Backpage

IF contemporary China resembles a closed system with an open mind, democratic and open India tries hard to mimic a closed and insecure nation. Three decades back, in the era of the Cold War and well before it embarked on its experiments with opening out, scholars and research students wanting to study India had to go through a cumbersome process before being granted permission. Their research proposals were subjected to an opaque enquiry, not merely academic but also by the Home Ministry before the applicants were allowed entry and their topics of research not seen as ‘threatening’ national security.

For instance, in the social sciences, a slew of topics were considered unsuitable. So ‘foreign’ researchers, unless unusually networked, could not look at peasant and tribal movements or caste and communal conflicts, far less research into conditions in border areas. Evidently the mandarins responsible for safeguarding the security and integrity of the nation state were convinced that such endeavours were best discouraged.

Those were different times and India was a different country. Such an assessment, however, is clearly mistaken. As revealed by The Indian Express, even today Fulbright scholars, all fully funded, may have to wait for well over a year before being permitted to get on with their research. There is, of course, no guarantee that they will actually get permission. And evidently, neither the topic nor the site of the proposed research matters. Even researching the changing status of women in Kerala can become a sensitive matter.

Faced with some embarrassment over this exposure, the government now proposes a customs strategy for granting research visas by introducing a red and green channel. The fact that we have signed a range of agreements with the United States, including on research cooperation even in areas of defence production, is clearly insufficient to persuade the babus in the ministries of human resources development, external affairs and home affairs to be somewhat more liberal in their outlook. Why, even the prime minister was constrained to admit, when asked about the delays in processing research applications, his inability to convince his ministerial colleagues. Hopefully, the recent decision to outsource the training of senior bureaucrats to the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, may help reduce the levels of our paranoia!

The above is merely an illustration of the mess our higher education system finds itself in, what the National Knowledge Commission characterizes as ‘over-regulated but under-governed’. Opening up the economy and welcoming foreign capital, even attracting foreign expertise in the management of our enterprises is kosher. Not so for the higher education sector which remains not just hidebound and moribund but, to use Raj Krishna’s favourite phrase, ‘knowledge proof’.

For decades we have lamented the virtual collapse of our higher education – crumbling infrastructure, outdated curricula, disgruntled and ill-trained teachers, the abysmal quality of our research, restive students and ungovernable campuses. Yet, anyone daring to suggest even minimalist reform – be it fee hikes, greater autonomy to institutions, fiscal incentives to attract private capital, modernizing syllabi and overhauling the examination system – will immediately be accused of being captive to vested interests.

It does not seem to matter that the Minister HRD has been too unwell for months to attend office, that the numerous regulatory bodies governing the fate of our higher educational apparatus, from the UGC to the AICTE, remain at loggerheads, more concerned about turf protection than meaningful collaboration. Even the National Knowledge Commission set up by the prime minister to evolve a blueprint to help India become a knowledge superpower has been plagued with dissension. Some months back, two of its members resigned over the decision to introduce OBC reservations in institutions of higher education. More recently, its vice-chairman publicly upbraided the chairman for being autocratic. So why be surprised if the NKC suggestions are disregarded, if not dismissed by both the UGC and the HRD ministry.

Meanwhile, our students, those fortunate enough to raise the necessary finances, continue to seek foreign pastures in an effort to upgrade their skills. Close to 160,000 students from India are today studying in foreign institutions, resulting in an outflow of four billion dollars. And they are going not just to the conventional sites in the English speaking West but, hold your breath, to study medicine in China. In the past, the one avenue available to citizens finding conditions intolerable in their native kingdom was to vote with their feet. Contemporary India has succeeded in reducing our potential knowledge workers to the status of migrants of yesteryears.

Harsh Sethi