In the over-regulated education sector, politicians with clout, connections and insider knowledge, can cut through red tape and quickly expand capacity. But political wheeling and dealing habits die hard with scandals and allegations of corruption surfacing with tedious regularity. Vidya Pandit reports from Lucknow • August, 2005. Mulayam Singh Yadav, the then chief minister of Uttar Pradesh, sanctioned a government grant of Rs.103.44 crore to the Choudhary Charan Singh Post Graduate College (CCSPGC), sited in his parliamentary constituency of Etawah and managed by the Siksha Prasar Samiti, headed by his brother Shivpal Singh Yadav. Shortly thereafter, the chief minister diverted Rs.69 crore from the UP state govern-ments total budget of Rs.71 crore for unaided degree colleges, to CCSPGC • February, 2007. The management of the NDMVPS Medical College, Nasik, promoted by Nationalist Congress Party MLA Vasantrao Pawar, provoked an outrage by doubling annual tuition fees from Rs.97,000 to Rs.180,000 without any notice to enrolled or applicant students. • May 2008: P.K. Misra, UP chief secretary, resigned after being forced by chief minister Mayawati to transfer 74 acres of land to the Dr. Shakuntala Mishra Seva Sansthan Trust. The objective of the trust constituted by her trusted ally Satish Misra (a Rajya Sabha MP and Bahujan Samaj Party general secretary), was to promote a university for the disabled, for which it had received a grant of Rs.51 lakh. When Misras resignation precipitated a media outcry, Mayawati announced that the university will be constructed by the state government. • November 2008. The higher education department of Maharashtra imposed fines totaling Rs.3 crore on 45 engineering colleges for admitting students in excess of sanctioned capacity. Most of the erring colleges are run by politicians. For example, three engineering colleges owned by MLA Satish Patil were fined Rs.11.46 lakh, while another run by the states textile minister Satish Chaturvedi was penalised Rs.17 lakh. These are a few randomly chosen examples of prominent politicians involved with education being indicted on charges of corruption. Though exact numbers are unavailable, according to industry observers the recession-proof education sector and in particular professional education, is a perennial investment favourite of politicians of all ideologies, with a sizeable number of them actively engaged in running education institutions in Indias 28 states and seven Union territories. Some of the big names include G. Viswan-athan, AIADMK MLA (promoter-director of Vellore Institute of Technology); Chhagan Bhujbal, deputy chief minister of Maharashtra (MET League of Colleges in Mumbai and Bhujbal Knowledge City in Nashik); D.Y. Patil, former member of the Maharashtra legislative assembly (DY Patil Deemed University, Pune); Manohar Joshi, former chief minister of Maharashtra (Kohinoor Technical Institutes in Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka) and Akhilesh Das Gupta, Samajwadi Party MP (Babu Banarasi Das Group of Educational Institutions, Lucknow). (see box). In the heavily over-regulated education sector, to which the licence-permit-quota regimen has migrated post 1991, politicians with clout, connections and insider knowledge, can quickly cut through red tape to create and expand capacity in school as well as tertiary…
