The 100 day plan of the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development it now appears has backfired! These were the proposals for an autonomous and independent umbrella authority that now at best appears to be anything but independent but surely an ‘over-arching all in one’ body, independent assessment and accreditation that is now being known as a regulatory nightmare considering the multiplicity of accreditation agencies and the resultant chaos in public mind; the much touted entry of foreign education providers hurting our own national pride, best portrayed by the failed foreign jaunts of Kapil Sibal and his invitation lamenting our educational standards now being perceived by many as India’s spurned begging bowl to European and American Universities; a tribunal for fast-tracking disputes, perceived by the private sector as an attempt to malign their altruistic efforts and one that is as yet to see the light of the day; the short sighted and ill conceived review of deemed universities, sparing other state run private and other government central and state universities, for sure Kapil Sibal has the credit for having damned them in public but are far from being doomed and the final and least controversial decision for direct credit of scholarships to bank accounts, perhaps the easiest to implement but is as yet to see the light of the day! Ironically the Government has done little in the past few months when it comes to universalization of elementary education that is now compulsory for the past few years and is the single most important commitment of the government that also stands for open and distance education, eradicating illiteracy and introducing adult literacy, secondary and vocational education.
Ironically, it is on the higher and technical education front that could have been best left to the private sector since the country was faring relatively better, having acclaimed to be the third largest scientific and technological manpower and having brought about the information technology revolution to mankind’s doorstep in an increasingly flattened world. But it is here, that the Government has unwittingly stirred a hornet’s nest and in the process Kapil Sibal has indeed burnt his own fingers.
Let us use a different lens, so that we do not miss the wood for the trees and examine other outcomes. The doing away of 10th Board, in retrospect appears to be a bad policy decision on many counts, but most importantly Kapil Sibal cannot be excused for the narrow short sighted goals that dismantled Mahatma Gandhi’s larger vision of imparting vocational education after schooling where rising costs and socioeconomic compulsions made it difficult for most parents to bear the burden of further education. Indeed it was the 10th Board that had provided standardization of standards and uniformity for assessments before a student would have embarked on employable skills based training so critical for a country that wishes to improve its literacy rate and capitalize on its demographic dividend.
Similarly all efforts at doing away of numerical assessment in favor of grading that has stood the test of time for a shortsighted and purported benefit of lesser competition and stress have not taken into account the issues and problems associated with its implementation in letter and spirit. The fact of the matter remains that even in most of the IITs today numerical assessment is converted into grades just for the sake of arriving at those grades thus defeating the very purpose of grading.
To cap it all the latest in the series is the draft Central legislation on the constitution of the National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) that proposes to dismantle the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) and sets up another overarching body with immense powers and responsibilities to usher in an era of highly centralized and authoritarian institutionalization with little guarantee and safeguards to ensure the vision of academic freedom and decentralized democratic structures of Professor Yash Pal or the agenda of neo-liberal reforms that Sam Pitroda was so impatient to implement. Amusingly the Task Force constituted to aid and advise the MHRD to set up the NCHER has skirted the issue of promoting autonomy, decentralization, competition and privatization of higher education that even Kapil Sibal has been publicly recommending. It is unclear that the orchestrated campaign against the now discredited privately funded deemed universities sparing other private state government recognized Universities and more importantly the public funded Central and other Universities that in many a cases suffer with yet lower quality standards. It is now learnt that some of these Deemed Universities under de novo category were not even allowed to complete their mandated five year term as per Government’s own notification before they were recommended for derecognition. It is also preposterous to presume that the façade of a national collegiums of advisers, comprising of core members and another set of co-opted members will not be compromised by the political selection process as has been indeed the case in the past with such positions as the UGC or AICTE or NCTE Chairman’s selections may bear testimony and the past remains a good barometer for future. The patronage of a position for a lifetime is again against all canons of promoting democratization and decentralization and the possible rationale is that it would ensure both continuity and change in the determination of policies in higher education is highly questionable. The Bill also provides for the preparation of a national registry of Vice-Chancellors and mandates that Vice-Chancellors of State universities and even private Universities be appointed from a panel of names selected by the commission from the registry is a very serious affront to the wisdom of others and the freedom and autonomy of the University system, particularly in a federal polity as ours. The issue is not whether the Commission would always act fairly, but whether such an arrangement would be consistent with the principles of autonomy. These decisions have been contrary to the emerging global trends in privatization of higher education and have brought immense disrepute internationally to India’s own academic standing.
Another myopic move that has now been objected by the Planning Commission is the proposed setting up of Regulators and the educational tribunals that will have the power to impose jail sentences and fines as such a move will result in a multiplicity of regulatory bodies given that the creation of the National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) is on the anvil and that the prospect of a plethora of statutory authorities, is against the spirit of the Yash Pal committee recommendations. Apart from duplicating role of NCHER the move will further insecurity and bureaucratize the prevailing jungle raj of higher education in our country instead of tackling grievances related to deemed universities and affiliations. It is suspected that without adequate safeguards there will be a multiplicity of AICTE like bodies to license engineering, management and other technical courses offered by private colleges and the scrutiny for regulatory delays, red tape, restrictive policies, opaque functioning—and even bribery will indeed go for a six. The Chairman of the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions (NCMEI), MA Siddiqui, believes that a specific body to deal with disputes may work better in India, where the education sector is always expanding for fast and more efficient redressal. This view is also shared by Mr Pratap Bhanu Mehta, President of the Centre for Policy Research, a New Delhi-based think tank, who believes that India needs sweeping changes. “There is no point having a tribunal or an oversight mechanism such as NCHER unless reforms happen in the sector.” There is intense opposition from several quarters to the Bill as the Commission, announced by the President as a key agenda of the UPA in its second term, as a single regulator that will monitor all streams of higher education other than those related to medicine. The Bar Council of India and the Council of Architecture perform two tasks — regulating education in their respective streams and issuing licenses mandatory to practice as a lawyer or an architect in India but the bill proposes to transfer control over legal and architecture education to the new regulator while allowing the Bar Council of India and the Architecture Council to continue as quality monitors of both professions, a move that will further centralize decision making and control and hence opposed tooth and nail by the two Councils.
Yes true to his inimitable cavalier style Kapil Sibal, again has ensured that the Human Resource Ministry’s acceptance of ‘Tandon Committee Report’ recommending without much ado derecognition of 44 Deemed Universities followed by another 44 in the next three years indeed opens a Pandora’s Box. It is learned that on 18th August, 2009 representatives of these Universities were summoned by the ‘Tandon Committee’ constituted amid much hurry, bypassing the Constitutional Authority, the University Grants Commission (UGC) by the same Ministry of HRD for a hurriedly convened ‘Durbar’ presided over by Dr P N Tandon. It is alleged by the Universities that such a short hearing without any transparent parameters indeed became a meaningless exercise and a mockery of the process which is evident from the fact that 126 Deemed Universities were heard in just 4 days and each one of them was given a mere 10 minutes, wherein only a formal introduction was really possible. Incidentally on verification from the Ministry of HRD sources it is confirmed that till date no copy of the said Report has been furnished or the minimum standards of assessment or parameters were ever been defined or the observations of the Committee been informed to the Universities concerned before recommending the purported action of de-recognition. It also transpires that the UGC, a statutory body, under its Act had earlier appointed an expert committee to visit these institutions and the Deemed to be University status was granted only after a thorough on site inspection, interaction and physical verification of all aspects by the Ministry of Human Resource Development vide its gazette notifications under Section 3 of UGC Act 1956. Ironically, enough it is also understood that the Chairman of this Task Force, Prof. P.N. Tandon, himself is the President of the society of one of the Deemed Universities (under De-Novo category) named National Brain Research Centre, Manesar, Haryana that was recommended to be one of the 38 Universities found to be fit out of the total list of 126 reviewed by him. The fact also remains that one of the members of the said Tandon Committee, Shri Sunil Kumar happened to be one of the handpicked bureaucrats of the then HRD Minister Arjun Singh, who was instrumental in having these Institutions declared as Deemed to be Universities. Even if one goes by governments own assessment yardstick, the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) has rated 140 (out of 355) universities and 3,492 (out of 18,064) colleges wherein only 9 per cent of colleges and 31 per cent of universities were graded “A”. No wonder that 150,000 Indian students head annually for foreign shores at a tremendous cost to their parents and the country. Have the mandarins in Shastri Bhavan come up with a plan to review the functioning of all these Universities and Institutions and handed them with a time bound action plan? Obviously not!
Although Education in our country is in the concurrent list, upholding, regulating and maintaining the quality in higher education happens to be the responsibility of Central Government as recently settled by Calcutta High Court which had declared several teacher-training institutions in Bengal illegal as they did not meet NCTE requirements despite their meeting state government standards. In due fairness to the Deemed Universities the purported ‘Tandon’ review exercise was limited to only the Deemed Universities that even included the de novo category, which had not even completed the first five years, before a review was to be undertaken as per government’s own gazette notification. Many of these Universities particularly in remote and rural heartland were infact fulfilling the mandate of Government of India working on various projects with different government and non-government bodies that were in any case based on independent inspections. Some of these Universities included the likes of Gurukul Kangri an age old Institution, Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development and many Universities graded much higher than to even some of the IITs and Central Government Universities. It is lamented by these Universities, a few of whom were even accredited as ISO 9001-2000 Institutions with academic collaborations and independent academic validations with several reputed foreign Universities, Industries and Institutions. Highly aggrieved, notes one of the promoters, having invested huge amounts and despite conforming to every possible guideline issued by the University Grants Commission and the Trust byelaws and regulations that were open to public scrutiny and having the best possible educational standards they have been derecognized by the Government and condemned, unheard and hence deprived of even the Principle of Natural Justice. The review exercise surprisingly enough had spared the State Private Universities and other Central and State Universities where despite huge public expenditures over a number of years no such review was even contemplated. On a cue from the Ministry of HRD, the print and the visual media immediately started a concerted campaign and initiated their own media trial against some of these Universities, surprisingly oblivious of the even poorer standards of the State Universities, State recognized Private Universities and other Central Universities barring a few notable exceptions. As pointed out by one of the Deemed to be Universities, the witch hunting was exacerbated by rival competition and a vicious cartel of vested interests, funneled by greed and demands for illegal gratification by individuals who now plague the corridors of power in the regulatory institutions. They wonder that in the years to come any private capital or enterprise would again dare venture in the arena of higher education in India and allege that even Minister Kapil Sibal appears to have been taken for a ride as he was caught unaware as could be made of from his own press statements.
In India presently just eleven million students enroll for higher education however we dither when it comes to allowing private enterprise and free capital forgetting the fact that there has already been a de-facto privatization of school education, professional education and now even the higher education sector. Though the barriers to entry and the regulation in higher education for the private sector are strict, there is no level playing field with the public universities and there are inadequate disclosure norms. One may discover that the ratings done by assorted interests and magazines particularly for professional education are more motivated based on subjectivity than on the basis of objectivity and proper disclosures. Ironically, Kapil Sibal is guided by the existing ideological bias against profit-making in the education sector and therefore access to capital markets remains a taboo. Thus we have only driven profiteering by the ‘not for profit’ societies and trusts underground, as the so many politicians and industrialists who have ventured in professional education understand. Altruism, in today’s world is best left to individuals and the motives best judged by the public at large than by the government of the day and by any legislative correction or intent. Unfortunately due to ill-conceived, misguided and ill fated governmental regulation any residual investment through private participation has directed the inflows and outflows under the carpet and by precluding private and foreign equity we have further ensured too many road blocks for transparency and better disclosure.
The entire fiasco as it now emerges has been best summed up recently with some good advice for HRD Minister Kapil Sibal by Oscar Fernandes, Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Resource Development that he cannot ignore ‘even if there are deficiencies the Deemed Universities should be given another chance’ to promote governments own mandate and to encourage public private partnerships in higher education so that the governments may concentrate more on its promise to ensure quality free and compulsory primary education.
Ironically, it is on the higher and technical education front that could have been best left to the private sector since the country was faring relatively better, having acclaimed to be the third largest scientific and technological manpower and having brought about the information technology revolution to mankind’s doorstep in an increasingly flattened world. But it is here, that the Government has unwittingly stirred a hornet’s nest and in the process Kapil Sibal has indeed burnt his own fingers.
Let us use a different lens, so that we do not miss the wood for the trees and examine other outcomes. The doing away of 10th Board, in retrospect appears to be a bad policy decision on many counts, but most importantly Kapil Sibal cannot be excused for the narrow short sighted goals that dismantled Mahatma Gandhi’s larger vision of imparting vocational education after schooling where rising costs and socioeconomic compulsions made it difficult for most parents to bear the burden of further education. Indeed it was the 10th Board that had provided standardization of standards and uniformity for assessments before a student would have embarked on employable skills based training so critical for a country that wishes to improve its literacy rate and capitalize on its demographic dividend.
Similarly all efforts at doing away of numerical assessment in favor of grading that has stood the test of time for a shortsighted and purported benefit of lesser competition and stress have not taken into account the issues and problems associated with its implementation in letter and spirit. The fact of the matter remains that even in most of the IITs today numerical assessment is converted into grades just for the sake of arriving at those grades thus defeating the very purpose of grading.
To cap it all the latest in the series is the draft Central legislation on the constitution of the National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) that proposes to dismantle the University Grants Commission (UGC), the All-India Council for Technical Education (AICTE), the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) and sets up another overarching body with immense powers and responsibilities to usher in an era of highly centralized and authoritarian institutionalization with little guarantee and safeguards to ensure the vision of academic freedom and decentralized democratic structures of Professor Yash Pal or the agenda of neo-liberal reforms that Sam Pitroda was so impatient to implement. Amusingly the Task Force constituted to aid and advise the MHRD to set up the NCHER has skirted the issue of promoting autonomy, decentralization, competition and privatization of higher education that even Kapil Sibal has been publicly recommending. It is unclear that the orchestrated campaign against the now discredited privately funded deemed universities sparing other private state government recognized Universities and more importantly the public funded Central and other Universities that in many a cases suffer with yet lower quality standards. It is now learnt that some of these Deemed Universities under de novo category were not even allowed to complete their mandated five year term as per Government’s own notification before they were recommended for derecognition. It is also preposterous to presume that the façade of a national collegiums of advisers, comprising of core members and another set of co-opted members will not be compromised by the political selection process as has been indeed the case in the past with such positions as the UGC or AICTE or NCTE Chairman’s selections may bear testimony and the past remains a good barometer for future. The patronage of a position for a lifetime is again against all canons of promoting democratization and decentralization and the possible rationale is that it would ensure both continuity and change in the determination of policies in higher education is highly questionable. The Bill also provides for the preparation of a national registry of Vice-Chancellors and mandates that Vice-Chancellors of State universities and even private Universities be appointed from a panel of names selected by the commission from the registry is a very serious affront to the wisdom of others and the freedom and autonomy of the University system, particularly in a federal polity as ours. The issue is not whether the Commission would always act fairly, but whether such an arrangement would be consistent with the principles of autonomy. These decisions have been contrary to the emerging global trends in privatization of higher education and have brought immense disrepute internationally to India’s own academic standing.
Another myopic move that has now been objected by the Planning Commission is the proposed setting up of Regulators and the educational tribunals that will have the power to impose jail sentences and fines as such a move will result in a multiplicity of regulatory bodies given that the creation of the National Commission for Higher Education and Research (NCHER) is on the anvil and that the prospect of a plethora of statutory authorities, is against the spirit of the Yash Pal committee recommendations. Apart from duplicating role of NCHER the move will further insecurity and bureaucratize the prevailing jungle raj of higher education in our country instead of tackling grievances related to deemed universities and affiliations. It is suspected that without adequate safeguards there will be a multiplicity of AICTE like bodies to license engineering, management and other technical courses offered by private colleges and the scrutiny for regulatory delays, red tape, restrictive policies, opaque functioning—and even bribery will indeed go for a six. The Chairman of the National Commission for Minority Educational Institutions (NCMEI), MA Siddiqui, believes that a specific body to deal with disputes may work better in India, where the education sector is always expanding for fast and more efficient redressal. This view is also shared by Mr Pratap Bhanu Mehta, President of the Centre for Policy Research, a New Delhi-based think tank, who believes that India needs sweeping changes. “There is no point having a tribunal or an oversight mechanism such as NCHER unless reforms happen in the sector.” There is intense opposition from several quarters to the Bill as the Commission, announced by the President as a key agenda of the UPA in its second term, as a single regulator that will monitor all streams of higher education other than those related to medicine. The Bar Council of India and the Council of Architecture perform two tasks — regulating education in their respective streams and issuing licenses mandatory to practice as a lawyer or an architect in India but the bill proposes to transfer control over legal and architecture education to the new regulator while allowing the Bar Council of India and the Architecture Council to continue as quality monitors of both professions, a move that will further centralize decision making and control and hence opposed tooth and nail by the two Councils.
Yes true to his inimitable cavalier style Kapil Sibal, again has ensured that the Human Resource Ministry’s acceptance of ‘Tandon Committee Report’ recommending without much ado derecognition of 44 Deemed Universities followed by another 44 in the next three years indeed opens a Pandora’s Box. It is learned that on 18th August, 2009 representatives of these Universities were summoned by the ‘Tandon Committee’ constituted amid much hurry, bypassing the Constitutional Authority, the University Grants Commission (UGC) by the same Ministry of HRD for a hurriedly convened ‘Durbar’ presided over by Dr P N Tandon. It is alleged by the Universities that such a short hearing without any transparent parameters indeed became a meaningless exercise and a mockery of the process which is evident from the fact that 126 Deemed Universities were heard in just 4 days and each one of them was given a mere 10 minutes, wherein only a formal introduction was really possible. Incidentally on verification from the Ministry of HRD sources it is confirmed that till date no copy of the said Report has been furnished or the minimum standards of assessment or parameters were ever been defined or the observations of the Committee been informed to the Universities concerned before recommending the purported action of de-recognition. It also transpires that the UGC, a statutory body, under its Act had earlier appointed an expert committee to visit these institutions and the Deemed to be University status was granted only after a thorough on site inspection, interaction and physical verification of all aspects by the Ministry of Human Resource Development vide its gazette notifications under Section 3 of UGC Act 1956. Ironically, enough it is also understood that the Chairman of this Task Force, Prof. P.N. Tandon, himself is the President of the society of one of the Deemed Universities (under De-Novo category) named National Brain Research Centre, Manesar, Haryana that was recommended to be one of the 38 Universities found to be fit out of the total list of 126 reviewed by him. The fact also remains that one of the members of the said Tandon Committee, Shri Sunil Kumar happened to be one of the handpicked bureaucrats of the then HRD Minister Arjun Singh, who was instrumental in having these Institutions declared as Deemed to be Universities. Even if one goes by governments own assessment yardstick, the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (NAAC) has rated 140 (out of 355) universities and 3,492 (out of 18,064) colleges wherein only 9 per cent of colleges and 31 per cent of universities were graded “A”. No wonder that 150,000 Indian students head annually for foreign shores at a tremendous cost to their parents and the country. Have the mandarins in Shastri Bhavan come up with a plan to review the functioning of all these Universities and Institutions and handed them with a time bound action plan? Obviously not!
Although Education in our country is in the concurrent list, upholding, regulating and maintaining the quality in higher education happens to be the responsibility of Central Government as recently settled by Calcutta High Court which had declared several teacher-training institutions in Bengal illegal as they did not meet NCTE requirements despite their meeting state government standards. In due fairness to the Deemed Universities the purported ‘Tandon’ review exercise was limited to only the Deemed Universities that even included the de novo category, which had not even completed the first five years, before a review was to be undertaken as per government’s own gazette notification. Many of these Universities particularly in remote and rural heartland were infact fulfilling the mandate of Government of India working on various projects with different government and non-government bodies that were in any case based on independent inspections. Some of these Universities included the likes of Gurukul Kangri an age old Institution, Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development and many Universities graded much higher than to even some of the IITs and Central Government Universities. It is lamented by these Universities, a few of whom were even accredited as ISO 9001-2000 Institutions with academic collaborations and independent academic validations with several reputed foreign Universities, Industries and Institutions. Highly aggrieved, notes one of the promoters, having invested huge amounts and despite conforming to every possible guideline issued by the University Grants Commission and the Trust byelaws and regulations that were open to public scrutiny and having the best possible educational standards they have been derecognized by the Government and condemned, unheard and hence deprived of even the Principle of Natural Justice. The review exercise surprisingly enough had spared the State Private Universities and other Central and State Universities where despite huge public expenditures over a number of years no such review was even contemplated. On a cue from the Ministry of HRD, the print and the visual media immediately started a concerted campaign and initiated their own media trial against some of these Universities, surprisingly oblivious of the even poorer standards of the State Universities, State recognized Private Universities and other Central Universities barring a few notable exceptions. As pointed out by one of the Deemed to be Universities, the witch hunting was exacerbated by rival competition and a vicious cartel of vested interests, funneled by greed and demands for illegal gratification by individuals who now plague the corridors of power in the regulatory institutions. They wonder that in the years to come any private capital or enterprise would again dare venture in the arena of higher education in India and allege that even Minister Kapil Sibal appears to have been taken for a ride as he was caught unaware as could be made of from his own press statements.
In India presently just eleven million students enroll for higher education however we dither when it comes to allowing private enterprise and free capital forgetting the fact that there has already been a de-facto privatization of school education, professional education and now even the higher education sector. Though the barriers to entry and the regulation in higher education for the private sector are strict, there is no level playing field with the public universities and there are inadequate disclosure norms. One may discover that the ratings done by assorted interests and magazines particularly for professional education are more motivated based on subjectivity than on the basis of objectivity and proper disclosures. Ironically, Kapil Sibal is guided by the existing ideological bias against profit-making in the education sector and therefore access to capital markets remains a taboo. Thus we have only driven profiteering by the ‘not for profit’ societies and trusts underground, as the so many politicians and industrialists who have ventured in professional education understand. Altruism, in today’s world is best left to individuals and the motives best judged by the public at large than by the government of the day and by any legislative correction or intent. Unfortunately due to ill-conceived, misguided and ill fated governmental regulation any residual investment through private participation has directed the inflows and outflows under the carpet and by precluding private and foreign equity we have further ensured too many road blocks for transparency and better disclosure.
The entire fiasco as it now emerges has been best summed up recently with some good advice for HRD Minister Kapil Sibal by Oscar Fernandes, Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Human Resource Development that he cannot ignore ‘even if there are deficiencies the Deemed Universities should be given another chance’ to promote governments own mandate and to encourage public private partnerships in higher education so that the governments may concentrate more on its promise to ensure quality free and compulsory primary education.
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