The ministry’s mantra: Control

This is part of a larger process of political control of higher education. A more blatant move is the University Grants Commission proposed ‘Model Act for Universities of the 21st Century in India’, circulated as a Concept Paper in October 2003. The Model Act seeks to greatly increase the powers of the proposed Visitors (governors) of these state universities who are political appointees of the Centre, and intervene in universities coming into conflict with state governments. The Visitor will “carry out recommendations of the council of ministers at the Centre/state” and is to have powers of discretion and judgement in various functions relating to the University, including “advising” the chancellor/vice chancellor in their duties/responsibilities and coordinate with the UGC. This means that political appointees like the president and the governors will ensure implementation of the recommendations, not just policies, of their governments, and advise the VCs on their daily functioning. Governors would now dominate universities at the behest of the MHRD, disregarding state government policies. The universities would become subservient to government diktat, just like the IIMs and IITs.

This control is safeguarded by removing elected teachers’ representation from the Executive Council as their proposed membership will be “ex-officio and nominated”. There is no mention of students’ representation. The attached questionnaire asks: ‘Should there be specific provision in the Model Act for: Depoliticisation of the campus for a healthy academic environment?’ An empowered university community would resist arbitrary political control, thus the depoliticisation and denial of elected representation.

Most significant is the constitutional aspect. Higher education is a concurrent subject, under the jurisdiction of both the Union and state governments, but at no stage have the state governments been consulted in the dispute with the IIMs, IITs or the drafting of this proposed Act.

Contrary to criticism, this is not a neo-liberal reform. The proposed Act, after reference to academic culture in universities, adds “two new cultures (that) have now come up, viz., commercial culture and corporate culture”. Corporate culture is apparently non-commercial. Instead it is defined as “emphasis(ing) the leadership role provided by senior academics/officials and top-down planning and monitoring practices”.

The emphasis on top-down planning contrasted to decentralised, democratic or bottom-up planning is a bureaucratic, not an academic or corporate, concept of planning. The paper assumes diminished if not zero state funding for higher education, substituted by corporate funding and internally generated resources.

The World Bank in ‘Higher Education in Developing Countries — Peril and Promise’ (2000) conceded the importance of higher education. Since national competitiveness is crucial for India’s ability to face globalisation, higher education merits public funding. This critical question deserves much more attention than this Act gives it. What the MHRD is doing to the IIMs is part of an attempted political takeover of higher education as a whole. To defeat this is not just the duty of the IIMs and corporate sector alone, but that of all citizens.