We have made education a political priority, says Manish Sisodia

Deputy Chief Minister, Delhi, addressed students, academicians, and civil society members as part of the Change Makers series initiated by GITAM.

Manish Sisodia, Deputy Chief Minister of Delhi speaking to students, academicians, and civil society members at GITAM said that they have made education a political priority. “Education has never been a priority for politicians because the results of investing in education are not immediate,” Sisodia said.

Sisodia addressed the students and teachers at GITAM (Deemed to be University) Vizag campus detailed the Delhi Government’s education initiatives, the mission and vision behind these initiatives, his growing up years, the transition from activism to politics, adopting participative democratic methods and much more.

“In Delhi, we have worked in two folds – one is fixing the problem of the education system and using education to fix the problems of the society,” He said.

He added, “We’ve made education a political priority. Education has never been a priority for politicians because the results of investing in education are not immediate. While building roads or working on other infrastructure - right before elections guarantees support during elections, the same can’t be said about education. But we’ve changed the narrative through our work in Delhi. Now politicians do talk about education before elections.”

Explaining how the change was brought about he said, “We increased the budget allocated to education and we’ve used this money to improve infrastructure - which is always a work in progress. We’ve started training programmes for teachers. We send our government school teachers to universities such as Harvard and Columbia and countries like Singapore and Finland. We want the teachers to provide world-class education, but they can only do that when they know what the rest of the world is doing in the field of education. We’ve also tried to shift the focus of classroom teaching to producing good learning outcomes.”

About using education to fix the problems of society, he said, “Education is necessary to deliver not only skills but also a change the mindset. The happiness mindset is missing, the entrepreneurship mindset is missing and the mindset that we all belong to one nation and must work together as a team is also missing. So, we’ve introduced three curriculums to produce these mindsets in future citizens. It’s not enough to score high marks, it is also important to have the right mindset to thrive in society.”

Answering a question about AAP’s attempts to foster a participative democracy in society, he gave the example of how the budget preparation process for the Delhi government is inclusive, which considers the inputs of various stakeholders like traders and market associations etc.

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