The Karnataka state government order of August 18 closing down a massive number of 1,416 privately-promoted primary schools with an aggregate enrollment of 2.73 lakh children in the six-14 age group, is symptomatic of all that’s wrong with post-independence India’s failed education system. It’s reflective of the reckless and negligent official mindset which has generated the world’s largest population of comprehensive illiterates and 40 million registered unemployed within a nation blessed with the contemporary world’s largest and most high-potential human resource pool.
The offence of the schools which invoked the implacable wrath of Basvaraj Horatti, the state’s minister of primary and secondary education who has the full support of the Janata Dal (Secular)-BJP coalition government which was voted to power in Karnataka — hyped as the country’s knowledge hub — eight months ago, is trivial. Their promoter-managements are alleged to have violated a state government order stipulating that the medium of instruction in all junior primary schools (classes I-V) promoted after 1994 had to be in the state’s official language Kannada or the child’s mother tongue. They have committed the cardinal sin of providing education in English — universally acknowledged as the link language of India and the language of international business and diplomacy.
Busy dodging a fusillade of corruption and graft charges which have numbered its days in office, the unstable coalition government in the state has suffered a massive disconnect with reality and the modest upward mobility aspirations of the neglected poor at the base of the iniquitous social pyramid. It is pertinent to note that the closure order is applicable only to down-market schools affiliated with the Karnataka State Education Board. It does not apply to upscale schools affiliated with the pan-India CBSE and ICSE boards, or to expensive five-star schools affiliated with foreign boards.
This blatant class-based discrimination apart, several other questions should be answered by the evidently preoccupied state government before it reconfirms its closure order which is due to become operational after schools re-open on October 10 following the Dassera holidays. First, why wasn’t this allegedly grave misdemeanour detected and corrected during the past 12 years since the 1994 order was promulgated? Why is the choice of parents who quite obviously want their children to learn in English, being disregarded? Is the government aware that currently there is a global English-learning boom and that over 500 million Chinese students of all ages are enrolled for intensive English learning programmes and this development could well negate India’s English language advantage in the near future?
In all civilized societies the paramountcy of child-centricism within the education system is a given. The callous disregard of this cardinal principle on the specious ground of promoting vernacular languages, suggests a deeper mischief. What is the connection of the so-called Kannada lobby with vernacular language education publishers looking for captive markets for their shabby, ill-written textbooks? This is an unexplored area which needs thorough investigation to correct this monstrous injustice.
Thorny issue of collegiate tuition fees
The death of Prof. H.S. Sabharwal in the small town of Ujjain (pop.700,000) on August 26 during a demonstration protesting the cancellation of a student union election, is symptomatic of a deep malaise which is debilitating India’s second-tier, small-town institutions of higher learning. Whether the late professor died of a stress attack or was pummeled to death by a group of militant students, the moot point which was surely noted by hundreds of thousands of viewers of the television clips which were repeatedly telecast by national news channels, is that the protesting student leaders of ABVP (Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad), the student wing of the BJP, were very angry and agitated. And it is unlikely that the postponement of the date of a students union election was the root cause of their anger.
The dominant belief within the education ministries at the Centre and in the states seems to be that any education is better than no education at all. Therefore minimal attention is paid to fundamental issues such as supportive infrastructure, adequacy of teachers, syllabus and curriculum updation and sufficiency of financial allocations made to schools and institutions of higher education. Tight-fisted minimalism resulting in ritual rather than real education, is the hallmark of government financed institutions of learning, except in the case of a few show-piece institutions such as the IIMs and IITs which are over-indulged.
A major cause of perennial financial stringency in all government schools, colleges and universities is fudging of the issue of tuition fees. While there is undoubtedly a case for blanket subsidisation of government-provided primary and perhaps secondary education because universal literacy is a public or societal good, full subsidisation of tertiary education which is the norm in government-funded institutions of higher education, is much less defensible. For the simple reason that the personal benefit derived by an individual receiving subsidised higher education is much greater than derived by society. Therefore standardised subsidisation of all students in top grade government funded tertiary institutions such as the IITs, IIMs, St. Stephen’s and Presidency colleges where students pay a fraction of the actual cost of education by way of tuition is inequitable, unjust and the prime cause of the financial emergency which characterises government funded schools and colleges.
Quite clearly, the existing tuition fee model prevailing in institutions of higher education dominated by government is wasteful, iniquitous and obsolete. It needs to be replaced by a rational system under which all students are charged the price of actual education provision with liberal scholarships and subsidies provided to socio-economically disadvantaged students.
In sum, drastic reform of the collegiate tuition fees system which is draining Indian education of resources is overdue. The alternative is rising student anger and frustration being manifested in the seething colleges of small-town India.