Failing to deliver a 39-point list for school education cost Smriti Irani her job

When the cabinet of PM Modi was shuffled a few days back, the biggest news came in the form of Smriti Irani being replaced by Prakash Javadekar. As soon as the news was announced, people began to speculate the reasons behind this change, one of which was the non-delivery or slow movement on the PMO’s to-do list for higher education.

However, turns out, other than that, she also failed to deliver on the school education to-do list, which was also being closely monitored by the PMO.

As against the five key issues that were undelivered on the higher education side, including the autonomy of IIMs and world-class institutes, school education had a 39 point to-do list, including a focus on improving learning levels, teacher training and vocationalisation.

PM himself reviewed the implementation of actions taken on these issues in a meeting held on March 10.

Even though the ministry was talking about addressing these aspects for over a year now, something concrete was yet to be done. However, some of the steps were taken within the stipulated timelines; however, a majority of steps were yet to be taken, which probably led to Irani’s exit from the ministry.

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