Big bucks apparently drove Arvind Kumar to take a few days off from his regular banking job and jostle with college admission seekers in Rajasthan. A marketing officer with United Bank of India in Jaipur, Kumar was hired by the Global Institute of Technology (GIT), a private engineering college in Jaipur, to woo students into classrooms.With over 30 private institutions doing exactly the same thing, Kumar reportedly decided to just buy out admission-seekers. Last week, the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) arrested him as he was “trying to bribe” Ambesh Ratnu.Kumar apparently offered Ratnu Rs 1 lakh to persuade 200 students attending the Rajasthan Pre-engineering Test (RPET) counselling session in Jodhpur to join GIT. He was arrested trying to persuade a reluctant Ratnu with Rs 45,000 to at least fill 21 seats.Even as the ACB handed over the case to the CBI, the spotlight on Rajasthan’s ‘‘education for sale’’ slogan suddenly became brighter.In the last four years, the state government has given its nod to more than 30 colleges. From five-odd colleges, the number of private technical institutions has jumped to 30, with two-thirds of them located in and around Jaipur. The government runs just six technical colleges in the state.In the pink city, private colleges offer 6,000 seats for technical education. The number of students clearing common entrance exams is almost 50 per cent less than the number of vacancies.‘‘Around four years back, the government decided that whoever wants to open a technical educational institution should be given a chance,’’ explains Technical Education Secretary Shyam Aggarwal. ‘‘It is something like automobiles. Although people may not buy all cars, it doesn’t stop makers from introducing new models in the market. Right now, the education bazaar is having birth pangs.’’At present, anybody who meets the very basic requirements of land, seed money and equipment (as per the rules of the AICTE) gets a no-objection certificate, and finally affiliation from the Rajasthan University.‘‘Of course, it is easy,’’ admits Bharti Parashar, who runs the Maharishi Arvind Institute of Engineering and Technology in Jaipur. ‘‘The government wants it like that. When we started four years back, the policy seemed good. But now you have cloth merchants, liquor vendors and just about anyone opening shop. Things have started to go very wrong, even in my own college.’’This academic year began on a bad note. The annual RPET counselling, being held at the Jai Narayan Vyas University in Jodhpur this year, had to be postponed after allegations of mismanagement and general confusion.‘‘There is a lot of general confusion at these sessions,’’ says Kanika Sugana, a first year engineering student who has just been enrolled in the government-run college at Kota. ‘‘Private colleges put up advertisements, offer scholarships and promote themselves very aggressively.’’‘‘It’s never happened before,’’ says a weary Naseem Bhatia, vice-chancellor of Jodhpur University. ‘‘This time, there were so many private institutions vying with each other. We had no choice but to postpone the entire procedure. Now the committee on technical education is trying to find a solution.’’And it is not just engineering. There have been zero enrolments in seven of the 22-odd MCA colleges this year. ‘‘There are around 1,300 MCA seats but this year only 450 students were enrolled,’’ says Aggarwal. ‘‘This is what free market is all about. ’’‘‘Look, the market orientation is such that supply is more than the demand,’’ Aggarwal adds. ‘‘Things will settle down in 10-odd years. Right now, the government has put a ceiling on the fees, but there really isn’t much we can do to regulate the functioning of private colleges.’’And as far as ‘‘quality’’ goes, Aggarwal admits government colleges are not faring any better on this front.
