Bid to control higher education

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The Narendra Modi government has come up with a measure which seeks to strengthen the Centre’s control over institutions of higher education in the name of regulation.

Currently regulatory functions in respect of universities are vested in the University Grants Commission, which has academic and financial powers. It lays down standards of teaching, examination and research, provides for their needs and ensures maintenance of standards.

A draft bill the government has put in the public domain provides for abolition of UGC and creation of a new body called Higher Education Commission of India in its place. The HECI’s powers will be limited to academic matters. It will have no financial powers. The stakeholders, including the academic community, have been given just 10 days to convey their views on the draft bill.

In the remote past there were institutions of higher learning in the subcontinent at Takshashila (near Rawalpindi in Pakistan) and Nalanda and Vikramshila (both in Bihar) which reputedly attracted scholars from far and near.

The first modern universities were established by the British at Calcutta (now Kolkata), Bombay (Mumbai) and Madras (Chennai) in 1858.  More universities came up later, some, like the Aligarh Muslim University and the Banaras Hindu University, due to private initiative, and some under patronage of rulers of princely states.        

The UGC was created by an Act of Parliament by Jawaharlal Nehru’s government in the 1950s on the lines of the recommendations of a commission headed by John Sergeant, who was Educational Adviser to the Government in the closing stages of colonial rule.

Nehru believed science and technology can help better the lot of the poor.  Outside the university system, his government fostered the Indian Institute of Sciences, a brain-child of industry pioneer JN Tata which was brought to fruition by the colonial government in 1909. 

It also established a number of institutions of higher learning like the Indian Institutes of Technology, the Indian Institutes of Management and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences. The IISc and a couple of older IITs are the only Indian institutions that have found their way into any global or Asian rankings. The great measure of autonomy these institutions enjoy in academic matters has enabled them to function without undue governmental interference and maintain high standards. The regular universities have seen a decline in standards under political control. 

The Bharatiya Janata Party and its ideological parent, the Rashtreeya Swayamsevak Sangh, have not been well-disposed towards the new-generation institutions of higher learning which they view as centres of liberal thought.

Reform of higher education was mentioned in the BJP’s 2014 election manifesto. Although it is only now that the Modi government has come up with a legislative measure in this regard, efforts to control institutions of higher learning have been on from the very beginning.

The RSS set the stage for the assault on these institutions with its journal, Organiser, launching an attack on the IITs and the prestigious Jawaharlal Nehru University, dubbing them centres of “anti-India, anti-Hindu” activities.

The RSS’s student wing, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, fomented trouble in several campuses, including those of JNU in New Delhi, IIT in Chennai and Central University in Hyderabad. It specifically targeted Muslim, Dalit and left-wing student leaders.

Rohit Vemula, a Dalit scholar of the Central University, was driven to suicide.  Sedition charges were slapped on several JNU students. Two students reported missing from the JNU campus still remain untraced.

RSS-affiliated groups were fighting liberal thought at various levels even before the BJP came to power. Five years ago a leading publisher, Penguin Books, bought peace with one group by agreeing to pulp all copies of US Indologist Wendy Doniger’s “The Hindus: An Alternative History”.

More recently another group proposed to the Centre the removal of all foreign languages from the curriculum of institutions of higher education in the national interest. It also wanted stoppage of UGC funding for all research not connected with national requirements.

The move to replace the UGC with the HECI can be seen as the first step in that direction. The Centre’s decision to keep the power to allot grants in its own hands is undesirable for more than one reason.

In the first place, it will leave the HECI with no means to enforce its directives with regard to academic matters other than the extreme step of ordering closure of the institution. More importantly, as the one who pays the piper, the Centre will be in a position to call the tune even in academic matters. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, July 3, 2018,

Education cries for attention

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

Development has been on India’s agenda for decades. In this year’s parliamentary elections, Narendra Modi could lead his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to victory mainly because a significant section of the electorate believed he is more capable of ensuring speedy development than Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

Development is still Modi’s favourite theme. However, there is nothing to indicate that his government is aware of the need to tone up the educational system, especially its higher levels, to achieve the development goals. Neither he nor his Human Resources Development Minister, Smriti Irani, has given any indication that education is a high priority area.

Last week, on Teacher’s Day, celebrated nationally since the 1950s, Modi addressed school children across the country through radio, television and the web. He spoke of the need for good teachers and for adequate toilet facilities, especially in girls’ school. He did not touch upon the academic challenges before the nation, presumably because it was not the right occasion to bring up the subject.

Soon after she took charge of the HRD ministry, Smriti Irani asked officials to take steps to introduce in school textbooks lessons on ancient India’s contributions in fields such as science, mathematics and philosophy. Most academics viewed it as a move to smuggle the BJP’s Hindutva ideology into the curriculum.

The BJP is of the view that the previous governments neglected study of Indian culture and that the textbooks now in use are the work of Left-oriented academics. On their part, Hindutva academics, relying upon the epic, Mahabharata, are propagating the ridiculous theory that ancient Indians were familiar with stem cell reproduction.

While there are daunting problems at all levels, the higher education scene cries for immediate attention in view of its high relevance to developmental activity. The country now has about 700 degree-awarding institutions with more than 35,000 affiliated colleges under them. They have a total enrolment of 20 million.

There were only 157 engineering colleges in 1980, most of them in the government or aided sector. Today there are about 3,400, most of them private self-financing colleges. The vast expansion has resulted in dilution of quality.

There is no Indian institution among the top 100 in the Academic Ranking of World Universities 2014, released recently. Even in the list of top 100 Asian universities there are only eight from India. Seven of them are Indian Institutes of Technology, autonomous institutions established under a law enacted in the 1950s on the initiative of the first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

Addressing the first convocation of the first IIT, Nehru said these institutions were symbolic of the changes taking place in the country. Five IITs were established in his time. Now there are 16 and a few more are on the way.

Most engineering colleges get between Rs100 million and Rs200 million from the Central government by way of grants annually. Each IIT receives between Rs900 million and Rs1,300 million. 

A significant proportion of the early graduates of IITs went to the United States for higher studies and did not return. This led to criticism that they were causing brain drain. In recent years, the trend has changed. Some of those who prospered in the US have made munificent donations to their alma mater.

Another criticism against the IITs is that while students passing out of them land well-paid jobs, many end up in the services sector where the technical knowledge they acquired at great cost to the taxpayer is wasted.

The IITs account for only one per cent of the country’s 1.3 million engineering students. Two per cent of the students go into National Institutes of Technology, which too are autonomous institutions in the government sector and 21% into other government colleges. The remaining 76% enter private colleges. 

Only a few private colleges have a good academic record. Many private college graduates are unemployed.

In Tamil Nadu state, more than 171,000 graduates and about 160,000 post-graduates in engineering are jobless. A newspaper recently quoted former Anna University Vice-Chancellor E Balagurusamy as saying only 20% of the state’s engineering graduates have jobs suited to their qualification. About 70% are unemployed and 10% are employed as police constables, hotel supervisors etc.

PK Sivanandan of the Institute for Societal Advancement, who analysed the performance of students in three engineering colleges of Kerala, found that they have a failure rate of 42%. Noting that the failure rate among Dalits was as high as 62%, he asks, “Can the weaker sections ever join the league as equal partners?” -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, September 9, 2014.

Academic untouchability?

If passed, the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Reservation in Posts and Services) Bill 2008 will bar reservations at the faculty level for SCs, STs and OBCs in 47 premier institutions, including the IITs and IIMs . Why is there no opposition to this proposal to close the doors of our premier institutions to the historically oppressed, asks Subhash Gatade in the article below, distributed by InfoChange News and Features.

SUBHASH GATADE
InfoChange News and Features

The historic Jantar Mantar in the capital city of New Delhi, which has become a sanctioned abode of protest, was witness to a dharna or sit-in protest in the first week of February which, at first glance, was indistinguishable from the many such protests held at this venue on the same day. However, the protest was of great importance because it pertained to the entitlements of dalits, tribals and Other Backward Castes (OBCs) in higher education and the manner in which the government is pushing legislation that will do away with reservation at faculty level in institutions of “national importance”. Not surprisingly, the protest was a non-event for the media. And that raises the question of why the articulate sections of our society who yearn for justice, peace and progress, have joined the conspiracy of silence about this particular issue.

The return of “academic untouchability” with the due sanction of parliament and the further legitimacy it would provide to the ‘merit’ versus ‘quota’ debate needs to be questioned and challenged uncompromisingly.

Nature of the Bill

What do Professor Sukhdeo Thorat, the present chairperson of the University Grants Commission (UGC), Dr Mungekar who is a member of the Planning Commission, and Professor Ramdayal Munda, the ex-vice chancellor of Ranchi University, have in common? The obvious answer is that all of them happen to be masters in their respective fields of work. Less well known is the fact that if newly independent India had not instituted affirmative action programmes in the form of reservation for the socially oppressed sections at various levels, it would have been very difficult for this triumvirate to prove its mettle.

If the proposed Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Reservation in Posts and Services) Bill 2008, which was tabled and passed in the upper house, the Rajya Sabha, becomes law, then many such meritorious students coming from similar backgrounds would not be able to even think of occupying any important position on the faculties of eminent educational institutions. For the Bill talks of doing away with reservation at the faculty level for scheduled castes, scheduled tribes and OBCs in institutions of “national importance”.

Close watchers of the reservation debate in our country will say that the proposal was very much in the air and there is nothing surprising about it. In fact the directors of the various Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) have been campaigning hard for the human resource development ministry to drop its proposal to reserve posts for SCs, STs and OBCs in faculty recruitment. Directors of the Indian Institutes of Managements (IIMs) have also expressed their resistance in no uncertain terms. The sole argument peddled by the directors of these prestigious institutions revolved around the supposed negative impact reservation would have on the quality of the faculty. The prime minister, during a visit to the IIT in Guwahati a few months ago, had dropped enough hints that the “concern” expressed by the various directors would be given sympathetic consideration.

It is difficult to comprehend the silence even among the self-professed champions of dalits, tribals and OBCs over this disturbing development. Is it a sign of an emergent consensus among all political parties? In the absence of any national uproar over this legislation, there is a strong possibility that the Bill, moved by the Department of Personnel and Training in the Rajya Sabha in December 2008, will be passed by the Lok Sabha. And the long cherished demand of the “institutes of national importance” that they be exempted from reservation in teaching posts will be fulfilled.

The 47 institutes that will be exempt from faculty reservation once the legislation gets parliamentary approval include the seven older IITs, the seven IIMs, Aligarh Muslim University, Allahabad University, and the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). Also excluded from reservations are 19 National Institutes of Technology (NITs), the Jawaharlal Institute of Post Graduate Medical Education and Research in Pondicherry, Banaras Hindu University, Delhi University, the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research in Chandigarh, the Indian War Memorial in New Delhi and in West Bengal, Visva Bharati, the Victoria Memorial, National Library, and the Indian Museum.

Issues around reservation

Apart from closing the doors of these 47 institutions to the historically oppressed, this legislation will drive under the carpet many issues around reservation.

The non-filling of reserved seats and the rampant use of false caste certificates by non-dalits and non-tribals to snatch posts reserved for dalits and tribals, have emerged as key issues of the social movement. We have been witness to actions at the individual and collective level which have not only questioned the non-implementation of reservations but have also brought forth innumerable cases of phony dalits and fake tribals enjoying the fruits of reservation at various levels.

Vacancies in reserved posts is a serious issue. One has been witness to the strange phenomenon of reserved posts for class four jobs getting filled with “eligible candidates” but as one moves up the hierarchy one notices a reduction in filling reserved posts.

A case in point is Delhi University. In 2001, out of a total strength of 6,500 teachers, a minimum of 1,500 teachers should have been from this section of society. However, merely 100 teachers were from the reserved category at the time of the survey (which later shot up to 400). The Delhi School of Economics, which once had Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen on its faculty, fared no better; it had only one dalit teacher out of a sanctioned strength of four (1999).

The 1999-2000 report of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes provided details of the total number of posts and the number of people working in the reserved posts, which provides for 15% reservation for scheduled castes and 7.5% for scheduled tribes:

Professor: BHU 1/360 (one post filled of 360), Aligarh 0/233, JNU, 2/183, Delhi University 3/332, Jamia 0/80, Visva Bharati 1/148, Hyderabad Central University 1/72

Reader: BHU 1/396, Aligarh 0/385, JNU 3/100, Delhi University 2/197, Jamia 1/128, Visva Bharati 1/70, Hyderabad Central University 2/87

Lecturer: BHU 1/329, Aligarh 0/521, JNU, 11/70, Delhi University 9/140, Jamia 1/216,
Visva Bharati 16/188, Hyderabad Central University 13/44

Even a cursory glance at the figures makes it clear that despite 50 years of the University Grants Commission, the more than 250 universities and innumerable colleges under it have not bothered to fill the 75,000 posts meant for scheduled castes. Moreover, it has turned a blind eye to the fact that people belonging to the upper castes, or other non-dalits, have occupied these positions.

There is general disapproval in varna society (that is a society based on hierarchy whose essence is purity and pollution and which has divine sanction as well. Dr Ambedkar rightly described it as a multi-storeyed structure where you are condemned to live and die in the same ‘storey’) about providing reservation to historically oppressed peoples. While in formal discussions they will praise the virtue of tolerance practised in their age-old civilisation, in practice they stick ruthlessly to the graded hierarchy preached by the lawgiver Manu.

Affirmative action in the US

Considering the fact that these practitioners of varnadharma often look to the United Sates of America as their model, it would be opportune to know how US society views its own affirmative action programme.

The affirmative action programme was launched in the US in the 1960s to provide equal opportunities to minorities, especially blacks. Its aim was to maximise the benefits of diversity in all levels of society, and to redress the disadvantages due to overt, institutional, and involuntary discrimination. It was not a gift by the US ruling classes to the blacks and other minorities, but was a fall-out of the civil rights movement led by the legendary Martin Luther King.

The year 2002 witnessed the biggest challenge in recent times to this policy when two white students who did not get admission to Michigan University went to the US Supreme Court to challenge the policy itself. They contended that they were refused admission because of the ‘discriminatory’ policy of affirmative action and therefore asked that it be scrapped. The case divided American society. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favour of continuing the policy. Interestingly, many corporate leaders, ranging from the mighty Microsoft to smaller ones, had clearly taken pro-affirmative action positions. For instance, 65 of these companies (boasting a collective revenue of well over a trillion dollars) jointly filed an amicus curiae (friends of the court) brief in the Supreme Court in 2003 in which they maintained that a racially and ethnically diverse student body is “vital” to maximising the potential of “this country's corporate and community leaders of the next half-century”.

What is “national importance”?

The debate around denial of entitlements to dalits, tribals and OBCs in higher education would be incomplete if two issues remain unaddressed.

First, one needs to expose the various mythologies around merit, which the varna society keeps peddling to buttress its case.

Second, it is important to take a hard look at the whole definition of institutions of “national importance” and show how people’s hard-earned money made available to these institutes by the public exchequer (at the cost of basic educational needs of the deprived sections) ends up creating doctors, engineers and other learned professionals, a majority (more than 50%) of whom have no qualms in immediately moving to greener pastures, especially the USA, for good. The Economist (September 26, 2002) cited an Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) survey that found that over 80% of Indian students in the US planned to stay on after completing their studies. The survey also revealed that Indian students were more likely to remain in the US after higher studies than students from any other country.
The Media Studies Group, a Delhi-based group of media professionals and social activists studied 42 batches of students who had passed out of AIIMS since its inception in 1956. It looked at where these students worked or had worked. The findings, carried in The Telegraph (December 26, 2006), revealed that more than half the graduates worked abroad, mostly in the US. Of the 2,129 students who passed out in the first 42 batches of the MBBS programme at AIIMS from its inception in 1956 to 1997, the researchers could trace 1,477. Of them, 780, or 52.81% were working abroad.

A similar picture emerged in an article in Frontline (‘The IIT Story’ by Kanta Murali, February 1-14, 2003) pertaining to IITs. The article pointed out that a glaring failure of the IIT system is that it has been unable to attract scheduled caste/tribe and women students in a progressive way. Close to half the seats reserved for SCs and STs remain vacant and of those admitted, a significant proportion, perhaps up to 25%, is obliged to drop out. Moreover, close to half the annual undergraduate output of the seven IITs, that is anything between 1,500 and 2,000 young men and women, go abroad every year — overwhelmingly to the US. It is estimated that there are some 25,000 IIT alumni in the US.

Unfulfilled promises

When the Congress-led UPA government came to power five years ago, it made all sorts of pro-social justice noises to distinguish it from the earlier dispensation. It raised the question of providing reservation in the private sector and also talked about making the atrocity laws more stringent and even announced that it would make reservation a statutory right.

The proposed Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Reservation in Posts and Services) Bill 2008 is being projected as elevating the provisions of reservations to a statutory right and supposedly instilling a greater sense of confidence in members of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. However, as discussed earlier, the Bill is based on the unreasonable presumption that those belonging to the scheduled castes and tribes are incapable of handling higher posts. It thus bars them from making any claims for adequate representation in appointments to such posts.

One can see that the Bill lacks the constitutional spirit of providing equal opportunities to all citizens. It has the potential of undoing in one stroke what has been done so far for improving the representation of SCs and STs in service by successive governments and is certainly a retrograde and regressive piece of legislation.

Subhash Gatade is a social activist, translator and writer whose writings appear regularly in Hindi and English publications and occasionally in Urdu publications. He edits a Hindi journal 'Sandhan'