The Erosion of Public Education in India: Challenges and Imperatives
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In recent times, Indian society has witnessed the emergence of an anti-liberal and authoritarian ethos in almost all social, cultural and political practices. It is well pronounced in the field of education, both in content and organization. The changes in the education system mainly target two areas. First, the content of the curriculum in order to redefine the character of the nation in religious terms. The second feature of the changes is enclavisation, which is an inevitable legacy of colonialism., Even to this day, ccess to higher education remains very limited. Implication of this is that there is an overwhelming section of population that is deprived of higher education for social and economic reasons. In a country like India, only the state can provide them the opportunity. But then the state has been steadily renouncing its welfare role following the prescriptions of the World Bank.
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The implementation of the reforms suggested by the World Bank had a disastrous impact on higher education, which even the World Bank is forced to acknowledge now. Most Indian universities have become stagnant pools, starved of funds and facilities and are unable to keep abreast with the explosion in knowledge taking place in almost all fields. As a result, most institutions have ‘developed’ as academic slums. The self-financing and cross-border institutions now mushrooming all over the country are part of an alternative system that would relieve the elite from the disadvantages of the poor and inefficient public education.
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The decline in standards of public higher education has opened the space for self-financing and cross-border institutions. The self-financing institutions do not represent the mobilization of private resources for providing quality education, but the use of education as an area of profitable investment. The quest for profit is also the key to cross-border education. Almost every institution looking for outlets in developing countries is doing so not for philanthropic reasons, but to use education as a source for quick returns for the capital it invests. The number of institutions franchised by foreign universities is steadily increasing in India. . This would lead to further marginalisation of the socially and economically deprived, while resulting in the intellectual enslavement of the elite.
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The World Bank prescription of higher education as a non-merit good was responsible for a sharp decline in the quality of instruction. Interestingly, after 10 years of experiment which has led to irreparable damage to education in developing countries, the World Bank has recognized the peril it had engendered. From its earlier position, the World Bank has effected a complete ‘volte face’ and has unambiguously acknowledged the merit of higher education for national development. Has it anything to do with the changing nature of the demands of transnational capital? The underdeveloped countries are no more than mere playing fields of predatory capitals; they are increasingly developing as service providers. The advances in Information Technology have made such a transition possible, the success of which would depend upon the availability of technically competent but cheap manpower that the undeveloped countries could provide.
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An enclavised, commercialized and communalized system of education, rapidly gaining currency, can be countered only by strengthening the public system, the revitalization of which depends upon a variety of issues, more important among them being quality assurance, democratization and autonomy. None of them is on the agenda of the state, even if they form the themes of officially sponsored seminars. The ground reality obtaining in most institutions however, is totally inadequate to ensure even minimum quality. In the making of an academic culture, democratization and autonomy are crucial factors. The democratization so far achieved as a result of the struggles of the teachers and students movements are mainly limited to representation in decision making bodies. It has not percolated to academic matters in which the actual teacher is still outside the process of decision-making. In strengthening the public education system, the teacher is the most crucial component and he or she can be enthused only if academic democratization is a reality.
