The Hindu : Kerala / Thiruvananthapuram News : Patnaik seeks more funds for higher education

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Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram

Patnaik seeks more funds for higher education

Staff Reporter

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The current changes in the field of higher education are part of a process wherein the sector is being hijacked by forces of imperialism. Only by substantially hiking public spending on higher education and by effecting social regulation on private self-financing education can the nation hope to fight this counter revolution, Vice-Chairman of the State Planning Board Prabhat Patnaik has said.

He was speaking on the topic “higher education the UPA’s policies” at a programme organised by the Kerala University Union here on Friday.

If one reads newspapers, one gets the impression that there is going to be a burst of spending in higher education. If one goes through the 11th Plan outlay for higher education one realises that this spending will be to the tune of Rs.85,000 crore, or about Rs.17,000 crore per year.

This, if the present National Income Estimate is factored in, will be just about 0.4 per cent of the GDP. So, nothing dramatic is going to be done. Yes, it is true that even less was spent during the 10th Plan and that way there is going to be an increase. In real terms, the amount that is going to be spent on education is trivial. True enough, though, there are dramatic changes taking place in the higher education sector. What is happening is a counter revolution, a shift in paradigm; a shift from the concept of education as a process of nation building to education that is open to imperialist hegemony.

New concept

The new concept of higher education is one that is to do with the production of foot soldiers for international finance capital. When some people talk about excellence, they are actually talking about the destruction of the thought process. When people talk about instituting world class universities in India they are moving education away from the ideals enshrined in the Constitution.

Concepts of equality, secularism, freedom from want, ending gender discrimination were part of the freedom struggle and were also part of the ‘education for nation-building’ ideal in independent India. In a country liberated from colonialism, education was meant to create an intelligentsia that was free from thinking inherited from the colonial past. Education meant the creation of organic intellectuals committed to the vision of an egalitarian India. Even the curricula and the composition of students in institutions of higher learning were designed keeping this in mind, Dr. Patnaik said.

The very concept of a world class university - an absurd concept at that - reflects the inferiority complex of a colonised elite who are like the ‘Bandar lok’ in Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Books who are constantly trying to become human beings. Kipling was parodying the Bengali ‘Bhadralok’ who were constantly trying to become like the colonial masters. By promoting the concept of world class universities some people are living out the image of the ‘Bandar lok.’

“That we can have our own criteria of excellence, our own paradigm of learning in our own universities does not strike the proponents of world class universities…. Their idea is to create clones of Harvard or Oxford here,” Dr. Patnaik said.

What contact would those institutions have with the people of this country? Such universities would create an elite who have no commitment to India. Such universities would teach their students a withdrawal of sorts from the people. Moreover, people promoting the concept of world class universities would not have place for any reservations or for student politics in such institutions.

The IITs and the IIMs have gone that route already. That is why such people think that IITs and IIMs are models worthy of emulation. Such systems actively encourage placing of their students in the highest income bracket.

The poor people in India are paying for this kind of institutions. A tell-tale sign of imperialism-driven higher education is the debasing of liberal education and an overemphasis on professional education. A society does not live on professions alone but also on concepts thrown up in universities through a system of liberal education, Dr. Patnaik noted.

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