The problem with our education policy is not just of funding, standards, and more. It’s one of a severe identity crisis
The national policy on education, since independence, has gone through various acts of commission and omission. Indeed, for anything to be called a ‘policy’, it has to be formally so stated by an agency which is charged with the responsibility of framing the document. There can be no policy by default.
This is not the best place to get into a chronological narrative of the approach of the Parliament or indeed the Indian Government towards an ‘education policy’. Education is something on which many people have some opinion. Therefore, it is not surprising that so many committees and commissions have been appointed on this subject.
Further, like in many domains, in the field of education too, post-independence institutions have had a huge shadow of the British legacy. To begin with, we created a University Grants Commission (UGC), perhaps for no better reason than that Britain had such an entity. Imitation is the best form of flattery. But it’s dangerous when it happens blindly in the domain of knowledge management.
The result of this kind of institutional framework is not only worrisome, but also pernicious. The distribution of funds for education have got hugely eschewed. It will be useful to remind ourselves that education is a concurrent subject. However, the business of granting recognition for the so-called ‘maintenance of standards’ made the UGC almost the sole arbiter of the fate of higher education.
When this was put on a base of higher secondary and secondary education on which the Centre had much less say, the fit did not quite work out. The response was not clear, though, through some quirk, the Central Board of Secondary Education finally emerged.
The result is there for all to see. Examination after examination, sometimes mutually exclusive if not competitive, dominates the scene. This is besides the competitive entrance tests from everything — medicine to engineering. Parents are confused, children are bewildered, and employers at a loss to make sense of all this.
The result is that several employers have begun installing there own competitive examinations. The series appears endless. The truth of the matter is that the escape route came — as it always does — for the resourceful and those who were networked.
Almost every two of three so-called influential families have their wards studying outside India. Indeed, this decision had lent them a huge status in many ways: From marriage to employment.
The dream of every Indian mother continues to be to get a son-in-law or a daughter-in-law who is either placed abroad or is at least an NRI. From a Government company to a multinational firm operating in India, a clear pattern of recruitment is discernible.
The effective career path is to float in at a lateral level with foreign credentials. Well might one ask: To whom does this country belong? Is it just a pasture for those from outside India?
However, to continue with the narrative on education, it is not only a problem of funding, standards, intake, focus on output and more, but one of a severe identity crisis. This is a terrible story to narrate as few ever seem to attempt a way through it with the political and the social will it requires.
Hopefully, the national policy on education should be a canvas to clear much of this confusion. The truth of the matter is: Every attempt to do a national policy on education has an overlay of a confusion which is best stated as framed in the statement, ‘Eminence is not omniscience’.
Somebody may be very distinguished in his field, but it does not necessarily make him an expert in education too. In fact, an analysis of the composition of the search committees of key functionaries of educational bodies such as the All India Council for Technical Education and others will show that, those who chaired these committees were members who had little notion of the subject matter of the education domain, or for that matter, even of the issues.
Casual familiarity with issues of education cannot be a substitute for a deep scholastic insight into the subject matter. That can only happen after decades of concentrated development of expertise. That day is still awaited.
