Against the backdrop of a gradual sea change in higher education, privately promoted universities are set to dominate the higher education segment, lamentations of left intellectuals notwithstanding. Private institutions of higher education are the abused step children of the Indian State and society. In the lexicon of the “socialistic pattern of society” which Jawaharlal Nehru and his heirs within the Congress party imposed upon the newly-independent country despite its five-millennia tradition of free trade and markets, “commercialisation of education” became one of the seven deadly sins uncritically accepted as such by the Supreme Court and society. Although in the new millennium the learned judges of the apex court have shown signs of awareness that with the number of youth aspiring for high-quality post-secondary education rising exponentially, the promotion of commercially viable private colleges and universities has become necessary, within academia and society there’s still a bad odour about private institutions of higher education. Yet the plain truth is that without the great pioneers in private higher education and their stoic determination to establish professional education institutions, especially engineering and medical colleges, India’s globally-acknowledged information communication technology (ICT) services industry which contributes $105 billion (Rs.668,219 crore) per year to the Indian economy, would have been a non-starter. The country’s doctor-pupil ratio (1:2,000) would be even worse. However, instead of society’s gratitude, the country’s pioneer edupreneurs had to endure continuous calumny and suffer expropriation by the State of up to 80 percent of capacity. Indeed, right up to the dawn of the 21st century, even after Indian industry was freed from the worst constraints of neta-babu socialism, the Supreme Court — packed with committed judges by Indira Gandhi and successive Congress governments — continued to legitimise expropriation of huge capacity in private colleges by state governments. In 1993 in Unnikrishnan vs. State of Andhra Pradesh, a full bench of the apex court legitimised a complex matrix of government quota, merit and management seats in private professional colleges under which only 20 percent of admissions could be made at the discretion of promoter-managements. With the combined investment of the Central and state governments in education averaging a mere 3.25 percent of GDP for the past 68 years since independence as against 5 percent globally, and the developed OECD countries allocating 7-10 percent of their GDP towards education, the nation owes a debt of gratitude to edupreneurs such as the late Dr. TMA Pai (1898-1979) who established the Manipal Education Group; Dr. S.B. Mujumdar (Symbiosis Group); P.S. Govindaswamy Naidu (PSG Group) and Dr. KVV Satyanarayan Raju (Chaitanya Group) among others. Despite every official discouragement, with dogged determination they promoted and developed globally-benchmarked institutes of professional education which have trained and certified millions of engineers, medical practitioners, nurses, pharmacists and media, communication and animation among other professionals, without whom the Indian economy would be even more backward than it is currently. Providentially, following the Narasimha Rao-led Congress government’s economic liberalisation and deregulation initiative of 1991-92 which immediately lifted the Indian economy out of its 3.5…
