Opinion Educating our ministers

However,this minister claims credit for reforms initiated by the Congress government in 1991. Note that those were days when industry was liberalized,licensing ended and domestic industry was exposed to foreign competition. Our own industry was in bad shape then. Barring protectionist industry (the Bombay Club),no one claimed it wasn’t practical to invite foreign competition. Instead,it was argued that infant industry protection meant infants never became adults. The only way to ensure maturity and improve industry’s shape,so to speak,was to expose it to competition.

Without survival of the fittest,survival of the fattest would continue. Indian industry has now become much more competitive,by any criteria. So why can’t the competition-driving-efficiency hypothesis drive education too?

There is a minor matter of ministers lacking courage of conviction and running with the hares and hunting with the hounds,depending on which way the wind is blowing. But that apart,it is practical for Indian students to head off to foreign shores for quality education (and sometimes get beaten up there). It is practical for Indian educational institutions to set up shop in the Middle East and East Asia. It is practical for relatively low-quality foreign universities to function in India,using a grey area of law. But it is not practical to allow good-quality foreign universities in India. It is also practical for human capital flight to take place overseas from good faculty.

Sure,there is a Pandora’s box of reforms required in education,especially higher education. We need to free up salary and fee-fixation,ensuring subsidies reach poor students directly. We need to allow education to become profit-making,instead of underhand proliferation of capitation fees. But it’s an odd level playing field argument that we can’t open up until we do all that.