NCERT’s Political Science Textbooks

The author’s article ’NCERT’s Political Science Textbooks Controversy: Cartoon-centred Pedagogy’ appeared in Mainstream (July 28, 2012). The following article is a continuation of the previous one.

There are six textbooks in Political Science for Classes IX to XII, two for Classes IX-X and four for Classes XI-XII. Each of these textbooks has been prepared by, or under the auspices of, a Textbook Development Committee, one for each book, but all of them have a common Chairperson of the Advisory Committee (Hari Vasudevan, Professor, Department of History, University of Calcutta), and two Chief Advisors (Suhash Palsikar, Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Pune, and Yogendra Yadav, Senior Fellow, Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi). Besides, there are Members, their number varying from about 10 to about 20 for each book; they include Professors, Readers, Lecturers, and school teachers (from various parts of the country) and some others such a Supreme Court Advocate (in one case) and independent researchers, etc.
Apart from the Textbook Developing Commi-ttee, there is a Monitoring Committee set up by the Department of Secondary and Higher Education, Ministry of HRD of the Government of India. There are two Chairmen of this Committee