Letter from the Editor
There’s lots of lights, camera, action in Indian education, but most of it is as absurd as the hyperactivity in Bollywood. To any individual with a modicum of intelligence evaluating the education sector, it would become plainly apparent that the challenge is to raise the entire floor of Indian education — uplift standards in primary, secondary and tertiary institutions of learning. Moreover, it would also become plainly apparent that the worst way to attain this objective would be by way of incremental government intervention.Yet this is exactly what’s happening in Indian education under the benign dispensation of Union minister for human resource development Arjun Singh, who is recklessly pushing ill-considered legislation through a distracted Parliament. Recklessly because there is an obvious design to attain political objectives by tinkering with the education system.
All this bitterness flows from the haste with which Parliament has passed the 104th Constitutional Amendment Bill to overrule two well-considered judgements of the Supreme Court related to institutions of professional (medicine, engineering, architecture, business management etc) education pronounced during the past few years. In the TMA Pai Foundation (2002) and P.A. Inamdar (2005) cases, two full-bench judgements of the court made the perfectly rational ruling that government mandated seat reservations or quotas should not be applicable to privately promoted, financially independent or unaided colleges of professional education. The learned justices of the apex court also opined that the managements of such unaided institutions should be left free to administer them according to their own lights, and as such should be free to levy their own tuition and development fees so far as they are fair and reasonable, and don’t amount to profiteering.
Vehement political reaction to this plain commonsense judgement of the Supreme Court prompted the introduction and passage through Parliament of the 104th Amendment Bill. Now the path is clear for legislation such as the Private Professional Educational Institutions ( Regulation of Admission and Fixation of Fees) Bill 2005 and the Right to Education Bill 2005 which will drastically reduce the autonomy of professional colleges and even private, unaided schools.
Is incremental intervention in education by government which has conspicuously failed to raise standards in government-run schools and has dumbed down most institutions of higher education driving them to the edge of bankruptcy, justified? That’s the question which this month’s cover story examines.
And in our second lead feature Chennai-based correspondent Hemalatha Raghupathi examines the issue of dress codes and social restrictions being imposed upon adult tertiary level students by college managements, not only in Chennai, but across the country. Usually governed by technicians innocent of nostrums of liberal philosophy and the humanities, these once liberal havens alas, seem to have abandoned their traditional role of setting standards for society and have succumbed to the dictates of vulgar mobs beyond campus gates.
Also check out our new column on sports education.