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What is Fatorda MLA’s hidden agenda
By Nisser Dias
Last week, parents of students studying in first to fourth standard and
tenth to 12th standard were ruffled up a bit and are now gearing up to
take on the Directorate of Education and Fatorda MLA Damodar Naik for
seeking personal information using the Right to Information Act. In my
opinion this BJP MLA has no business to request entire details of the
students such as names, postal address, their date of birth, mobile
numbers of students as well as the details of their parents, at the same
he has not committed any illegality nor has he usurped his position as a
legislator by requesting the information. It was the duty of the
Education department to apply its mind and decide whether it could part
with such personal data.
Person seeking information under RTI needs to state his reason for what
he wants the information and Damodar’s reason being, he is conducting a
survey on students possessing mobiles, this sounds stupid and
unconvincing indicating that the BJP along with their MLA has a hidden
agenda. Citing such a flimsy reason for obtaining personal data of the
students should have rung warning bells in the minds of the officials
sitting in the Directorate of Education, unfortunately it did not. And I
am not surprised because most of the officials in the DoE starting from
the top are inefficient and stupid. What they can do best is “yes sir
job” to each and every politician.
Not for a moment am I willing to believe that it was the brainchild of
the Fatorda MLA to acquire the data of the students from first to fourth
standard and tenth to twelfth standard. I feel that it is well devised
plan by the BJP bigwigs and Damodar Naik is just a pawn. However it is
really difficult to gauge the motive behind sinister ploy, but one can
be sure that the BJP which thrives on divisive politics is seeking such
personal information not for the love of students or the for the love of
mobile companies, the party surely has some plans up its sleeve and to
believe that those plans are honourable would be dangerous.
Be that as it may, it was unbelievable that Education department
forwarded this request to the schools to provide the information and
that too directly to the applicant. This action of the department is
irresponsible and has to be condemned. The data should have first be
collected by the Directorate of Education and then handed over to the
applicant. For direction to schools to handover the information directly
to the Fatorda MLA is setting a bad precedent and the Education Director
has to be penalized for being so casual in her approach. How can the
Director, who is the overall custodian of our children can now guarantee
the parents the safety of their children, what guarantee can the
director of Education offer us that the information provided to the BJP
MLA will not be put to wrong use or will not be passed on to wrong people.
The information sought by the Fatorda MLA Damodar Naik is personal is
nature and the director of Education or her legal adviser should have
realized that such information has to be safe guarded and that such data
does not serve public purpose or cannot be used in public domain. But
since they have already allowed the information to be made available to
the applicant speaks volume of the caliber and capabilities of Director
of Education in improving the quality of education in the state of Goa.
It would be better for the present incumbent to relinquish the post for
directing schools and higher secondary schools to provide personal
information to the applicant who so ever he might be.
Now let us analyze how the information, some of which is already in the
hands of the MLA can be misused. At the outset, let me remind all the
readers how the BJP led government in the state headed by former chief
minister Manohar Parrikar tried to brainwash and poison the innocent
minds of the our children with the controversial CD of Goa freedom
struggle. In fact the CDs were already distributed in all the schools in
the state with direction from the then Education minister who was none
other then the chief minister himself that the children should be
compulsorily made to view the CD. If his government was not toppled
then, by now deadly poison would have already been infused in the
formative minds of our children making them religious fundamentalist by
now. The same man had earlier tried to indoctrinate our children with
introduction of a new history book with distorted version. But vigiliant
citizens had put spokes into his designs on both occasion.
At that time it was a arrogant move because they were in power, thus to
my mind this also could be a discreet move of the BJP to get involved
with the children on one to one basis and indoctrinate them. This could
be one of the reasons to get hold of the mobile numbers of students,
given the fact that cell phones are supposed to personal communication
instruments. And given the close links of BJP with hardline organization
like RSS, Ram Sene, Sanathan Saunstha, the information provided to the
Fatorda MLA under RTI by the Directorate of Education does seem to be in
safe hands.
In the recent past Ram Sene has been in the news for all wrong reasons,
for attacking and molesting young girls, for going on a rampage on
Valentine’s day. Sanathan Saunstha has been under the scanner for a long
time and very recently allegedly for carrying out blasts amongst its own
brethren to cause communal tension.
In this modern world too, there are children, who have a mean streak in
them, in earlier days this mean streak was put to use to maybe stone a
street bulb or to nick a street tube to replace a fused tubelight at
home, but that was without any training but now with the gadgetry that
is available young minds can be moulded for much worse destruction and
God forbid that the information provided by the Directorate of Education
is not used for such purposes.
The Directorate of Education should immediately order that none
institutions should handover the data sought to the Fatorda MLA and if
Damodar Naik is already in receipt of the information should immediately
hand it back without keeping copies of the same. (ENDS)
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First published in Gomantak Times, Goa - February 25, 2010
