NEW DELHI: Former Human Resource Development minister Murli Manohar Joshi on Thursday said students' demands should be heard with sympathy and criticised the use of force.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the 21st FICCI Higher Education Summit here, Joshi said students are "our children" and should be dealt with as such.
"Reasonable or legitimate demands of students should always be heard and should be heard with a great deal of sympathy. This method of using batons is not appropriate. You can never find a solution this way. If there are problems, listen to them. They are our children," the BJP leader said when asked about the raging protests.
"When a child complains to father saying you had promised that you will get me so and so thing, the father tells why he wasn't able to fulfil the promise and assures that it will be done soon … or does he shoo away the child? Similarly the students are our children and should be dealt with in the same manner," he said.
Asked about the National Education Policy, Joshi, a Padma Vibhushan awardee, said it was too early to do a fair assessment.
"NEP 2020 is new … It has not been in place for very long. The implementation is still underway, so what can we say about it at this stage? It is only the beginning. What its results would be, we would know later," he said.
Joshi expressed similar concerns two months ago, when the leak of the NEET question paper sparked widespread protests, eventually resulting in the resignation of then education minister Dharmendra Pradhan.
"It is painful to see young students from different parts of the country assembled for days on the streets of New Delhi. Their anxieties and concerns regarding the examination system are genuine and must be handled with empathy and a desire to find a lasting solution," he then said.
"I fervently hope that this is not treated merely as a law-and-order issue to be tackled through the use of force. It is very painful to see that even young girls were brutally mishandled. Such use of force shall alienate large sections of Indian society from the national goal of Viksit Bharat," he added.