Kapil Sibal, the Human Resource Development Minister of the UPAII
government, by all counts, is candid. His assertions may sound
boastful – but no one can fault him for not stating the objectives of his
government and his ministry with clarity. He has declared with a rare
matter-of-factness that he intends to do to the education sector exactly
what his Prime Minister had done to the Indian economy in the early
nineties.
There is no need to go into the specifics of what Dr. Manmohan
Singh had done to our national economy. It has been widely discussed
and understood. Indian economy was aligned in the most
unambiguous manner with the process of neo-liberal globalization.
It has replicated in the clearest form what has happened elsewhere
through such a paradigm shift. Intensification of sharp inequalities –
accentuation of poverty – ‘jobless’ growth – privatization of public
assets – are all those unmistakable features which characterize Indian
economy today.
But, let us come back to Kapil Sibal and his grandiose plans for
taking Indian education forward. After having announced
immediately after assuming office, the agenda for the first 100 days of
the government, he has embarked on a plethora of policy
pronouncements and proposed legislative actions.
Primarily, he has clearly spelt out the policy direction of his
government. For the first time, the HRD ministry has come out with
a public-private-partnership (PPP) policy. Through several legislative
proposals, he has also clearly laid out the direction towards further
commercialization and privatization of the educational process. And
lest there be, any form of resistance to this policy course, he has
abandoned any veneer of nicety of ‘cooperative federalism’ and
launched a most direct and overt assault on hitherto existing practices
and conventions which have been guided by the requirements of
constitutionally ordained contours of Centre-State relations.
To the present government, the question is very simple. Not only
will neo-liberal policies be pursued in education as in the case of
economy from the nineties through the instrumentality of facilitating
private and commercial interests which, invariably, will jeopardize
the right of the aam aadmi to access education at all levels, but every
possible effort to resist such an offensive will be legally snuffed out.
Therefore, longstanding rights and autonomy enjoyed by the states
and other democratic structures of educational governance like elected
university Senates and Syndicates, State Higher Education Councils
and State School Boards will be unambiguously disempowered.
A proper comprehension of what is going on is extremely
important. That this is not any subjective misguided display of over
enthusiasm but a clear-cut expression of the class priorities of the
present Indian ruling classes in this juncture of further integrating
India in the overarching project of neo-liberal globalization – is a
necessary conclusion that has to be assimilated. But for such an
understanding, the resistance to this obnoxious process cannot be
forged.
EDUCATION: A MARXIST APPRAISAL
Marxists have never seen education and its evolution as divorced from
the fundamentals of the class society. Therefore, education can never
be treated as mere dissemination of instructions and knowledge for
the overall advancement of the human society. Apart from a process of
transmitting skills and knowledge, education throughout the
protracted history of class societies have served as a powerful tool to
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forge a consciousness aimed at perpetuating the class rule specific to
that stage of development of the class society. Education, indeed, has
been a powerful component of the ‘ideological apparatus’ which has
served the objective of securing the cultural and intellectual hegemony
of the ruling classes.
Explaining this, Marx and Engels observed: “The ideas of the
ruling class are in every epoch, the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the
ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual
force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal,
consequently also controls the means of mental production, so that the
ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are on the whole
subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of
the dominant material relations; dominant material relations grasped as
ideas: hence of the relations which made the one class the ruling one, and
therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling
class possess among other things, consciousness, and therefore, think. In so
far, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of
an historical epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range,
hence among other things, rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and
regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age; thus
their ideas’ are the ruling ideas of the epoch”.
In pre-capitalist societies, the approach of the ruling classes was
quite direct. They simply excluded the broad masses from the process
of education and kept it confined to the ruling elite through ‘home
education’. Given the low levels of productive capacities of such
societies and the consequent limited requirements of manpower
suited such a blatant policy of exclusion. The experience of Greek
institutions or the Indian Gurukuls are prime examples of such an
exclusionary course. And, how cruel that could mean is amply
demonstrated through the mythological anecdotes of Ekalavya and
Shambuka.
The situation, however, altered with the advent of capitalism.
With the tremendous development of the productive forces and the
requirements of a mass social production necessitated the need for
imparting some minimum level of education and training. The early
capitalist society, of course, was slow in realizing these new
requirements. Therefore, in the primitive days of capitalist
development, the advances in education were excruciatingly tardy
and halting.
Chronicling such a situation, the early revolutionary, Mikhail
Bakunin, wrote on July 31, 1869 in L’Egalite – “That is the fact that all
of the intelligentsia, all of the great applications of science to the purpose of
industry, trade and to the life of society in general have thus far profited no
one, save the privileged classes and the power of the State, that timeless
champion of all political and social iniquity. Never, not once, have they
brought any benefit to the masses of the people”.
Still later, another eminent Marxist, Sylvia Pankhurst, wrote in a
pamphlet in 1918 quoting extensively from the Report of the Royal
Commission into “The Employment and Condition of children in
Mines and Manufacturers” presented in 1848 retelling the
heartrending accounts of poor under-aged, malnourished children
of British miners’ families. She captured the inhumanity of early
capitalism as to how all instructions were limited to the Sunday classes
mostly restricted to the scriptures which hardly enabled these hapless
children to become confident of overcoming their circumstances.
However, as much as Marx and Engels asserted in Communist
Manifesto : “Not only has the bourgeoisie forced the weapons that bring
death unto itself. It has called into existence the men who are to build these
weapons – the modern working class – the proletarians”. They further
observed that the bourgeoisie “furnishes the proletariats with weapons
to fight” them. The struggle for education – a universal education –
has remained as an inseparable agenda for the proletariat to steel
themselves in their class battle to topple capitalism. At the same time,
the proletariat has also fought for expanding that universal right for
other exploited sections for the establishment of democracy.
Marx and Engels have mocked at the pretensions of capitalism to
restrict the access to education: “But, you say, we destroy the most
hallowed of relations, when we replace ‘home education’ by social.
“And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the
social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or
indirect, of society, by means of schools & c.? The Communists have not
invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter
the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence
of the ruling class.”
Thus, the course for us has been charted by the pioneers. The
struggle for the universal right of education for the masses will be an
essential element of our struggle to establish democracy and equality.
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It will, however, be shaped by the ‘concrete’ conditions of the ‘concrete’
situation with a view to defend past gains, consolidate them and try to
forge ahead fending off fresh assaults.
THE INDIAN EXPERIENCE
There has been a great degree of unanimity over the broad features of
development of education in the colonial period, save except our
Prime Minister when he exclaimed in his infamous observation in
his alma mater – Oxford University – that the British rule in India
had made positive contributions in the development of a structure of
administration and the human resources required for this purpose.
That the British viewed education as an instrument to consolidate
their colonial rule is clear from the manner that they approached the
subject from the days of Warren Hastings and Jonathan Duncan
established the Calcutta Madrassa and the Banaras Sanskrit College
in the fag end of the 18th century. With changes over the years to
systematize the educational structure starting with the Wood’s
dispatch often regarded as ‘Magna Carta’ of British education in India
to the establishment of universities in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras
in 1857, the effort was always to restrict the education to the elite. The
philosophy was so succinctly articulated by Lord Macaulay in 1835
who observed ‘we want to create a class of Indians who will pursue
the interest of the Her Majesty’s Government – sharing our thinking
but brown in the colour of their skin’.
But, as Marx has pointed out, the attempt at restrictive
development by which the ruling classes attempt to secure their
hegemony gives rise to contradictions which eventually leads to the
strengthening of a process which is quite the opposite. Colonial India
has been no exception. Young educated Indians broke down the
barriers of their often elitist circumstances to become part of the
struggle for national emancipation and end of the colonial rule.
And, thus, in the crucible of our independence movement itself,
the struggle for universal right to education broke out. Gopalkrishna
Gokhale moved the proposal in Imperial Legislative Council on
March 18, 1910 to provide for ‘free and compulsory primary
education’ in India. Sessions of Indian National Congress also adopted
resolutions for realizing right to education for the masses and the
THE MARXIST
8
commensurate allocation of financial resources by the government to
ensure this. The bourgeois leadership of the national movement was
very clear that moving away from the restrictive policies of the colonial
rule, right to education was an important war cry to rally millions of
Indians – especially young men and women in the struggle to secure
their support and participation.
In the wake of independence, India faced a daunting challenge.
Commenting on the nature of those challenges, the Swedish economist
and sociologist Dr.Gunnar Myrdal in his seminal three volume book
Asian Drama-An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations observes: “From a
development point of view, the purpose of education must be to rationalize
attitudes as well as to impart knowledge and skills. In the South Asian
countries, which have largely been stagnant for a long time and where
attitudes antagonistic to development have taken firm root and become
institutionalized, the changing of attitudes requires far greater emphasis
than in the developed countries, where attitudes are already more rational,
and are adjusted to permit further rapid progress. This is one of several
reasons why educational reformers in South Asia have to guard against a
tendency to adopt uncritically the educational practices and policies of the
Western countries.”
However, the post-colonial developments have shown that the
post-independent ruling classes – the bourgeois-landlord regime
have not moved away from the fundamental premise of restricting
education and not transforming it into a universal right.
It is true that the requirements of developing capitalism
independently which the international historical conjuncture offered,
the government did talk of expanding university and secondary and
technical education. To address the requirement they constituted,
commissions under the chairmanship of Dr. Radhakrishnan and
Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar respectively. There were also certain
faltering efforts to create the scientific and technical manpower needed
for pursuing the path of capitalist development. However, the question
of universalizing the educational rights always remained a distant
dream. And, in any case, the contradictions inherent in the path of
capitalist development particularly arising out of the failure to
eliminate feudalism drew the economy into a phase of crisis in the
mid-sixties. There was a considerable degree of disenchantment
among the young people over the failure of the economy to absorb
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them in the economy productively after passing out from the college
and the universities.
It is not a chance coincidence that the vision of a modern
developed and educated society outlined by the most comprehensive
report till now – that headed by Prof. D. S. Kothari -did spell out an
appropriate conception. The Kothari Commission pointed out : “The
children of the masses are compelled to receive sub-standard
education…while the economically privileged parents are able to `buy’
good education for their children…By segregating their children, such
privileged parents prevent them from sharing the life and experience of the
children of the poor and coming into contact with the realities of
life…There is thus segregation in education itself – the minority of private,
fee-charging, better schools meetings the needs of the upper class and the
vast bulk of free, publicly maintained, but poor schools being utilized by
the rest. What is worse, this segregation is increasing and tending to widen
the gulf between the classes and the masses.”
The Kothari Commission did not limit itself to pious assertions.
It concretely recommended that at least 6 per cent of the GDP be
spent on education. But the failure of the Indian ruling classes as in
other areas of national life is in an equal degree glaring in the sphere
of education as well. And, therefore, Kothari Commission’s
recommendations continue to remain a pipedream for millions of
Indian families who remain excluded from the educational process.
And, India continues to be the home to the largest number of illiterates
in the world.
The process of education and the government policies saw a sharp
‘U’ turn with the 1986 New Education Policy of the Rajiv Gandhi
government. The government officially abandoned the idea of
universalizing education and restricting the design of the structure
of education system to produce the limited manpower required for
its narrowly premised export led growth strategy. The policy statement
pointed out that not only is a large section of our educated youth –
unemployed but, in fact, they are ‘unemployable’. Therefore, the
government’s funds and other resources should be focused on
educating and developing the ‘employable’ manpower. Thus came
the regime of Navodaya Vidyalayas and Centres of Excellence in the
sphere of higher education.
Summing up the updated Programme of the CPI (M) in 2000
pointed out: “The Constitution of Republic of India which was adopted
in 1950 had laid down a set of directive principles to be followed by the
State. These include ….right to education and provision of free and
compulsory education for children. ... None of these principles had been
realised in practice. The glaring gap between the constitution’s precepts
and the practice of the bourgeois rulers is a scathing indictment of the
bourgeois-landlord system instituted after independence.” (Para 2.37)
THE ADVENT OF NEO-LIBERAL GLOBALISATION
The nineties saw the emergence of the ‘bold new initiatives’ of the
economic reforms in India. The paradigm saw a quantum change. It
was a complete new direction. The government shed the pretensions
of being accountable for the education of the masses. It started claiming
that the government did not have the resources to provide for the
education of its entire citizens. Seeds were sown in the 1986 – now it
blossomed in a more hospitable environment. Henceforth, the private
sector would play a much larger role in the funding of education
particularly at the level of higher education.
Oblivious of the commitments that India has made to the
international community in being signatory to the ‘Education for
All’ in Alma Ata Conference or the UN-sponsored ‘Millennium
Development Goals’, the government did not fight shy of
relinquishing the responsibilities of educational development to
predatory market forces. The result of such a course of development
is for all to see. Gradually slipping among the nations of the world,
India has now come to occupy the 132nd position among 177 nations
in the ranking with respect to human development – a truly laudable
achievement for the claimant of an ‘economic superpower’ status!
And, this is true to the spirit of neo-liberalism. The government
is bent on facilitating the growth of private sector – a philosophy of
‘education for profit’ over the principle of ‘education as a right’.
A Brazilian economist, Alfredo Saad-Filho, in describing neoliberalism
points out: “Neoliberalism combines an accumulation strategy,
a mode of social and economic reproduction and a mode of exploitation
and social domination based on the systematic use of state power to impose,
under the ideological veil of non-intervention, a hegemonic project of
recomposition of the rule of capital in all areas of social life”. Filho’s
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observations could not be more representative of the paradigm which
has dictated the process of educational development in the last two
decades.
There are, of course, certain differences in the sphere of school
education and higher education. Although there has been very little
commensurate sense of responsibility displayed in terms of financial
resources allocated for school education of which we will talk about
later.
In 1994, World Bank came out with a study, Higher education:
Lessons of Experience. It provided the argument for pushing neo-liberal
prescriptions particularly in higher education. The document
construed higher education as a ‘non-merit good’ as opposed to the
school education which was viewed as a ‘merit good’. It asserted that
those who pursued higher education benefited individually and the
community only benefits marginally, therefore, it stands to logic that
the government should not squander its scarce resources for
promoting higher education. The implicit conclusion pointed
towards a direction of privatization and commercialization of higher
education divorcing it from school education.
That such an approach is completely lopsided and unsustainable
is quite evident. It overlooks the dynamic relationship between school
and higher education. And, the teachers required for school education
are essentially those who have to come out with the appropriate level
of proficiency from institutions of higher learning itself. Historically
in a phase of development when the country has to move forward on
the back of a scientific technological revolution-driven development
trajectory, the essential knowledge for cutting edge technology in
frontier areas cannot but be accessed without a strong structure of
higher education. So either way, the governments cannot relinquish
their responsibility towards higher education.
Wiser by the experience of the futility of its earlier approach,
World Bank has now started singing the new tune – coming out with
a new study entitled ‘Creating Knowledge Societies’ in 2002. The new
document advocates quality education for all at all levels at least
formally embracing a model of inclusive approach to higher
education.
But formal statements or perceptions apart that the government’s
signature tune continues to remain the neo-liberal precept of profit
over people’ are clear from the preferences of the government .The
Prime Minister has pointed out that the Eleventh Plan essentially
will be a National Education Plan. In January 2010, Kapil Sibal
claimed that: “India needs $ 400 billion of investment in education over
the next decade.” The much acclaimed National Education Plan has
allocated Rs. 84,743 crores. If a similar trend for allocation continues
for the Twelfth Plan as well, we can expect to have Rs. 2, 00,000 crores
in the education sector for the ongoing decades starting with the
Eleventh Plan. But the HRD Minister’s requirement is ten times
more. Who will provide these resources?
An indication is contained in the Eleventh Plan document itself
where the Planning Commission wants to provide ‘necessary enabling
framework to attract private investment and public-private
partnership in HTE (Higher and Technical Education) sector’;
therefore, the public-private partnership policy of the HRD ministry.
The reason for the quantum jump of 19 per cent gross budgetary
support for the Eleventh Plan over 7.7 per cent in the Tenth Plan
does become quite clear. The allocation for HTE has been raised
nine-fold from Rs. 9,600 crores in the Tenth Plan to Rs. 84,963 crore
in the current Plan. This is to create 16 central universities, 14 world
class central universities, 370 colleges in lower GER (Gross Enrolment
Ratio) districts, 8 IITs, 7 IIMs, 10 NITs, 20 IIITs, 5 IISER, 2 SPS and
50 centres for training and research in frontier areas. The Planning
Commission has estimated that a total of Rs. 2,52,260 crores would be
required for implementation of these projects. So, there will be a
resource gap of Rs. 2.22 lakh crores. Together with this, another Rs. 1
lakh crores will be required for setting up 200 new universities during
Eleventh Plan which adds up to a resource gap of Rs. 3.22 lakh crores.
The story becomes interesting! Only 8 per cent of HTE sector
expenditure will be through public investment while 92 per cent will
be accounted for by the private sector. The quantum jump in the plan
allocation is to lure the private entrepreneurs with public funds and
public assets.
Actually, the direction of education policy in India had already
started displaying a private sector-driven course. So far as school
education is concerned, in 1979, of the 5, 80,040 schools in the country,
only 7.9 per cent or 45,780 were in the private sector. But in 2007, this
has jumped up to 18.8 per cent. Of the total 11, 96,663 schools in the
country, 2, 25,691 are in the private sector.
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The trend of privately run institutions in higher education is, of
course, more pronounced. Of the 271 medical colleges in the country,
133 are in the private sector. During these two decades of neo-liberal
reforms, 106 deemed universities have been created – all of them in
the private sector. Significantly, the Yashpal Committee appointed by
Kapil Sibal himself had recommended closing down most of these.
In 2007, according to HRD ministry, we had 4894 professional
institutions for imparting education in engineering, MBA, pharmacy
etc. We also had 2102 institutions for conferring diploma in these
branches. Roughly 50 per cent of these institutions are in the private
sector.
The consequence is for all to see.
The NSSO data for 2003 for GER in higher education shows
that 13.2 per cent of the population has access in the age group of 18
to 23, in the case of poor, it is a meager 2.43 per cent, for SC 5 per cent,
ST 7.5 per cent and Muslim minority 8.2 per cent. There is also an
adverse urban-rural and male-female divide. There have been several
reports chronicling the economic and social discrimination which
impacts the present education system at different levels. The Sachhar
Committee which went into the study on the status of education and
employment of Muslim minorities has come out with a very disturbing
picture. While there is an increasing clamour for greater degree of
social justice – there is no doubt that the private corporate driven
commercialization of the education process will further accentuate
disparities because private institutions do not require compliance
with the established provisions of reservation. And, that is not to speak
of the wide variation between the poor and the non-poor in terms of
access. This is the balancesheet of neo-liberal policy direction in our
country.
EDUCATION REFORM: NEW LEGISLATIVE EFFORTS
In determining the direction of policies shaping education in India
is not a mere physical question and is not only influenced by financial
allocations. As we have already seen, it is as much about institutional
and legislative changes. So it is not surprising that Kapil Sibal’s new
‘war cry’ of introducing neo-liberal policy shifts in the sphere of
education would be spearheaded by legislative measures. Within a
very short while, we are witnessing a plethora of legislative proposals
THE MARXIST
14
initiated by the HRD Ministry. These require some examination to
grasp the essence of their intent and direction.
While there have been no real effort in the post colonial period by
successive Indian independent governments to mark a complete break
with the colonial legacy and construct a truly egalitarian education
system for the masses, it will be equally true that democratic struggles
have taken place to impact relevant policies in the sphere of education.
One such issue is the right to education. That the right to education
should be a fundamental right was an idea which was enshrined in
the Directive Principles to the State in the Constitution. However,
this idea largely remained conspicuous by its non-translation. In a
landmark judgement, the Supreme Court in 1993 in the
Unnikrishnan case pronounced that henceforth education has to be
recognized as a fundamental right. In a relentless battle to convert
this judicial order in the Constitutional provision, the forces for
universalisation succeeded and in 1997, this became a provision
through the 86th amendment. But the operationalisation of this
provision in terms of a national Right to Education (RTE) enactment
had to wait till 2009. During the tenure of the UPA-I, the law could
not be passed because of sharp differences over the pattern of sharing
of financial responsibility towards its implementation. There were
other policy issues as well, covering issues like provision for children
below six years of age, children with special needs and so on and so
forth.
The present slew of legislative initiatives had started with the
RTE enactment. There has been a general welcome for the RTE law
but now the approach of the government threatens its implementation
and realization.
One of the fundamental objectives -the government bearing the
full funding responsibility for its implementation -remains far from
being achieved in the confines of the present law. The law does not
rule out educational institutions set-up for profit [Section 2. n. (iv)].
Push Bhargava, an erstwhile Vice-Chairman of the National
Knowledge Commission has argued that, “the model Rules and
Regulations (R&R) for the RTE Act say in Section 11.1.b that a school
run for profit by any individual, group or association of individuals or
any other persons, shall not receive recognition from the government.
However, this Section will not be binding on the States as it is not a part of
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the Act. If the Government of India were serious about the issue, it should
have made this a part of the RTE Act.”
That the concept of unencumbered right to education in the
spirit of the Supreme Court judgement and the 86th amendment is
not being accepted by the government by allowing such private
institutions. As we have pointed out that already the percentage of
private schools among the total schools in the country are increasing
at a rapid pace and the principle of profit is inherently exclusionary.
The ceiling of 25 per cent of poor students in private unaided
institutions as per provisions of the Act can be circumvented by the
management by charging under heads which are not covered by the
provisions of the Act or the rules and regulations governing the Act.
The other problem is that the Act does not cover children studying
from IX to the XIIth Std. The world over the concept of right to
education covers compulsory universal education for 12 years in
school. Therefore, the Act and its R & R stands in glaring contrast to
this internationally accepted reality.
The other rather surmountable problem of funding RTE would
be argued later which bring into sharp focus the Centre-State question.
Among the other legislations proposed and at different stages of
enactment which have provoked raging controversy are the Foreign
Education Institution (FEI) and the Higher Education and Research
(HER) Bills.
The FEI Bill smacks of a colonial mindset. The expectation that
our requirements of both quantitative and qualitative expansion and
enhancement of higher education cannot be met without intervention
of foreign universities and institutions completely betrays the
government’s sense of misrepresentation of the ground reality. That
India’s low GER at the higher education level is largely due to the
lack of financial resources available with the students attempting to
access higher education. As we have already pointed out that 92 per
cent of the funds required for the projected expansion of higher and
technical education during the Eleventh Plan period is expected to
come from the private sector comprehensively defeats the objective of
the expansion given the levels of financial disempowerment of those
who remain excluded.
Therefore, the main issue here is one of finding adequate nonprofit
resources for funding the expansion of our higher education.
To expect that foreign universities and FEPs will fill this void is to try
and hoodwink the people. It is, therefore, not without reason that
opposition is galvanising to this proposed legislation. Sometime back,
even the mainstream media newspaper Times of India after surveying
the experience of countries like Singapore, Israel, Gulf countries and
China have come to the inescapable conclusion that FEIs cannot
mitigate the requirements of the expansion of our higher education
needs.
Speaking in an interview, Director of the Centre for International
Higher Education of Boston College has observed: “Historically,
branch campuses do not absolve many students. India will have to provide
the access that India needs. It cannot rely on foreign universities to do that.”
The Indian-born Chemistry Nobel laureate and the present professor
and researcher of Cambridge University, Dr. Venkatesh Ramakrishnan,
sharply castigated the move to set-up branches of foreign universities
in India. The current move of the government also appears to overlook
the current financial reality which hamstrings the existence of reputed
universities even in the West. Both Oxford and Cambridge which
have been running on endowment funds have come to face fund
crunch. Dr. N. V. Varghese, in a paper for the International Institute
for Educational Planning under UNESCO entitled, `Globalisation,
economic crisis and national strategies for higher education development’
had cited the severe financial crunch faced by the Korean universities
to the point of collapse during the East Asian financial crisis.
In fact, the conclusions of the Varghese’s paper sum up a
comprehensive critique of the government’s legislative intention: “The
unplanned and unregulated expansion of higher education may lead to
the creation of new inequalities and the accentuation of existing ones. This
is all the more so when there are multiple private and cross-border providers.
There is a risk of stratification of students based on their fee-paying capacity.
Given the high fee structures, only those from a better economic background
will be able to enroll in cross-border and private institutions. This may
lead to two types of imbalances in the growth of higher education. First,
there are increasing inequalities of access to education and later to
employment. Second, there are regional imbalances. Many of the private
and cross-border education institutions are located in urban areas.
Contrary to the general belief that these institutions are absorbing excess
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demand, they may in fact be increasing the access options of those who
already have access to higher education”.
And the paper further argues: “for state intervention in higher
education rather than leaving the sector mainly to the markets. State
intervention with funding support is the ideal situation. In the absence of
the possibility of full public funding for higher education development,
the state may better target its limited resources to disadvantaged groups
and to specific subject areas to improve overall equity in higher education.
However, the lack of resources at the disposal of the government should
not be a reason for it to be absent from the sector. Even when the state
cannot provide funding support, it still has an important role in planning
and regulating the system”.
Pretensions apart, the government’s real intention lies elsewhere.
In 1993-94, the total expenditure for education globally was to the
tune of $ 1 trillion or Rs. 48 lakh crores. Such a huge amount of
finances could not conceivably remain outside the operational reach
of global corporates. That is why education had to be part of the
GATS negotiation under WTO. United States alone exports $ 10
billion of educational services. In this sphere, it earns a surplus of $ 8
billion. Therefore, our elaborate higher education sector with
1,16,00,000 students, 5,00,05,000 university and college teachers with
a network of 480 universities and post-graduate institutions of higher
learning and 21,677 colleges involve an annual expenditure of Rs.
1,63,356 crores. How can such a huge education ‘market’ remain
insulated from global education corporates? This is why the advocates
of neo-liberalism are candid: “The opening up is directly related to
India’s WTO commitment rather than any great desire to clear the mess in
higher education”. (Time of India, March 21, 2010)
The HER Bill is a clear instrument to legitimize an institutional
arrangement for facilitating this trajectory. The HER Bill which is
now the second draft for setting up of an apex super regulator which
will do away with all hitherto existing regulators for various sectors of
higher education save except medical and agricultural education.
The attempt is to convince the nation that merely bringing together
all the regulatory agencies under a single head, the quality of higher
education can be enhanced.
Ironically, the government is trying to do this by claiming that
they are doing so on the basis of recommendations made by the Yashpal
Committee. But the fact is the holistic vision of the Yashpal Committee
on Higher Education had recognized autonomy as an important
ingredient of excellence. It wanted to reinforce universities with ample
self-regulatory powers and allow the academic community with
fulsome autonomy on academic matters. It also suggested greater
flexibility to students for horizontal entry into institutions of choice;
and, a great degree of interdisciplinary integration. However, this
vision has been completely subverted and subsumed by the ‘education
for profit model’ suggested earlier by the National Knowledge
Commission headed by Sam Pitroda. Therefore, today, we are straddled
with a legislation which proposes to completely centralize the
regulatory and policy functions of higher education in a small sevenmember
apex body with hardly any accountability and to be
handpicked by the panel which will be virtually dominated by the
government and the ruling party. The autonomy of the state
governments enjoyed in terms of creating higher education structures
in the state will be made redundant. Obviously, such a structure will
be mainly used to push the obnoxious designs of education for profit
promoted by private – both domestic and foreign- education
providing corporates. It is true that the existing regulators in the sphere
of higher education like UGC or AICTE do have their lacuna.
Renovating them in keeping with the requirements of decentralization
and academic autonomy is a pressing prerequisite for taking forward
the cause of a genuine democratic educational reform. But the present
proposed legislation is proceeding in a completely opposite direction.
There are other Bills as well – the Prohibition of Unfair Practices
in Technical, Medical Institutions and Universities Bill, 2009 and
National Authority for Registration in Accreditation of Higher
Education Institutions Bill. During the past, especially in the last two
decades, the mushrooming growth of private institutions earning
huge sums as capitation fees had come to be seen as major challenges.
The burdens of capitation fee had led to indebtedness of poor and
middle class parents and incidents of students of such institutions
driven to a point of desperation committing suicides had been widely
reported. There was a widespread need felt for exercising social and
regulatory control over such institutions. At the instance of the Left,
Arjun Singh, the then HRD Minister, initiated a legislative exercise
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for an “Admission and Fee Structure in Private Aided and Unaided
Professional, Educational Institution’s Regulation 2007, UGC Bill”.
The current initiative is clearly aimed at killing that earlier initiative.
Now the government proposes to legitimize capitation fee by allowing
the managements to get away with collection of high fees only if they
are notified in the public domain in the institution’s website. Such
open encouragement to enshrine the practice of `education for profit’
in our Statute Books is seen to be believed!
The creation of a National Accreditation Authority and
compulsory accreditation for all educational institutions on the basis
of compliance with a certain given stipulation is also an exercise in
centralization. It is putting the cart before the horse! The challenge in
India today is not to secure accreditation but to overcome the
challenges of physical and manpower infrastructure at a minimum
level that could ensure the delivery of quality education. Accreditation
comes only after that – as a means to ensure monitoring and
certification of that achievement. It is obvious that such an authority
unrelated to the ground reality can actually lead to the disbanding of
struggling community efforts to establish educational institutions in
poor and excluded neighbourhoods.
government, by all counts, is candid. His assertions may sound
boastful – but no one can fault him for not stating the objectives of his
government and his ministry with clarity. He has declared with a rare
matter-of-factness that he intends to do to the education sector exactly
what his Prime Minister had done to the Indian economy in the early
nineties.
There is no need to go into the specifics of what Dr. Manmohan
Singh had done to our national economy. It has been widely discussed
and understood. Indian economy was aligned in the most
unambiguous manner with the process of neo-liberal globalization.
It has replicated in the clearest form what has happened elsewhere
through such a paradigm shift. Intensification of sharp inequalities –
accentuation of poverty – ‘jobless’ growth – privatization of public
assets – are all those unmistakable features which characterize Indian
economy today.
But, let us come back to Kapil Sibal and his grandiose plans for
taking Indian education forward. After having announced
immediately after assuming office, the agenda for the first 100 days of
the government, he has embarked on a plethora of policy
pronouncements and proposed legislative actions.
Primarily, he has clearly spelt out the policy direction of his
government. For the first time, the HRD ministry has come out with
a public-private-partnership (PPP) policy. Through several legislative
proposals, he has also clearly laid out the direction towards further
commercialization and privatization of the educational process. And
lest there be, any form of resistance to this policy course, he has
abandoned any veneer of nicety of ‘cooperative federalism’ and
launched a most direct and overt assault on hitherto existing practices
and conventions which have been guided by the requirements of
constitutionally ordained contours of Centre-State relations.
To the present government, the question is very simple. Not only
will neo-liberal policies be pursued in education as in the case of
economy from the nineties through the instrumentality of facilitating
private and commercial interests which, invariably, will jeopardize
the right of the aam aadmi to access education at all levels, but every
possible effort to resist such an offensive will be legally snuffed out.
Therefore, longstanding rights and autonomy enjoyed by the states
and other democratic structures of educational governance like elected
university Senates and Syndicates, State Higher Education Councils
and State School Boards will be unambiguously disempowered.
A proper comprehension of what is going on is extremely
important. That this is not any subjective misguided display of over
enthusiasm but a clear-cut expression of the class priorities of the
present Indian ruling classes in this juncture of further integrating
India in the overarching project of neo-liberal globalization – is a
necessary conclusion that has to be assimilated. But for such an
understanding, the resistance to this obnoxious process cannot be
forged.
EDUCATION: A MARXIST APPRAISAL
Marxists have never seen education and its evolution as divorced from
the fundamentals of the class society. Therefore, education can never
be treated as mere dissemination of instructions and knowledge for
the overall advancement of the human society. Apart from a process of
transmitting skills and knowledge, education throughout the
protracted history of class societies have served as a powerful tool to
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forge a consciousness aimed at perpetuating the class rule specific to
that stage of development of the class society. Education, indeed, has
been a powerful component of the ‘ideological apparatus’ which has
served the objective of securing the cultural and intellectual hegemony
of the ruling classes.
Explaining this, Marx and Engels observed: “The ideas of the
ruling class are in every epoch, the ruling ideas: i.e., the class which is the
ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual
force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal,
consequently also controls the means of mental production, so that the
ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are on the whole
subject to it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of
the dominant material relations; dominant material relations grasped as
ideas: hence of the relations which made the one class the ruling one, and
therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The individuals composing the ruling
class possess among other things, consciousness, and therefore, think. In so
far, therefore, as they rule as a class and determine the extent and compass of
an historical epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range,
hence among other things, rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and
regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age; thus
their ideas’ are the ruling ideas of the epoch”.
In pre-capitalist societies, the approach of the ruling classes was
quite direct. They simply excluded the broad masses from the process
of education and kept it confined to the ruling elite through ‘home
education’. Given the low levels of productive capacities of such
societies and the consequent limited requirements of manpower
suited such a blatant policy of exclusion. The experience of Greek
institutions or the Indian Gurukuls are prime examples of such an
exclusionary course. And, how cruel that could mean is amply
demonstrated through the mythological anecdotes of Ekalavya and
Shambuka.
The situation, however, altered with the advent of capitalism.
With the tremendous development of the productive forces and the
requirements of a mass social production necessitated the need for
imparting some minimum level of education and training. The early
capitalist society, of course, was slow in realizing these new
requirements. Therefore, in the primitive days of capitalist
development, the advances in education were excruciatingly tardy
and halting.
Chronicling such a situation, the early revolutionary, Mikhail
Bakunin, wrote on July 31, 1869 in L’Egalite – “That is the fact that all
of the intelligentsia, all of the great applications of science to the purpose of
industry, trade and to the life of society in general have thus far profited no
one, save the privileged classes and the power of the State, that timeless
champion of all political and social iniquity. Never, not once, have they
brought any benefit to the masses of the people”.
Still later, another eminent Marxist, Sylvia Pankhurst, wrote in a
pamphlet in 1918 quoting extensively from the Report of the Royal
Commission into “The Employment and Condition of children in
Mines and Manufacturers” presented in 1848 retelling the
heartrending accounts of poor under-aged, malnourished children
of British miners’ families. She captured the inhumanity of early
capitalism as to how all instructions were limited to the Sunday classes
mostly restricted to the scriptures which hardly enabled these hapless
children to become confident of overcoming their circumstances.
However, as much as Marx and Engels asserted in Communist
Manifesto : “Not only has the bourgeoisie forced the weapons that bring
death unto itself. It has called into existence the men who are to build these
weapons – the modern working class – the proletarians”. They further
observed that the bourgeoisie “furnishes the proletariats with weapons
to fight” them. The struggle for education – a universal education –
has remained as an inseparable agenda for the proletariat to steel
themselves in their class battle to topple capitalism. At the same time,
the proletariat has also fought for expanding that universal right for
other exploited sections for the establishment of democracy.
Marx and Engels have mocked at the pretensions of capitalism to
restrict the access to education: “But, you say, we destroy the most
hallowed of relations, when we replace ‘home education’ by social.
“And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the
social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or
indirect, of society, by means of schools & c.? The Communists have not
invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter
the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence
of the ruling class.”
Thus, the course for us has been charted by the pioneers. The
struggle for the universal right of education for the masses will be an
essential element of our struggle to establish democracy and equality.
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It will, however, be shaped by the ‘concrete’ conditions of the ‘concrete’
situation with a view to defend past gains, consolidate them and try to
forge ahead fending off fresh assaults.
THE INDIAN EXPERIENCE
There has been a great degree of unanimity over the broad features of
development of education in the colonial period, save except our
Prime Minister when he exclaimed in his infamous observation in
his alma mater – Oxford University – that the British rule in India
had made positive contributions in the development of a structure of
administration and the human resources required for this purpose.
That the British viewed education as an instrument to consolidate
their colonial rule is clear from the manner that they approached the
subject from the days of Warren Hastings and Jonathan Duncan
established the Calcutta Madrassa and the Banaras Sanskrit College
in the fag end of the 18th century. With changes over the years to
systematize the educational structure starting with the Wood’s
dispatch often regarded as ‘Magna Carta’ of British education in India
to the establishment of universities in Bombay, Calcutta and Madras
in 1857, the effort was always to restrict the education to the elite. The
philosophy was so succinctly articulated by Lord Macaulay in 1835
who observed ‘we want to create a class of Indians who will pursue
the interest of the Her Majesty’s Government – sharing our thinking
but brown in the colour of their skin’.
But, as Marx has pointed out, the attempt at restrictive
development by which the ruling classes attempt to secure their
hegemony gives rise to contradictions which eventually leads to the
strengthening of a process which is quite the opposite. Colonial India
has been no exception. Young educated Indians broke down the
barriers of their often elitist circumstances to become part of the
struggle for national emancipation and end of the colonial rule.
And, thus, in the crucible of our independence movement itself,
the struggle for universal right to education broke out. Gopalkrishna
Gokhale moved the proposal in Imperial Legislative Council on
March 18, 1910 to provide for ‘free and compulsory primary
education’ in India. Sessions of Indian National Congress also adopted
resolutions for realizing right to education for the masses and the
THE MARXIST
8
commensurate allocation of financial resources by the government to
ensure this. The bourgeois leadership of the national movement was
very clear that moving away from the restrictive policies of the colonial
rule, right to education was an important war cry to rally millions of
Indians – especially young men and women in the struggle to secure
their support and participation.
In the wake of independence, India faced a daunting challenge.
Commenting on the nature of those challenges, the Swedish economist
and sociologist Dr.Gunnar Myrdal in his seminal three volume book
Asian Drama-An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations observes: “From a
development point of view, the purpose of education must be to rationalize
attitudes as well as to impart knowledge and skills. In the South Asian
countries, which have largely been stagnant for a long time and where
attitudes antagonistic to development have taken firm root and become
institutionalized, the changing of attitudes requires far greater emphasis
than in the developed countries, where attitudes are already more rational,
and are adjusted to permit further rapid progress. This is one of several
reasons why educational reformers in South Asia have to guard against a
tendency to adopt uncritically the educational practices and policies of the
Western countries.”
However, the post-colonial developments have shown that the
post-independent ruling classes – the bourgeois-landlord regime
have not moved away from the fundamental premise of restricting
education and not transforming it into a universal right.
It is true that the requirements of developing capitalism
independently which the international historical conjuncture offered,
the government did talk of expanding university and secondary and
technical education. To address the requirement they constituted,
commissions under the chairmanship of Dr. Radhakrishnan and
Lakshmanaswami Mudaliar respectively. There were also certain
faltering efforts to create the scientific and technical manpower needed
for pursuing the path of capitalist development. However, the question
of universalizing the educational rights always remained a distant
dream. And, in any case, the contradictions inherent in the path of
capitalist development particularly arising out of the failure to
eliminate feudalism drew the economy into a phase of crisis in the
mid-sixties. There was a considerable degree of disenchantment
among the young people over the failure of the economy to absorb
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them in the economy productively after passing out from the college
and the universities.
It is not a chance coincidence that the vision of a modern
developed and educated society outlined by the most comprehensive
report till now – that headed by Prof. D. S. Kothari -did spell out an
appropriate conception. The Kothari Commission pointed out : “The
children of the masses are compelled to receive sub-standard
education…while the economically privileged parents are able to `buy’
good education for their children…By segregating their children, such
privileged parents prevent them from sharing the life and experience of the
children of the poor and coming into contact with the realities of
life…There is thus segregation in education itself – the minority of private,
fee-charging, better schools meetings the needs of the upper class and the
vast bulk of free, publicly maintained, but poor schools being utilized by
the rest. What is worse, this segregation is increasing and tending to widen
the gulf between the classes and the masses.”
The Kothari Commission did not limit itself to pious assertions.
It concretely recommended that at least 6 per cent of the GDP be
spent on education. But the failure of the Indian ruling classes as in
other areas of national life is in an equal degree glaring in the sphere
of education as well. And, therefore, Kothari Commission’s
recommendations continue to remain a pipedream for millions of
Indian families who remain excluded from the educational process.
And, India continues to be the home to the largest number of illiterates
in the world.
The process of education and the government policies saw a sharp
‘U’ turn with the 1986 New Education Policy of the Rajiv Gandhi
government. The government officially abandoned the idea of
universalizing education and restricting the design of the structure
of education system to produce the limited manpower required for
its narrowly premised export led growth strategy. The policy statement
pointed out that not only is a large section of our educated youth –
unemployed but, in fact, they are ‘unemployable’. Therefore, the
government’s funds and other resources should be focused on
educating and developing the ‘employable’ manpower. Thus came
the regime of Navodaya Vidyalayas and Centres of Excellence in the
sphere of higher education.
Summing up the updated Programme of the CPI (M) in 2000
pointed out: “The Constitution of Republic of India which was adopted
in 1950 had laid down a set of directive principles to be followed by the
State. These include ….right to education and provision of free and
compulsory education for children. ... None of these principles had been
realised in practice. The glaring gap between the constitution’s precepts
and the practice of the bourgeois rulers is a scathing indictment of the
bourgeois-landlord system instituted after independence.” (Para 2.37)
THE ADVENT OF NEO-LIBERAL GLOBALISATION
The nineties saw the emergence of the ‘bold new initiatives’ of the
economic reforms in India. The paradigm saw a quantum change. It
was a complete new direction. The government shed the pretensions
of being accountable for the education of the masses. It started claiming
that the government did not have the resources to provide for the
education of its entire citizens. Seeds were sown in the 1986 – now it
blossomed in a more hospitable environment. Henceforth, the private
sector would play a much larger role in the funding of education
particularly at the level of higher education.
Oblivious of the commitments that India has made to the
international community in being signatory to the ‘Education for
All’ in Alma Ata Conference or the UN-sponsored ‘Millennium
Development Goals’, the government did not fight shy of
relinquishing the responsibilities of educational development to
predatory market forces. The result of such a course of development
is for all to see. Gradually slipping among the nations of the world,
India has now come to occupy the 132nd position among 177 nations
in the ranking with respect to human development – a truly laudable
achievement for the claimant of an ‘economic superpower’ status!
And, this is true to the spirit of neo-liberalism. The government
is bent on facilitating the growth of private sector – a philosophy of
‘education for profit’ over the principle of ‘education as a right’.
A Brazilian economist, Alfredo Saad-Filho, in describing neoliberalism
points out: “Neoliberalism combines an accumulation strategy,
a mode of social and economic reproduction and a mode of exploitation
and social domination based on the systematic use of state power to impose,
under the ideological veil of non-intervention, a hegemonic project of
recomposition of the rule of capital in all areas of social life”. Filho’s
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observations could not be more representative of the paradigm which
has dictated the process of educational development in the last two
decades.
There are, of course, certain differences in the sphere of school
education and higher education. Although there has been very little
commensurate sense of responsibility displayed in terms of financial
resources allocated for school education of which we will talk about
later.
In 1994, World Bank came out with a study, Higher education:
Lessons of Experience. It provided the argument for pushing neo-liberal
prescriptions particularly in higher education. The document
construed higher education as a ‘non-merit good’ as opposed to the
school education which was viewed as a ‘merit good’. It asserted that
those who pursued higher education benefited individually and the
community only benefits marginally, therefore, it stands to logic that
the government should not squander its scarce resources for
promoting higher education. The implicit conclusion pointed
towards a direction of privatization and commercialization of higher
education divorcing it from school education.
That such an approach is completely lopsided and unsustainable
is quite evident. It overlooks the dynamic relationship between school
and higher education. And, the teachers required for school education
are essentially those who have to come out with the appropriate level
of proficiency from institutions of higher learning itself. Historically
in a phase of development when the country has to move forward on
the back of a scientific technological revolution-driven development
trajectory, the essential knowledge for cutting edge technology in
frontier areas cannot but be accessed without a strong structure of
higher education. So either way, the governments cannot relinquish
their responsibility towards higher education.
Wiser by the experience of the futility of its earlier approach,
World Bank has now started singing the new tune – coming out with
a new study entitled ‘Creating Knowledge Societies’ in 2002. The new
document advocates quality education for all at all levels at least
formally embracing a model of inclusive approach to higher
education.
But formal statements or perceptions apart that the government’s
signature tune continues to remain the neo-liberal precept of profit
over people’ are clear from the preferences of the government .The
Prime Minister has pointed out that the Eleventh Plan essentially
will be a National Education Plan. In January 2010, Kapil Sibal
claimed that: “India needs $ 400 billion of investment in education over
the next decade.” The much acclaimed National Education Plan has
allocated Rs. 84,743 crores. If a similar trend for allocation continues
for the Twelfth Plan as well, we can expect to have Rs. 2, 00,000 crores
in the education sector for the ongoing decades starting with the
Eleventh Plan. But the HRD Minister’s requirement is ten times
more. Who will provide these resources?
An indication is contained in the Eleventh Plan document itself
where the Planning Commission wants to provide ‘necessary enabling
framework to attract private investment and public-private
partnership in HTE (Higher and Technical Education) sector’;
therefore, the public-private partnership policy of the HRD ministry.
The reason for the quantum jump of 19 per cent gross budgetary
support for the Eleventh Plan over 7.7 per cent in the Tenth Plan
does become quite clear. The allocation for HTE has been raised
nine-fold from Rs. 9,600 crores in the Tenth Plan to Rs. 84,963 crore
in the current Plan. This is to create 16 central universities, 14 world
class central universities, 370 colleges in lower GER (Gross Enrolment
Ratio) districts, 8 IITs, 7 IIMs, 10 NITs, 20 IIITs, 5 IISER, 2 SPS and
50 centres for training and research in frontier areas. The Planning
Commission has estimated that a total of Rs. 2,52,260 crores would be
required for implementation of these projects. So, there will be a
resource gap of Rs. 2.22 lakh crores. Together with this, another Rs. 1
lakh crores will be required for setting up 200 new universities during
Eleventh Plan which adds up to a resource gap of Rs. 3.22 lakh crores.
The story becomes interesting! Only 8 per cent of HTE sector
expenditure will be through public investment while 92 per cent will
be accounted for by the private sector. The quantum jump in the plan
allocation is to lure the private entrepreneurs with public funds and
public assets.
Actually, the direction of education policy in India had already
started displaying a private sector-driven course. So far as school
education is concerned, in 1979, of the 5, 80,040 schools in the country,
only 7.9 per cent or 45,780 were in the private sector. But in 2007, this
has jumped up to 18.8 per cent. Of the total 11, 96,663 schools in the
country, 2, 25,691 are in the private sector.
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The trend of privately run institutions in higher education is, of
course, more pronounced. Of the 271 medical colleges in the country,
133 are in the private sector. During these two decades of neo-liberal
reforms, 106 deemed universities have been created – all of them in
the private sector. Significantly, the Yashpal Committee appointed by
Kapil Sibal himself had recommended closing down most of these.
In 2007, according to HRD ministry, we had 4894 professional
institutions for imparting education in engineering, MBA, pharmacy
etc. We also had 2102 institutions for conferring diploma in these
branches. Roughly 50 per cent of these institutions are in the private
sector.
The consequence is for all to see.
The NSSO data for 2003 for GER in higher education shows
that 13.2 per cent of the population has access in the age group of 18
to 23, in the case of poor, it is a meager 2.43 per cent, for SC 5 per cent,
ST 7.5 per cent and Muslim minority 8.2 per cent. There is also an
adverse urban-rural and male-female divide. There have been several
reports chronicling the economic and social discrimination which
impacts the present education system at different levels. The Sachhar
Committee which went into the study on the status of education and
employment of Muslim minorities has come out with a very disturbing
picture. While there is an increasing clamour for greater degree of
social justice – there is no doubt that the private corporate driven
commercialization of the education process will further accentuate
disparities because private institutions do not require compliance
with the established provisions of reservation. And, that is not to speak
of the wide variation between the poor and the non-poor in terms of
access. This is the balancesheet of neo-liberal policy direction in our
country.
EDUCATION REFORM: NEW LEGISLATIVE EFFORTS
In determining the direction of policies shaping education in India
is not a mere physical question and is not only influenced by financial
allocations. As we have already seen, it is as much about institutional
and legislative changes. So it is not surprising that Kapil Sibal’s new
‘war cry’ of introducing neo-liberal policy shifts in the sphere of
education would be spearheaded by legislative measures. Within a
very short while, we are witnessing a plethora of legislative proposals
THE MARXIST
14
initiated by the HRD Ministry. These require some examination to
grasp the essence of their intent and direction.
While there have been no real effort in the post colonial period by
successive Indian independent governments to mark a complete break
with the colonial legacy and construct a truly egalitarian education
system for the masses, it will be equally true that democratic struggles
have taken place to impact relevant policies in the sphere of education.
One such issue is the right to education. That the right to education
should be a fundamental right was an idea which was enshrined in
the Directive Principles to the State in the Constitution. However,
this idea largely remained conspicuous by its non-translation. In a
landmark judgement, the Supreme Court in 1993 in the
Unnikrishnan case pronounced that henceforth education has to be
recognized as a fundamental right. In a relentless battle to convert
this judicial order in the Constitutional provision, the forces for
universalisation succeeded and in 1997, this became a provision
through the 86th amendment. But the operationalisation of this
provision in terms of a national Right to Education (RTE) enactment
had to wait till 2009. During the tenure of the UPA-I, the law could
not be passed because of sharp differences over the pattern of sharing
of financial responsibility towards its implementation. There were
other policy issues as well, covering issues like provision for children
below six years of age, children with special needs and so on and so
forth.
The present slew of legislative initiatives had started with the
RTE enactment. There has been a general welcome for the RTE law
but now the approach of the government threatens its implementation
and realization.
One of the fundamental objectives -the government bearing the
full funding responsibility for its implementation -remains far from
being achieved in the confines of the present law. The law does not
rule out educational institutions set-up for profit [Section 2. n. (iv)].
Push Bhargava, an erstwhile Vice-Chairman of the National
Knowledge Commission has argued that, “the model Rules and
Regulations (R&R) for the RTE Act say in Section 11.1.b that a school
run for profit by any individual, group or association of individuals or
any other persons, shall not receive recognition from the government.
However, this Section will not be binding on the States as it is not a part of
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the Act. If the Government of India were serious about the issue, it should
have made this a part of the RTE Act.”
That the concept of unencumbered right to education in the
spirit of the Supreme Court judgement and the 86th amendment is
not being accepted by the government by allowing such private
institutions. As we have pointed out that already the percentage of
private schools among the total schools in the country are increasing
at a rapid pace and the principle of profit is inherently exclusionary.
The ceiling of 25 per cent of poor students in private unaided
institutions as per provisions of the Act can be circumvented by the
management by charging under heads which are not covered by the
provisions of the Act or the rules and regulations governing the Act.
The other problem is that the Act does not cover children studying
from IX to the XIIth Std. The world over the concept of right to
education covers compulsory universal education for 12 years in
school. Therefore, the Act and its R & R stands in glaring contrast to
this internationally accepted reality.
The other rather surmountable problem of funding RTE would
be argued later which bring into sharp focus the Centre-State question.
Among the other legislations proposed and at different stages of
enactment which have provoked raging controversy are the Foreign
Education Institution (FEI) and the Higher Education and Research
(HER) Bills.
The FEI Bill smacks of a colonial mindset. The expectation that
our requirements of both quantitative and qualitative expansion and
enhancement of higher education cannot be met without intervention
of foreign universities and institutions completely betrays the
government’s sense of misrepresentation of the ground reality. That
India’s low GER at the higher education level is largely due to the
lack of financial resources available with the students attempting to
access higher education. As we have already pointed out that 92 per
cent of the funds required for the projected expansion of higher and
technical education during the Eleventh Plan period is expected to
come from the private sector comprehensively defeats the objective of
the expansion given the levels of financial disempowerment of those
who remain excluded.
Therefore, the main issue here is one of finding adequate nonprofit
resources for funding the expansion of our higher education.
To expect that foreign universities and FEPs will fill this void is to try
and hoodwink the people. It is, therefore, not without reason that
opposition is galvanising to this proposed legislation. Sometime back,
even the mainstream media newspaper Times of India after surveying
the experience of countries like Singapore, Israel, Gulf countries and
China have come to the inescapable conclusion that FEIs cannot
mitigate the requirements of the expansion of our higher education
needs.
Speaking in an interview, Director of the Centre for International
Higher Education of Boston College has observed: “Historically,
branch campuses do not absolve many students. India will have to provide
the access that India needs. It cannot rely on foreign universities to do that.”
The Indian-born Chemistry Nobel laureate and the present professor
and researcher of Cambridge University, Dr. Venkatesh Ramakrishnan,
sharply castigated the move to set-up branches of foreign universities
in India. The current move of the government also appears to overlook
the current financial reality which hamstrings the existence of reputed
universities even in the West. Both Oxford and Cambridge which
have been running on endowment funds have come to face fund
crunch. Dr. N. V. Varghese, in a paper for the International Institute
for Educational Planning under UNESCO entitled, `Globalisation,
economic crisis and national strategies for higher education development’
had cited the severe financial crunch faced by the Korean universities
to the point of collapse during the East Asian financial crisis.
In fact, the conclusions of the Varghese’s paper sum up a
comprehensive critique of the government’s legislative intention: “The
unplanned and unregulated expansion of higher education may lead to
the creation of new inequalities and the accentuation of existing ones. This
is all the more so when there are multiple private and cross-border providers.
There is a risk of stratification of students based on their fee-paying capacity.
Given the high fee structures, only those from a better economic background
will be able to enroll in cross-border and private institutions. This may
lead to two types of imbalances in the growth of higher education. First,
there are increasing inequalities of access to education and later to
employment. Second, there are regional imbalances. Many of the private
and cross-border education institutions are located in urban areas.
Contrary to the general belief that these institutions are absorbing excess
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demand, they may in fact be increasing the access options of those who
already have access to higher education”.
And the paper further argues: “for state intervention in higher
education rather than leaving the sector mainly to the markets. State
intervention with funding support is the ideal situation. In the absence of
the possibility of full public funding for higher education development,
the state may better target its limited resources to disadvantaged groups
and to specific subject areas to improve overall equity in higher education.
However, the lack of resources at the disposal of the government should
not be a reason for it to be absent from the sector. Even when the state
cannot provide funding support, it still has an important role in planning
and regulating the system”.
Pretensions apart, the government’s real intention lies elsewhere.
In 1993-94, the total expenditure for education globally was to the
tune of $ 1 trillion or Rs. 48 lakh crores. Such a huge amount of
finances could not conceivably remain outside the operational reach
of global corporates. That is why education had to be part of the
GATS negotiation under WTO. United States alone exports $ 10
billion of educational services. In this sphere, it earns a surplus of $ 8
billion. Therefore, our elaborate higher education sector with
1,16,00,000 students, 5,00,05,000 university and college teachers with
a network of 480 universities and post-graduate institutions of higher
learning and 21,677 colleges involve an annual expenditure of Rs.
1,63,356 crores. How can such a huge education ‘market’ remain
insulated from global education corporates? This is why the advocates
of neo-liberalism are candid: “The opening up is directly related to
India’s WTO commitment rather than any great desire to clear the mess in
higher education”. (Time of India, March 21, 2010)
The HER Bill is a clear instrument to legitimize an institutional
arrangement for facilitating this trajectory. The HER Bill which is
now the second draft for setting up of an apex super regulator which
will do away with all hitherto existing regulators for various sectors of
higher education save except medical and agricultural education.
The attempt is to convince the nation that merely bringing together
all the regulatory agencies under a single head, the quality of higher
education can be enhanced.
Ironically, the government is trying to do this by claiming that
they are doing so on the basis of recommendations made by the Yashpal
Committee. But the fact is the holistic vision of the Yashpal Committee
on Higher Education had recognized autonomy as an important
ingredient of excellence. It wanted to reinforce universities with ample
self-regulatory powers and allow the academic community with
fulsome autonomy on academic matters. It also suggested greater
flexibility to students for horizontal entry into institutions of choice;
and, a great degree of interdisciplinary integration. However, this
vision has been completely subverted and subsumed by the ‘education
for profit model’ suggested earlier by the National Knowledge
Commission headed by Sam Pitroda. Therefore, today, we are straddled
with a legislation which proposes to completely centralize the
regulatory and policy functions of higher education in a small sevenmember
apex body with hardly any accountability and to be
handpicked by the panel which will be virtually dominated by the
government and the ruling party. The autonomy of the state
governments enjoyed in terms of creating higher education structures
in the state will be made redundant. Obviously, such a structure will
be mainly used to push the obnoxious designs of education for profit
promoted by private – both domestic and foreign- education
providing corporates. It is true that the existing regulators in the sphere
of higher education like UGC or AICTE do have their lacuna.
Renovating them in keeping with the requirements of decentralization
and academic autonomy is a pressing prerequisite for taking forward
the cause of a genuine democratic educational reform. But the present
proposed legislation is proceeding in a completely opposite direction.
There are other Bills as well – the Prohibition of Unfair Practices
in Technical, Medical Institutions and Universities Bill, 2009 and
National Authority for Registration in Accreditation of Higher
Education Institutions Bill. During the past, especially in the last two
decades, the mushrooming growth of private institutions earning
huge sums as capitation fees had come to be seen as major challenges.
The burdens of capitation fee had led to indebtedness of poor and
middle class parents and incidents of students of such institutions
driven to a point of desperation committing suicides had been widely
reported. There was a widespread need felt for exercising social and
regulatory control over such institutions. At the instance of the Left,
Arjun Singh, the then HRD Minister, initiated a legislative exercise
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for an “Admission and Fee Structure in Private Aided and Unaided
Professional, Educational Institution’s Regulation 2007, UGC Bill”.
The current initiative is clearly aimed at killing that earlier initiative.
Now the government proposes to legitimize capitation fee by allowing
the managements to get away with collection of high fees only if they
are notified in the public domain in the institution’s website. Such
open encouragement to enshrine the practice of `education for profit’
in our Statute Books is seen to be believed!
The creation of a National Accreditation Authority and
compulsory accreditation for all educational institutions on the basis
of compliance with a certain given stipulation is also an exercise in
centralization. It is putting the cart before the horse! The challenge in
India today is not to secure accreditation but to overcome the
challenges of physical and manpower infrastructure at a minimum
level that could ensure the delivery of quality education. Accreditation
comes only after that – as a means to ensure monitoring and
certification of that achievement. It is obvious that such an authority
unrelated to the ground reality can actually lead to the disbanding of
struggling community efforts to establish educational institutions in
poor and excluded neighbourhoods.
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