Sudha Murthy and Shankar Mahadevan part of committee formed by NCERT

A 19-member National Syllabus and Teaching Learning Material Committee (NSTC) would work on developing textbooks, instruction material and syllabus for class 3 to class 12. 

 Dr Shekhar Mande, Professor Sujatha Ramdorai, U Vimal Kuma, Michel Danino, Surina Rajan, Chamu Krishna Shastri, Gajanan Londhe, Rabin Chhetri, Pratyusha Kumar Mandal, Dinesh Kumar, Kirti Kapoor and Ranjana Arora are some of the members. Among the members and certain renowned celebrities. These are playback singer Shankar Mahadevan and author-cum-philanthropist Sudha Murthy. 

Internet is divided over the move

Whereas one section found that having a diverse panel is a positive sign for collaborative purposes and that the educational and social work background of Sudha Murthy puts her in a commendable position for the role. 

“There is nothing wrong with having members from different backgrounds on the panel. Both of them have accomplished backgrounds and bring creative and logical aspects, which are the need of the hour in today’s academic world,” a person commented.

Others however had a different point of view.

“If you are an academic from Dalit/Adivasi communities, even the best of academic works may not get you a place in the NCERT textbook panel. But if you’re a Brahmin, extra-academic qualifications like singing well and writing children’s stories are good enough,” one user wrote.