People's Democracy

SINCE the time the BJP government has come to power at the centre, the attacks on higher education have increased manifold. Having surrendered to the World Bank, the BJP government is now implementing its prescriptions in the field of higher education as well. Treating higher education as a non-merit good, as dictated by the World Bank, this government has already taken steps to gradually withdraw funding of institutions of higher education, restrict the access to higher education, recover a big part of expenditure from the students as fees, and privatise and commercialise higher education. It has also decided to impose autonomous status on colleges, and the assessment and accreditation of universities and colleges have been made mandatory.

While the Ministry of HRD and the UGC were implementing these decisions by executive orders and circulars without discussing the issues involved with the democratic movement of teachers and students, the Prime Minister’s Office was busy in consolidating these decisions and expediting the process of privatisation and commercialisation of higher education. The prime minister’s Council on Trade and Industry (PMCTI) constituted a ‘special subject group on policy framework for private investment in education, health and rural development’. The prime minister found no experts in the concerned areas but the noted industrialists, Mukesh Ambani (Convenor) and Kumarmangalam Birla (Member) to constitute this special subject group. Obviously, they were among the best-interested people to suggest the implementation of the World Bank prescriptions and privatisation and commercialisation of higher education in the country.

Ambani and Birla submitted their report ‘A Policy Framework for Reforms in Education’ to the PMCTI on April 24, 2000. The Report remained confidential till it was downloaded from the Internet (Website: http://www.nic.in) recently.

For Ambani and Birla, education is a very profitable market over which they must have full control and for their industrial requirements "education must shape adaptable, competitive workers who can readily acquire new skills and innovate." Hence, they want us to "fundamentally change our mindset" of "seeing education as a component of social development."

By not being market-oriented, the Indian education system fails to realize the potential of the information technology requirements. Consequently, private institutions enjoying brand equity and large market capitalization have come up forming a large non-formal education system of creating quality software professionals

Knowledge has become the new asset. According to the Report, "More than half of the GDP in the major OECD countries is now knowledge based. About two-thirds of the growth of world GDP is expected to come from technology-led businesses. This necessitates that education and knowledge are at the centre stage of any development process."

The Report says: "Weightless goods – with high knowledge content rather than material content – now account for some of the most dynamic sectors in several economies. The single largest export industry for the United States is neither aircraft nor automobiles, but entertainment. Education offers a fast track to knowledge-based growth."

Therefore, a call has been given for a "knowledge revolution", a revolution in education that "induces a market oriented competitive environment."

Thus the two industrialists want the country to move towards a "knowledge-based economy" in which education will offer a "fast track" to produce "weightless goods" like "entertainment". Knowledge-based economy and revolution are envisaged using cyber-age education and internet and "putting latest technology to innovative use" establishing "classroom of the future" and "virtual universities" for "the dot com generations."

A number of economic reforms, undertaken on the dictates of the World Bank and multinational corporations, are "hampered by their impact on labour and employment." These reforms are, among others, "privatization of public enterprises, reduction of tariffs, moving to a quantitative regime or restraining wasteful government expenditure."

Several rigid labour laws protect the interests of 300 lakh employees in the government, public sector and organized private sector. The large numbers of workers in the unorganized sector and agriculture have no such protection. Therefore, Ambani and Birla do not like to invest in the organized sector because they cannot make huge profits by hiring as cheap a labour as is available in the unorganized sector. They have realized the enormous power of the people in India and "the potential for growth and development if over a billion people, one sixth of humanity, are educated, creative and enterprising."

Therefore, they want India to "create an environment that does not produce industrial workers and labourers but fosters ‘knowledge workers.’ Since "education has a major role to play in shaping knowledge workers", they want to first capture higher education and make huge profits, and then use the ‘knowledge workers’ in their unorganized sector to make further profits.

Ambani and Birla are unhappy to note that the education sector in India is probably the most controlled sector in India, with several bodies managing education. Rules and regulations govern virtually everything from location, student intake, course content, fees and fee structure, appointments, compensation for faculty and so on. Consequently institutions of "learning have become rigid." They do not want "excessive regulations" in education because this will "discourage private spending" on it. They want "operational freedom and the flexibility to innovate."

Therefore they recommend,

"Governments must encourage private financing by taking on some of the risks that makes financial institutions reluctant to lend for higher education."

The role of the government in higher education has been redefined as playing the role of a facilitator, maximum at the primary stage, and minimum at the higher education stage. Accordingly enactment of a Private University Act for the establishment of "new private universities in the fields of science and technology, management, economics, financial management and other critical areas with commercial applications" has been recommended. The Report advises the government that leading business houses (read Ambani and Birla) must be encouraged to establish such institutes and universities.

This recommendation goes much beyond the aims and objectives of the Private Universities Bill still pending before the Rajya Sabha. The DUTA had appeared before the Select Committee of Parliament in 1996 and opposed the Bill because, apart from other reasons, the Bill proposed to take away frontier areas of science and technology from the university system. Ambani and Birla on the other hand, want this Bill to cover every area having commercial application other than the liberal arts and performing arts. Advocating foreign direct investment in education, they have built a case, in their own interest, to start private universities, turning education into a business for profit- making and marketing India as a "destination for affordable and high quality education."

In this pursuit for profit making, universal primary education is counter-posed to higher education. Once universal primary and secondary education has been achieved then only can higher education be considred as a priority. There must be a concerted effort to free up resources for primary education. (Incidentally, differentration is also proposed among teachers according to the ‘level’ at which they teach – including their education.) To achieve this there must be a gradual move to full cost recovery in higher education, encouraging the emergence of a largely self-financing private sector.

The "user pays principle" will be enforced strictly for higher education supported by loan schemes, as well as financial grants for economically and socially backward sections of society. They have suggested a credit market for education. Those who cannot pay should take loans or credit from the market if they want to enroll themselves in the institutions of higher education.

For primary and literacy education an education development fund has been proposed to be based on donations fully exempt from income tax, alongwith a gradual withdrawal of subsidies for higher education through higher fees and changes in the fee structure. Funds withdrawn from higher education, have never been transferred to primary education. Nevertheless school education is pitted against the higher education. It is proposed that progressive redution in the funding for universities can pay fo the Infrastructure for schools – buildings, telecom networks, and computers. Universities should take the path of self-sufficiency through higher students’ fees, donations and endowments, alumni contributions, linkages with corporate establishments for research, royalties on book and research output etc. The role of the UGC as a funding entity will no longer exist, except in those areas of education involving liberal arts and performing arts.

. Schools of learning must be encouraged to constantly upgrade content and facilities in order to make them more market oriented. Because the formal education system, is not awake to the needs of society, therefore a non-formal system of self-financing institutions has filled the need.

Ambani and Birla prefer to overlook the fact that it is the government policy of gradual withdrawal of state funding of institutions of higher education that has thwarted many attempts of institutions of higher education, universities and colleges, to upgrade their courses in view of present day technology requirements. For example, the government and the UGC have paid nothing in the past several years to Delhi University to start new courses and upgrade the existing ones by integrating computer and information technology. The case for the privatization and commercialization of higher education is being made out by blaming universities and colleges, and not government policies.

Only areas of higher education which are profitable are of interest to there Non-profitable areas such as oriental languages, archaeology, palaeontology, religion and philosophy, should be left to the state to pursue.

The Report further requires annual rating of all educational institutions in India – schools, colleges, institutions and universities – by independent agencies analogous to a Standard and Poor’s or CRISIL in the financial sector, mandatory to cover issues such as emphasis on girls’ education, value education, social service, physical education and games. This rating should be mentioned in the prospectus as well as all important communications. "Funding to educational institutions will then be linked to rating. Institutions with a lower than the minimum specified rating should not be allowed to operate. Based on ratings which will follow a strengent system, a differential fee structure could emerge.

The value education and social service is likely to be as defined by the BJP. With funding linked to rating, many institutions, which may not come up to the minimum level for want of adequate state funding, will have to closed down.

Where increased spending on education arises this is to be met "by restructuring of inter-sectoral allocations and divestment of loss- making public sector companies. For example, the average annual plan expenditure on education (1992-97 plan) was Rs 3,920 crore and the annual losses of all state electricity boards (1997-98) was Rs 10,684 crore which is 2.72 times the average annual plan expenditure on education." Secondly, Panchayats must seek funding from the local community to supplement state funding. Central and state assistance should not be seen as largesse but linked to those who can help themselves."

To achieve full control over education, legislation should be enacted "banning any form of political activity on campuses of universities and educational institution including any union activities."

Ambani and Birla have assumed that by the year 2015, primary and upper primary education (age group 5 – 14 years) will be universalized, a 75 per cent enrolment rate will be achieved for higher secondary, 20 per cent enrolment in colleges and professional education. The percentages of public spending are projected as 90 per cent in the primary sector, 50 per cent in the secondary sector and 40 per cent in the tertiary sector. This translates to a total public spending of Rs 1,17,000 crore and a private spending of Rs 68,900 crore (i.e. Rs 1,85,900 crore, calculated at 1998-99 levels of costs and prices).

In effect this means that the government would spend 63 per cent of the total expenditure, which they assume would amount to 1.98 per cent of the projected GNP, ie, a reduction from the present 3.7 per cent to 1.98 per cent by the year 2015. The number of students projected to be enrolled in the institutions of higher education in the year 2015 is 220 lakh. This number is about three times the current figure.

The ignorance of Ambani and Birla regarding the current state of affairs in higher education while abysmal is not surprising. Only six per cent of the young people in the age group of 17-23 are currently enrolled in higher education. These students, about 75 lakh in number, are able to join higher education because of the currently prevailing fee structure. The percentage rise in the enrolment of students per year has been decreasing in last ten years. These industrialists want us to believe that not only these students, but others totally 220 lakhs students, will be able to pay more than Rs thirty thousand per year, at 1998-99 prices, in 2015, for a B.A. degree. Given the experience in relation to rise in prices in past, this fee might be about Rs 1.5 lakh per year in 2015. This is the fee alone, actual expenditure may be much more.

With such a high fee the enrolment of students will never be 20 per cent as proposed by Ambani and Birla, but it will fall steeply to far below even six per cent.

Loans to students have been proposed so that they are able to meet the enhanced fees. It is being advocated that the poor students who cannot pay the fees, instead of dropping out from higher education, should take loans, get jobs and then pay back loans. The BJP government has already started implementing these proposals. There are several serious problems associated with this proposal.

Firstly, while proposing loans it has been assumed that after education, students would get jobs with ‘good’ earnings and be able to pay back loans. But education does not guarantee employment. With no employment or no ability to repay, people from relatively poorer sections will be worst affected.

Secondly, the recovery of loans would become the most important consideration for the banking institutions. Therefore, they would not be willing to give loans to economically weaker and educationally deserving students. They would prefer to cater to economically better-off students. The conditions of guarantee based on the mortgage of immovable property would further exclude a large section of students.

Thirdly, since dowry is an important social phenomenon in several countries including India, loans to students would work as a ‘negative dowry’ resulting in decline in the enrolment of girls in higher education.

On the whole, the proposed loans to students would prove to be detrimental to the growth of higher education and adversely affect equity in and access to higher education.

Thus the Ambani-Birla Report, would convert the entire system of higher education in the country into a market where only profit- making will be the only consideration. Only those who will be able to pay exorbitant amounts of fee will enroll in higher education. Not only anti-higher education but also anti-people, this report must be rejected in its totality.