When the idea of inviting foreign universities was mooted in 2010, the then minister for human resource development had said that his objective was “to provide a Harvard Education” within India at a fraction of the cost. Implicit in this remark was the view that ‘Harvard Education’, hence by implication education itself, was a commodity; indeed his remark was of the same form as saying that he wanted ‘to provide a kilo of fish at one’s doorstep at a fraction of the cost’. This idea of providing ‘Harvard Education’, of course, was patently unrealistic, for no off-shoot of Harvard in India can ever be a clone of the original: if local academics are recruited as faculty, then they would forever be seeking to migrate from the off-shoot to the original, and if academics come to the off-shoot on a temporary basis from the original, then they would be more concerned with sight-seeing than with any serious academic activity. But the commodification of education that the proposal entailed was an assault on the very concept of education as an activity; the University Grants Commission is now taking this idea of inviting foreign universities and commodifying education much further.
Inviting foreign universities to set up off-shoots in India presumes two things: first, that education is a homogeneous activity which involves imparting an identical set of ideas no matter where such imparting occurs; second, that this imparting, which is the essence of education, occurs in a better manner at Harvard than at any Indian university, which is why creating such an off-shoot of Harvard and other well-known foreign universities is beneficial for Indian students.
Both these presumptions are wrong. Education does not entail imparting an identical set of ideas. For instance, an Indian student should have an awareness of the impact of colonialism on the Indian economy, for which he or she must have some exposure to the work of Dadabhai Naoroji, Romesh Chunder Dutt and other, recent, scholars; he or she, in short, must have some exposure to the view that underdevelopment is linked to the phenomenon of imperialism. But in Harvard and other such foreign universities, the faculty teaching development economics would scarcely have heard of Naoroji or Dutt, and colonialism would scarcely ever figure in the curriculum. A homogenisation of the curriculum, therefore, necessarily means imparting to Indian students an understanding of underdevelopment that is favoured by imperialism, and that institutions like Harvard typically advance, perhaps unwittingly.
In the social sciences, inviting foreign universities is thus tantamount to buying wholesale the imperialist obfuscations about slavery, colonial exploitation, economic ‘drain’ and the recurrent famines under colonial rule. Even as regards the natural sciences, the eminent British scientist, J.D. Bernal, was of the view that the course contents and curricula in universities in countries like India had to be different from those in British and American universities since our problems were so different. The presumption of homogeneity, in short, is completely incorrect.
Second, education is concerned not just with imparting a set of ideas to students; its objective, above all, must be to arouse questioning among students, for critical questioning is the source of creativity. The commodification of education — of which the invitation to foreign universities is an obvious manifestation — far from creating any questioning, actually destroys it. A commodity, after all, is a well-packaged entity that is supposed to be consumed; it is not supposed to agitate or disturb the consumer’s mind. When education gets commodified, it becomes synonymous with the imparting of ‘skills’, not with the application of creative minds to a set of ideas not limited by imperialist perceptions or prejudices.
The destruction of creativity is the hallmark of the education system being developed now. Three factors contribute towards making it so. The first is the discomfort of the ruling Hindutva elements with questioning minds; such minds become much more difficult to manipulate into accepting a discourse that generates hatred against hapless minorities. The second is the eagerness of globalised capital to homogenise course contents and curricula across the world so that wherever capital relocates, it finds potential employees of equal levels of training and docility. The third is the desperate need of middle-class youth to secure employment: questioning minds are unnecessary, even a handicap, for securing such employment, while degrees from European or American universities are far more valued by selection committees both at home and abroad than degrees from Indian universities.
This last point suggests that we cannot build a proper education system in the country, creating questioning and interested students who go on to become “organic intellectuals” — to borrow a Gramscian concept — of the people of free India, unless we simultaneously build a welfare State that guarantees employment to all.
But one should not despair. An Indian academic who teaches in a top Ivy League university in the United States of America was visiting India recently and gave a lecture at the Jawaharlal Nehru University. He was impressed because the students’ discussion with him was so intense and prolonged that the event had to be ultimately cut short after four hours. This is a university that has been under massive and continuous attack from the Hindutva elements for over seven years now. And, yet, they have not been able to destroy the institution, as is evident from the overwhelming intellectual engagement and passion among the students. Many such institutions in India still remain which the Hindutva elements have not succeeded in destroying. The hope for the country’s future lies in them.
Prabhat Patnaik is Professor Emeritus, Centre for Economic Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
