Vinay Kumar
NEW DELHI: Election Commission’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of electoral rolls launched last year ahead of Bihar assembly polls has entered the Class IX textbooks, 1975-77 Emergency has moved from senior school political science into compulsory secondary reading, while economics has been recast around scarcity, markets and role of govt. NCERT’s new Class IX social science textbook — Understanding Society: India and Beyond – Part 1 — marks a shift in how students will encounter democracy, institutions and the economy from the 2026-27 academic session. SIR appears in a chapter on elections, in a section on the poll panel’s functions. The textbook describes EC as an autonomous constitutional body responsible for free and fair elections and says SIR involves “updating, verifying and correcting the electoral rolls”. It adds that the exercise ensures “no eligible citizen is left out and no ineligible person is included”. The book also introduces Emergency in class IX for the first time, bringing it into compulsory secondary-level reading. Earlier, Emergency was taught only in an optional class XII political science paper. The third shift is structural. Its economics chapters build from the idea of scarcity and the choices it forces on individuals, firms and govts.
