Maharashtra’s state education department is skipping political leaders such as Jawaharlal Nehru or Sardar Vallabhai Patel and heading straight to Prime Minister Narendra Modi when it comes to stocking books on important Indian political figures.
The state education department has bought nearly 1.5 lakh books on Modi for Rs 59.42 lakh to stock up libraries of zilla parishad schools as extra reading material for classes I to VIII, Mumbai Mirror reported.
Some books are full of photographs of Narendra Modi from his younger days, some others are biographies. There are also comic strips of Modi with Chacha Chowdhury.
72,933 Marathi copies and 33 Gujarati copies of Chacha Choudhary and Narendra Modi, 424 Hindi copies of Pradhanmantri Narendra Modi, and 7,148 English copies of the same book, each priced at Rs 35, have been ordered from Diamond Pocket Books Pvt Ltd.
Additionally, according to The Hindu, 69,416 Marathi copies of Narendra Modi published by Vilas Book Agency & Prakashan were ordered.
These books are not prescribed for schools run by the BMC, but they can be bought through the funds provided by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, Mumbai Mirror reported.
The other important figures are Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj who is on the top of the list with 3,40,982 copies, followed by former president APJ Abdul Kalam (3,21,328). But when it comes to political figures Nehru has only 1,635 books, compared to the 1.5 lakhs books on Modi.
Even Mahatma Gandhi, BR Ambedkar and Atal Bihari Vajpayee are behind Modi.
Justifying the purchase, Dr Sunil Magar, director, Balbharati and director in-charge, State Council of Educational Research and Training (SCERT), told The Hindu, “The books have been chosen by an expert committee on merit. Just because it is Modi, you are talking about it. But we have other books also.”
But educationists believe this move is done to build a political image of Modi on young impressionable minds.
“It seems both the Centre and the state are using public money to establish the prime minister as a modern icon…Instead of doing all this, the PMO should direct states to utilise funds for fixing problems in our education system,” Mumbai Mirror quoted an education researcher as saying.
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