Generations of Hindus have imbibed the tradition of keeping Saraswati, the goddess of learning, far away from Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth. You are conditioned to believe that Saraswati belongs only to the austere environs of Ashrams tucked away in forests — or their modern day variant, state-run universities and colleges where you can do expensive professional courses for a fee that does not cover even your tea bill. The Supreme Court betrayed much the same mindset in 1993 when it cracked down on private medical and engineering colleges in Unni Krishnan vs State of Andhra Pradesh. Banning capitation fee, the court held then that commercialisation of education was ‘‘opposed to public policy and Indian tradition.’’Coming as it did two years after the duo of Narasimha Rao and Manmohan Singh launched economic reforms, the Unni Krishnan verdict was a radical experiment in socialism in the season of liberalisation. Appropriating the role of the legislature, the Supreme Court came up with an elaborate scheme stipulating that while all admissions to private professional colleges should be merit-based, 50 per cent of them would be for ‘free seats’ where the student paid the same nominal fee charged by a government counterpart. The remaining 50 per cent of the seats would be ‘payment seats’ where the student paid a higher fee which was again to be fixed by the government. The unviability of that revenue model forced the court later to carve out an NRI quota of about 15 per cent from the payment seats, giving greater leeway on the fee that could be charged from them.The piece-meal reform helped neither the student nor the college, making the court reconsider the Unni Krishnan verdict. Last fortnight, in a dramatic volte face, the apex court declared that the whole scheme of its Unni Krishnan verdict was ‘unconstitutional.’ The entire system of free seats, payment seats and NRI quota is now gone. In its judgment in T.M.A. Pai Foundation and others vs State of Karnataka delivered on October 31, the Supreme Court has denationalised admissions to professional colleges. Though the ban on capitation fee and the requirement of merit continue to be in force, the fast proliferating private medical and engineering colleges are free to charge whatever fee they can command in the open market.Thus, the latest judgment of the apex court, on the face of it, may seem anti-poor and loaded in favour of the rich. The fee burden on the students is bound to increase. And that burden will be shared equally by all the students, irrespective of their economic status. So, the relative burden of the fee hike will be greater on a poor student. Yet, a closer examination suggests that there is greater equity in the new liberalised system of admissions. For all its socialist rhetoric, Unni Krishnan’s scheme had also made no allowance for the financial condition of any student. The quantum of fee a particular student paid depended entirely on how much he scored in the entrance examination. If his marks are high enough, he may make it to the grade of free seats. But somebody else may have the misfortune of falling into the category of payment seats simply because he got one or two marks less. This lottery-like situation suited the richer student better because it made little difference to him whether he got a free seat or a payment seat. Worse, Unni Krishnan also threw up the possibility quite often of a poor student holding a payment seat subsidising the education of a rich student holding a free seat. As the Supreme Court observed in its recent judgment, ‘‘In practice, it has been the case of the marginally less merited rural or poor student bearing the burden of a rich and well-exposed urban student.’’ The Supreme Court has abandoned its 1993 experiment in socialism in professional colleges But isn’t there a danger of the fees of private professional colleges now spiralling beyond the reach of a vast section of students? The apex court sought to address this concern by reaffirming the principle that there should not be capitation fee or ‘‘profiteering’’. But then it conceded in the same breath that ‘‘reasonable surplus to meet the cost of expansion and augmentation of facilities does not, however, amount to profiteering.’’ So, clearly, whether a certain quantum of fee charged by a private college amounts to profiteering or not is hard to determine and will depend on the facts and circumstances of each case.The truth is the government does not have funds to keep pace with the growing demand for medical and engineering education. The private sector cannot bridge the gap unless it is given the financial autonomy to ensure a return on its investment. So, there is no option but to come to terms with the fact that there is no free lunch in the field of education as well. It is just as well that the Supreme Court did not stand on prestige and stopped making piece-meal efforts like the insertion of the NRI quota to prop up what was essentially an unviable system. The focus of the government should shift to ensuring that the standard of education does not fall in the wake of commercialisation.
