Mismanaging Higher Education

In its previous term the UPA government took a giant step to promote higher education in the country. The decision was prompted by the serious thinking that the country had acute shortage of graduates both in professional and traditional subjects. The central government, therefore, decided to set up more IITs and central universities in various parts of the country. And the HRD ministry has been given adequate funds to meet the financial requirements in this regard.

But it is indeed a flawed thinking that increasing the number of universities and IITs would improve the higher education situation in the country. More universities might increase the number of graduates but would not necessarily ensure a higher quality of education. We need to realize that higher education sector is as much riddled with corruption as any other walk of our collective life. Unless and until corruption is cleansed from higher education, the country should not expect any improvement in this vital sector.

A great Urdu poet has figuratively described the peculiar dilemma as well as the disease our higher education management is suffering from. He says:

Meer Kiya Khoob Hain Beemar Huai Jiske Sabab

Usi Attar Ke Laund-e-se Dawa Lete Hain.

Meer (the poet) is wonderfully naïve to take medicine.

From the (fair) boy who caused disease to him.

This exactly is the case of our central government. Its diagnosis of the ailment that higher education is suffering from was right but the agency chosen for providing medical treatment is none other than the bastion of corruption, the University Grants Commission.

The UGC is a pale shadow of what it was originally conceived to be. Its sole purpose was to promote and ensure quality higher education all across the country which it has failed to achieve. The UGC is full of officers who are incapable of seeing beyond their noses. They misuse their high position of being officer in this funding agency to secure lucrative appointments for their Kith and Kin in central/deemed universities and colleges. Deemed universities, especially the ones managed by the minorities, are particularly vulnerable to the manipulative individuals occupying high positions in the UGC. These disgraceful men go to any extent to benefit their near and dear ones and in the process damage the country’s educational system beyond recovery. The new UGC guidelines for the teachers is the latest example of manipulating institutional mechanism to favour one’s Kith and Kin. Otherwise, how can one justify it that an assistant professor will take 12 years to be promoted to the level of associate professor who will take only three years to become a professor. Can the UGC explain as to how the poor fellow will met all the high requirements in just three years time to reach the level of a professor. Obviously the UGC has framed the new guidelines to favour those who have been appointed readers/associate professors, legally or illegally, after September 2008.

The office of the Vice Chancellor is the centre of gravity in a university system. The Vice Chancellor has enormous power and becomes more powerful if he/she finds a patron in the UGC or HRD ministry. There are examples where such well-placed Vice Chancellors have done smart things for the institutions they head/headed. But most Vice Chancellors lack vision and leadership quality and mismanage the affairs of institutions they lead. They make and break promises at will and indulge in wrongful practices with full cooperation of the UGC. The Constitution says that everyone is equal before law but Vice Chancellors and the UGC ensure that some are more equal than others. As a result merit suffers and mediocrity flourishes in our universities. The ones who excel in academic publications are subjected to harassment, denied due promotion and tormented in many other ways. Promotions and rewards are accorded to those who are never seen reading a book and yet have authored over a dozen books. Our Vice Chancellors and the UGC never enquire as to how such miracles happen. Instead our Vice Chancellors are cajoled by the UGC to make appointments of its choice even if it involves breaking the rules. Mediocres are not only appointed but they are also given additional increments and rewarded with other favours. With such a sorry state of affairs prevailing in universities and UGC, how can we expect that merit and academic excellence would triumph over favouritism and nepotism?

It would be really appropriate to take stock of the performance of senior academics in our universities. Professors matter a lot in a university system as they are members of decision-making bodies and also occupy senior administrative positions. What prevents them from discharging their such duties as creating an atmosphere of democratic functioning in various bodies of universities. It is sad to note that, while a good number of academics are busy with their routine works of teaching and research, a great majority is more than eager to secure administrative positions. They help Vice Chancellors in breaking rules in order to curry favour with them. They clamour to grab high offices, not to serve some noble cause but to fulfill their base desires.

As can be imagined, the situation is very bad indeed. The central government seems to have a sense of corruption in the UGC and universities but does not appear to fully realize the dangers involved. It is just not enough to dismantle the notoriously inept and corrupt UGC and set up a Higher Education Commission in its place. The most important thing is to provide it with a clean and inspiring leadership which has integrity, vision, clarity of thought and, above all, believes in democratic functioning of academic institutions.

[June, 2010]

Making Retirement Meaningful

Life can be more enjoyable and may have a deeper meaning if we just manage our time and utilize our resources properly. For an average middle class man life comes to an end the moment he retires. He thinks the busy days are over and the period of leisure has set in. But he is grossly mistaken, specially if he is still fit, mentally and physically.

Retirement is a technical word to mean the end of the routine job you have been doing since long. It, however, does not mean to be lazy or inactive. Life may continue to be active and meaningful even after retirement.

Most middle classmen become free of routine responsibilities of parenting by the time they retire. They have a house and pension to live on and their children are married and settled. This gives them abundance of time to serve the larger society they are living in.

Our developing societies have a lot many problems which government agencies alone are either unable to solve or they neglect their duties. Retired middle class men can step in here and become the conscience keeper of the society.

Take the case of a retired teacher, for example. He is healthy and alert and can contribute to the wellbeing of the society. He has the option to pass his time with his grand children. But a better and more meaningful option would be to get busy with disadvantaged children struggling to join the race of life. His teaching experience can help them in a varieties of ways as he could be their tutor, counselor and guide.

Relatively well off middle class men can do even better. They can launch NGOs, join welfare associations and take up common causes to serve the public at large. Our system of governance is plagued with corruption and inefficiency and the country is facing problems of all kinds. Retired but healthy middle class men can help the country in overcoming many obstacles and provide leadership to the civil society of which they are proud members. There are men engaged in numerous projects that they have launched to clean the environment we are breathing in. There are also people who are rendering selfless services to the disadvantaged and the marginalized. And there are many areas where neither any government agency nor any NGO or private organization is active to attend and solve people’s problems. Retired people can find works here to keep themselves busy and continue being useful to the society.

The Muslim community in India has a tiny middle class. Historically speaking, they took to modern education quite late which delayed the emergence of a Muslim middle class. Then happened the Partition in 1947 whose shock waves were felt well upto 1960 and beyond causing the flight of the Muslim middle class to Pakistan, England and other places. The loss to the Muslim community can just be imagined.

A new Muslim middle class, though small in size, has emerged recently. In fact, the ones who braved to be in schools and colleges even in the depression period of 1950s and 1960s have either retired today or are on the verge of retirement. There is no denying the fact that this middle class is not very rich nor many of them have the satisfaction of their children being happily married and settled. In fact, a good number has problems at personal or family levels to solve which keep them preoccupied. Thus we can imagine that only a small minority of the tiny Muslim middle class is truly in a position to help their community as well as the country.

Social service is a daunting task, specially if one has to work among the uneducated or semi-educated poor whose level of awareness is pathetically low. This scares many middle class men who prefer to remain idle and lead a boring retired life. These are the men who need to be impressed upon that being in the thick of affairs would not only keep them healthy but would also provide them with opportunities to enjoy life in a better way, even make their retirement more meaningful and beneficial to the society.

[May, 2010]

Jihad Against Corruption

India has the dubious distinction of being among the top most corrupt nations of the world. There is corruption in every walk of life here. You look from top to bottom or the vice versa, corruption is visible everywhere. Often it displays itself shamelessly.

Corruption’s most ugly and vulgar display is seen in the political class of the country. Hardly a year passes without a politician being caught with huge money amassed illegally: Citing one or two examples here would be an injustice to many a dozen politician, so we avoid it.

Bureaucracy is not far behind. It often rubs shoddier with the political class and competes in corruption with them. Bureaucracy is a privileged class in our country. Politicians, if not caught by CBI and other investigating agencies, are tried in people’s court after every five year. People, when duly informed about their corrupt leaders muster courage, exhibit intelligence and reject them. But the bureaucracy has no such trial courts to face, so they go on indulging in corruption unless caught red-handed. It must be kept in mind here that the CBI and other investigating or vigilance agencies normally go after the big fishes; small fries are generally ignored.

It must also be noted here that CBI, the country’s premier investigating agency is not without black sheeps. There is corruption in it as well. Moreover, CBI is often alleged to be functioning under political influence. Nevertheless CBI alone is reliably effective investigating agency and functions honestly as and when it is free of political pressure and biases.

The saddest aspect is that corruption has crept in judiciary as well. Lower judiciary has always been prone to bad influences. Now the higher judiciary itself has spoken of freeing itself of corruption which amounts to accepting the presence of bad elements in Supreme and High Courts. Corruption in upper judiciary often appears in the form of twisting the law to favour one or another party. One wonders why judges are so reluctant to disclose their assets while they want all others to do it. The judiciary must clean its house as soon as possible for the temple of justice now remains the only source of hope for the common people.

The political class with legislative and executive powers is always powerful enough to indulge in corruption. They are also quite intelligent to find out new methods of corruption. Arm-twisting the industrialists, businessmen and film-makers is an out-moded method of corruption. The ingenious method is to pump black money in new kinds of business which are dubious and yet protected by law. The Indian Premier League (IPL) that organizes T-20 cricket is such a venture.

Until now cricket was a game with money for players and entertainment for public. Betting and match-fixing were never considered part of the game but these were always sought to be eliminated as bad practices. But the IPL has changed the rule of the game; it has changed the game also. The entertainment side of the game is, no doubt, still there. But just a look on one IPL game is enough to convince beyond doubt that it has become more a business and sleaze than a game of cricket.

The head of a union minister has already fallen and two are under cloud. This is not an ordinary situation and the government must capitalize on the opportunity that has come its way to clean the mess and reshape cricket just as a source of public entertainment. The detestable parties held to celebrate victory after every match involve a lot of sleaze, wine-drinking and other varieties of vulgarities and deserve to be banned with immediate effect.

A deeper, and perhaps a philosophical, question needs to be asked here: why India ranks among the top most corrupt countries of the world. Is it olny because our political class, industrialists, businessmen, bureaucrats and technocrats are corrupt and all others, especially the common people are honest? There is no denying the fact that there are corrupt and dishonest in the ranks of common people also.

[April, 2010]

A Lot More is Needed to be Done

A full-fledged Ministry of Minority Affairs was created in 2007. Veteran Congress leader Mr A.R. Antulay was the first choice to head this ministry. The functions assigned to the ministry overlapped with those of others and Mr. Antulay had to work hard to give his ministry an independent shape. Mr. Antulay is very old and his vast experiences might have helped him as well as the ministry in its early days. The fact, however, is that the ministry failed miserably during his stewardship in fulfilling people’s expectations. The fund allocated to the ministry for carrying out welfare measures for minorities remained largely unspent.

The new minister, Mr. Salman Khurshid seems to be gradually overcoming the problems which are numerous and complex. Until September 2009 the ministry had spent less than five per cent of the funds allocated to it. Some reports suggest that things have improved since then and by December 2009 some 17% of the allocated fund was spent on various schemes launched to benefit the minorities.

Mr. Khurshid, in a sense, had to start afresh and now seems to have overcome some of the problems facing the ministry since Mr Antulay’s time. The advantage with Mr Khurshid is that he is relatively young, dynamic, energetic and focused. He is also free of seniority syndrome or complex which probably has helped him in solving some of the problems his ministry faced. Let us hope he would overcome the remaining obstacles as well. We specially hope that he would soon develop a viable mechanism to implement his ministry’s programmes effectively.

It would be appropriate to critically appreciate the ministry’s programmes and offer constructive suggestions. Let us all become stakeholders in the affairs of the ministry.

A flagship scheme of the ministry is distributing scholarships to increase minorities’ participation in the higher education sector. It is good that the scheme is being implemented through the UGC which has enormous experience in the field. One just hopes that the UGC acts a bit faster than it normally does. The problem, however, is that the total number of scholarships is just over 700. The number must increase to many thousands indeed. We have our reason.

The 11^th plan (which would end in less than two years) allocation for multisectoral development of minorities in 90 earmarked districts is Rs. 2750 crores. However, the approved fund for implementing minority-specific schemes was Rs 1562 crores out of which only 77 crores was spent upto September 2009 which is a mere 4.93% of the approved funds for 2009-10 and 2.8% of the 11^th plan allocation. It means huge amount remains unspent. And surely one easy and fruitful way to use the money should be increasing the number of fellowships.

The Ministry of Minority Affairs has announced over 700 scholarships for pursuing higher education. One scholarship is worth Rs. 12000/- per month and thus the seven hundred scholarships would cost a total of Rs. 122500000/- per annum which is less than one per cent of the approved fund (Rs 1562 crores) for the fiscal year 2009-10. One wonders why it has not been 10% of the approved fund as it would have created many thousand scholarships. We must keep in mind that multi-sectoral development of the minority-dominated 90 districts has to primarily focus on education, healthcare and housing. Therefore the demand for increase in the number of scholarship is not without reason.

We all accept that education is the key to empowerment. Education, therefore, must receive the focused attention of the Ministry of Minority Affairs. The ministry may be well-advised to focus not only on higher education but also on primary and secondary education. One wonders if it would be possible for the MMA to set up schools on the pattern of Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalayas in the minority-dominated districts? If it ever happens, it would surely go a long way to educationally empower Muslims and other minorities.

A cursory look at the district level religious data reveals that a majority of districts have Muslim population between 8 to 15 percent. However, the 90 minority-dominated districts are the ones which have over 20% minority population. The need, therefore, is to also identify and earmark the districts with eight and above percentile of minority population for multi-sectoral development as it would help more and more members of the minority communities.

Just by opening schools we can not empower Muslims educationally. A big problem is how to reduce high dropout rate of Muslims in schools? Another problem is how to improve the quality of education at primary and secondary levels? These require far-sighted policies and long-term strategies. Above all, we need to create an effective and honest mechanism to implement the schemes we make.

[March, 2010]