NEW DELHI: Education minister Atishi said that political parties in India had begun to take education and health as crucial points for election campaigns because of the attention the Aam Aadmi Party gave to these. “In the past 75 years, we have not had a single political party that claimed to transform the education system of the country and provide quality education to every child,” she said at the Cambridge India Conference hosted by Cambridge Judge Business School in the UK on Thursday.Criticising the central government, Atishi said that there were two political models prevailing in India: one followed by Aam Aadmi Party that gave common people access to good education and another of the central government, which resorted to imprisoning political rivals through agencies like the Central Bureau of Investigation and Enforcement Directorate and introduced ordinances in Parliament to undermine the power of elected governments.Atishi highlighted the work done by Delhi government in high school education and said it was now working to improve the primary schools run by the municipal corporation. “In all the 75 years of India’s democratic history, it is for the first time that politics is paying attention to governance and political parties have education and health as their top agenda,” she said. “This major shift in the politics of India was brought about by Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal with his exemplary work over the past eight years. He has given priority to high-quality education for every child and quality healthcare for every citizen in Delhi.”The minister claimed that even PM Narendra Modi, pressured by the impact of the Delhi model of governance model, had had to reach a school – “though a fake one in a PortaCabin”, she said – before the Gujarat assembly elections to launch an education scheme.Atishi also spoke about national issues. “Although we are often told that India’s GDP has crossed the $3.5 trillion mark and it is the fastest-growing G20 economy… one key indicator of the country’s situation is the Human Development Index, where India ranks 132 out of 191 countries. Several smaller countries such as Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, have higher ranks in this index,” she pointed out.She said the number of hungry people grew from 19 crore to 35 crore between 2020 and 2022. “This is alarming considering that India is the second-largest producer of food in the world,” she said, adding that 4.8 crore people were currently unemployed in the country.
Source: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/atishi-lauds-aap-govt-model-at-cambridge-targets-centre/articleshow/101056503.cms