There is no dearth of experts who are, of late, repeatedly reminding the central government that Education comes under the Concurrent List and not under Union or State List. That is, the Union Ministry of Human Resources Development needs to take the state governments into confidence before taking any major decisions on Education. True, the Central Universities and centres of excellence come under the jurisdiction of the Union government yet the states cannot be totally bypassed.
Whatever may be the position of Indian Constitution, which came into effect on January 26, 1950, Education in the 21st century India comes under the Global List. If everything goes on as per plan, neither the States nor the Centre – or both – will have any say on it. Not far from now it would be the global powers that will be fully controlling Education.
But just like the transfer of technology we may end up getting second grade Universities or Business Schools of the Anglo-Saxon world. Oxford or Cambridge may not come as business-wise the venture may not be viable but hordes of others from US, UK, Australia, Canada, etc. – all English speaking world – may dot the Indian landscape. And the Indian upper middle class will no more need to send their children to these countries to decorate themselves with foreign degrees.
But these temples of knowledge are not indulging in any act of philanthropy. Rather they are doing business. The multi-national corporations, invested rather invaded, Indian industry not with a view to improving the lot of the people here. They did so to do business and earn some fast bucks as India has a big emerging market. Our ruling class may be happy that the western universities are coming to India to teach us, but the truth is that they are coming because many of them are facing acute financial crisis back home.
Many of these Universities and Business Schools in the West are simply surviving on the students from Third World countries – India being top among them. Since education is subsidised in several western countries they charge much less from their own students. It is money from the foreign students which keeps them alive and running. Now in this age of global recession it would be in the fitness of things to expand the campus to countries like India and do more business. Many second-rung educational institutions in the West are facing closures or are being forced to prune their strength.
Even before we enacted law to throw open our doors for international universities some of them started rushing to purchase land in India to expand their empire. The problem with the West is that apparently they come to do business and end up ruling that country. This may not be ruled out this time too. Now in this age of globalisation there is no need to have physical presence to rule, rather their ‘own’ men and women can do their job.
We may be glad to see our sons and daughters having degrees from India-based American, British or Australian universities. But who knows that the other day they may enact a law stating that these degrees are not recognised in their own respective countries. After all, the United States does not recognise doctor degree from any other country of the world. They all need to pass the United States Medical Licence Exam (USMLE) before getting any job in that country.
So far our choice of foreign universities is concerned, we have double standards. Though we appreciate degrees even from any third-rate universities of the US, UK, Australia, etc., we have problem in recognising medical graduates from Russia, Ukraine, China, etc. notwithstanding the fact that they too are big powers. The MBBS graduates from these countries are not allowed to appear in Post-Graduate examinations in many Indian colleges.
Ironically, in pre-1990 years when we were close to the then Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries our ruling class would eagerly get their sons and daughters admitted to even Communist countries like Bulgaria, East Germany (now a part of unified Germany), Romania, etc.
A special feature about the latest campus invasion of India is that unlike consumer items there will be less scope for the expansion of Japan, China and other non-English universities. So it is likely to have all English affairs.
The problem with us is that we are spending so much money, attention and energy on imparting education to minuscule proportion of our population. Only 7-8 per cent of our students proceed ahead with their study after passing the high school exams. What we do not know is that there will be no dearth of neo-rich who would keep insisting on sending their children to foreign land for studying as they would think that the one in India is inferior. A new race of status symbol among this class would start. After all we are thinking in terms of setting up a new secondary school board for the Indian schools in the foreign countries, especially Gulf. This simply because those affiliated with the CBSE are unable to compete in admission tests for foreign universities.
Those who think that India would be greatly benefited by the invasion of the second-grade universities from the West seem to be in a hurry in jumping to this conclusion. We have already invested much of our attention on these foreign-aided institutes.
But now is the time to question their contributions. Yes, we need to question even the much glorified Indian Institute of Technology, opened on the pattern of the western universities with the western aid and idea. From 1951, when the first IIT came up at Kharagpur till 1991, when we embarked on the path of liberalisation the IIT graduates paid hardly any role in the making of India. Be it from A P J Abdul Kalam to a small junior engineer working in any rural countryside all were the non-IITians who made enormous contribution to laying the foundation of the country’s development. Almost all the big dams, river valley projects, heavy industries, defence research, infrastructure works such as National Highways, huge bridges, and laying of railway tracks in difficult terrain were mostly done by the non-IITians and even diploma engineers. Most of the IITians, after graduating from their campuses, would mostly love to graduate towards the US, UK and other western countries. No fewer than 50,000 went abroad in the last so many decades.
It is only at the advent of the 21st century that these IITians started contributing to the I-T sector in India. Today we have reached to such a pass that we do not have teachers for teaching students in the 15 such IITs all over India. Even many of the teachers in the IITs are graduates from other engineering colleges who did their M Tech and PhD from IITs. So there exists hundreds, even thousands, of vacancies of teachers in these prestigious institutions.
The maximum these IITians did in the first half century of our country’s development is that they sent remittance to India. Some of them have their own reason for migrating. India lacks research facilities on par with the West. The big question is: Will the second rated foreign universities provide genuine research facilities in the field of science or would just end up teaching some technology or business in the so-called B-Schools? After all how many intellectuals have these western universities produce in the Middle East, where there are quite a few?