Education Reforms in India: How and in what way ?

The massive reforms in the Education sector are awaiting for further action by governments, in states and at the centre. Starting from the fundamental Right to Education,  moving towards consolidating the secondary education and towards creating more quality professional and research institutions is the top priority in education sector of the government. The debate about the actual target hovers around achieving 15 % enrolment in 12^th plan and 20% enrolment up to 2020. Some experts in Planning Commission argue that focus should be on the absolute number of people to be brought in the education net rather than concentrating on the percentage of enrolment to be achieved. Real challenges ahead of Planning Commission are manifold when reforms in Education sector are discussed. Those are lack of inspirational incentive for the teacher training at primary and secondary education level. Huge paucity of infrastructure leading towards languishing of the funds and vice versa, great degree of vacuum in   the monitoring of the quality and excellence, too many regulatory institutions making it impossible for smooth functioning of the institutions regulating and those of being regulated.

            The reforms in the education sector are subjected to huge investment increase made by Planning Commission from 10^th to 11^th Plan. New Central Universities, Innovation Universities, Centers of Excellence, National Institutes of Technologies, IIITs, IITs, IISERs and many other premier higher education institutions are being proposed and being established. What is the matter of worry is speed with which these institutions are being established. Another important aspect of worry is the stagnated number of new institutions being proposed and limited intake capacity with limited disciplines having less scope for interdisciplinary professional courses and creating ambience to nurture interdisciplinary research fields.

            The reforms in higher education will only succeed once we create the anticipatory mechanisms which will tap, trace and respond to the growing challenges of the economic growth and sustainable development. The needs of these two factors should drive the classification of the categories which will dominate the creation of quality benchmarks for excellence in human resource development policy aims at. The complacency on the front of human resource development will greatly cripple the India`s growth aspirations which ultimately are aimed at fulfilling the basic needs of the huge population of this country. Development of soft skills and technical skills which will help in strengthening the employability are surely the principal means to provide the equal opportunity to the oppressed classes in competitive environment of job market and also in the attainment of life having meaningful resources to live and nourishing the capability and culture to share, collaborate and plan for synergetic projects of entrepreneurship in any walks of life.

            One of the great lacunas of planning in Higher Education sector is lack of imagination where this entire workforce will lead us to. The active collaboration with the industries so as to have meaningful utilization of those people coming out of the different institutions is very crucial. The   huge untrained human resources can be big disaster when it comes to providing them efficient services. These human resources must be trained to promote self employment, to ignite the industrial ambitions and to nurture the culture of quality and excellence so as to respect the professional values. These professional ethics exposure are absent from training of today`s higher education system. When Planning Commission consistently talks about Inclusive Growth, it remains to be seen whether the process of inclusion will be cherished by government alone. Every member of civil society and in this narrow respect, higher education sector is equally responsible for creating the value chain which will respond positively to enhance the capacity of supply side and also build the capabilities of demand side in education so as to create equitable access with logical expansion without compromising quality and excellence.

            Considering the huge sector of education, different bodies working on the problems of education and conducting research on education is deeply desirable and sought after aspiration. Opportune time has arrived when Planning Commission should push for creating more and more region specific and sector specific research institutes and developing the capabilities of the people already working in this area. Unless and until we have more mature understanding about the kind of agricultural/industrial/information society we need to have in our future we will not be able to justify the mere creation of massive number of huge knowledge institutions whose sole agenda would be to manufacture the professionals rather than cultivating the leaders in every walk of life who can solve the emerging, incidental problems at hand by complementing that knowledge by adding knowledge to understand the emerging scenarios in better ways.

            India is the country which simultaneously lives from 17^th to 21^st century. The equal and opposite argument about India`s strength and weakness is equally true. The massive contradictions and subtle similarities of habits make it unique destination to preserve the unique heritage we have in terms of human resources. Creating modern educational infrastructure will greatly diminish the potential of this diversity India has by creating more homogeneous workforce by killing the diversity of thought present in different demographic groups in India. Notwithstanding the   equality of opportunity inherent in the constitution, any policy aimed at creating more opportunities in primary, secondary and higher education also leaves huge space where exploitation of the people needing education happens all along. S

            Sometimes, this exploitation happens through expensive cost of the education, sometimes through lack of information technology, sometimes due to lack of sufficient access to information resources which can transform the way we learn and sometimes the lack of        access to quality resource persons which makes huge difference in terms of inspiration and standards. Still, people in India have tried hard, thrived in difficult circumstances and embarked on uphill tasks of creating and sustaining institutions and also in knowledge delivery  practices. These people and institutions need to share their experiences in systematic manner so as to help Planning Commission to have better sense of dynamics of the economics of education and trends in quality delivery of education all over the world.

            The role of leaders in the development of higher education cannot be underestimated. While the notion that only administrative leaders are responsible and capable of sustaining and innovating the progress in primary, secondary and higher education. We need to promote the leadership qualities at every level of the education; in teaching, research, administration, training, project development, collaboration, revenue generation, inclusive policies. Creating more and more leaders to ensure the huge demand to be met with quality and quantity will definitely compliment to the nation`s effort in the other sectors of development and economic progress.

            The higher education and any education sector is increasingly being subjected to privatization and in recent days to Public Private Partnership initiatives. The strong opinion of many stalwarts in public policy hold the view that state should not abdicate the responsibility in all education areas. But looking at the challenges about access and maintenance of the quality, entry of the private institutions were inevitable. Planning commission is envisaging different experiment where PPP will be used to strengthen educational infrastructure. Apart from this proposed entry of foreign universities also tries to give this promise of quality and excellence.

            While some of the qualitative aspects of the promises given about the entry of foreign  educational institutions can be debated, the basic issue of state of the art and centers of  excellence in our research institutions  and universities cannot be wished away relying on  or importing the readymade solution. We need to strive perseveringly for the establishment of the new institutions by rewarding all the people contributing to that process. Also, the gross ignorance about the incentives to the students at any level of education cannot be compromised. This is one area which greatly needs massive reforms. The prospects of quality research and development in public funded, autonomous and private research institutes greatly depend upon the kind of reward or incentives provided to the students irrespective of their economic, social status.

            Bottom-line of education reforms in India lies in the fact that little negligence at this stage of history can ruin the prospects of returning to the normal development pace with average human development indicators. Cautious and attentive planning will certainly help to remove the stagnation and arrest the decline of employment unfriendly academic institutions, defeat the largely anti-research environment in Indian universities, demystifying massive confusion about what it means by ‘world class quality’ and off course to eradicate the pervert politics in education replacing it with potential policies in education so as to empower the masses with knowledge, professionalism and a purpose to utilize that knowledge for solving the problems of our daily lives.

           

            The institutions like Planning Commission have always emerged to the scene. Regarding education, real changes started happening since completion of the 10^th Plan. Whether the changes are driven by new terms being coined in terms of BRICS or ideas of knowledge superpower being tossed from here and there; the potential of education is one of the very few instruments which will make the Idea of sustainably developed India true in every sense. In stimulation and response there lies the choice. It was thought that after liberalization India chose to respond. Some people thought it in terms of outsourcing, demographic dividend and knowledge driven sustainable economic growth. Real  stimulation lies not in the terms being appropriated from outside but it lies in deep felt agony of the daily problems faced by millions of Indian citizens across the length and breadth  of the country. And the space created by this agony and pain is pushing Indian policymakers towards reforms in Indian education system. Within this pain and these upcoming policies, lie our ability to make choices. Choices for better life, choices for better tomorrow!

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Knowledge and Diversity: Founding Principles of Partnership between Democracy and Economy !!!

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“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
Where knowledge is free
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
By narrow domestic walls
Where words come out from the depth of truth
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
Where the mind is led forward by thee
Into ever-widening thought and action
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.”

                                                                                   

Above lines by Tagore has become epitome of the existence of the mission towards which have to relentlessly strive for. Let us remember these words to understand the it`s relation with the diversity. “Plurality of thinking is the bedrock of the Indian experiment of democracy and the successful implications for the diverse communities for their co-existence in India in last sixty years."  Dr. Abid Hussain  was speaking at the Nehru Memorial Lecture at JNU on 30th November 2010. He greatly engaged audience with the founding ideas of the perseverance in the quest of knowledge and tolerance in the search of harmony when we discuss Knowledge and Diversity in the Indian context. “It is the mind which propels us in the 21st century but it is the mindset which keeps us in the 15th century." He was asserting the crucial uncompromising position of the mindset of the coming generation when we deal with the emerging challenges and problems. 

 Three virtues remain pivotal for the sustained maintenance of experiment forged by Indian democracy:

A) Ability to recognize, assimilate, forge common bonds with the diverse opinions.

B) Ability to question the elderly schools of thoughts in a humble, mature and dignified way.

C) Ability to usher with the new interpretation of the classic common sense available in the history for the contemporary scenario.

Dr. Hussain greatly emphasized the significance of the place of the university like JNU for engaging in the ideas worthwhile for the conservation of the diversity and the creation, dissemination of new knowledge. He identified the role of students, researchers and scholars as being indispensable for the nation as a whole because they are away from the worldly obligations and responsibilities, which in a sense; limit the capacity to innovate the perspectives for the betterment of the situation in front of us. So, he appealed to the students to debate, question and initiate on their own for the dreams they deem useful for the coming times. After all, Empires of the future are empires of the Mind.  Dr. Hussain regretted that, in these days of globalization and proliferation of knowledge networks, it is the educated mind which is falling prey to the wrong beliefs and lies compared to the innocent and ignorant brains of the uneducated persons. So, it is the educated mind of the students which is going to rescue the sliding attention of the leaders who claim themselves to be at the helm of affairs.

While Dr. Hussain greatly focused on the role of university in a subtle way, a recent contemplation by Dr. Betteille (Béteille, André. Universities at the Crossroads. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Print.) greatly deals with this aspect of role of university in realizing the goal of Inclusion and the Knowledge creation.  

 While upholding the location of university he says, “The modern university provides a setting for a new kind of interchange not only between men and women but also among persons belonging to different castes and communities. The barriers of language, religion and caste can be overcome relatively easily in such settings, although here identity politics can also reinforce the boundaries between communities instead of softening them. No large and complex society can reconstitute itself without experiencing conflict and disorder, and if the universities appear embattled, it is partly because they are in the forefront of this reconstitution.” 

On the other hand, Dr. Andre greatly exposes the contradictions in the experiment of inclusion when it comes to Knowledge Creation. He says, “Pressures to accommodate new classes and communities have lead to rapid and sometimes reckless expansion of the institutions of the learning. While a modern university must strive actively and continuously to be socially inclusive, it must be academically discriminating in the treatment of its members. We cannot wish out of existence the real and pervasive tensions between the demands of social inclusiveness and those of academic excellence. The democratization of the Indian university has always lead to the unanticipated consequences for the pursuit of study and research. New undergraduate colleges, new postgraduate departments, and new universities have been opened without the consideration of the resources available for their proper functioning. Academic standards have been relaxed, sometimes abruptly and even arbitrarily, in the name of equality and justice through decisions taken outside the universities by persons with little experience or knowledge of science and scholarship.”

This year, India is celebrating the 150^th year of birth of legendary poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). He was a transforming thinker and poet, educationist and cultural icon of not only Modern Bengal but also whole Indian subcontinent. He was poet of devotion, love, integration and nature; and has rare honor of scripting national anthems of two countries of India and Bangladesh. Dr. Narendra Jadhav, Member of Planning Commission, Govt. of India recently authored a book about the diversity of the poems Tagore`s genius gifted to this world. He said, “The lines  of Where the knowledge is free…song of Tagore should have been selected as National Anthem.” When we discuss the knowledge and diversity, the lines in the current national anthem Jana, Gana, Mana… by Rabindranath are true mirror of what he envisages about knowledge when he asserts that “Where the world has not been broken up into fragments, By narrow domestic walls.” 

As we move along, (There is arrogant fashion in this contemporary world to quip “ The world has moved on!”), we forget the legacies, diversities, heritage and rich plurality of thoughts we inherit. Rabindranath again in his cautionary voice alerts us:

“Time is endless in thy hands, my lord.
There is none to count thy minutes.
Days and nights pass and ages bloom and fade like flowers. Thou knowest how to wait.
Thy centuries follow each other perfecting a small wild flower.
We have no time to lose, and having no time, we must scramble for our chances. We are too poor to be late.
And thus it is that time goes try, while I give it to every querulous man who claims it, and thine altar is empty of all offerings to the last.
At the end of the day I hasten in fear lest thy gate be shut; but if I find that yet there is time.”

(Gitanjali, 82.)

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