The SEZ we really need

The unbelievably high cut-offs for admission to colleges in Delhi University and the lakhs of disappointed students who have failed to get into engineering or medical colleges indicate the acute shortage of quality education in the country. Unfortunately for the students, this is one sector where India has not removed the licence-permit raj or undertaken market oriented reforms. The government does not allow the burgeoning demand to be met by higher supply by the private sector. Every year the situation gets worse as the number of seats remains the same while the number of students wanting a good education goes up, but overregulation of the sector continues to choke supply.

Ironically, the Left’s opposition to the bill allowing foreign universities to set up campuses in the country works to the advantage of the rich. If their children cannot get what increasingly amounts to the luck of the draw in college admissions, they send them to universities abroad. If the government allowed entry to universities like Harvard, MIT and Stanford, which are reported to be interested in opening campuses in India, with lakhs of seats at a cost much lower than what it takes to send a child abroad, higher education would be accessible to middle-class children who cannot afford to go abroad today. Removing licences and restrictions to entry will make education — so exclusive today — available to the aam admi.

Perhaps a completely new approach is needed. The government is setting up special economic zones to encourage industry. But if the focus was to change to making India’s large population her biggest strength, a different category of SEZs is needed: Special Education Zones, university towns where there is a single window clearance system for opening colleges and universities. States with abundant natural beauty like Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal and Goa would do much better if instead of inviting industry, which is costly and polluting and for which they do not have adequate infrastructure or access, they set up university campuses. By encouraging private universities, both income and employment can be created. By allowing flexible fees and compensation to staff, the best brains in the world can be attracted. India’s handful of IITs can neither meet the students’ demand, nor industry’s requirements. It is time to think not merely of a 50 per cent increase in seats that a quota regime would require, but the 100-fold increase that the country requires.