India: Big business and educational
inequality By Ranjit Devraj
NEW DELHI - India's lopsided policy of
supporting higher education with public money while
grossly neglecting primary schools has been reinforced
by recent moves by the central government, led by the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Students entering
the autonomously-run Indian Institutes of Management
(IIMs) this year will pay 80 percent less in fees than
the outgoing batch, thanks to an order issued on
February 5 by the union minister for human resources
development, Murli Manohar Joshi, ostensibly to help
poorer students.
"Talent is not the monopoly of
a small section of society and we feel that talent from
deprived sections must also get an opportunity to study
in these institutions, which were created and funded by
the government," said Joshi.
But the move has
brought on criticism from captains of industry, IIM
faculties, opposition politicians and the students as an
attempt to interfere in the autonomous functioning of
the globally known institutions by first starving them
of funds.
Other critics view this from a wider
picture, saying the hefty cost of such education that
the government takes on reflects lopsided priorities
that put more importance on business schools rather than
the basic need of primary education.
The
government picks up 50 percent of the US$10,000 it costs
annually to support an IIM student. While each of the
1,000-odd students in the masters in business
administration program pays $3,750 in fees annually,
students in the next batch starting August will pay just
$750.
The famed Indian Institutes of Technology
(IITs) charge even less, with annual fees at $700 per
annum. This has long been criticized as working out as a
huge subsidy for industry in the United States and in
developed countries, where 75 percent of graduates end
up. Along with the six IITs, the IIMs are prime
talent-hunting grounds for business giants like Goldman
Sachs, KPMG, Morgan Stanley and Merill Lynch and hold
their own against privately-run business schools that
charge $35,000 or more in annual fees.
According
to a survey carried out by weekly magazine Outlook six
months ago, an IIM graduate can expect to earn, on
average, a salary of $40,000 per year if working in
India - or $100,000 if working in a Western country.
This means the students are in no great need of
subsidies.
The worst criticism Joshi, a former
professor of physics, now faces is the suggestion that
if the government had the funds to subsidize IIMs, then
it had better make the money available to the grossly
neglected area of primary education.
"To cut
fees drastically against the backdrop of the huge
subsidy that higher education already enjoys at the
expense of primary education in this country is wrong,"
said Jairam Ramesh, an economic analyst and member of
the economic cell of the opposition Congress party.
Ramesh said while he agreed with Joshi that
institutions of excellence nurtured by the government
must accept social obligations, the answer did not lie
in drastically cutting fees. "The answer really lies in
upgrading the quality of primary and secondary
education."
According to statistics by the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization based on 2000-2001, only half of the
children who enter primary school in India reach class
five, mainly because of inadequate public funding. The
dropout rate is 53 percent, the poorest in South and
East Asia.
Primary school education is also
beset with unabashedly elitist attitudes that allow a
fine quality education in the so-called public schools
(privately run) for the children of the well-to-do -
which boast air-conditioned classrooms and riding
lessons - to exist side-by-side with government schools
that so lack infrastructure that many function out of
canvas tents.
Critics of the unequal system
include Azim Premji, chairman of the information
technology major Wipro Ltd, who believes that quality
primary education must get better priority on the
national agenda and is too important to be left to
private enterprise. "Given the deep social impact of
primary education and its long-term returns, a
completely free market environment is neither desirable
nor practical," said Premji, a major employer of IIM and
IIT graduates.
Right now, privately-run school
managements are busy finding ways to evade or mitigate a
January 20 order by the Delhi High Court requiring them
to "provide admission to students belonging to the
weaker sections to the extent of 25 percent and grant
'free-ships' to them".
The school managements
hope to pare down the prescribed quota to around 10
percent. "Discussions are on with the school managements
and the percentage will be fixed - of course with the
approval of the court," Arvinder Singh Lovely, Delhi
state's minister for education, said recently.
"While the schools will waive fees for students
entering under the quota, the government will consider
funds for books and uniforms," the minister added. The
program will involve 250 public schools grouped under
the banner of the Unaided Schools Action Committee.
Arguments loudly aired by the principals of the
public schools ranged from the possible trauma "normal"
paying students would have at the sight of
underprivileged students within school premises, to a
possible "sense of alienation" that poor students might
suffer in a public school.
According to Anil
Sadgopal, professor of education at the University of
Delhi, such arguments only betrayed the fact that
private schools do not promote values of equality,
social justice and human dignity. "If inculcation of
such values is not the goal of these schools, one
wonders whether they are imparting education at all."
What may compel the public schools to heed the
High Court order is the fact that they are exempt from
paying income tax while charging high fees from
students, cornering subsidized training for their
teachers and holding on to prime real estate allotted at
concessional rates. "These schools should return the
land allotted to them with interest for breach of
conditions and penalty for misuse of public property -
surely this is in keeping with the ethics of the free
market," Sadgopal said.
