‘Ensuring accountability is not interference’

I have given clear instructions to my officers in the Ministry that our policies have to be student centric. Coming to the entrance examination system, presently the students are inordinately harassed, being forced to appear in more than a dozen exams to get admission in management institutions. This entails filling up innumerable application forms — whose cost is enormous. It also compels travelling to distant examination centres across the country involving heavy expenditure as well as effort in making boarding and lodging arrangements. In addition to that, students are made to pay a hefty counselling fee to the institutes concerned. Eliminating these inconveniences, reducing the financial pressure on the students is only objective of the decision to conduct a single entrance examination from the year 2005-2006. How a decision taken in the interest of thousands and thousands of students can at all affect autonomy of any academic institution including IIMs, which are Central Government institutions, I fail to understand.

IIMs have been given complete academic autonomy. I have ensured that there is no political interference in their day-to-day working. I have professionalised their management structure by having people like Narayana Murthy, Y.C. Deveshwar, Baba Kalyani as Chairman of Board of Governors of these management institutions. These institutions have been set up with public funds, so they have to be accountable to the Parliament. Enforcement of accountability is being propagated by a few as interference in their autonomy.

• Your much-touted Bharat Siksha Kosh, a scheme to bundle all available donations from alumni and NRIs to IITs and other institutes, has come a cropper. The IITs were more successful getting donation on their own and using it effectively. Now the funds are hard to come by for people to do not really want to donate to a ministry-run fund. What do you have to say about this?

Anu

The initiative of Bharat Siksha Kosh was taken with a view to garner support from every quarter including the common man for spreading education. I have always been saying that education is the primary responsibility of the State and it should do its utmost to educate its population and strengthen the education system for the balanced development of its citizens and its economy. During the past 50 years donations received by IITs, including those from their alumni, have been less than Rs 150 crore. This is the amount they have received so far from all sources since inception whereas Central Government sanctions nearly Rs 750 crore annually to IITs. Let me also make it clear that the country has enough funds to run its institutes of national importance. We welcome support from all quarters but that has to come willingly from the other side. This country spends collectively nearly Rs 88,000 crore annually on education itself.

• Being a physicist yourself, you still seem to be pushing forward the completely unscientific disciplines like astrology and tantra. Are you not trying to take India a few steps backwards by emphasising on these disciplines?

Abhijeet Mahanty

It is amazing that it is only in India that people oppose teaching of astrology. Astrology is being taught as a subject in University of London, UK, University of Southampton, UK, University of Plymouth, UK, Manhattan School of Astrology, School of Astrology in Australia, American Institute of Vedic Studies, English Huber School, Switzerland to name a few. There are 27 universities across the world who offer Astrology as a course. This is really unfortunate that it finds opponents only in the country of origin. Has anyone scientifically proved beyond doubt that Astrology is unscientific. My question is ‘‘why should anyone hesitate to study Astrology?’’ Is History scientific? Have we not accepted History in our curriculum? Are art and literature scientific? It is a general tendency in our country to ridicule anything Indian and praise everything Western. Now-a-days, most of the dailies and magazines publish astrology columns. Most Internet service providers also offer astrology. We should accept astrology as an Indian art/science of predicting nature, study of which would result in development of quality astrologers and to get rid of spurious practitioners and quacks from the arena. One should always remember that even Cartesian and Newtonian theories have their limitations. So has astrology.

• Elections are just a year ahead…so when you look back on your tenure as the HRD minister — apart from the controversies you had spawned — which achievement do you think is your single-biggest one? And how would you like posterity to remember you as the HRD minister?

Thomas Kutty Thambaram

A positive action when it is initiated is opposed in the beginning, debated in the second phase and accepted consequently. This is the trajectory of the process of change. After Independence the most extraordinary transformation achieved was through Universal Adult Franchise, which gave equal right to every citizen, in the formation of the Government, irrespective of his cast, creed, sex, wealth and position. I would call that as the first revolution in our country. Giving Fundamental Right of primary education to our citizens is the second revolution, which I consider as the single most important achievement of my Ministry. I would like this to be considered as the contribution of the NDA Government towards enabling every citizen of this great nation to participate in democracy effectively.

• Why don’t you try to improve the education standards of the lower-level govt engg. colleges?

Rajib Barua

My Ministry has taken a series of initiatives to improve the quality of technical education in our country, including Government-funded engineering colleges. I will mention only few of the major initiatives taken by us. Already the Regional Engineering Colleges have been upgraded into National Institute of Technology with a status of ‘‘Deemed to be Universities’’. Funding mechanism of Centrally funded institutions have been modified to provide greater focus to outcomes in accordance with national priorities. Prominent technical institutions have been provided electronic access to nearly 4000 e-journals/data bases to enhance the quality of teaching and research productivity. A fully dedicated Technical Education Channel (Eklavya) has been launched which telecasts curriculum-based programmes across the country.

My Ministry has recently launched an ambitious ‘‘Technical education Quality Improvement Programme’’ with a specific focus of upgrading the infrastructure and quality of education in all the Government engineering institutions with an approved outlay of Rs 1,550 crore. Engineering institutions have been sensitised to undertake research projects which are India-centric and which lead to solving our country’s problems especially in rural areas. The scholarship amounts for research scholars have been substantially increased. In addition to above, the National Programme for Technology Enhanced Learning, National Programme for Biotechnology Education, National Programme for Information Technology Education and National Programme for earthquake Engineering have been started to help engineering institutions improve their quality