Union Budget 2019: On education, need to focus on non-elite universities, social sciences, autonomy and primary sections

Asserting that the government will make renewed efforts to promote research in the country, she announced that a National Research Foundation would be established to coordinate and promote research in the country. NRF will assimilate the research grants being given by various Ministries independent of each other. It will ensure that the overall research eco-system in the country is strengthened with focus on identified thrust areas relevant to our national priorities and towards basic science without duplication of effort and expenditure.

The country’s first full time woman Finance Minister also informed that the regulatory systems of higher education would be reformed comprehensively to promote greater autonomy and focus on better academic outcomes. She said a draft legislation for setting up Higher Education Commission of India (HECI), would be presented in the year ahead.

No big announcements pertaining to the education sector were made in the Interim Budget presented by the then acting Finance Minister Piyush Goyal. While the Modi Government could not bring about the proposed New Education Policy in its first five years, seven IITs, seven IIMs, fourteen IIITs, 15 AIIMS, one NIT, and four NIDs were either established during the period or are in the process of being set up.

Unfortunately, most of these big ticket projects are yet to become operational and suffer from serious faculty shortage.

As Director General of the prestigious Indian Institute of Mass Communication during the period, there were many demands from state Government including Chief Ministers for setting up IIMCs in their respective states but I remember declining almost all the requests on the grounds that there was no point in spreading it too thin and thereby compromising on quality, which is the hall mark of these national institutions. The effort should be to consolidate and further strengthen the existing institutions rather than setting up poor copy cats pandering to populism.

There is also a need to shift the focus from world class institutions to world class education in all institutions. When the focus is on institutions, it gets narrowed down to the elite institutions, which put together hardly cater to 5 percent of students going in for higher education. Over 90 percent of the students opting for higher education attend state or Central Universities, institutions affiliated to them or private universities, most of which are teaching shops. Is there any conscious effort to improve the quality of education in these non-elite institutions? It would not be an exaggeration to state that most pass outs from the ‘lower rung’ institutions which cater to the masses at large are largely unemployable. Presently, the country has more than 903 Universities, 39050 Colleges and 10011 other institutions.

Consequently, there is absolutely no standardisation and the outcome is two classes of educated, one from the classes and another from the masses. Therefore, the focus has to shift to improving the infrastructure and faculty in the institutions located in the rural and remote areas of the country and bridge the widening chasm within the education system. Global rankings for a handful of institutions can wait.

According to All India Survey on Higher Education 2017-18, at undergraduate level the highest number (36.4 percent) of students are enrolled in arts/humanities/social sciences courses, followed by science (17.1 percent), engineering and technology (14.1 percent) and commerce (14.1 percent). Yet, there seems to be very little focus on social sciences, languages and arts, which are critical for our society and civilisation.

Again, the emphasis on greater autonomy is most welcome given the fact that bureaucratic interventions are suffocating our institutions. A genuine effort needs to be made to liberate our institutions from the clutches of babudom.

While the proposal to attract foreign students to India is laudable, the focus should be on making our institutions attractive for our students first so as to prevent the massive brain drain.

As for the new age skills the Minister spoke about, it is pertinent to mention here that the National Centre for Excellence in Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming and Comics proposed long time back is gathering dust in the Information & Broadcasting Ministry with little movement forward.

Last but not the least, the focus of any vibrant education policy has to be primary education. The current budget has proposed a 12.8 percent year-on-year (YoY) increase in the FY20 allocation for school education to Rs 56,536.63 crore in Budget 2019 while on the higher education front, the same has risen 14.3 percent to Rs 38,317.01 crore.

With honourable exceptions and efforts in some states such as Delhi, primary education including infrastructure and manpower is in a mess. It’s perhaps for this very reason that way back in 1964, the Kothari Commission recommended allocation of six percent of GDP on education.

No strong edifice, leave alone global institutions can be built on such weak foundations.

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