People's Democracy

THE NKC RECOMMENDATIONS   

Pushing The Exclusivist Neo-Liberal Agenda With Inclusivist Phraseology  

K K Theckedath   

IT is the position stated in this paper that the NKC recommendations reflect the urgency of the ruling classes to push for neo-libeal reforms, throwing to the winds the cautions given by the Mungekar committee, and by proposals for opening up of the financial sector by funnelling funds into the stock exchanges, extending huge tax benefits to the corporate sector in the name of incentives, and disinvesting and privatising land belonging to the state in the name of raising funds for the universities. Since all these are exclusivist, in the sense of adding further to the deprivation and suffering of the people, this note recommends that the NKC report be rejected totally.   

THE DIALECTICS OF OPENING UP  

The neo-liberal economic programme is based on the rejection of major premises of Keynesianism on generation of demand, and prescription in respect of spending on the social sectors. The Keynesian recommendation that effective demand can be sustained through war budgets is not given up. But notions of state support and subsidies for the social sectors are jettisoned.  

The term ‘opening up’ is a favourite phrase with neo-liberals. This has positive connotations, but the dialectically opposite aspect needs to be remembered. In hydraulic and civil engineering it is recognised that opening up is fraught with the opposite danger of total destruction. This has been kept in mind in the construction of the Suez canal and the Panama canal, where the unequal levels of water are recognised. Hence, a series of strong sluice gates have been introduced in the canals to prevent destruction through over flooding.  

In economics opening up means unhindered operation of the market forces for the purpose of all round increase of profits. The market only recognises purchasing power that is the man with money. Others have noting to do with the market. It is in this sense that such opening up is exclusivist.  

In the field of education, for example, by allowing fee hikes under the dictates of the market, we are excluding the entire gamut of over 50 per cent of our population from the fields of higher education. This is what the Mungekar committee has argued. The NKC takes fee increase as a major pillar for increasing incomes, prescribing even a lower limit for such increases. The sham slogan of “the needy should be provided with a fee waiver” is exposed when the NKC comes to brass tacks and quantifies such posited support. Quantity exposes the sham quality of the NKC’s document as well as its commitment.  

The NKC makes loud noises about the so called knowledge society, as if it is a new category other than the present global capitalist society. It paints the picture of raising the enrolment from the present 7 per cent of young people in the relevant age group to 15 per cent by the year 2015. This would work out to an average increase of one percent enrolment every year, which is about 5 million new entrants per year. The NKC recommends that the government should provide for one lakh of scholarships. This is less than 2 per cent of the target. Either the NKC is weak on arithmetic or it believes that it is best to leave the hindmost to the Devil.  

While Mungekar warns about exclusion under fee hike, the NKC feels that even if the have-nots are excluded there would still be others to pay and make the system economically viable.   

NEW THRUST TO HELP THE CORPORATE SECTOR  

Neo-liberal economics recognise the innate crisis in the capitalist system, but while Keynes was looking at the demand side, neo-liberalism stresses the supply side, and puts faith in Say’s law which says that supply create demand.  

To help the supply side, more and more tax reliefs are prescribed for the corporate sector. There are no prescriptions for increasing the burden on the capitalists, but transfer of the burden on the working people is suggested. Hence the stress on local resource mobilisation and cuts in subsidies.  

The NKC only speaks of increasing within the promised 6 per cent allocation for education from the total on education to the area of higher education, thus implying a reduction from elementary and secondary education quotas. On the other hand tax concessions are prescribed under all kinds of excuses, and incentives for private universities are recommended. Already the union cabinet has approved legislation for the starting of private universities. The NKC is giving the justification for this move.   

While disinvestments of the shares of BHEL could be stopped by people’s pressure, the move to privatise the airports in Mumbai and Delhi could not be prevented. Now the scheme for raising funds presented by the NKC is that the government should endow large tracts of land to the universities, and these properties should be utilised to generate funds. Surely, such income can come only by giving out such land to private parties for their use. Thus the scheme envisages the transfer of landed property or its use from the public domain to private hands.  

In the recent past the university of Mumbai transferred some of its land to a private entity, Hotel Hyatt, in spite of opposition by the teachers. Now such a practice is to be sanctioned as a normal way to raise funds, apart of course from hike in fees as one instrument.   

SUPPORT TO THE SPECULATIVE STOCK MARKET  

One of the features of the new world economic situation is that, because of the crisis in the productive sphere of the capitalist economy, and the falling rate of profits following huge automation and jobless growth and consequent dip in the valorisation process, money is flowing from the productive sectors to the financial sectors for investment. Here also, it is mainly speculative finance capital which is dominating. 
What the NDA government did earlier and the UPA government is doing now is to place funds at the service of the stock market. They are both for the privatisation of pension funds, and recently the union government has decreed that 5 per cent of these funds would go into the stock market, as a new financial instrument.   

On the same lines the NKC is making the following recommendation:“India should nurture the tradition of philanthropic contributions through changes in incentive for universities and donors. At present, there is an implicit disincentive in both tax laws and trust laws. These laws should be changed so that the universities can invest in financial instruments of their choice and use income from their endowments to build up a corpus.”  

This is an open invitation for change of laws in favour of the corporate sector for tax concession and for the universities to help the stock market with their resources in the hope of augmenting their income.  

REACTIONARY STANDARDS FOR TESTING EXCELLENCE  

The term excellence is a portfolio concept. In it are contained several concepts. Included is the idea of exclusion (excel over others), and also the idea of quality, which latter is quite dubious.  

There is the suggestion that excellence is to be determined by what are called poor groups. Now in an exclusive society which is sharply divided into oppressed and oppressor classes, the members of the intelligentsia tend to imbibe the structures which support the continuation of the existing system. In this sense they are conservative. Even the judiciary in our country often shocks us because some of their members give reactionary and anti-working class judgements. This is an example of these individuals having imbibed the neo-liberal class philosophy, for example, on fee rise or right to strike.   

AN EXAMPLE OF POOR EVALUATION IN SCIENCE  

But even in the field of science, which is generally considered to be above politics, the notion of poor evaluation is utilised to block research which is considered to be against the interests of the ruling classes. One classical example is that given by Jayant Narlikar and others in their book A Different Approach to Cosmology (Cambridge University Press, 2000). They describe in detail in chapter III how poor evaluation is used to block research into the steady state theory of cosmology because it goes against the ruling theory of the Big Bang creation. Even telescope-time from the newly constructed huge telescopes is restricted if the poor groups feel that the project for research is not good enough. This has been the fate of steady state theorists.  

If poor evaluation is so class oriented even for a subject like cosmology, what can be expected of the fate of research work in economics, politics or even agriculture with reference to the development of new variety of seeds as against Monsanto?  

Poor evaluation is loaded with anti-working class and anti-peasant philosophical implications when it comes to selection or promotion of personnel. Poor evaluation can be anti-dalit, anti-minority or anti-women. In short the prescription of poor evaluation is a sugar coated pill to continue the present structures in our social system, which are patently exclusivist.   

In spite of projected intentions of working for an inclusive educational system for the knowledge society, the NKC no where touches on the Kothari commission recommendation of neighbourhood schools. Although this paper is to be within the ambit of Higher Education, if we consider the scheme presented for elementary education or for the strengthening of secondary or vocational education, or the improvements to the library, the whole argument is that inputs should be worked out within the parameters of the neo-liberal economic philosophy.   

On the whole the NKC recommendations, while speaking of a knowledge society, provide the ideological underpinnings for the implementation of an exclusivist class oriented educational system qualitatively as well as in syllabus content.   

The report should be rejected in spite of its only seemingly positive recommendation for the setting up of one lakh scholarships. Teachers, students and other democratic sections should beware and keep themselves away from the trap of post-modern phraseology. Words like ‘knowledge society’ and ‘post-industrial society”, will ensnare even the most honest into believing that terms such as ‘capitalism’ are not relevant anymore. Exclusion hides behind inclusivist verbiage.