To,Sri Tarun Gogoi,Honourable Chief Minister,Govt. of Assam,Dispur, Guwahati-781006

Sub: Memorandum on some aspects of school education in Assam

Sir, With deep regard and warm greetings, we the undersigned desire to bring the kind notice of your honour, on two important aspects of School Education in our State.

1. Sir, as per the Article 21A of the Constitution of India, the State is required to provide free and compulsory education to all children from the age of six to fourteen years. It is needless to mention that under your stewardship, the free and compulsory education to the children covered by this age group, has well flourished in our state during the last ten years. Now sir, our humble submission is that today the Nursery and Pre-Primary schools have come up to cover the children of ages below six. Even playschools have started training children at the age of two years. Almost all able parents, presently, send their children to these schools in order to prepare them for bright future in this age of very fast knowledge dissemination and tough competition. Therefore Sir, we humbly pray that you take necessary steps to extend this age limit for provision of free and compulsory education of children from four to eighteen years. We know Sir, for such an extension, a decision of the Government of India shall be necessary; but your honour perhaps may think of starting this extension in our state as a pilot project, which in time may become eye-opener to the rest of the country.

2. Sir, secondly, you are fully aware that in the past, in our country, school buildings were destroyed due to fire, stampede, flash flood, etc. leading to large numbers of death and injury to young children. In our state, in the Dhemaji bomb blast on Independence Day in the year 2004, several school children died on spot in a heart-breaking situation. To prevent such sad incidents and give relief to the affected families, the Honourable Supreme Court of India delivered it`s judgement on a Writ Petition between Avinash Mehrotra versus Union of India and others regarding the death of hundreds of school children in a devastating fire that swept through the Lord Krishna Middle School in the city of Madras(now Chennai). The judgement made certain observations regarding safety and security of school buildings and the school children (Civil Petition no.483 of 2004). One important observation of the honourable court was, “school buildings have to be insured against fire and natural calamities with Group Insurance of school pupils”. Sir, now our prayer before your honour is that all school buildings be properly insured and school children, between the age group of fourteen to eighteen years of our state, be covered with Group Insurance Scheme for any kind of calamities. We firmly believe that a positive response to our prayer shall be a tremendous moral booster for our school going children.

Sir, once again we offer our deep respect to your honour and our heartfull thanks for giving a very patient reading to our prayers.

Guwahati Yours faithfully,16.12.2010

To, Smti Sonia Gandhi,Honourable Chairperson,National Advisory Council

Sub: Memorandum on some aspects of Education of the country

Madam, With deep regard and warm greetings, we the undersigned desire to bring the kind notice of your honour, on two important aspects of Education of the country.

1. Madam, as per the Article 21A of the Constitution of India, the State is required to provide free and compulsory education to all children from the age of six to fourteen years. It is needless to mention that under the stewardship of the Government of India, the free and compulsory education to the children covered by this age group, has well flourished during the last six years. Now madam, our humble submission is that today the Nursery and Pre-Primary schools have come up to cover the children of ages below six years. Even playschools have started training children at the age of two years. Almost all able parents, presently, send their children to these schools in order to prepare them for bright future in this age of very fast knowledge dissemination and tough competition. Therefore madam, we humbly pray to the NAC to take all necessary steps so as to extend this age limit for the provision of free and compulsory education to our children from four to eighteen years.

2. Madam, you are very much aware that the present Gross Enrolement Ratio of higher education in the country is not at all satisfactory and is only around 12 percent. Therefore, the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Govt of India has set a target to raise this percentage to 30 by the year 2020. We feel madam, target of this ratio should be taken as 50 percent by the year 2020 instead of 30 percent. We know that to achieve such a target shall be a difficult and daunting task with the present system; but if we all work hard with a missionary spirit,we think achieving such a target shall not be impossible. Therefore, we humbly feel that by creating a ‘Higher Education Mission’ at the national level, target to achieve 50 percent GER by 2020 in our higher education sector can be fulfilled. We pray you madam to take the necessary initiative for the creation of such a mission as early as possible.

Madam, once again we offer our deep respect to your honour and our heartfull thanks for giving a very patient reading to our prayers.

Guwahati Yours faithfully,9.1.2011