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Should we bail them out?

DNA, Mar29, 2010

R Vaidyanathan

The government has decided to open up the education sector, particularly of the higher education variety, to

foreign universities and a bill is expected to be introduced in Parliament in the current session. It is acontinuation of our decision earlier to provide more than Rs50 crore to Cambridge and Harvard universities.For Cambridge it was to honour the entry of Nehru. In Harvard it was to commemorate the 75th birthday ofAmartya Sen.

The major arguments given for the bill are that it will minimise the number of students going abroad andsave billions in foreign exchange and enhance competition. It will open the windows for foreign expertiseand facilitate globalisation. Many of the students going for beautician or bread-making courses in Australiaare primarily interested in getting residence permits and becoming citizens of that country. They are notinterested in learning per se. Hence, the arguments regarding saving foreign exchange are not without basis.

Let us look at what has taken place in the last six decades in higher education after the arrival of institutions

of higher learning like the IITs, NITs (formerly RECs), the IIMs and various other institutions in medicineand law. The lower and middle classes could have access to education based on merit since most of theseinstitutions, particularly government-owned ones, were following rigorous criteria for entrance tests. Thetraditional feudal elite, belonging to what can loosely be called the Delhi/ Mumbai caucus which thrives onthe recommendations (sifarish) culture, found the going difficult.

Not only that, most of the children of business magnates could not get into prestigious Indian institutionsdue to strict entry norms. They were sent abroad for higher education by the elite by paying a hefty sum asfees.

As it is well known, one of the important criteria to get into these world-class institutions in the US and UK

is the amount of money you can give as fees or as gifts in the form of grants. The elite thrived on the illegalmoney stashed abroad in various tax havens to educate their academically-challenged progenies even as theless monetarily endowed classes were ascending the hierarchy by merit, capability and competence.

The elite suddenly realised that the cost of sending their children is increasing and the newly ascendingbankrupt classes are becoming powerful in terms of their positions in many organisations. These are thechildren of the middle classes.So the elite decided to hit back and take things in their own hands. The result is this foreign university bill.These so-called quality institutions will look for larger donations and then give admissions based onlegacy. That is the children or sponsors of alumni get preferences based on donations.

These institutions in the UK and US are broke and many departments are getting closed. Some are

admitting more out-of-state students, who pay higher fees. Several institutions have also started to cut thenumber of students they enroll in order to save money. California State University (CSU), a publicuniversity system that has 23 campuses in California, will reduce enrolment by 20,000 students in the nextacademic year because it has lost $564 million, or around 20%, of its state funding, according to a report inThe Economist, London.

We find that the discussion and debate in the media after the bill has been approved by the cabinet isregarding market, business and return. That is the main reason for the interest of globalcompanies/institutions to get into these activities. It is not for imparting education or knowledge.

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Today if anyone talks of globalisation, it is on Indian and Chinese terms. The axis of power has shifted andthe West is in terminal decline, or monotonically declining, for those who are mathematically inclined.When the West is in decline on all fronts and when its Weltanschauung is not being bothered about, what isthe necessity for India to try to copy their educational system? It is broke from the financial point of view aswell as the philosophical one. Their models have not worked, including their family system, communitysystem and social security system.

Even their church has suffered due to therecent outbreak of scandals. This is one reason why Martin Wolf ofthe Financial Times suggests that Britain should give up its permanent seat in the Security Council in favourof India.

It is up to our Parliamentarians to decide what India wants and what they would like to leave for the futuregenerations. One only wishes that some Gandhian institution will distribute copies of the original HindSwaraj of Mahatma Gandhi published hundred years before to our Parliamentarians to understand thatwe are proud children of Nalanda and Taxshila.(Views expressed are personal)