A prison may not jump to mind when you think of the pursuit of education. But Tihar jail has many inmates who are undertaking courses from Indira Gandhi National Open University, including master’s degree in public administration, postgraduate diploma in business operations, bachelor’s degree in social work and certificate in food and nutrition.
An RTI filed by law student Aniket Gaurav elicited these details of courses being pursued by Tihar inmates for the past five years. Most students are enrolled in certificate and diploma courses. A large number, of course, are undertaking Class X and XII courses. There are many incarcerated students enrolled in bachelor’s degree courses.
Gaurav filed the RTI after learning that exams for the inmates hadn’t been held last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. “While everyone outside was talking about conducting exams, no one was concerned about the jail inmates. The overall data shows the proportion of students undertaking courses among the prison inmates is very low,” said Gaurav.
Sandeep Goel, DG, Tihar Jail, responded, “The exams are under way now. While NIOS conducted exams two weeks ago, Ignou is holding them now.”
With the caveat that some of the jails did not provide details for the RTI response, the most popular course in most jails is the bachelor’s preparatory programme offered by Ignou. In Jail No 13 in 2017, 69 students were enrolled, the highest for any course in the central prison. In 2020, around five inmates there were undertaking the course.
As for diploma courses, at Jail No 13 in Mandoli, in 2020, 48 inmates are enrolled in the certificate course in food and nutrition. In 2017, 39 students had taken up the course. At Jail No 6, around seven students had passed the same course.
The postgraduate diploma in business operations attracts students too. In Tihar’s Jail No 3, three completed the course in the 2018-19 academic session. Since 2015-16, two or three students have regularly undertaken this course, and a total of 32 students completed the graduation programme and 19, the postgraduate programme between 2014-15 and 2018-19.
However, in Jail No 16 and 15, no one has passed any course in the last five years.
There are also students enrolled in classes X and XII. In Class X, NIOS has 318 aspirants and 48 in Class XII. Ignou has overall 370 enrolled.
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