Students must be heard, batons are no solution: Murli Manohar Joshi

Former Human Resource Development minister Murli Manohar Joshi on Thursday while criticizing the use of force said students’ demands should be heard with sympathy.

While speaking to the reporters at the 21st FICCI Higher Education Summit, Joshi said that “students are our children”.

"Reasonable or legitimate demands of students should always be heard and should be heard with a great deal of sympathy. This method of using batons is not appropriate. You can never find a solution this way. If there are problems, listen to them. They are our children," the BJP leader said on the sidelines of raging protests.


“When a child complains to father saying you had promised that you will get me so and so thing, the father tells why he wasn't able to fulfil the promise and assures that it will be done soon … or does he shoo away the child? Similarly the students are our children and should be dealt with in the same manner," he said.

On the National Education Policy, Joshi, who is a Padma Vibhushan awardee said that it was too early to assess the impact.

He said that NEP has not been in place for very long, and its implementation is still underway.

Joshi had also expressed similar concerns two months earlier after the leak of the NEET question paper sparked widespread protests and later led to the resignation of the then education minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

"It is painful to see young students from different parts of the country assembled for days on the streets of New Delhi. Their anxieties and concerns regarding the examination system are genuine and must be handled with empathy and a desire to find a lasting solution," he then said.

Joshi had also urged the protests to be not treated merely as a law-and-order issue requiring force, and expressed his concern on how young girls were brutally mishandled. “Such use of force shall alienate large sections of Indian society from the national goal of Viksit Bharat," he added.

(With inputs from PTI)