HRD mentality

The National Knowledge Commission has in effect argued that the human resource development ministry retreat from regulation of higher education. The idea is easily recommended by developments in another sector. In the telecommunication industry, the benefits of instituting an independent regulatory authority are evident in terms both of rapid expansion of services and competitive reduction in costs to the consumer. Of course, education is a much more complex subject than telecommunication. Besides the delivery of services and infrastructure, it involves crucial issues of social welfare and civic progress. And, read together, the proposals in the commission8217;s 27-page report constitute a holistic blueprint to enhance India8217;s knowledge edge and to include ever-larger sections of the population as beneficiaries of quality higher education.

The report8217;s key recommendations, as reported exclusively by this newspaper, include an independent regulatory authority for higher education, formulation of a deprivation index with a gamut of indicators as a basis for affirmative action, entry of foreign educational institutions and encouragement to existing institutions to leverage their assets to raise funds. These recommendations are unexceptionable. But expeditious acceptance of the first is key to kickstarting reform 8212; indeed, without it the other proposals would be blunted. It is not just that the HRD ministry has become a nodal point for politicisation of education 8212; for party or for ideological purposes 8212; by consecutive incumbents. The very architecture of the ministry and its procedures make rapid expansion and regulation of education impossible.

The recent debate on increasing reservations in higher education threw up the need to broadbase criteria for affirmative action. It also, in what cynics saw as the carving up of the pie, showed how little there is to go around. To make education truly inclusive, India needs to increase the number of seats many times over 8212; an increase that just cannot come from government initiative alone. This accentuates the need for prudent regulation. Because complementing long-established institutions with a profusion of new centres carries the danger of allowing in fly-by-night operators and bad practices. Accreditation, as experience around the world shows, is most reliable when done by an independent authority. The proposals of the Knowledge Commission are thus not in the least experimental; these are ideas whose time has already come. Speedily implemented, however, the results could be revolutionary.