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His current job could well turn out to be the most crucial Veerappa Moily has held in a fairly colourful political career. And going by some of the ideas being considered by the Moily-headed oversight committee on OBC higher education quota, he would seem to have grasped the importance of his remit. The most important of these preliminary suggestions is that to expand the capacity of the education system India needs a material and attitudinal change towards the teaching profession. When the government had recommended larger higher education intake as a pacifying measure in the face of the quota controversy, there was no explicit, or even perhaps implicit, recognition that bigger and better faculties and low paid, unmotivated teachers are mutually contradictory. That Moily is clearly articulating the need to even throw rulebooks out so as to pay teachers better indicates the government is coming to terms with what higher education reform may entail.

In fact, and it is necessary to say this, the need to upgrade the teaching profession is independent of government projects on social engineering. We say education is vital for the future of this country and we, both in the public and in private sectors, pay teachers far less than most white-collar professions. Until recently, government salaries in colleges and universities were abysmal. A pay revision a few years back has made teachers8217; pay packets barely respectable. Schoolteachers8217; salaries in the public sector remain scandalously low. In some private schools, the situation is better. But the fact remains that for an academically and pedagogically gifted graduate, teaching is not a natural choice, unless he or she is an exceptional individual willing to ignore the incentive calculus.

In fact, Indian society has a particularly hypocritical attitude towards teachers8217; pay: the loftiness associated with teaching is seen as some sort of a justification for low salaries. This is bunkum, of course. We won8217;t get either enough teachers or, more important, good teachers unless we make the profession attractive materially. And while doing this we mustn8217;t make the mistake some Western countries like the US and Britain have: try to hike pay at college and university levels while keeping school teaching a low paid job. There8217;s no point talking of quality education, if well-paid educators aren8217;t central to the discussion.