Post-independence India’s Nehruvian socialist legacy has ensured there’s no stopping the slide of academia into mediocrity. Not only has public expenditure (Centre plus states) remained stuck in the 3-3.5 percent per annum groove for over 60 years as against 6 percent recommended by the high-powered Kothari Commission in 1966, the country’s higher judiciary has facilitated back-door nationalisation of privately-promoted education (Unnikrishnan Case 1993), by legitimising reams of rules and regulations stymieing all private initiatives in education. The latest higher judiciary pronouncement that shoots the already hobbling Indian education system in the foot, is a September order of Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw of the Delhi high court, dismissing a suit filed by Cambridge University Press, James Taylor & Co and Oxford University Press against Rameshwari Photocopying Services sited on the Delhi University campus. The latter replicated reams of material from textbooks published by the plaintiffs and has created “course packs” mapped with college and university study programmes, sold to students at a profit. The court held this doesn’t amount to infringement of copyright. The 94-page ruling observed that photocopying and creation of course packs for the use of students is permitted under provisions of the Copyright Act, 1957. Commonsense would indicate this issue has wider implications than interpretation of the Copyright Act. It’s a plain act of theft of intellectual property and violates the right of citizens (book distributors, retailers etc) to carry on a business, trade and profession (Article 19 (1) (g). If the Copyright Act permits such theft, the Act itself is violative of several constitutional provisions. This populist verdict is dangerous for Indian education because it will dissuade foreign publishers from exporting textbooks to India where indigenously written textbooks tend to be of pathetic quality. Therefore, the already poor learning attainments of school and college students will go from bad to worse. The learned judge should have known better. Neta-babu freeloaders There’s a seemingly incorrigible blind spot in the greedy Indian middle class which stepped into the shoes of British colonial rulers who lived life king size in the immiserised subcontinent for almost two centuries, during which the rate of annual GDP growth averaged 1 percent. Despite the deep poverty of the masses, particularly in rural India, they see no reason to cut down the perquisites of office, especially foreign travel at public expense. The example was perhaps set by independent India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, who during an era when foreign exchange purchase by the public for leisure and travel was limited to $5, nevertheless sojourned in the UK and elsewhere every summer on official business, undeniably mixed with rest and recreation. Since then, this perk of office has become an entitlement not only of Central government leaders and bureaucrats but of their counterparts in India’s 29 states and seven Union territories as well. Unsurprisingly, neither the Central nor state governments publish data disclosing the annual cost of neta-babu junkets. This expenditure is buried in ministry expenses under various heads. The latest worthy commendably outed by…
