THE BJP-LED NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC Alliance (NDA) completed its first year in office on May 26. However, unlike the 200-days-in-office celebrations of December 22 last year when the Union ministry of human resources development (HRD) showcased its initiatives with pomp and ceremony, its anniversary celebrations were relatively muted. That’s because under the stewardship of former television soap star Smriti Irani, the HRD ministry has little to crow about.
According to Yamini Aiyar, director of Delhi-based Accountability Initiative, Irani — the youngest minister in the Narendra Modi-led BJP-NDA coalition which was swept to power at the Centre with a massive majority last summer — has undermined her credibility by provoking “needless controversies”. “A plethora of schemes have been rolled out every second month during the past year without cohesive thinking and planning. It’s not clear how the HRD ministry intends to fund its many programmes including SSA (elementary education for all) when it allowed its allocation in the Union Budget 2015-16 to be slashed by 24 percent,” says Aiyar.
Simultaneously, a growing number of politicians and academics are critical of Irani for undermining the autonomy of higher education institutions and ‘saffronising’ education. “Instead of strengthening education institutions, HRD minister Smriti Irani seems bent on destroying them by insulting respected educationists and appointing RSS functionaries with dubious qualifications and reputations to high positions in academia,” Congress spokesperson Dr. Girja Vyas told reporters in Ahmedabad on the eve of the NDA government’s completion of one year in office.
In support of her charge, Vyas referred to the resignations of Dr. Anil Kakodkar (former chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission from the chairmanship of the board of governors of IIT-Bombay), IIT-Delhi director Raghunath K. Shevgaonkar, and NCERT director Parvin Sinclair among others, in controversial circumstances after differences with the minister.
Moreover, the selection process for choosing the new director of IIM-Lucknow has been unwarrantedly changed with eminent educationists forced to undergo a humiliating ‘group discussion’ (see p.31) even as Y. Sudershan Rao — a historian who has spent the greater part of his career trying to prove the veracity of the mythological epics Ramayana and Mahabharata, was appointed chairman of the Indian Council of Historical Research last July.
Coterminously, notwithstanding that its budget has been slashed without even adjustment for inflation and the ground reality that there’s a massive faculty crunch in academia, the HRD ministry has announced the promotion of five new IITs and IIMs. It has also launched the Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya National Mission on Teachers and Teaching, Padhe Bharat, Badhe Bharat to focus on the quality of foundational learning, Swachh Vidyalaya Abhiyan, Know your College portal, a choice-based credit transfer scheme in universities, a massive open online courses (Swayam) programme and the establishment of a Lok Nayak Jayaprakash National Centre for excellence in humanities in Madhya Pradesh, among other initiatives and projects.
Despite having initiated these ambitious projects, while the BJP-NDA government’s first full-fledged Union Budget 2015-16 was being formulated, as indicated by the cut in the ministry’s allocation from Rs.82,771 crore in 2014-15 to Rs.69,074 crore in the current year, Irani didn’t press her ministry’s case for adequate funding in the cabinet or before the finance minister. Consequently, it’s doubtful if the HRD ministry will have the wherewithal to adequately fund its numerous initiatives.
The math doesn’t add up.
Autar Nehru (Delhi)
RTE racket
Five years after the right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, which makes it mandatory for the State to provide free and compulsory elementary (class I-VIII) education to all children between 6-14 years of age became operational on April 1, 2010, it has at best proved to be a mixed blessing. The most controversial provision of this hastily-drafted legislation of the former Congress-led UPA government is s. 12 (1) (c), which obliges private schools to reserve a 25 percent quota in class I for “children belonging to the weaker sections and disadvantaged groups in the neighbourhood and provide free and compulsory elementary education till its completion”. .gif)
In the national capital, private unaided schools and the state government are at loggerheads over the pathetically low tuition fees reimbursed by the government for EWS (economically weaker section) children admitted under s. 12 (1) (c). Meanwhile these seats are being marketed by Delhi’s wily and ubiquitous middlemen to parents who can afford to fork out anywhere between Rs.1-5 lakh depending on the reputation of the school.
On May 16, following a tip-off, the Delhi police crime branch identified a gang of six members headed by a woman named Punita which has allegedly been providing forged income certificates to ineligible parents determined to get their children into the nurseries of reputed composite (K-12) private schools for ‘facilitation fees’ running into lakhs. According to police sources, the gang has a network of accomplices working in private schools as well as in 33 offices of the sub-divisional magistrate, which issues the income certificates, across the city.
The crime branch has initiated an enquiry and asked some major private schools in Delhi NCR including G.D. Goenka School, Rohini and Raghubir Singh Junior Modern School, Humayun Road to furnish all records of nursery admissions made in 2014-2015. “The crooks charge anything between Rs.1-5 lakh per admission. We have registered an FIR under appropriate IPC sections and served notices to more than a dozen schools. Our probe is at a preliminary stage,” says joint commissioner of police Ravindra Yadav who adds that in the past two years, 30 irregular admissions have been reported to the police.
While unsurprisingly, schools accused of selling EWS seats refused to comment on the issue and disconnected when called, the office of the district magistrate, Delhi issued a circular on April 21, admitting that “a number of admissions under EWS category are done in various schools of Delhi… on the basis of forged and fake income certificate produced by respective parents… To discourage and expose such practices, it is informed that various government certificates, including income certificates/caste certificates etc issued by this office be verified by the school authorities online at www.esla.delhi.gov.in revenue department or in paper form....”
“This information from the government has come very late; such admissions have been going on for the past three-four years and needed to be checked immediately. There is no mention of such a website in the Delhi Rules of the RTE Act. We don’t have much say in regulating admissions under the Act and are directed to give admissions based on income certificates produced by parents. The state government has been very casual about effectively implementing the RTE Act,” says S.K. Bhattacharya, managing committee secretary of the Bal Bharati School and president of Action Committee for Unaided Recognised Private Schools (estb.1997), an umbrella organisation of six associations of private schools in Delhi.
Young middle class parents in particular experience great anxiety and angst in the annual scramble for admission of tiny tots (and registration of newborns) into nurseries of Delhi’s top-ranked K-12 private schools because it ensures smooth progression of children right up to class XII as vacancies are rare in higher classes. Hence they are often induced to buy fake income, caste and other certificates.
The introduction of quotas for EWS children in private primaries without fool-proofing the system indicates that governments at the local level, state and Centre lack intent and political will towards making education of poor children a priority. In the circumstances, under-the-table admission rackets under s.12 (1) (c) are set to multiply.
Swati Roy (Noida)
Enter Indian WURs
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With not even one indian university ranked among the Top 200 in the World University Rankings (WUR) of the London-based rating agencies QS and Times Higher Education released in April (no Indian varsity has ever broken into the Top 200 of either QS or THE annual WURs), the Union HRD ministry is set to launch its own WUR league tables. According to Shastri Bhavan, Delhi (headquarters of the ministry) sources, the ministry has begun consultations with IITs, NITs, IIMs and other top-ranked higher ed institutions, and business representative organisations CII and FICCI to formulate national and/or international league tables with Indian characteristics.
The indications are that Indian and foreign universities will be ranked on eight parameters — quality of education, quality of teachers, infrastructure, placements, international outreach, research/innovation, social inclusion and value for money. Rankings are also proposed for different disciplines such as engineering, medicine, law, MBA, social sciences, liberal arts, etc.
To a significant extent the initiative to devise a home-grown varsities ranking system is driven by the example of China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) annual league tables which are gaining increasing respect around the world, specially in Asia. Although the parameters on which the Shanghai Jiao Tong ARWU rate and rank universities around the world are substantially similar to the QS and THE WURs — 40 percent weightage to quality of faculty, 40 percent to research output, 10 percent to quality of education and 10 percent to “performance vs. size,” i.e, average student performance of each varsity — the latter parameter is a departure from the QS and THE assessment methodologies.
Significantly in its own Top 500 world universities league table (2014) in which 18 of the world’s 20 top-ranked varsities headed by Harvard and Stanford, are American, Shanghai Jiao Tong is ranked 101-150. Unsurprisingly, not one of India’s 735 universities is ranked in ARWU’s Top 200 league table.
Indian academics tend to attribute the poor ranking of Indian universities in the WURs to “flawed methodologies” and “different ground circumstances”. But the fact that some IITs and Indian Institute of Science (IISc) rank high in the geographically-filtered rankings of QS and THE’s Asia and BRICS league tables, indicates that Indian universities are at best regionally competitive but hopeless also-rans globally.
This is perhaps why there’s general agreement within academia of the need for indigenous WURs which will rate and rank the world’s Top 200-500 universities from the Indian perspective, with weightage given to parameters such as accessibility, social inclusion and affordability.
Comments Dr. K.P. Vijayalakshmi, professor of international studies at Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University, India’s top-ranked multi-disciplinary varsity in the EducationWorld India University Rankings 2015 (see EW May): “Ranking systems are a useful mechanism to create an environment in which universities are constantly trying to improve and pursue excellence. It’s helpful to be able to have both your positives and negatives highlighted in comparison with other universities. But, the value of any rankings system will be dependent on the league tables effectively reflecting the peculiar circumstances confronting Indian universities.”
That is, they must factor in rock-bottom priced higher education for all without indolent college and university managements having to filter poor meritorious students for targeted subsidisation.
Abhirup Bhunia (Delhi)