Education Reform Needs Quantity Plus Quality

Painting by RAQIB SHAW

Education Reform Needs Quantity Plus Quality


Goldman Sachs, the Investment Bank that did not collapse in the rout of 2008, has once again produced a report on India which says India could grow 40 times bigger than it is today, by 2050. It is indeed hard to imagine this, but perhaps the suave new HRD Minister might not find it so.

There are ten challenges outlined in the new Goldman Sachs report; things that need reforming, to make this potential become a reality. The key points are all weighty, and include one on Education Reform.

In 2009, the surprising thing is that India’s Secondary Education budgets are the lowest among all emerging market countries, let alone amongst BRIC. This, even as the National Knowledge Commission wants to increase the proportion of the 18-24 year olds educated to university level, from the present pathetic 7%, to a modest 15%. Of course, this means huge absolute numbers in a population of at least 1.1 billion.

And in higher education, the Commission has proposed an increase in the number of universities from 350 today to 1,500 by 2016. The target, as usual, is unlikely to be met.

And even if it was, the corruption of capitation fees at private medical colleges, the confusion of AICTE recognition, and the bottlenecks of hardly any new universities set up by the Government since independence, tells its own story.

This is compounded by dismal quality issues across the educational spectrum and then there is the hot potato of land, which needs to be acquired at market rates, if the setting up of university campuses is not a source of controversy and strife.

But assuming these hurdles can be overcome with enlightened handling, we don’t seem to know very much about quality in secondary or higher education. The IITs and IIMs are collaborations, but they are ridiculously short on seats, and no amount of hiding behind the merit argument can actually justify the shocking bottlenecks.

But in the main, all we can provide is education that resembles the processing of herds through the rickety gates of higher learning, and that too for those who score in the nineties at their school board exams. Or those who get degrees by never going to college.

It is, in this global age, clearly a much degraded form of higher education that turns out graduates who cannot think or innovate, till they are given their heads in a foreign shore. So as we stand, more of the same will not meet the needs of our future.

And Education Reform is, after all, just one plank out of ten that Goldman Sachs has outlined. But judging from our track record, it may be necessary, and practical, to import the quality education in the form of good foreign universities encouraged to open branches in this country on a FDI basis.

This may also let us meet a proportion of the Knowledge Commission target of 2016 in a qualitative manner. At present, not even one Indian university features even in the Global 300! China has only 6 universities that feature in the top 300, and all of them are collaborations with the West.

Indeed, despite our shortcomings, we have much to thank Goldman Sachs for. Because it was a Goldman Sachs economist of Irish extraction, (Jim O’Neill), that coined the term BRIC, in 2001. And suddenly India was included alongside Brazil, Russia and China, as the shape of the future power structure. This has, over the last eight years changed the global perception of India’s potential.

And gradually, the term has gained traction and though very different in themselves, the BRIC countries have decided to pull together of late. There is even a new hotline being put in between India and China at the highest levels of Government.

And this month, BRIC was referred to, only half in jest, as: “The Gang of Four” by a commentator on BBC, as its leaders were photographed executing a four-way handshake at Yekaterinburg in Russia.

The BBC commentator may have inadvertently upped the ante. Because BRIC, discussed some weighty matters at the Yekaterinburg Summit on the 15-16 June 2009, without waiting for permission, or participation, from the West.

Matters such as BRIC ambitions on developing an alternative global reserve currency, beyond the US dollar. After all, China has lent the US over $1 trillion and is very concerned about the declining value of the US currency. India, Russia and Brazil have also parked some of their dollar holdings in US Treasuries, and are also worried, if not to the same extent.

BRIC also wants a greater say in the disbursement of global development funds via the IMF and the World Bank, to reflect the shifting balance of power.

And perhaps, there was some unintended symbolism at work beyond the “gang” remark, because these deliberations took place at Yekaterinburg. And it was Yekaterinburg too that saw the end of one era and the consolidation of another. For it was there that Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family was executed by the Bolsheviks on the night of July 16th 1918.

Contemporary symbolism was equally evident, not just because of the presence of BRIC piggybacking on the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit at Yekaterinburg. The SCO even gave President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, fresh from a controversial election victory, a prominent forum to fire a vituperous, if predictable broadside against US and Western imperialism.

Mr. Ahmadinejad sounded off against US hegemony and imperialism; to wit: "The international capitalist order is retreating," and "It is absolutely obvious that the age of empires has ended and its revival will not take place", egged on, as if he needed the encouragement, by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and China's Hu Jintao. Ironically, both are decidedly capitalist and active hegemons in their own spheres of influence.

These are still early days for big ticket Indian reform, even though it has been nearly 20 years since 1991. But even at our slow pace, the world has seen us implement a large part of the Golden Quadrilateral roads Project, and surge on to an impressive telecom revolution. They, on their part, don’t think we will fail to reform our education systems as well. What we probably need is a booster dose of self-confidence and policy dynamism of our own to get it going.

(1,050 words)

19th June 2009
Gautam Mukherjee


Published as Leader Edit on Edit Page of The Pioneer as "Best fuel for India's growth" on June 30th, 2009 and Online at www.dailypioneer.com. Also archived online at dailypioneer under Columnists.