If a new IIM comes to Shillong, should a less constricted, more ambitious education policy be far behind? At a time the HRD ministry has been making news for the generally controlling and repressive tendencies of its minister, it is hugely tempting to see the decision to add a seventh member to the exclusive club of IIMs, while reaching out to a yet remote part of the country, as a good omen. Yes, minister: This country needs many more IIMs and IITs, and especially in areas like the Northeast. It has been inadequately recognised how educational institutions and institutes of excellence among them, can straddle other differences and become the hubs, in a symbolic sense as well as on the ground, of a new national community connected by the shared will to achieve and excel. Provided, at the same time, that they are assured of a degree of autonomy that will allow them to preserve their claim to excellence.It is not incidental that a more forward-looking debate on education has been averted in this country. Here, the discussion on education has been fettered by the ideological biases and license-raj reflexes of the ministers in charge. Both Murli Manohar Joshi and Arjun Singh have concentrated their efforts on rewriting history textbooks and tightening the screws on higher education. They have also left unchallenged the small-minded presumption that investment in higher education is inevitably at cost to the expansion of primary education. They have actively resisted the idea of opening up the higher education sector to the rich potential of private-public partnerships. In fact, now that the HRD minister appears to be in a more expansive mood, he may consider setting up IITs and IIMs in other places as well. Like Bihar, and Jharkhand, and Chhattisgarh. There can be no better way of encouraging and celebrating Bihar’s efforts to reinvent itself than to empower it with the possibilities generated by an IIM or an IIT.
