By G Babu Jayakumar & D Sekar

Copyright deccanchronicle

CHENNAI: With a conspiracy called caste overwhelming society for a thousand years, people were deprived of education, prompting a series of agitations at various points of time and giving rise to the emergence of protestors against that domination, which finally culminated in the Dravidian movement’s revolution in Tamil soil that enabled the present progress of the State, Chief Minister M K Stalin said on Thursday. Speaking at the government event titled ‘Tamil Nadu, the best in education,’ at the Nehru Indoor Stadium in Chennai, Stalin said the celebrations of success of education was only meant to inspire the future generations to give importance to studies. He thanked Telangana Chief Minister Revanth Reddy for attending the event as a special guest and said that he had followed the Tamil Nadu model and introduced a ‘Mahalakshmi Scheme’ on the lines of the free bus ride for women scheme. Enumerating the various schemes like by his government and also by the DMK in the past, he said that it was he who spoke in the Assembly, for the first time, on the need for students to travel without hassles and recommended the issuing of free bus pass, which was accepted and implemented by the then Chief Minister M Karunanidhi. Next, Karunanidhi, giving importance to college education, did away with fees in colleges for first generation students and also increased the quantum of reservation with a view to enabling people of all communities to enter the portals of colleges, he said. The education journey of the State was thus marked by several agitations and to take it to the next level, the DMK government had introduced, in the last four years, a slew of schemes like the Pudhumai Pen, Tamil Pudhalvan, Naan Mudhalvan, model schools, smart classrooms and importance to sports, he said. Skeptics raised questions like what change would a free meal or assistance of Rs 1000 a month would usher in but in reality, those schemes had helped people which was evident from the increase in turnout in classes and the Pudhumai Pen and Tamil Pudhalvan schemes had ensured that 75 percent of students, mostly girls, who passed out of schools enrolled themselves for higher education. In the last four years, 1,878 students from government schools had joined top universities, a revolution in education that had made every other state look at Tamil Nadu in wonder and study those schemes for them to follow, he said. Stalin said his aspiration to provide quality education to all in the State would be achieved with the help of the government schemes and the success of the students and no student would be stopped from entering a college for whatever reason. Urging the students to make use of the opportunities provided by the government, he advised them to never even stop studying even if they land in jobs after graduation or reach top positions in their careers because education was important.