Letter from the Editor
Isn’t it strange the fact that only 9 percent of Indians in the age group 18-24 have access to tertiary education as against 15 percent in China, 50 percent in Europe and 80 percent in the US, doesn’t seem to bother anyone? That’s perhaps because most people can’t make the connection between lack of education and India’s "functioning anarchy" — pathetic public utilities, crumbling infrastructure, dysfunctional law and order and justice systems, civic chaos and endemic corruption.
Unfortunately in post-independence India — a grudging society of pervasive man-made shortages — not only has access to tertiary education been restricted to a privileged minority, much of the higher education dispensed is substandard, fit to create petty clerks rather than great thinkers and leaders. That’s the reason why most of the country’s problems ranging from the Kashmir dispute, chronic power shortages and the law’s delay to repeated droughts, floods and casteism and corruption have proved insoluble.
An obvious option available to people or societies who can’t solve their problems is to learn from others who have resolved similar socio-economic development problems when they were confronted with them. That’s what Japanese society did in the late 19th century when it became aware of its technological and educational backwardness. They sent out a large number of youth to western universities and welcomed the latter to teach in their own country. Thus by studying and replicating the best practices of developed countries, absorbing technologies and reverse engineering their industrial products and processes, Japan quickly developed its economy and industry to catch up with — and perhaps surpass — western countries in terms of living standards and industrial productivity. If that’s what the Japanese did in the 19th century and then again in the aftermath of its comprehensive defeat in the Second World War, the Chinese are doing exactly the same in the 21st century with spectacular success.
Although a large number (over 100,000) of India’s next-best students who don’t make it into the handful of globally benchmarked institutions of tertiary education go abroad every year for higher study, this option is available only to an affluent minority. Therefore it makes good sense to welcome foreign universities eager to establish satellite campuses and/or partner with local education providers, so that larger numbers of Indian students can avail of quality tertiary education. But inevitably there is opposition to this eminently sensible proposal. Fearing western influence and "commercialisation of education", a coalition of politicians and left-wing academics has mounted a concerted campaign to discourage foreign education providers from entering Indian academia. This month’s cover story attempts to show them the error of their ways.
And in our special report feature, Delhi-based journalist and writer Sudha Passi beams the spotlight on the Central government-funded Kendriya Vidyalaya primary-cum-secondary schools. The story explains why India’s largest school chain is an unqualified success, and a model for the country’s other 931,941 failing government schools to follow.
Dilip Thakore