Get your maths right Minister

Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.
Bertrand Russell
British author, mathematician, & philosopher (1872 - 1970)

Mathematics is the queen of the sciences.
Carl Friedrich Gauss, from Sartorius von Waltershausen, "Gauss zum Gedachtniss" [1856]
German mathematician, physicist, & prodigy (1777 - 1855)

So at last there is an answer to the problems that Indian students faced all these years. Maharashtra, a trend setter in many avenues, come up with another novel idea to end the miserable conditions our students live. The extremely intelligent state minister of School Education, Prof Vasantrao Purke come up with this rather bizarre suggestion to make Mathematics an optional subject in school curriculum. . The above quoted greats are in no way comes at par with this guy. For a country who contributed ‘zero’ to the world, this suggestion is an absolute humiliation. When countries like the US of A and other scholars from world over emphasis the importance of mathematics & science in fear of losing the edge of their students to Indian and Chinese due to their prowess in these subjects, we are planning to blunt that same edge by introducing these draconian measures just to make the winning percentage looks good?
At a time when Indian professionals are being hailed as the best all over the world, this suggestion is totally unwarranted and uncalled for. That too from a top minister makes the impact more dangerous. If this trend is continued, we can scrap physics and chemistry and may be biology and other difficult subjects from the curriculum and introduce new subjects like, Paddy farming, Cricket and politics in order to make it easy for rural students.
The very basic of our intellect is Mathematics. If one is to survive in any of the careers that are available now, a sound mathematical background is essential. Without it, how one could succeed in life is beyond my comprehension. May be the minister was just shooting his mouth off. Hope he doesn’t mean it. If he does, it will have serious repercussions on the future generations.