CORPORATIZATION
OF TECHNICAL EDUCATION IN INDIA, DEPARTURE FROM SOCIAL JUSTICE AND
ECONOMIC EQUALITY.
A Critical
Evalution by Prof. Thota Jyothi Rani.
View Point .
{Published in
'CLASSSTRUGGLE' organ of CPI(ML) central Committe.
It is really possible to eradicate poverty, unemployment, to improve
the lives of the people in general and rural poor in particular, to
free the farmer from sufferings, to end all sorts of inequalities, to
attain qualitative progress in the living standards of people so as
to protect the democratic values and ultimately to realize social
justice only with the “Technical Education” which is expected to
provide “technical skills associated with social consciousness”.
This will pave the way for the process of building socio-economic
structures based on equity. What is the nature and state of this
highly significant “Technical Education” in present India? How is
it being articulated and for whose interests? What is its effect on
our structures of economy, social justice, democratic relations and
human values especially in the context of intensification of
corporatization of “Technical Education” in India? All these
issues are to be analyzed and discussed seriously to create a
favourable environment for the emergence of socially conscious
technical education.
Technical education itself will not become an instrument
automatically to achieve economic equality and social justice in
India where all kind of inequalities based on class, caste, gender
and region have been rooted strongly in the structures of society. It
is not an automatic tool. It needs to be linked with the
consciousness of studies of social sciences and humanities to
transform it into an efficient and effective means to build the
structures of society on the basis of equity and rights. It is known
to all, that Albert Einstein who invented “Atom Bomb” had
seriously perturbed and worried by looking at the violent effects on
Hiroshima & Nagasaki during World War II. He strongly opined that
“social consciousness is a necessary pre-condition for scientific
and technical education”. Therefore, he categorically stated as
early as in 1954 that “it is not enough to teach a person a
specialty. It is essential that the student acquire an understanding
of and a lively feeling for values and a vivid sense of the morally
good. Otherwise, the person with specialized skills and knowledge,
more closely resembles a “well-trained dog” rather than a
harmoniously developed person”. The nature and pattern of use of
the development, inventions and innovations of science and technology
determines its effect. If it is used with the social consciousness,
then it is possible to move towards ending all sorts of exploitation,
oppression and violence so as to build humane structures of society.
Does the introduction of technical education in India with the
perspectives of self-reliant economic development and social justice?
The emergence of industrial revolution in England resulted in the
origin and development of present technical education. At that time,
India was under the colonial rule of England. The then government
implemented several policy measures including discriminatory tariff
system to deindustrialize India to destroy technical expertise and
manufacturing activity so as to transform India as a market for the
survival of British machine-industries. The articulation of Indian
economy according to the needs and development of England resulted in
the backwardness and its perpetuation till now.
In this context, can we expect the objective of the policy measures
of British Indian Government towards the development of Technical
Education was really to make India as self-reliant economy?
In the Pre-Independence period, the then British Indian Government
tried to expose itself that it gives importance to technical
development in India and constituted a committee in 1945 under the
chairmanship of N.R.Sarkar for the creation of adequate number of
technically skilled persons. Why do we need adequate number of
technical persons? For whose benefit? What is the real interest of
British Government? To meet the post-war needs of the Britain and to
revive its industrial development was the real purpose. The origin
and articulation of present technical education in India itself was
not from the perspective of the development of Indian economy but the
needs of dominant countries especially Britain at that time. This
trend has been established, expanded and strengthened strongly.
The committee in its report in 1946 has recommended that it is
necessary to establish four Indian institutes of Technology (IITs) on
the lines of Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT] in US.
However, it was astonishing to note that the government of
‘Independent’ India in the Post-Independence period wanted to
invite American Team to give suggestions to establish IITs in India.
The team naturally lacks perspective on the social and political
realities of India. They did not search for alternative ways of
technological and national development of India. They failed to
achieve any co-ordination between IITs and Democratic values as well
as needs of our country. This clearly states that the rulers have
totally forgotten to think about our economic conditions and identify
the political and social realities. Thus, the establishment of the
institutes of technical education took place not to solve our
problems and are totally unrelated to the challenges of our country.
Therefore, their pattern of organization has been articulated
according to the needs of global market and to the agenda of
corporate powers. Did the IITs play any role in the economic
development of our nation or in the protection of democratic values?
What is the justification to allocate huge amount of scarce resources
to maintain them? These are the serious questions.
What will be done by the engineering graduates trained in these
institutions which have been articulated as per the agenda of
corporate forces? They tempt to work in affluent countries and in
multi-national corporations. They leave the country for the
self-centered advantages. This phenomenon of leakage of high quality
technical persons has been named as “Brain Drain” and the
consequent serious harm done to the nation has been intensively
discussed during 1970’s.
As early as in 1961, the “Nayudamma Committee” has seriously
recommended that there is an urgent need to redesign engineering
syllabus with inter-disciplinary approach and curricula should be
made broad based and flexible. Moreover, it should contain
substantial studies in social sciences and humanities including heavy
dosages of basic and biological sciences. All this is warranted to
humanize the professions as well as the professionals and technical
experts. Unfortunately, the government did not put any effort to
implement these recommendations which are significant for building
humane socio-economic structures.
It is astonishing to note that the origin and development of
privatisation has been closely associated with the development of
IITs which are exclusively under the control of Central government. A
mushroom growth took place in the establishment of various private
coaching centers to give coaching exclusively for IIT entrance test.
It is really a paradox to identify the implicit connection between
seeds of privatisation and the development of institutions of
technical education under the control of central government. This
trend advanced further and on the name of “IIT Foundation from
secondary school education”, the private corporate schools have
been charging and collecting high fee and made school education more
costly. This is the bitter reality of the present day.
The forward linkage of articulation of IITs according to the needs
and interests of corporate forces resulted in the backward linkage of
growth of privatisation. At present the number of IITs in our country
are 21 when we take into account the promise of central government in
its budget 2014-2015 to establish 5 IITs. These are followed by
National institutes of Technology [NITs]. They are 30 in our country.
The next status goes to constituent engineering colleges of
universities. All these institutes of Technical Education come under
public sector.
Our Technical Education sector, since its inception, has been moulded
from the perspective of the interests of corporate forces and will
naturally be attractive for private investments which work for
profit. Therefore, the private institutes could enter and expand into
the technical education sector as early as the Third five year plan
and huge growth can be seen in the non-grant technical institutes
that run with capitation fee from 1974-75. They could get strong
support from the state governments. This trend is strong especially
in Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamilnadu and undivided Andhra Pradesh.
By 1985, as many as 33,578 engineering students are in private
institutes while only 24,313 are in public institutes. Similar trend
can be seen even at the diploma level where 62,998 students are in
private institutes where as 51,927 are in public institutes. This
clearly shows the relative strength of private institutes when
compared to public institutes. The accelerated growth and expansion
of private technical institutes resulted in the deterioration of
academic standards and the quality of teaching and training. The
process of termination of social consciousness among students has
been strengthened.
Public policies have been formulated to accelerate privatisation in
the technical education sector even prior to the entry of
globalization in the name of New Economic Policy in 1990-91. The
National Education Policy, 1986 will be a clear evidence for this
trend. The University grants Commission has initiated various reforms
according to the prescription of the policy. It is a known fact that
in the era of globalization the term “reforms” itself indicates
the creation of favourable environment for the development and
expansion of privatisation. This resulted in the abnormal
multiplication of private technical institutes which run exclusively
with self-financing courses and capitation fee. At the end of Tenth
Five Year Plan, their number is 45,122 and enrolment of students
stand at 7.83 lakhs.
Moreover, the State governments have formulated Private University
Acts to legalise the process of Privatisation of Technical education.
The domination of Private sector in the institutes related to
engineering and management has been increased with the establishment
of Jawaharlal Nehru Technical University [JNTU] in the undivided
Andhra Pradesh, the best example for this trend. 1) How many people
have the capacity to pay the high fee charged by these institutions?
2) What is the guarantee of profits for the managements of these
private technical institutes? In order to solve the second problem
i.e., to give guarantee to the profits for private managements, the
government has introduced ‘Fee Reimbursement Programme’ in the
name of ‘provision of corporate technical education to the poor is
the responsibility of the government’.
The pro-corporate measure has successfully been shown as pro-poor
measure. Moreover, is it not shame on the part of government to state
‘corporate’ is superior to public institutions? These private
managements possess enormous political strength. Further, they
successfully misused the ‘Fee Reimbursement Programme’ in various
ways to appropriate government funds and became further rich. The
constitution of ‘Vigilance Committees’ in Telangana in recent
days, to arrest the misuse of funds, indicates the extent of
misappropriation of government funds. Meanwhile, they stopped ‘Fee
reimbursement’. The management class, which could appropriate all
the benefits from this programme so far, have been throwing the
incidence of burden from stoppage of fee-reimbursement onto the
teachers and staff. It is very difficult for the teachers to survive
without pay for months together. Their lives became miserable. In
fact, working in these institutes itself is very difficult as always
they have to prove that they are profitable to the institute.
Many people are of the opinion that the real intention behind the
stoppage of fee-reimburse ment is to create a favourable environment
for the initiation of insurance-based technical education system as
“the provision of loans for education”. This “creation of
insurance-based education system” is a strong proposal of the World
Bank. The remaining programme is to weaken public institutions so as
to encourage private institutions. This resulted in the shortage of
teachers in prestigious institutes to the extent of 36 percent in
IITs and 41 percent in NITs. Private engineering colleges, whose sole
aim is profit, are appointing fresh B.Tech graduates to teach B.Tech
students. Enrolment of engineering students in these institutions
stands at 15 lakhs, while the shortage of teachers is as high as
80,000. This is the state [fate] of so called “efficient” private
colleges. Out of 15 lakh engineering graduates, only 5 percent are
going to PG level. It is astonishing to note that as low as 1 percent
of them could go upto Ph.D level. However, the standards are
controversial. Everybody knows that the research basically lacks
seriousness, sincerity and discipline. Is it possible to expect to
realize the recommendation of Nayudamma Committee - “research
towards humanizing professions”?
Keeping aside the characteristics of social conscious ness, respect
for democratic values, self-confidence, self-respect, protesting
injustice, fight for justice that an engineering graduate is expected
to possess, do they deserve their degrees in terms of at least
expertise? The phenomenon of “Easy going” which is created and
strengthened by the process of globalization is the answer for that
question. On one hand, they study in private colleges, and on the
other, to learn additional knowledge in IT and computers they move
around private coaching centres which can be seen everywhere on the
roads. The public sector leads to private, private leads to private.
Privatisation and its expansion is like octopus. If the purpose of
education is to meet the needs of market then it will be dictated by
private sector only. Though the education is linked to employment,
the estimates of National Association of Software and services
Company [NASSCOM] reveals the bitter fact that out of 85 percent
engineering students who belong to self-financing engineering
colleges, as low as less than 20 percent could get jobs. What is the
fate of unemployed engineering graduates? They cannot earn anything
for their livelihood. They are useful neither to themselves nor to
the society. These self-centred, easy going youth will not question
the imperialist exploitation and the domination of corporate forces.
Of course World Bank wants and perpetuates this kind of tendency.
Moreover, the youth who are caught in the lure of luxurious life have
been forced to become criminals and earn something through the
activities of fraud. The media is disclosing about the lives of women
where they are compelled to become sex-workers sometimes. All these
deterioration and decay is the result of corporatization of technical
education. Still, Public policies have been formulated to intensify
this crisis is the biggest tragedy.
What is the nature of Public Policies? The intensification of the
crisis due to government decisions and public policies is because of
the fact that they declare the cause of the problem as the solution.
Public policies have been formulated to invite corporate institutes
by stating “Corporatisation of technical education is the only way
to achieve development”. Now corporate companies can start courses
with the permission of AICTE. With this, the government states that
it is possible to raise the enrolment ratio to 21 percent by 2017.
The department of Human Resource Development Ministry has been
initiating various reforms to accelerate corporatisation of technical
education. Now, the challenge, they feel is how to attract corporate
investments? For this, they chose the model of Public-Private
Partnership [PPP] and Build-Operate-transfer-Model [BOOT]. It is a
fact that both the models are pro-corporate and anti-people.
It is stunning to note the statement of government and its network
that as technical education is profitable to the private sector and
corporate forces, it is their responsibility to make investment in
this sector. This explicitly states the abandonment of the goals of
the social justice and the protection of democratic values.
The issue is what kind of technical education and for whose benefit
does the corporate sector provides technical education? The technical
education “will be for the corporate sector, of the corporate
sector and by the corporate sector”. The approach itself is
corporate forces-centred, while people’s interest is totally
missing in it.
The National Knowledge Commission which is popularly known as Yashpal
Committee estimates that there is a need to establish more than 1000
universities and more than 10,000 colleges to raise the enrolment
ratio in the Higher Education sector. Moreover, it is necessary to
attract High-Calibre teachers and encourage research. It concludes
that all this will be possible only through corporatisation.
According to the estimates of this committee, the market value of our
Higher Education sector is 20 billion US dollars. Therefore, it
requires an investment of 20 billion US Dollars in the next 10-12
years. Who will make investment at this level? It is possible only
for the corporate forces. Therefore, the question is how to attract
these forces? A forthcoming white paper of confederation of Indian
Industry [CII] entitled “Discovering New Models of Increasing
Private Participation in Higher Education” is expected to address
the issues of quantification of investment required, identification
of sources of funds, the level of private participation required, the
experiences of various countries and how to take loan from World Bank
and Asian Development Bank. All this is a clear evidence of
mortgaging our technical education to corporate forces on the name of
raising enrolment ratio, provision of quality education and bridge
rural-urban divide.
However it is not the indepen dent decision of our government to
corporatize technical education. It is because of the strong inter
national pressures, especially the pressure of the World Bank.
What are those International Pressures? What are its effects?
The dominant capitalist countries along with their local network
could succeed in creating conditions to compel major socialist
countries to step backward which resulted in the end of ideological
confrontation.
This cleared the way for aggressive and arrogant growth of capitalist
system. The capitalist/corporate forces could unite strongly. The
emergence and accelerated growth of globalization is the result of
the consolidation of the corporate forces. The World Bank could play
key and strategic role to create ideological basis as well as real
conditions to strengthen this trend. The corporate forces will
sustain and continue without any questioning if they control
education sector with which they can direct and dictate youth and
mould them accordingly to their needs. They can command entire
structures of economy. Consequently imperialist exploitation will
continue without any hindrance. In this process, the World Bank
released a report in 1994 entitled “Higher Education - Lessons of
Experience”. This created a strong basis to eradicate government
control over higher education system including Technical and
professional education, to strengthen privatisation and ultimately to
bring the higher education system under complete control of corporate
forces.
The process of intensi-fication of privatisation results in the
demise of courses that are called as intellectual capital which is an
essential pre-requisite for the social progress. The engineering and
management courses assumed significance. Moreover, the courses
related to computers and IT became the indicators of knowledge. The
youth who are trained in these lines always tries for opportunities
in foreign countries and high salary package jobs at any cost but
will not have any kind of social consciousness. They are totally
illiterates about social justice and human relations. No self-respect
at all. Moreover, they are characterized by timidness which results
in the tolerance of all kinds of oppression, exploitation and
injustice. The youth with slave mentality is very much essential for
the sustenance of imperialist exploitation.
To stiffen this trend and to establish the argument that ‘There is
no alternative for corporatization’ World Bank has released a
report entitled “Constructing knowledge Societies: New challenges
for Tertiary education” in 2002. The essence of the report is that
Higher Education means engineering and Management courses and this
kind of education will be provided effectively only by corporate
forces. No one else will process the capability.
The corporatized institutes of Technical education will naturally
take the form of big business corporations in the market. Their
strong assumption is that the “Market is the solution for every
problem”. Therefore, deep knowledge is unnecessary. The student
will become customer or client. The courses are offered on the basis
of market demand. No need to think about the requirements of people
or society. No place for morality.
The regulations are to be followed- that’s all. The techniques are
above to all the values. The wage differentiation will be so great
where no two individual employees in any organization will have same
wage. No question of unionization and consolidation. The employees
cannot unite on any issue. No employment on permanent basis. The
casualization will be a dominant phenomenon. The institution of
education has been managed as a company. The low standards will be
the actual phenomenon. They follow ‘Market Driven Strategy’. The
public institutes will be thrown on to ‘Death Bed. No one will be
there to debate and discuss about the society critically. If the
Nobel Prize awardees spoke on these issues, then it is ok. Prior to
corporatization, any ordinary normal academic person can talk about
social issues where as now the moral leadership is totally
transferred to Nobel laureates. Therefore any normal academic either
teacher or student will have no autonomy to speak or discuss about
social issues and democratic values. If they speak, they are termed
as criminals and terrorists and liable for legal action. The
incidents of University of Hyderabad and Jawaharlal University (JNU),
Delhi are the best examples for this.
On the one hand, UNO’s UNDP publishes Human Development Report with
various indices of human and gender development but the models
developed by countries which are in the highest position in Human
Development have not been accepted by the World Bank. This is a
serious contradiction. The World Bank will not agree to the best
models of education of Scandinavian countries such as Norway, Sweden
which are in the forefront of Human Development. Unless they are
market- oriented and there by pro-corporate, the World Bank will have
no trust on them. The pro-people models are termed by the World Bank
as ‘Worst Models’. Further, it will criticize that their Higher
Education sector is characterized by “Too much student welfare, Too
much State control, Too much academic independence, Too much public
involvement, Too little cost sharing by students, Too little market
considerations”. Thus the World Bank will accept, popularize and
pressurise the globe especially developing countries like India to
take serious measures towards corporatization of Higher Education as
well as Technical Education. The aim of building ‘Knowledge
Societies’ itself is to strengthen the domination of corporate
forces.
As a result of corporatization of Technical education as part of
Higher Education, the poverty is increasing, no livelihood, and
extreme inequalities on the rise. The majority people are deprived of
education and health services. The Oxfam Report categorically states
that it is necessary to emancipate the education and the health
sectors to lessen the intensity of inequalities. Therefore, it is the
greater responsibility of the progressive groups who have faith in
people- centered approach to mobilise people in this direction.
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