Secretary to the Ministry of Education stated yesterday that the circular to Grade 1 admissions needs further amendments – to be presented before the Supreme Court on next Monday. If anyone has lost count, this is the FOURTH successive time he will do so. Perhaps he will carry out the same exercise in numerous times in future.

The modifications he intends to include are by no means minor. In fact, he will be moving from one extreme to the other, as he had done in the previous instances. Education Secretary does not give any guarantee that this is the last time the document will be amended. It looks like he is just taking the least resistance path. The problem is his least resistance path does not remain the same. It is changing. Just like the samsara, everything is uncertain.

To Education secretary, the circular may be no more than a document, something not different from say, instructing the Principals how to approve leave for the new batch of trainee teachers. So he does not think twice making the amendments. To him, it is just dictating another letter to his secretary. No big deal.

What he, and all politicians involved, do not realise is that there is a group of children whose entire future will be decided on this continuous modification process. They have absolutely no concerns for the tens of thousands of parents whom he has been subjected to mental torture for the past few months. After all he is a government servant.

Can the Education Secretary give a solemn pledge to the nation that this is the last time the circular is modified?

Once a student answers a question in an examination he/she is not allowed to change it. Right or wrong, that’s it. Why not use the same principle here? Should the Education Secretary allowed to change the criteria at the drop of a hat? Is that the nation expects from him?

(Open for discussion)