In an outreach exercise to 40 lakh students following the declaration of the Central Board of Secondary Examination (CBSE) exam results earlier this month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is writing letters of appreciation to those who had applied to participate in ‘Pariksha Pe Charcha’ (PPC). The letters are also being addressed to the applicants’ parents.
Since 2018, Mr. Modi has been holding the annual event to interact with school students, teachers, and parents to share tips on remaining stress-free during the board exams. Every year, students from Class 9 to 12 participate in the PPC competition online by registering on the mygov.in website and respond to questions based on themes such as “Know your freedom fighters”, “Our culture our pride”, “My start-up dream” and so on. In 2023, close to 40 lakh students applied, of which 2,400 teachers and students were selected to attend the January 27 event in person.
Sources told The Hindu that the National Book Trust (NBT), an apex body under the Ministry of Education (MoE), has now been assigned the responsibility of printing, translating, and posting the letter penned by Mr. Modi to addresses of students across India. The Hindu accessed a copy of the letter.
Towards transforming India
In personalised letters addressed to each student, Mr. Modi thanks students for participating in PPC and writes, “The next 25 years signify the Amritkaal for India, in which we must move ahead with a vow to transform India into a developed and a self-sustaining nation… Be it entrepreneurship, medicine, sports, start-ups and many such fields, there is no dearth of resources and opportunities for youngsters to carve their future in any of these sectors.”
The enclosures include a certificate bearing Mr. Modi’s signature, listing out five vows for a prosperous India – working towards its development, getting rid of the mentality of slavery, taking pride in Indian culture, strengthening unity, and a priority towards duties.
On March 11, the NBT had floated a tender to select a bidder to print 40 lakh envelopes with gold foiling on the front, and folders containing individual letters, along with certificates, address stickers, biodegradable polybags as well as cartons to contain the envelopes.
According to Ministry of Education (MoE) sources, the NBT had also outsourced the job of transliterating addresses to which letters have to be posted, into regional languages. In a faux pas, the outsourced agency translated the addresses instead of transliterating them. For instance, Holy Child School became Pavitra Santaan Vidyalaya. “Now NBT has hired data entry operators to key in the correct addresses again,” sources said.
On the ground floor of National Book Trust building, photo booths with life-size cut-outs of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. | Photo Credit: Maitri Porecha
Up to 6.5 lakh letters are being translated into Gujarati, 2.43 lakh into Assamese, and a similar number into Marathi. Among the other regional languages in which letters will be sent are Tamil (83,062), Bangla (63,226), Odia (55,499), Malayalam (43,615) and Telugu (26,917).
According to a reply given during the February 2023 Parliament session by the MoE in the Lok Sabha, expenses for organising five editions of PM’s annual masterclass from 2018 to 2022 amounted to over ₹28 crore. This included the cost of sending out digital souvenirs of the PM’s autographed photographs, certificates, and PPC gift kits.
The expenditure on organising the PPC event has serially increased year on year from ₹3.67 crore in 2018, to ₹4.93 crore in 2019, ₹5.69 crore in 2020, ₹6 crore in 2021. In 2022, there was a nearly 122% increase in the spending from 2018, at ₹8.16 crore. This is higher than the average annual budget of one Kendriya Vidyalaya Sangathan school, which stood at ₹5.4 crore in 2021-22.
The MoE did not respond to The Hindu’s query on how much was spent on NBT’s letter distribution exercise and on the PPC 2023 event.
Catch them young
The letter writing exercise by Mr. Modi is the latest in the list of activities targeting schools and students. In February this year, CBSE added G-20 logos to hall tickets of students appearing in Class 10 and 12 board exams.
The mygov.in website interface where students register for PPC has been gamified, with students invited to participate in live quizzes pertaining to themes around Yoga Day, G-20 in Jammu and Kashmir, India’s G-20 culture track, Swachh Bharat and so on.
The boundary walls of the NBT office located in South Delhi’s Vasant Kunj have flex boards bearing PM Modi’s photos and publicity boards bearing signages of India’s G-20 Presidency. Inside the NBT office are selfie points with life-size cut-outs of Mr. Modi celebrating the 100th Mann ki Baat episode that aired on April 30.
There are also flex boards quoting Mr. Modi on virtues of reading, his Mentoring Yuva scheme, which encourages aspiring writers under 30 to apply to the government to write books on themes of India’s unsung heroes in the freedom struggle. In the 1.0 version, over 15,000 applications were received, of which 75 budding writers were shortlisted across 22 Indian languages, an NBT official said. In the 2.0 version, applications are now being invited by the NBT from young people to write books on themes of nationalism.
The NBT has also published translations of the book Exam Warriors, a compilation of Mr. Modi’s PPC discussions with students over the past six years, in 12 languages. While NBT holds the copyrights to regional language translations, the original English version copyright is held by Penguin.
“A couple of lakh copies have been printed and sold. But not all of them are sold; many are made available for free to be stocked in libraries of educational institutions or distributed as per demand,” the official said.
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2023-05-27 14:30:00Z
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