Hereditary Education Policy - Cancellation

Cancellation

The opposition campaign was successful in creating doubts about the scheme in the minds of the general public. There was dissent within the Congress party and Kamaraj wanted Rajaji to withdraw the scheme as it was unpopular amongst the public and with the party members. On 20 October 1953, forty Congress Legislative Assembly members led by P. Varadarajulu Naidu, sent a memorandum to Nehru objecting to Rajaji's unilateral conduct. Among the issues they raised was his refusal to budge on the education scheme issue. But Rajaji refused to drop the scheme. On 8 November 1953, Congress lost the by election for the Kangayam constituency by a narrow margin. Pressure mounted from within the party to drop the scheme. On 9 March 1954, Congress leader and former Chief Minister O. P. Ramaswamy Reddiyar made an open appeal to Rajaji in the legislature:

But Rajaji did not relent and his education minister C Subramaniam upped the ante by announcing that the scheme would be extended to urban areas in June 1954. This spurred the Congress legislators into open revolt. They scheduled a meeting of the Congress Legislative Party on 21 March. Faced with certain defeat in the leadership election that was bound to happen in that meeting, Rajaji tried a last minute compromise - he would quit if C. Subramaniam was chosen as his successor and the scheme was kept. But Kamaraj, the leader of the anti-Rajaji camp, refused to accept the deal. The meeting was postponed by a week and when it happened on March 31, C. Subramaniam was defeated by Kamaraj. Rajaji resigned and Kamaraj took over as chief minister on 13 April 1954. This effectively ended the prospects of the new education scheme. On 18 May 1954, C Subramaniam announced in the assembly that the scheme was being dropped. The reason stated for the dropping was that the necessary acceptance, support and cooperation of the people were not forthcoming for the scheme and the atmosphere was not propitious for the success of the scheme.

Meanwhile, the composite Madras State had been reorganised along linguistic lines. The state of Andhra had split from Madras on 1 October 1953. The Andhra Government constituted an Elementary Education Committee with Dr. B. Kuppuswamy as chairman to review the elementary education situation. The Kuppuswamy committee report recommended the rejection of the Modified Elementary Education Scheme. In 1954 the Andhra state canceled the scheme.