People's Democracy

 EVEN YOGA IS UP FOR SALE

Gujarat Govt Effects Severe Fee Hikes

FAITHFULLY following in the footsteps of the BJP-led central government, the Gujarat state government run by the same party is currently busy implementing the World Bank-dictated LPG policies in the state. A recent evidence of this orientation of the state government is its effort to take higher education out of the reach of students from poor and not so well to do backgrounds. A recent Supreme Court ruling asserting that education is not a public but a private good, and therefore those who want to have expertise must be ready to pay for it, came as a boost to the state government’s drive to privatise and commercialise higher education.

Recently the education department of the BJP-run state government has, through its notification ONGC/1103/2112 /(1) K.H. DT. 6/6/2003, effected severe fee hikes in colleges as under --- 

1) For arts, commerce and science students, the fee now would be Rs 600 a month instead of Rs. 300.

2) For B Ed students, it would be Rs 1250 instead of Rs 300.

3) For law students, it would be Rs 900 instead of Rs 300.

These fee rates are for the colleges that take grants from the University Grants Commission. 

As for professional courses, the revised fees are such as could be paid by rich people only. They are as under ---

1) For bachelor of business administration (BBA), Rs 10,000.

2) For bachelor of computer application (BCA), Rs 15,000.

3) For bachelor of commerce (B Com) Rs 15,000.

4) For bachelor of education, Rs 15,000.

5) For bachelor of physical education, Rs 15,000.

6) For bachelor of science, Rs 15,000.

7) For diploma in “yoga,” Rs 6,000. (Previously, it was Rs 300 only.)

8) For bachelor of home science, Rs 5,000.

Added with extraordinarily large ‘donations’ that are extracted from parents virtually by force, and with the enhanced prices of books and instruments, etc, these fee hikes push the cost of higher education sky high. Secondary education, which had been made free way back in 1969, also ceases to be so now.

It is therefore no wonder that while there were only government colleges in the fields of medical and engineering education earlier, now private ones charging exorbitant fees have sprung up.

In colleges teaching arts, commerce, education and law (subjects which generally boys and girls from humble backgrounds opt for study), there were no fee hikes since 1989. But of late the government has allowed “self-financing colleges” to open shops in these areas as well, blocking the prospects of education for these students.  

The suffocation caused by the recent fee hikes is so acute that students in Gujarat are seething with anger.

The Students Federation of India (SFI) and Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) have taken initiative to mobilise the students and youth against these hikes. They have chalked out programmes for widespread, united and effective actions in July and August.

The protest programmes so far have received wide popular support. These programmes included burning of the effigies of state government’s ministers, boycott of all the visiting ministers everywhere, a mass signature campaign currently under way, public meetings, processions and so on.

These days, a joke doing the rounds in Gujarat is that the great “Hindu” government of the BJP has raised the fee even for “yoga” courses from Rs 300 to Rs 5,000 and then to Rs 6,000, thereby indicating that for the Hindutva brigade even yoga comes under the goods for sale!

In the meantime, Mahendra Trivedi, the BJP MLA from Bhavnagar, admitted that the state government has turned to commercialisation of education. This he said in front of a huge mass of students and youth who gheraoed him when he came to attend a Chambers of Commerce programme in company with BJP state president Kanshiram Rana and the state’s industry minister Anil Patel. Both of them chose to absent themselves for the fear of facing mass wrath.

The SFI and DYFI have asked the youth and students to boycott the programmes of all ministers until the fee hikes are withdrawn. The two organisations have also launched a statewide signature campaign that started amid angry slogans from the Lal Darwaza in Ahmedabad.