Restoration

This chapter describes the policy initiatives undertaken in school education during the second stint of Arjun Singh as Minister, MHRD, which was a continuation of the political offensive against the BJP during his first stint. It outlines the work of the CABE Committee on textbooks used in all types of schools including schools run by religious and social organizations. It critiques the National Curricular Framework (NCF), 2005, and describes the criticism that NCF elicited from historians of the Marxist-Secular school who were hitherto allies of Arjun Singh. It describes the controversy generated by cartoons a NCERT textbook prepared after NCF, 2005, particularly a cartoon on Ambedkar. It gives a blow-by-blow account of the development of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Elementary Education (RTE) Bill, and highlights the competing conceptualizations of the Bill as well as the politics underlying that policy development.