illogical policy.

On April 4, 2006 a perfect storm was gathering in the student circle all over India when Human Resource Development Ministry, Government of India announced 27% OBC Reservation in Centrally funded educational institutions. A small group of motivated medicos in Delhi wondering what to do, when the idea to form an organization name Youth For Equality got acceptance. Gradually the organization has taken shapes larger than the ambit of Reservation and challenged the reservation policy scientifically. All India Institute of Medical Sciences become the centre of gravity and a policy document was prepared to take the movement forward.

Presently, Youth for Equality is an all India organization encompassing men and women of all walks of life irrespective of caste, creed, class, religion and region. It draws its strength from its large support base mainly from the youth and students of India along with all the responsible citizen of the country. The educated, sensible and law abiding citizens of India showing their unrestrained enthusiasm and support for Youth for Equality by each passing day.