The Indian growth story is fuelled by such assorted entrepreneurship that it is curious how different the ingredients of the Great Indian Dream are. The icons of this story are diverse people — from a B.R. Ambedkar, who succeeded in defining the constitutional arrangements that would define liberal democracy in this country, to a Srinivasa Ramanujan, who left mathematicians for ever wondering what he may have achieved had tuberculosis not claimed him so young. This story focuses on the ability, against low expectations that may come with unprivileged beginnings or social distance from the centres of cutting edge work, to find knowledge, to internalise it. Therefore, this weekend, it was apt that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh chose a gathering of students to tell business leaders that a level playing field is an idealised demand. Students must, he said, “hold an example for our business leaders, who must also learn to compete on un-level playing fields and prove their mettle”.Like cricketers, the prime minister said, students know they cannot sit back and demand a pitch and field conditions of their liking. They get on with things. “Over the years we have seen boys and girls from modest social and economic backgrounds passing out of our institutions of higher learning and writing competitive examinations to secure admission in the best institutions of the world,” he told students at the Mahindra United World College of India in Pune. “It is they who have shaped the image of Brand India across the world.” But even as he reassuringly committed his government to developing an education system that is more inclusive, creative and forward-looking, it is time to ask, does this country need a new template for success? Is it not time for India to cherish not just success gained in spite of the system, but to flaunt success gained because of the system?Take the business of education. The prime minister’s National Knowledge Commission noted that to excel as a knowledge society, India needed to greatly expand its higher education system. This requires reform, more prudent regulation and greater openness to investment. It needs for the system to dismantle an entire system of meaningless controls that inhibit, if not actively discourage, investment. These are, in athletics-speak, obstacles.
