No Civics - just life stories

We first learned about the new NCERT Civics text for the seventh grade from an article in The Hindu. The article was ecstatic in praising this book. Apparently this book, titled Social and Political Sciences II, replaces Civics. According to the article, the book tends to avoid definitions to sum up a concept. It uses case studies and narratives instead.

During our time, Civics used to be a pretty dry subject. You had to memorize the names and functions of the pillars of democracy, i.e. the democratic institutions. You learned about your rights and duties. You also learned about the constitution.

Instead, this new book has a comicey feel to it, among other things it features images from the hit movie Deewar to illustrate the concept of dignity of labor.

This got us curious. We decided to analyze the book and find out what it is all about.

The very first thing you note about the book are the ugly black and white drawings. Through these drawings, the students are introduced to the socialist narratives. The book is chock-full of various social programs undertaken by the Congress led Government, for instance the mid-day meals (which prominent social activist Chandrabhan Prasad considers a total failure besides being a misguided populist measure).

While it is expected that a people friendly Government will try its very best to indoctrinate children in socialism, your eye doesn't really pop out until you come across this:

This friends, is the Article 15, according to this book. Note the missing three most important clauses. Now, given that this book is meant for 12-year olds, you could argue that they are not mature enough to understand the implications of the clauses (3) , (4) and (5). Unfortunately this is not the case. The students are expected to not only understand but react to this:


The second chapter introduces the concept of universal healthcare. The usual ideas follow, for some reason Kerala and Costa Rica are presented as two model places which implement ideal healthcare policies.

The third chapter introduces the idea of state versus central Government, their roles and responsibilities and also the concept of MLAs and "opposition". There is a comic strip in which two girls are going to school when they come across a Bandh. There is a loudmouth person with an antiquated PA system who the girls identify as the "opposition" leader. The girls sneer.

The very next page elaborates on a state assembly and explains who are the rulers and who are the opposition. It is no coincidence that they pick Himachal Pradesh, pointing out that BJP is the opposition.

This is not an isolated example, the book picks several socialist success stories from Congress or Left states.




In Chapter 4, the concept of housewife is demonstrated using a Sikh family. Chapter 5 features an exercise in which students are asked to draw pictures of people employed in various professions. Then they are supposed to tabulate the number of students who drew a picture of a male or female for any given profession. Most surprisingly, the chapter also provides model answers, which is supposed to be something like - farmers all males, nurses all females etc., i.e. the students are supposed to stereotype and then be told that gender stereotypes are wrong. This is seriously funny.

Chapter 6 through 9 brings up establishment related issues. These parts deliver a strong doze of socialist economics, the communist manifesto would have been a better substitute. The book regretfully informs the students that the big media houses influence public opinion and how that is a bad thing. We recommend that as a practical exercise students take a tour of CNN-IBN.com. The book informs that advertisement spending is evil because it tilts the game in favor of the big manufacturers who spend crores on meaningless ad campaigns that add no value to society. Markets create inequality, only favoring certain parts of the value chain. Finally, in chapter 10, as a glowing example of a socialist success story, the Tawa Matsa Sangh cooperative story is narrated. This one happened during the previous Congress regime in MP.

There is a reason Civics was taught the way it used to be taught. It tells you in concrete terms where you stand in the democratic ecology of a country and indeed what those institutions are. This appalling book does a travesty of education by adding conclusions, value judgments and sometimes twisted facts and statistics.

How about these for life stories:

• The average wealth of Congress MPs is over 3 crores and this is merely what they publicly state. Meanwhile the PM criticizes CEOs for making too much dough
• Dangerous games are played with the constitution on a daily basis. Right now, several unelected members of the Left parties have gatecrashed into the parliamentary process.
• This should be a case study titled "How you can bypass the constitution". Ninth schedule anyone?
• Now that farmer suicides are causing widespread embarrassment, they are being elevated to the status of a "national crisis". Gee, where did I see that before?
• You don't have to be a citizen of this country to be a member of the parliament, as Congress MP Subba has demonstrated
• In Maharashtra, every politician has a cooperative, a sugar mill and a college.
• You don't really need a majority to grab powers, for instance Goa.
  

This is not the only assault on textbooks. Congress plans an ever deeper revision of the texts until they become indistinguishable from the party's election manifesto.