Higher Education In India: Fresh Visions And Visionaries, The Need Of The Hour
By Cynthia Stephen
04 June, 2015
Countercurrents.org
Inclusive economic and political institutions do not emerge by themselves. They are often the outcome of significant conflict between elites resisting economic growth and political change and those wishing to limit the economic and political power of existing elites. Inclusive institutions emerge during critical junctures, ...when a series of factors weaken the hold of the elites in power, make their opponent stronger, and create incentives for the formation of a pluralistic society. (D. Acemoglu and J. Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, 2012)
Introduction
The Education sector in India has long been the preserve of the privileged. Not just in modern times, but even from ancient times, the system of privileging certain sections of society by birth to systematic training in language, thought, literature, mathematics, philosophy, astronomy etc has been in the brahminical mode. This has emphasised hierarchy and privilege in every part of life. Thus, we had a miniscule set of people, mostly upper caste males, who had access to education and a vast number of working class, female, poor sections of society who did not have this privilege by virtue of birth. The knowledge of these vast sections was recorded and passed down the generations in the oral tradition and in day-to-day lived experiences, in what the eminent historian Romila Thapar calls the ‘bardic’ tradition[i]. It was treated as a kind of substratum source of history, and the Sramanic tradition, which was the heterodox tradition and gradually became sidelined in the knowledge discourse, as opposed to the Puranic tradition which became the mainstream tradition and gained wide currency.
Missionaries’ role in Education in India
During the early 19th C, the British brought in the formalised and more modern system of school, vocational and higher education. Apart from Macaulay and his famous Minute on Education, there were many individual and group efforts by scholars, almost all Christian missionaries, who worked on scripts, grammars, dictionaries, and in producing printed works, including some of the first printed journals in local languages and otherwise democratising the sphere of knowledge production and access to education. This gave a boost to the huge diversity of languages which were spoken and used by the masses. The work of William Carey is notable in this context. Singlehanded, he was responsible for producing grammars in seven languages and compilation of dictionaries in Bengali, Sanskrit and Marathi. The Rev. Ferdinand Kittel was responsible for the first English-Kannada dictionary and an influential grammar of the Kannada language. William Carey started the first university in India, and was professor of vernacular languages in the Fort William College, which was the starting point of the Bengal Renaissance. In the South, the work of missionaries in bringing out the earliest books in Tamil heralded social change through expanding education and occupational options for communities which had traditionally faced severe social exclusion and discrimination.
Indigenous Visionaries: Subaltern Pioneers
In Maharashtra, a mission school education including English inspired the original Mahatma of India, Jotirao Phule, to read Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man – and set him on course to begin, with a group of like-minded friends and his illustrious wife, Savitribai, the first indigenous schools to reach out to girls, especially from the marginalised groups.
The pre-Independence period saw the setting up of many Universities, and the expansion of higher education under the aegis of the rulers, including Princely Indian states. While Maharashtra saw the expansion of primary schools due to the pro-active work of Sahuji Maharaj, the ruler of Baroda gave a scholarship to a bright young scholar, Bhimrao Ambedkar, to study at Columbia University, New York, and later to go on to become a Barrister in London. It was this same Ambedkar who was to produce, almost singlehandedly, the Constitution of India. This set in place an Enlightenment-inspired constitutional framework for building the nation. Ambedkar also framed pro-women laws on property which were found so far ahead of the times that they roused the resentment of his Cabinet colleagues. The more active women agitated outside Parliament, and the draft statute – called the Hindu Code Bill - failed to gain the approval of the House; the laws were passed only with extensive amendments, triggering the resignation of Dr. Ambedkar from his post as Law Minister in Nehru’s cabinet. But the main proposal – that of equal rights to property for both men and women in Hindu Personal law – was finally made the law many decades later.
It is little known, however, that it was Ambedkar’s initiative that enabled the start of the Marathwada University in Aurangabad, to fulfil the huge gap in higher education in Vidharbha, Marathwada and northern Maharashtra. It is today a very large university with a student body of over 100,000. Ambedkar also started the People’s Education Society in Bombay, now Mumbai, in 1945 to contribute to the enrichment and education of the downtrodden communities in India. He also started the Milind Mahavidyalaya in Aurangabad, with three faculties, Arts, Science and Commerce. It was at first affiliated to the Osmania University, Hyderabad, but is now affiliated to the Marathwada University, which was renamed the B R Ambedkar Marathwada University in 1978. The renaming was fiercely opposed by the locally dominant groups, and provoked anti-Dalit pogroms. Finally the renaming became a reality in 1994, after 16 years of struggle by the Dalits and in the face of sustained violence against Dalits in the region!
Thus, in contrast with the elitist vision of India, which tended to be backward and inward looking, and lacking in the will to increase the access and quality of education to the downtrodden and oppressed section, the more vigorous, modern and forward-looking imagination of the subalterns and the oppressed envisaged an India in which education, equality, and justice would prevail. Architects of this image included Jotirao and Savitribai Phule, Pandita Ramabai – a much-maligned, brave, and iconoclastic Brahmin widow who broke many taboos and showed a stunning capacity for leadership and institution-building, including schools, hostels and printing presses; and Bhimrao Ambedkar, Ayotheedass, Periyar, Ayyankali – the last three active in the Southern peninsula. It is these personalities who actually set the agenda in pre-and post-Independence India, to emancipate those still oppressed by the caste, class, gender and communal nature of today’s Indian polity.
But in 21st Century India the bulk of formal higher education, funded chiefly by the Central government, or by wealthy individuals who set up private universities, continues to be in the hands of those traditionally privileged to access education by virtue of their (higher caste) birth.
Policy and Visions: Gaps and Fissures
According to the National Policy on Higher Education (1986), which translated the vision of the Radhakrishnan Commission and the Kothari Commission into a policy, there are five main goals for higher education:-
1. Access, requiring enhancement of the institutional capacity of higher education institutions to provide opportunities to all who deserve and desire higher education.
2. Equity, involving fair access of the poor and the socially disadvantaged groups to Higher education.
3. Quality, meaning the provision of education of an accepted standard; ensuring students receive the available knowledge of the highest standards which will enable the enhancement of their human resources/ capabilities.
4. Relevance, viz., an education which will develop human resources in tune with changing economic, social and cultural development of the country; and
5. Value-based Education, inculcating basic moral values among the youth.
How have these lofty ideals been implemented? This is what two eminent Indian academics, one a British citizen from a privileged section and another from a traditionally marginalised group, have to say on this:
Sir Meghnad Desai (economist and recipient of the Padmashree) says: [ii]“Hindu society is a caste society and caste denies the simple idea of status equality. In class societies, there is inequality of income and wealth but once feudalism disappeared, there was no status inequality. In the US, race was central to the denial of status inequality, but that was fixed by the struggle for civil rights. India has adopted the political equality of ‘one adult one vote’. But in social terms, caste inequalities add to class inequalities. The Indian state has been mainly manned by upper caste elites and they do not consider the lower orders deserving of education and health.”
Prof. Sukhdev Thorat, eminent economist and Chairman, Indian Council of Social Sciences Research, says[iii] “ [N]ation-building would require reform in education; unlearning of undemocratic values is as important as the learning of democratic ones. Unfortunately, our education system, with its present curricula and pedagogy, has less to offer by way of civic learning and democratic engagement that shapes good citizens out of men and women. … The education policy talks of national integration, equality and the development of a common culture. But these have remained on the periphery of learning in school and higher education… Civic learning and democratic engagement have not become the core component of our teaching.”
Hence the stated Key results aimed for by the National Higher Education Mission India document “Access, Equity and Excellence” will need more than just policies and funding to the institutions of Higher education in India. What is required is a paradigm shift in the approach to the idea of Education in India. Such a shift will only come about with a shift in the nature and quality of the leadership of the policy makers and implementers in the system.
“Redressing multiple and graded inequalities in higher education is not just about increasing the GER among disadvantaged groups, it is also about enhancing their presence in the centres of excellence, taking care of their post-admission needs and redesigning curricula to take into account their specific requirements”, states the National Higher education report.
The Action Plan of 1992 included schemes and programs that were directed towards the expansion of intake capacity in general, and with respect to the disadvantaged groups such as the poor, SCs, STs, minorities, girls, physically challenged persons, and those in the educationally backward regions, in particular. The Action Plan further states that “improving enrolments in general will not ameliorate inequities and special efforts will be required to deal with problems of geographically backward areas, women and backward classes; furthermore, specific initiatives will have to be taken for each category.”
A recent study[iv], conducted by a government-appointed task force, found that SCs constituted just 10.2% including those in distance education, while the percentage of STs was merely 4.4%. The percentage for the Other Backward Classes (OBC) was 27%, in line with their proportion to the population. The survey results are based on the details provided by 448 universities, 8123 colleges and 4076 stand-alone institutions up to July 31, 2012. These proofs of inadequate access – or under-representation of those who merit opportunity – show how limited in effect has been the implementation of the reservation policy in institutions of higher education.
In November 2008, the UGC brought out a 300-page document entitled “Higher Education in India – Issues related to Expansion, Inclusiveness, Quality and Finance”. The report talks about the 11th plan strategies for Inclusive Education, including the following objectives:-
1. Support for Universities and colleges located in 373 districts having lower GER, in line with the Prime Minister’s initiative to open new colleges in these districts with matching contributions from the States.
2. Special support to Universities and colleges located in rural, hilly, remote, tribal, and border areas. Special focus on 90 districts with a higher Muslim population identified for Central Support.
3. Enhanced support to Universities and colleges with more students from SC/ST/OBCs, and the Muslim population.
4. Schemes to improve language and competency through remedial coaching classes; augmented fellowships and opening hostels, particularly for women to increase their access to higher education.
5. Setting up new Polytechnics in un-served districts, community Polytechnics and community colleges, and other similar programmes of the UGC to include the excluded social groups.
In regard to Excellence, the UGC document evaluates the institutions on the basis of libraries, qualifications of teachers, and infrastructural issues and proposes funding to bridge the gaps. What is missing in the entire equation is vision. Where are the visionary leaders with the capacity to attract and retain talented teachers and students? In the resource-poor India of the past, there were scholars and technology leaders like S.N. Bose (Physicist and plant scientist), Ramanujam (Mathematician), Vishveshwaraiah (engineer), C. V. Raman (Physicist) and Meghnad Saha (Physicist). Several of these persons were from poor backgrounds, but went on to make a mark in their field at a time when government spending on technical research or on higher education was very low, in comparison with today. But today, despite the higher allocation of funds, increased numbers of institutions and availability of doctorate teachers, the level of research scholarship and publication is at an all-time low in India, especially when compared with the work of similar nations (in terms of socio-economic development and industrializing efforts) such as China and Brazil.
Could this be explained by the inequitable and exclusive nature of the higher education scene in India, despite the stated policy of inclusiveness? Young scholars –even those in the science stream - from SC backgrounds are regularly humiliated and kept idle without a guide or any assignment by casteist professors. In a report[v] on the phenomenon of suicides of students in institutions of higher learning in India, Insight, a group of Dalit youth working for Dalit and Adivasi students in higher education, state “The large number of Dalit and Adivasi students committing suicide clearly indicates the wide-spread prevalence of caste discrimination in the Indian education system, which perceives them as ‘non-meritorious', not fit to belong there”.
“Today, the most vital link in maintaining the status quo is education – increasingly privatised and commercial – that keeps young people trapped in the power relations by covering up every trace of contradiction in society. By concealing the reality of privilege and exclusion, the structure of school and university carry a hidden curriculum in pedagogical practices, feeding the myths that reinforce the established order…. As procurement of education remains a race against others, it encourages a sense of entitlement in the elites…..The pundits remain in eloquent denial of caste and the roots of discrimination….Genuine equality of opportunity requires equality of conditions which can only be ensured through social transformation and a shift in mindset….Elite-led knowledge construction, be it theology, philosophy, history or social-political theorisation….normalises or keeps hidden the designs of domination.”[vi]
The higher education system has shown a lack of appreciation of the value of original and fresh thought in research and higher education – plagued as it is with a lack of vision, energy, and originality. Yet there are very many young, first-generation learners entering the stream for the first time, who – if they are given their Constitutional rights – can bring a diversity of backgrounds and experience hitherto unavailable, and thereby develop both themselves and their nation.
Conclusion
Higher education in India is still in the early stages of recognising the reasons for the social disparities in terms of gender, caste, class, region, language, etc. These are still being replicated within the higher education sector. It will not be enough to rely on existing policies. More than the conventional means of framing policies are required to create real inclusion. Inclusion must be perfectly central to the improvement of standards and access; and the devising of schemes for funding activities to achieve these objectives. This current initiative could go the same way as legislative responses to extreme violence against women. Even if there are strong laws, there must be a strong will – a national will - to implement them. There is the stark fact that budgetary pledges for a 1000 – crore Nirbhaya fund to promote initiatives to ensure the safety of women in India have lain unused for a year, with no evidence of action in reality.
The vision of the excluded subalterns needs to be recognized. It needs to be central not only in documents but in social life. Well-qualified educationalists and policy makers with energy and the political will from the subaltern and excluded groups, including women, must be given opportunity to apply national commitments to national change. Then there may be equity and equality in Higher education in India. Clearly, one Prof. Thorat is insufficient to bring about the paradigm shift that is required. Will the policy makers and the political class have the courage to do what it takes?
Cynthia Stephen, Independent Researcher on Gender, Poverty and Development, Bangalore, India
References:
[i] Romila Thapar, The Past Before Us: Historical Traditions of Early North India, 2013, Permanent Black and Harvard University Press
[ii] Article in the New Indian Express dated 28th July 2013 entitled “The Hindu Rate of Backwardness”
[iii] Sukhdev Thorat, Unlearning Undemocratic Values: article in The Hindu, Dec 26th2013.
[iv] http://www.deccanherald.com/content/281839/sc-st-students-enrolment-higher.html
[v] http://www.countercurrents.org/insight300411.htm
[vi] Mani, Braj Ranjan, Introduction, in Knowledge and Power : A Discourse for Transformation, 2013, Manohar Publishers, New Delhi
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