A MALEVOLENT constellation of stars seems to be presiding over Shastri Bhavan, Delhi which houses the Union human resource development (HRD, aka education) ministry. To the misfortune of India™s 550 million children and youth, all HRD ministers of the past decade have at best been successful failures.
After the disastrous reign of the BJP™s Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi in Shastri Bhavan (1999-2004), the first five-year term of the UPA government (2004-09) was wasted by the late, unlamented Arjun Singh, who utilised his tenure in Shastri Bhavan to force the 73rd amendment of the Constitution which carved out an additional 22.5 percent reserved quota (i.e in addition to the 15 percent reserved for scheduled castes and 7.5 percent for scheduled tribes) in Central government-funded institutions of higher education, including the IITs and IIMs, for OBCs (other backward castes). This amendment and accompanying legislation was pushed through without any expansion of institutional capacity resulting in worsened teacher-student ratios and over-crowded classrooms. Unsurprisingly, he wasn™t reappointed HRD minister in 2009 when the Congress-led UPA was returned to office in Delhi.
Arjun Singh™s successor as Union HRD minister was too-clever-by-half  Supreme Court counsel Kapil Sibal who antagonised Parliament and his own party colleagues by presenting  several ill-drafted Bills including the Foreign Educational Institutions and National Commission for Higher Education & Research bills which were rejected by the ministry™s parliamentary standing committee. The only legislation Sibal managed to pilot through Parliament ” the Right to Education Act, 2009 which became law in 2010 ” is a welter of confusion and has proved to be beyond the implementation capabilities of most state governments.
Sibal was moved out of Shastri Bhavan in 2013 and succeeded by Dr. M.M. Pallam Raju who spent most of his time immersed in Andhra politics convulsed by the promised division of the state into Telangana and Seemandhra. In short, despite incremental public awareness of the vital importance of quality education as the essential precondition of human and national development, the past decade ” but for determined private sector initiatives in education ” has been a decade of stasis, if not decline in public education.
Consequently the controversy surrounding the appointment of popular BJP spokesperson and former Rajya Sabha MP, Smriti Irani as Union HRD minister following the sweep of the General Election 2014 by the BJP, has ominous portents. Surprisingly women™s rights activist Madhu Kishwar, a staunch BJP supporter, has made a big issue of Irani not having completed her commerce degree programme which in her (Kishwar™s) opinion makes Irani unqualified to lead the HRD ministry. This charge is dismissed by most pundits who point out that independent India™s first Union education minister, the highly respected Dr. Maulana Azad, didn™t have a college degree either.
Worse, spokespersons of the routed Congress party have highlighted contradictory affidavits filed before the Election Commission in 2004 in which Irani averred that she was an arts, and later commerce, graduate of Delhi University, when she is neither.
On her first day in office on May 27, Irani promised to increase public spending on education to 6 percent of GDP as stated in the BJP manifesto, and review all legislation related to higher education reform that had lapsed with the dissolution of the 15th Lok Sabha.
The minister™s resolve to redeem this pledge made ” but not honoured ” by successive governments at the Centre, has been welcomed by academia. œI expect the new minister will press for education reforms with determination and encourage the private sector to play a much larger role in higher education, says Dr. Prashant Bhalla, chancellor, Manav Rachna International University.
Provided the stars over Shastri Bhavan become benign.
Autar Nehru (Delhi)
Short-lived cheer?
A MAY 7 notification issued by India™s top-ranked Central government-funded Delhi University (DU, estb. 1922), further simplifying the admission processes of its affiliated colleges, has been welcomed by the student community in the national capital and countrywide. A seat in DU-affiliated colleges is highly prized because the university is routinely top-ranked in the annual India Today league table of the country™s most respected varsities. Last year, 103,000 students countrywide competed for 54,000 undergraduate seats in its 61 affiliated colleges.
The highlight of the new admission policy is the university™s decision to abolish the ˜additional eligibility criteria™ used by affiliated colleges to reject applicants who made the cut-off percentage for admission. Moreover, the notification introduces six new courses ” home science, music, and physical education among others ” and abolishes separate entrance tests for English honours, Hindi journalism, social work, and foreign languages such as German, Spanish, Italian and French.
The decision to abolish the ˜additional eligibility criteria™ comes in the wake of widespread protests last year by students refused admission into several colleges despite their having scored above the prescribed cut-off percentage in the class XII board exams, for failing to meet arbitrarily decided ˜additional eligibility criteria™. Some colleges demanded minimum marks in specific subjects in addition to cut-off averages, with others admitting students with high marks in certain subjects even if their average score in the class XII boards was below the prescribed cut-off.
œThe May 7 notification clears all confusion relating to admissions in DU affiliated colleges. Henceforth, students won™t contact college administrators to check if they are eligible for admission. If they score above the published cut-offs, affiliated colleges are obliged to admit them. This is a boon particularly for outstation candidates applying to DU colleges because such applicants are often fleeced by ˜admission agents™. We hope that the new policy will also address the issue of all discretionary admissions in affiliated colleges, says Aman Awana, president of the Delhi University Students™ Union.
However even as the notification is being celebrated by the student community, their joy is likely to be short-lived as college managements ” unable to reject candidates for failing to meet college-specific eligibility criteria ” will prescribe higher cut-offs. œNo student will be denied admission if she meets the cut-off, even if the seats are already full, says the notification.
Already burdened with over-admissions ” last year, DU colleges admitted 60,000 students for 54,000 undergraduate seats ” it remains to be seen how college managements will admit students without raising already sky-high cut-offs this year. In this connection, it™s pertinent to note that last year in their first cut-offs, 43 of 56 colleges offering commerce prescribed 90 percent while 23 colleges demanded class XII board exam averages above 95 percent. Also, there was a national media and public outcry after Ram Lal Anand College announced a perfect score ” 100 percent ” as the cut-off for admission into its B.Tech (computer science) programme last year, and after Shri Ram College of Commerce had prescribed 100 percent in 2011.
With the new academic session set to begin in July, the new admission system will be put to test when the first cut-offs will be announced on June 24. They may well cut the new cheer on DU college campuses short.
Garima Upadhyay (Delhi)