**5. Ambedkar's views on education**

It is said that Dr. Ambedkar was the first untouchable Indian who obtained the highest degree of education. Ambedkar's writings on education include his submission paper before the Indian Statutory Commission in the Bombay Presidency on "State of Education of the Dalits" and one article on "Subsidy for Education" in which he pleads for an increased subsidy from the government on education and also underlines the need for inexpensive education for the deprived communities. Ambedkar criticized the British policy on education for not adequately encouraging education among the lower castes.

The major concerns of the SCs, their concerns on education are lack of assistance for higher education and lack of facilities for technical training. The role of education is to moralize and socialize the people, not to make them servant or professional. The lower orders of Indian society are just getting into the higher education and the policy of then the time's Education Ministry of the Government of India therefore ought to be to make higher education as cheap to the lower classes as it can possibly be made.

Ambedkar established the People's Education Society in July 1945 with the two main objectives: first, search after the trust and second, start, establish and conduct educational institutions or give aid to such institutions. He emphasized the need to explore the myth created by the Hindu orthodoxy that students of backward communities were incapable of learning. Ambedkar has incorporated Article 45 in the Directive Principles of the State Policy (DPSP) of the Indian Constitution that,

"the state shall endeavor to provide, within a period of ten years from the commencement of this Constitution, for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of 14 years [28]."

Learnings from Dr. Ambedkar, there are four different communities in the matter of education, divided the Indian society into four different reservation categories. The first is OBC that social and educational backward class which includes farming and rural communities. The second class is SC which includes all untouchable communities. The third class is ST which includes all tribal communities both plain and hills, forest communities. The fourth class is EWS that includes the economically poor upper castes. The first three classes are non-Brahminical and educationally most backward also.

The fourth class is Brahmanical which includes economically weaker sections of upper castes. The EWS is educationally advanced but recently designed as economically poor. Bearing these divisions in mind, one sees a great disparity in the comparative advancement of these different classes in the matter of education. The government is not increasing its expenditure on schooling and higher education to create more space and opportunities for the students of marginalized communities.

Ambedkar requested the honorable education minister then the time the British India government to spend more money on primary education, if for nothing else, at least for the purpose of seeing that what he spends bears some fruit ultimately. Ambedkar also shared his concern about the commercialization of education in India. In the end of his speech, Ambedkar concluded his remark that fear is of commercialization of education. As in Ambedkar's view: "Education is something which ought to be brought within the reach of everyone." Ambedkar's big concern was related to casteism and their educational deprivation. At a stage where the lower castes of Indian society are just getting into education and the policy of the British government therefore must be like such that makes higher education a cheap to the lower castes as it can possibly be made [29].
