Thiruvananthapuram: Only a week after Kerala chief minister Pinarayi Vijayan alleged that the Christian management-run educational institutions in the state, too, had turned corrupt, former chief minister A.K. Antony has said the education sector in the state has become the “centre stage of corruption”.
The charges by the chief minister and the former chief minister come in the backdrop of a series of protests by students across campuses in the state, mostly in engineering colleges. Any of those protests turned violent, with students causing extensive damage to the buildings and equipment in the colleges.
The students allege that the managements are collecting unwarranted fines, showing favouritism in the awarding of internal marks, and imposing extreme disciplinary measures on campuses.
Speaking in Kochi on Monday, Antony alleged that the education sector was “drenched in corruption” and that in some cases the managements were involved in “downright robbery” in the matter of collecting money.
He also suggested that the state vigilance department keep an eye on government-aided and self-financing educational institutions. Kerala has fully government-owned institutions, government-aided institutions which are privately owned but where the staff salaries are paid by the government, and self-financing private institutions.
Antony’s comments are pertinent because it was during his term as chief minister that Kerala opened up the self-financing education sector in the state after decades of dithering over whether or not to permit private investment in the professional education sector.
The former chief minister said that the absence of student politics on campus was the chief reason for the varied problems now manifesting college campuses in the state. He said campuses had nor turned into hotbeds of casteist, religious and communal feelings in the absence of politics.
Last week, supporters of the Students Federation of India had set fire to the chair of the Maharaja’s College principal in Kochi. Following a volley of criticism against the students’ action, the SFI suspended the students who had carried out the act.
