I
t was said of the Bourbon kings of medieval France that they forgot nothing but also learned nothing, from history. The same charge can perhaps be made against the Indian establishment — Parliament, the bureaucracy, the media and alas, even the judiciary — which has made a right mess of the subcontinent’s socio-economic development process since the nation wrested its independence from foreign rule 57 years ago. In particular, it’s a matter of common knowledge that India’s once great and highly respected higher education system has lost the respect it commanded. This is because scholastic and academic standards have been levelled down to rock bottom by the heavy hand of the Central and state governments which micro-manage every function of the nation’s 15,600 colleges and 311 universities — the handful of privately promoted deemed universities included.
It was against this backdrop that in October 2002 in a landmark decision in TMA Pai Foundation vs. State of Karnataka & Ors, an 11-judge bench of the Supreme Court decreed that privately promoted education institutions which don’t receive government financial aid have a fundamental right to mind their own ‘occupation’ and administer themselves, especially in the matter of regulating admissions and tuition fees. Unfortunately a year later a smaller bench of the apex court felt it incumbent upon itself to render a decision to ‘clarify’ this eminently sensible full-bench judgement.
In Islamic Academy vs.Union of India (6 SCC 696), a five judge bench of the court decreed the constitution of two committees headed by retired high court judges to regulate admission procedures and tuition fees of privately-promoted, unaided professional (medical and engineering) colleges in every state of the Indian Union.
And on April 27 following an outcry from parents of students in several privately-promoted, unaided schools in Delhi alleging the imposition of unreasonably high tuition fees, the majority of a three-judge bench held that the director of education of the Delhi state government has the right to regulate the tuition fees levied by private schools to ensure that they are "reasonable".
Evaluated sequentially, it seems quite plain that the Supreme Court is diluting the substance of its own judgement in the landmark TMA Pai Foundation Case which extended the logic of economic liberalisation and deregulation to the education sector which needs to be freed from the levelling-down hand of government that has severely damaged institutions of higher education. Our cover story in this issue discusses the implications of the Supreme Court’s latest judgement in the Modern School Case for the rapidly multiplying number of privately promoted one-five star elite schools which have sprung up all over the country.
And in our second lead feature against the backdrop of rising unemployment of educated youth across the country, our Chennai-based correspondent Hemalatha Raghupathi reports on new initiatives to make college and university education more job-oriented.
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