Among the cries rending the air during the Lok Sabha elections, one issue was notably absent: education. Like Sherlock Holmes’s dog that did nothing in the night-time, the absence may be significant.
But significant of what? Are we so satisfied with Indian education that we have nothing to demand or criticize? That seems unlikely. Was education crowded out by other issues? Or do we find it inconceivable that the rulers we elect could be induced to think about education?
The recent budget lends substance to the last view: not simply because of the meagre allocation (Rs 9,090 crore less than last year’s revised budget) but also the priorities, such as they are. They seem to be three: subsidized higher education loans to 1,00,000 students (among some 4.5 crore enrolled); an internship scheme for 1 crore youth in 500 ‘top companies’ in five years; and a skilling programme in 1,000 upgraded Industrial Training Institutes for 20,00,000 trainees over five years, with loans to 25,000 persons annually.
Before looking farther, let us consider these proposals on their own terms. The beneficiaries number 6.25% of the total for the latter loans and an underwhelming 0.22% for the former. Moreover, these are loans. At least a part will be repaid, reducing the ultimate cost to the exchequer. Thirdly, an average of 4,000 interns per company per annum seems wildly unreal. Lastly, what fraction of these 20,00,000 trainees and 1 crore interns will actually find jobs?
There are other uncertainties. In an interview, the finance minister acknowledged that the companies could only be “nudged”, not compelled, to accept interns. They would meet their share of expenses from the 2% of profits spent on Corporate Social Responsibility across a range of options. How far will they opt for this scheme at all?
This is not the first instance of plans reliant on voluntary contributions from the private sector being gift-wrapped as government bounty. The Anusandhan National Research Foundation Act, a part of the National Education Policy, calls on both public and private sectors to “invest” in the Foundation. It also prescribes “strategic direction” (read restriction and control) in the content of research. In particular, reversing the pious professions of the NEP, it confines research in the humanities and social sciences to their “scientific and technological interfaces”. The scheme, due to commence this year, has been placed under the ministry of science and technology. Let us see if the private sector, notably parsimonious in funding research, obliges the government this time.
Two of the budget proposals are notionally skill development programmes, but clearly aimed at addressing (and deflecting?) the demand for jobs. They relate to labour policy rather than education policy. India is not the only country conflating education with skilling and shifting focus to the latter. (Britain is a prominent, if unexpected, instance.) Skilling means training in a defined set of practices for a specific material task. Exercising a skill can give deep creative satisfaction and foster innovation, but it does not extend to fundamentals. Meaningful education, on the contrary, reaches out to fundamentals even at the elementary level. It proceeds from ‘what’ to ‘how’ and thence to ‘why’. It does not limit itself to an immediate practical output.
That sounds like empty rhetoric but is not. Virtually all knowledge yields applications of practical, economic and social benefit, often where least expected. But for that to happen, it must range freely in the first place, following its own logic and not some external demand.
An economy sustained by the pursuit of knowledge (and not the other way around) is called a knowledge economy with true intellectual capital. It is no accident that so many powerful and prosperous countries foster a culture of research. The United States of America has ample share of hatred, insularity and obscurantism. But its economic and strategic compulsions make it open its doors to intellectual talent from across the world.
In this light, Vishwaguru Bharat might rethink the wisdom of its growing stranglehold over both academic inquiry and campus life and speech. As I write, a professor at South Asian University has resigned and a student is in trouble over a politically unwelcome research proposal. I have noted how the Anusandhan Foundation validates the growing insistence on ‘approved’ research topics. Lectures and conferences are censored or cancelled, while any murmur of dissent from the faculty invites retribution. It is not solely a matter of political persecution but of intellectual insecurity, using heavy-handed authority to guard the comfort zone of a hierarchic academic order.
It is thus hardly surprising that the education budget does not inspire hope in either the long or the short term. Central universities get over 20% more funds; but other Central institutions, including IITs, virtually no increase after allowing for inflation. Most crucially, there is nothing for the greater part of the public university system, comprising state-run institutions.
But should not these be funded by the states? It was never so, and it is unreal to expect it. The states traditionally provided salaries and running costs, and the Centre development funds. Education, after all, is in the concurrent list. The demise of the Planning Commission was a crippling blow: Five-Year Plans were a major source of development grants. The University Grants Commission (now dispensing few grants) has had its budget docked by two-thirds this year. Virtually the only source of Central funds for state universities today is the Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan or RUSA, now unsurprisingly renamed PM-USHA. Maybe for this reason, its allocation has increased, but that inspires little confidence: last year, two-thirds of the original grant was slashed.
No productive academic order can survive simultaneous curbs on speech, thought and funds. It will provide few jobs beyond a glorified gig economy. It emphatically will not bring about a knowledge economy or a knowledge society. We will draw on advances in knowledge achieved elsewhere, mediated in good part by our countrymen translocated there. India will remain a polytechnic vis-à-vis the vishwa-vidyalayas of the world.
Sukanta Chaudhuri is Professor Emeritus, Jadavpur University