Kapil Sibal blames parents for suicide

Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibbal blamed the parents for the students' suicide, accusing them of embedding their high expectations into psyche of their children.

Minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibbal blamed the parents for the students' suicide, accusing them of embedding their high expectations into psyche of their children.

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The HRD minister the children live under pressure always eyeing to meet the parental expectations. “They are told to secure more than 90%; they are asked to do this and to do that. It's the parents who share the onus of pushing their kids to limits,” he remarked candidly.

He was replying to queries about rising suicides by students in the technical and medical institutions. “This is why we are replacing marking system with grading system. There will no marks or percentage for the parents to fix,” the minister told reporters.

Sibbal was here to open state level teachers' convention at the Christ Church Inter College on Monday with minister for coal and programme implementation, Shri Prakash Jaiswal.

Pitching in for education reforms, he said his ministry has the intent of setting up education finance corporation, which would provide near interest free loans to under privilege children to pursue higher education. The ministry, he said, was in talks with the finance commission for the fund allocation.

“The government agenda wants education reach every spectrum and remotest of corner. Right to education is a bright step and its effect will be palpable in next 10 to 15 years,” he said. He said of the 22 crore children going to school only 2.6 crore graduate to the university level, meaning only 12 out of 100 students reach universities.

The efforts are directed at bridging the yawning gap by 2020 when the government the university population would increase by 30 per cent or 7 crore. At the same time challenge is to increase the infrastructure, which includes 22000 colleges and 480 universities.

“It's the biggest challenge and we cannot answer without involving the private sector,” he said. “We aren't that rich that we could afford free education to all. India has a economy of 1 trillion dollars but we are spending and expanding the education sector. If education level isn't jacked up we cannot meet our targeted development growth,” Sibbal said.

He, however, didn't support private investment in primary and secondary education. “There should always be government spending and we are right on the task,” he said. The minister revealed the government has identified 3500 most backward areas where it would be opening up 6,000 model schools and 374 colleges.

“The children at these places get education at par with those getting in best schools. This is our idea,” he said. When asked he admitted the states need to be made more accountable for implementation all central projects.