The first column of a New Year usually leaves me searching for issues that match the sense of occasion that a new year brings. So, though at first I considered a fulsome attack on Mr and Mrs Laloo Yadav and the lawless state over which they preside I decided against it because it is too depressing a subject and it demeans political journalism to comment on a government in which the chief minister’s husband rules from the zenana. Bizarre even by Bihar’s high standards and besides what more is there to say?Then, I mused over the Prime Minister’s annual, holiday ‘‘musings’’ and realized that the only thing to be said is that the Prime Minister must stop musing. It is a bad habit, serves no useful purpose and in India we need implementation not musing. So it is that I settled finally on dedicating this first column of the New Year to the Goddess of learning, a sort of Saraswati Vandana of my own.If you read your newspapers the week before the Prime Minister left on his Goan holiday you would have noticed that he has finally discovered, Saraswati be praised, that higher education in India is a complete mess. Sadly, he has not yet noticed that the reason for this mess is excessive, destructive governmental interference in an area where none is needed. His comments on higher education reform were vague and, inevitably, got misinterpreted.No sooner did he mention reform than wily, old Murli Manohar Joshi saw it as a chance to grab more patronage and power. He wants foreign students to come through the Ministry of Human Resource Development instead of the Ministry of External Affairs, he announced, and plans for them a ‘‘single-window system’’. Apparently confusing university education with foreign direct investment and an international airport he spoke of the need for a ‘‘green channel’’ for students from friendly countries and a ‘‘red channel’’ for those coming from countries considered less than friendly. What neither the Prime Minister nor his Education Minister appear to have noticed is that students should not need clearance from any ministry unless there are reasons to doubt their bona fides.That, though, is the least of our problems since there is not exactly a long queue of foreign students waiting at some green channel. Quite the opposite. In the past 20 years, Indian universities have collapsed so manifestly that even middle class Indian families invest their life savings on sending their children to foreign universities. Ironically, the first people to notice the decline were those who destroyed the system in the first place. It is hard to meet a bureaucrat or a politician these days, whose children are not studying in a foreign university but in the name of ‘‘the poor’’ they have reduced our own universities to destitution.Controls in higher education are such a stranglehold that colleges cannot raise fees or professors’ salaries without taking government permission. The result is that students in our best universities in Delhi and Mumbai pay less tuition fee in a month than they spend on a meal in the college cafe. The result also is that once fine institutions can now barely afford to keep their classrooms painted, leave alone invest in vital tools of modern learning like computers. Professors are paid so little that the best have fled to countries where learning is revered by deeds and not just Saraswati Vandana. Can you imagine Amartya Sen teaching at the Delhi School of Economics instead of Harvard or Cambridge?No. But, if the government relinquished control at least over private colleges there would be many who could afford to pay him the sort of salary that he earns abroad. The problem is that governmental interference does not allow even private colleges to charge the fees they want or pay the salaries that are essential if we want excellence to return to higher education. What our higher education needs is a large dose of American-style privatization. If our varsities were allowed to charge halfway reasonable fees, they would have enough funds to subsidize the education of poorer students If the Prime Minister is serious about higher education reform, he should make some effort to discover how the United States — where so many Indian students now flock — runs its universities. To begin with, there is absolutely no interference from the federal government, not even to set a standardized examination system.It is the universities themselves who decide the criteria for admissions, examinations and curriculum. At the best of American universities, more than half the students are given scholarships and grants of some kind but even this is decided by the college and not some minister or official. There are universities that are run by state governments that provide cheaper education than private colleges but even here education departments do not interfere in academic affairs except to provide money for research.What Indian higher education needs is a large dose of American-style privatization. If the Prime Minister attempts, though, to bring it about he will face the inevitable ‘‘what about the poor’’ argument. What is wrong with the universities themselves taking care of poor students as happens in America? If Indian universities and colleges were allowed to charge halfway reasonable fees for the education they provide, they will have more than enough money to subsidize the education of students who cannot afford to pay.So, if the Prime Minister wants real change in higher education could he please begin by abolishing the University Grants Commission instead of merely changing its name. As an immediate second step let him order all government controls lifted from private colleges. If he can achieve even these two things he would have done more for the Goddess Saraswati than any Indian Prime Minister has done in a long, long time.Email the Author
