The report of the five-member committee chaired by former Union cabinet secretary T.S.R. Subramanian, constituted last October by the Union ministry of human resource development (HRD) to draft a National Policy on Education (NPE) 2016, which was presented to Union HRD minister Smriti Irani on May 28, has quickly run into a storm.

This is hardly surprising since Subramanian, an alum of the Imperial College, London and Harvard University who served as cabinet secretary during the tumultuous  noughties (1996-98), has a mind of his own unlike most bureaucrats, and isn’t afraid to speak it. Moreover, he is reputed not to have buried any bodies or incriminating evidence during his long career (1961-1998) which could be leveraged to toe any particular line. Therefore, one of his first demands was to make the report available to the public for debate and discussion, a suggestion refused by Irani on the ground that the report is “the property of 110,000 villages, over 5,000 blocks, over 500 districts, and 20 states, which have entrusted it to us with the confidence that any recommendation that comes to the Centre will be shared with them before it is made into a draft policy”.

Unfazed and stating that “an informed public discussion which can provide valuable inputs for the final exercise to be undertaken in the (HRD) ministry,” Subramanian called a press conference in Delhi on June 23 and suo motu released the 230-page report of the committee which has made 90 recommendations for incorporation into the National Policy on Education, 2016.

“It will not be an exaggeration to say that our education system is in disarray… it is imperative for India to change the methods of imparting education, to nurture and develop the qualities that can lead to a meaningful future — both for the individual and society,” says the introduction of the impressively detailed report.

Most of the major recommendations of the Subramanian Committee have been repeatedly advocated by EducationWorld (estb.1999) and to that extent, are reflective of the positive impact of this pioneer publication on public education policies.

Among them: repealing the no-detention until class VIII provision of the Right of Children to Free & Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009 and introducing examinations after class V; provision of early childhood education for children in the four-six age group; introduction of vocational education from class VIII onwards; raising the annual outlay for education (Centre plus states) to 6 percent of GDP “without further loss of time”; granting greater financial and academic autonomy to higher educational institutions, and allowing top-ranked foreign universities to establish campuses in India.

Some of the novel suggestions made by the committee include establishing an all-India education service on the model of the Indian Administrative Service; compulsory testing of teachers and renewal of their teaching licences every ten years; compulsory accreditation of all higher education institutions every three years; and restricting role of the University Grants Commission to disbursal of scholarships and fellowships to deserving and needy students.

Union HRD minister Smriti Irani’s reluctance to make the Subramanian Committee report public in a hurry is understandable because most of its recommendations are likely to prove unpalatable to the BJP-led government at the Centre, especially to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) — the ideological mentor of the BJP — which is committed to transform 21st-century India into a regressive Hindu rashtra (state). With the RSS running an estimated 12,364 primary-secondary schools countrywide according to its own lights, the progressive education reforms centred around greater institutional autonomy are likely to prove unacceptable to the RSS top brass and BJP leaders.

Already the BJP-NDA government, which was swept to power at the Centre in General Election 2014, has appointed RSS ideologues as heads of education institutions such as the Indian Council of Historical Research and as vice chancellors of several universities. Moreover, given that in the Union Budget 2016-17, the government slashed its education outlay to Rs.72,394 crore from the budgeted Rs.82,771 crore in 2015-16, the recommended 6 percent of GDP seems a far cry.

The last time a National Policy on Education was presented to the country was in 1986 supplemented with bits and pieces in 1992, before the dawn of the new IT (information technology) era. The lack of urgency within the BJP-NDA government and the HRD ministry in particular to overhaul the plainly ineffective NPE 1986, is an indicator that when and if NPE 2016 is finally drafted, it’s likely to be as ineffective.

Swati Roy (Delhi)

Creeping liberalisation

The high-powered t.s.r. Subramanian Committee, constituted to advise the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry on the National Policy on Education (NPE) 2016, has recommended that the Top 200 foreign universities “should be facilitated to sign collaboration arrangements with Indian universities” to the extent that approved foreign universities should be in “a position to offer their own degrees to Indian students”. Against this advice, on June 22, the HRD ministry endorsed the University Grants Commission’s new set of feeble regulations to supersede the Promotion and Maintenance of Standards of Academic Collaborations between Indian and Foreign Educational Institutes Regulations 2012 legal framework which hitherto governed foreign educational institutions (FEIs) in India.

Under the new regulations, which will be gazetted shortly, Indian colleges and universities awarded the highest A grade rating of the National Assessment and Accreditation Council of India (NAAC) will now be eligible to apply to the University Grants Commission (UGC) for introducing twinning and collaborative arrangements with quality FEIs for undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. However, Indian universities are not permitted to issue foreign or joint degrees though the name of the foreign collaborator university can be modestly inscribed on degree or diploma certificates.

Such petty bureaucratic tinkering with rules and regulations typical of neta-babu licence-permit-quota raj, has demoralised FEIs who seem to have lost their enthusiasm for tying up with Indian institutions. In a vain bid to improve standards in higher education, the Congress-led UPA-II government at the Centre had drafted a Foreign Educational Institutions (Regulation of Entry & Operations) Bill, 2010 to encourage reputed FEIs to establish campuses in India.

But the Bill reportedly drafted by legal eagle Kapil Sibal was so full of discretionary powers invested in UGC bureaucrats that it also aroused the wrath of opposition MPs in the standing committee of Parliament. Subsequently in September 2013, a last-ditch attempt was made by way of an ordinance to open the doors for any of the Top 400 universities in the league tables of the London-based QS and THE to establish campuses and award degrees in India. But even that initiative didn’t take off.

The case for allowing foreign universities to establish campuses in India is irrefutable. Every year an estimated 300,000 students who don’t make the 95 percent plus cut-offs for admission into the few dozen top-ranked Indian colleges and universities, wing it to universities abroad — half of them to the US — notwithstanding the sky-high tuition and residential fees they extract from foreign students. An estimate by the Delhi-based Assocham a couple of years ago concluded that Indian students going abroad spend as much as US $17 billion (Rs.115,000 crore) annually.

In the circumstances, UGC’s new set of regulations, which makes collaboration between domestic and offshore universities marginally easier, has been welcomed especially by private university promoters who are inevitably more proactive than public university chancellors. “This is a bold step towards the government’s push to broaden the scope and improve the quality of higher education in the country,” says Dr. G. Viswanathan, founder & chancellor of the top-ranked VIT University, Vellore and president of the Education Promotion Society of India. “The new norms will provide greater freedom to Indian universities to raise the quality of education through collaboration with universities abroad.”

“The amendments respond to a felt and aspirational need expressed by students to engage with FEIs of repute, study in part in these institutions and acquire a formal recognition of this in the degree and related transcripts,” says Union HRD minister Smriti Irani.

Yet liberal academics in the national capital are perplexed by the creeping inch-by-inch movement towards higher education liberalisation which stops short of permitting FEIs to establish campuses in India. Several Asian countries, notably China, have welcomed foreign universities with beneficial outcomes such as affordability for students and academic competition which has raised teaching-learning and research standards.

The speculation in academia is that unconditional permission to FEIs to set up shop in India is anathema to the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the hyper-nationalist ideological mentor of the ruling BJP. But with the T.S.R. Subramanian Committee having recommended an unambiguous green light to FEIs to establish campuses in India and award their degrees, the BJP-NDA government is in a tight spot.

Autar Nehru (Delhi)