RSS student wing ABVP apprehensive about Smriti Irani’s choice to rollout CBCS across central universities

NEW DELHI: The RSS-affiliated Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad ( ABVP) has expressed apprehensions over the proposed rollout of the Choice-Based Credit System ( CBCS) across all state and central universities from the coming academic year, a development that could curtail HRD minister Smriti Irani’s ambitious plans of overhauling the higher education.

Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad is learnt to have “informally” asked the government to limit CBCS only to the postgraduate level as most state and central universities are not equipped to introduce radical changes in undergraduate courses.

“A formal note will be presented to the ministry and the UGC next month,” said a national-level senior ABVP functionary. Choice-Based Credit System provides a ‘cafeteria’ type or interdisciplinary approach to education in which students can take courses of their choice, learn at their own pace and acquire more than the required credits. So an arts student can also opt for a science subject as an elective. CBCS will also allow students to study at more than one university.

This scheme is currently being opposed by the national federation of central university teachers, which has threatened to launch a nation-wide agitation against what they feel is being hurriedly pushed through. ABVP hasn’t disclosed its stand on the issue, until now. Although it isn’t clear if the RSS student wing will join the teachers’ stir, its objections could prove to be embarrassing for the government, unless heeded.

Shrihari Borikar, national general secretary, ABVP, told ET that Choice-Based Credit System is theoretically acceptable, but many universities lack the infrastructural prerequisites such as a healthy student-teacher ratio, among other things, to implement it successfully, especially at the undergraduate level. “Delhi University, for instance, has lakhs of undergraduate students. This system is too unwieldy to support CBCS,” he said.

The credit-based system is one of the biggest announcements made by the HRD ministry under Irani and the government has moved pretty quickly on the implementation front. The HRD ministry recently informed the Parliament that as many as 18 central universities are on board to introduce credit-based system at both the undergraduate and postgraduate level. UGC has already prepared the model curriculum for 32 undergraduate programmes to fit the CBCS format. ABVP’s objections could now curtail Irani’s ambition.