The UPA Government in its second term has made it a priority to aggressively push through “reform” in education. HRD Minister Kapil Sibal has announced the introduction of sweeping changes in schooling and higher education policy that are deeply disquieting and will have long term implications for India’s education system. The changes are being ushered in, in the name of ridding education of long-standing problems and are as such being hailed by the corporate media as “revolutionary.” Closer examination of the proposed changes reveals, however, that all the progressive-sounding rhetoric are only a smokescreen for policy changes which spell what the World Bank etc have been recommending for long : freeing of the government from its responsibility towards education, and institutionalizing privatization of education.
The Right to Education Bill, soon to come up for enactment by Parliament, is a typical example. While paying lip service to “right to education” and “free and compulsory education for all children below the age of 14” (which is after all a long-standing demand of educationists and the student movement), the RTE Bill actually subverts any meaningful notion of right to education. Refusing the educationists’ recommendations of a system of common neighbourhood schools to ensure free education of equitable standards for all, the RTE Bill instead institutionalises the existing system of good schools for those who can pay and substandard, informal schooling for the poor. In the name of ‘right to education,’ Sibal has announced the introduction of ‘public-private partnership’ (PPP) in government-run schools (including MCD schools in the capital) and a ‘voucher’ system for poor students. In India, the greatest hurdle to right to education for all is no doubt the fact that poor students cannot afford to pay for good schooling, and the schooling available for them is of an extremely poor quality. Right to education cannot become a reality unless it is backed by the political and financial will of the government to take full responsibility for education, and by getting rid of the writ of the private profiteers in schooling. As it is, government spending on education in India is woefully inadequate and schooling is de facto privatised ; ‘PPP’ is a euphemism for further withdrawal of the government from its duty to fund education. When the powerful private players in schooling with impunity evade the current stipulations to enrol 25% poor students, there is little doubt that ‘vouchers’ for poor students in a privatised, profit-based system of schooling will meet the same fate.
The much-hyped move to make Std. 10th board exams optional is also a cosmetic and hollow measure. The move is being touted as one that will free students from excessive exam stress. Exam reforms are no doubt needed – but they cannot be divorced from wider school reforms and social changes. Students do not suffer stress only due to exams – but rather due to deeper insecurities that are created and fostered by a system that forces them to compete for shrinking space in education and employment. The UPA Government’s policies are intensifying this insecurity by the privatisation of education and the worsening of the unemployment crisis : and as such this insecurity cannot be undone by mere cosmetic moves like making 10th boards optional. Further, so long as these exams are ‘optional,’ even this limited measure will go against poorer children. The market’s demand for high marks in school exams will continue, and it is deprived students who will avail of the ‘option’ to opt out of the exam system.
In higher education, too, Sibal has proposed sweeping changes such as introducing of private and foreign universities, and replacing the UGC and other government-run regulatory bodies with a single ‘autonomous’ apex body – the National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER). These changes have been recommended by the Yashpal Committee on higher education as well as by the National Knowledge Commission.
The HRD Minister has been quick to utilise major controversies over deemed universities, capitation fees, and racist attacks on Indian students in Australia, to push for the agenda of private universities and foreign universities. Deemed universities have become notorious as fraudulent enterprises cheating students to sell sub-standard education at a steep price. Sibal has claimed that such flagrant fraud in the name of education can be checked by doing away with the ‘licence raj in education’ and allowing private players to set up universities without so much ‘red tape.’ Such reasoning is self-serving and illogical. If anything, the fate of the ‘deemed’ universities ought to serve as a nightmare preview of the fate university education is bound to suffer if left to the mercies of the market.
The replacement of the UGC/AICTE etc with the NCHER as well as the withdrawal of the Government from the responsibility of the funding and functioning of higher education is being pushed in the name of ‘autonomy.’ What does ‘autonomy’ mean in these circumstances ? Will it mean the autonomy to hold students union elections ; the autonomy of students to conduct democratic activity ; the autonomy to pursue research of one’s own choosing ? The Yashpal Committee report says that the NCHER will be “an autonomous body” with a 7-member board, and that one of its 7 members would be “an eminent professional from the world of industry ;” further, the NCHER will be “independent of all ministries of the Government of India.” This makes it clear that ‘autonomy’ thus defined is nothing but neoliberal shorthand for freedom for the market and the specifically the profiteers to dictate the agenda in education. This can only spell the worst un-freedom for the teachers, students and researchers, and for the spirit of university education itself.
The experience of health care is warning enough that private for-profit players cannot serve the needs of the mass of poor Indians. Their steep prices put them out of reach of the poor, who remain dependent on the shrinking public healthcare ; their claims of superior ‘quality’ are suspect, with rampant cases of neglect and corruption ; and they have largely relied for prestige and ‘quality’ on the best medical practitioners imported from the public hospitals, thereby weakening the institutions on which the poor rely. Private universities will be no different. Foreign universities which will open shop in India, too, are not likely to be the ‘top’ universities unless the government is willing to subsidise them ; they will instead be mediocre institutions seeking to shore up their financial crises by reaching out to India’s vast market.
Sibal has promised to implement the Yashpal Committee’s recommendations within 100 days. While in such a hurry to implement the recommendations of the Yashpal Committee and the National Knowledge Commission, it is telling that no government, in the last four decades, implemented the Kothari Commission’s recommendation that 6% of GDP be spent on education !
Sibal, it is apparent, is not so much throwing out the baby of education with the bathwater of deemed universities, capitation fees, etc..., he is throwing out the baby, with a sleight of hand, while pretending to throw out the bathwater. It is urgent that we expose these ‘revolutionary’ moves for what they are – moves to privatise and commercialise education – and resist them with all our might, while demanding that the UPA Government instead meet the long-pending demands for at least 6% of the GDP to be spent on education.