Opinion Now Do It HRD

The belated but very welcome reform of India’s own higher education sector can start with the announcement that navratnas status will be given to India’s ivy league. This blogger has always maintained that only good institutions can interact with the best elsewhere and autonomy and accountability of our own is the precondition of creative global partnerships. The MOU and navaratna status are the beginning. The concept of the MOU for PSUs goes back to the origin of India’s reform process. Indira Gandhi in the eighties set up two committees to engineer the architecture of reform. The Narsimhan Committee was to take us out of physical controls and the Arjun Sengupta Committee reform the public sector. I was a member of both and worked very hard on them. The Narsimhan Committee was implemented,The Sengupta Committee was by the governments in the Nineties shelved. At least not in spirit. I participated in some of the early MOUs very earnestly trying to implement the MOU concept but soon gave it up when it was clear that the Governments then only wanted to sell the family silver ,but without realizing that polished silver demands a premium in the market.

The Sengupta Committee pushed the idea of an arms length relationship between the government and PSU’s. The MOU was the instrument with which the objectives the Government wanted could be transparently stated ,the Government and the Units obligation stated and then worked through. PSUs in many cases should make profit just as Universities have to produce market acceptable trained products. But PSUs may be set up for non profit objectives,research,conquering space,producing the first super computer,trading for strategic reasons,ensuring that a poor women is fed with milk when pregnant,producing books for culture and a sense of nationhood and the list goes on. The BICP under me produced indicators for such PSUs and Sengupta put them down for MOUs. Like the GSLV,the first super computer and the first fast breeder reactor on the thorium route the MOU for University’s going where no man has gone before will need doing but like Arjuna and the eye of the fish the actors will have keep their sights clear.

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Governments will find it difficult. Therefore the offer of Samir Baruah the Director of the IIMA to structure the club of the Indian Ivys is much too tempting to let go.