The Hindu : Not the IIMs alone

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Saturday, Apr 03, 2004

Opinion

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Not the IIMs alone

By Pratap Bhanu Mehta

We need to ask why excellence in higher education, in a more general sense, is not a matter of widespread concern.

ALTHOUGH MURLI Manohar Joshi's concerted assault on the Indian Institutes of Management has been widely and correctly condemned, most of his critics are refusing to examine the deeper sources of malaise in our system of higher education, and are misunderstanding the political sentiment that he is tapping. Although Dr. Joshi's agenda needs to be fiercely resisted on more dimensions than one can list, there is a considerable degree of bad faith on the part of his critics as well.

The most striking aspect of the current round of criticism is this. When it comes to the IIMs, we loudly declaim against populism, are opposed to centralisation, have suddenly discovered the high principle of academic autonomy and the sound counsel of economic prudence. But where were these critics when, for decade after decade, the university system was being assaulted from all directions?

Most State universities have been appendages of the State Governments for quite a while, most have had their curriculum regulated under the name of populism, few of them were allowed to raise resources, government intervention was promiscuous, resulting in a university system that, with a few fledgling exceptions, is something of a joke — a giant fraud perpetuated on millions of students. Will our pieties for excellence and our solicitude for economic prudence come out only when the IIMs, excellent as they are, are under siege? Will we, as usual, use double standards to judge governments?

The plain fact is that Dr. Joshi is doing only what all political parties have long practised, and are still practising in the field of higher education. To shed tears over the predicament of the IIMs and not to have protested, worried, expressed consternation about that big shadow cast on "Shining India," our university system, is, to borrow Tom Paine's words out of context, a bit like pitying the plumage while forgetting the dying bird.

The point in raising all this is not to make the absurd suggestion that since we did not protest much at government depredation of institutions of higher education in the past, we have no right to do so now. But understanding the historical trajectories out of which Dr. Joshi's actions are emerging will help us better understand one crucial feature of the current protests that we should be honest enough to acknowledge: they are very feeble indeed. For one thing, almost the entire higher education establishment is absent in this protest. It is an odd admission failure when those protesting against government encroachment appeal not to the professionalism of educators to stand up and be counted, but to the self-interest of corporate India, or to a benevolent Prime Minister.

N.R. Narayana Murthy has to now don the unlikely mantle of being a knight in shining armour for higher education, a role corporate India has not had much interest in. Or we are appealing to the Prime Minister to intervene on the grounds that Dr. Joshi's actions sit ill with his attempts to project a more liberal and forward looking India.

Corporate India certainly has a prominent role to play in the future of higher education in India, and no educational reform will be possible without political will. But these groups ought to be, even under the best of circumstances, subordinate to the professional autonomy of educators. The fact that there are no educators who can claim any authority in this matter shows how much these protests come too little and too late. We are now, ironically, dependent upon the very classes to protect higher education that did their best to weaken it: corporate India that wilfully neglected it; and politicians who purposefully destroyed it.

The attention being lavished on the IIMs is, in a curious way, displaying a misplaced kind of elitism. We seem to be concerned about the excellence of institutions that serve a narrow swathe of corporate India. The very classes now loudly declaiming against the potential threat to the excellence of the IIMs for years tolerated an assault not just on the excellence of our universities but on the idea of excellence itself. We pretended that higher education should not be about distinction and excellence. We got so used to the idea that mission of the universities is about anything but excellence, about anything but, to use Jamsedhji Tata's phrase, "making the best better." We now seem to have suddenly discovered that corporate India needs homegrown excellence; India Shining needs world class management institutes. But we do not worry about whether we have world class universities, whether the millions of graduates we churn out have employable skills or whether we as a society can value academic excellence in all its forms, not just in its narrow manifestations. Misplaced populism is bad for the IIMs but it is fine for the rest of higher education.

As important as the IIMs are, the attention being lavished on them displays the ways in which India Shining, much truth though there is to the slogan, is blind sighting us. On this view, "get corporate India right" and the rest of the country will take care of itself. This has things backwards. It is proving difficult to defend the IIMs, in courts, and at the altar of public opinion, because we cannot tap into a wider concern for excellence and distinction more generally. Therefore many see these protests as not being about issues in higher education at all. They see these protests as driven by an excessive fascination with the corporate world or by a concern for India Shining, but not by a sincere commitment to quality education.

The feebleness of the protests over IIMs raises larger questions about the place of higher education. We need to ask why it is that excellence in higher education, in a more general sense, is not a matter of widespread concern. Is it because the best and the brightest, on the one hand, and the rich and the powerful, on the other, have already seceded from Indian higher education to a considerable degree, or do so after their undergraduate education? With more than 100,000 of our best students leaving the country every year, managing to get a great education, who has the stakes to fight for Indian higher education? Is it because we have so deeply managed to destroy the credibility of higher education in general that it leaves the few pockets of excellence even more vulnerable? Is it because, contrary to what we might suppose, populism is still alive and well as a political strategy, except that its object is now higher education? Is it because our elites, enamoured of a strange brand of economics, driven by the guilt of privilege and prone to subsidising themselves in the name of subsidising the poor, still believe that it is fine for them to be educated at foreign institutions that are sustained by private capital and even the plunder of empire, but it is morally appalling to charge students higher fees, irrespective of future returns or current income?

These are plausible reasons but there is a larger cultural politics to this as well. Dr. Joshi is a shrewd man. He is pointing out, with some degree of plausibility, that the link between Shining India and the concrete future and well being of millions of graduates is still tenuous at best. He has excelled all his life in the politics of resentment, and he is now reminding exuberant corporate India that despite all our successes this politics cannot be wished away. He has no desire to actually help the prospects of millions of students trapped in poor institutions, but he intends to make sure that their anxieties get symbolic expression and are directed against symbols of upward mobility.

Dr. Joshi's agenda needs to be resisted. But we need to still pay attention to two large issues. First, that corporate India's battle for legitimation is not yet over. Second, we shall not save the IIMs if we focus only on saving the IIMs alone.

(The writer is Visiting Professor of Government, Harvard University.)

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