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Divide and Educate
Indian education is becoming increasingly divisive. Cuts in public funding for primary education and child welfare are laying the basis for new inequities in higher education. The funding of public universities is grossly unequal; the expansion of private universities is causing further imbalance. The class profile of the academic community is being redrawn. Social and human factors apart, these trends threaten the prospects of adequate human resource development for India’s economic growth.
This is an article on India’s higher education policy. But for a proper perspective, I must start by looking at primary education. Let me begin with an anecdote.
I had taken a taxi to my place of work, Jadavpur University. The cab driver had never been inside the campus, never conceived of such a large space devoted to education. He said he would like his young son to study there so that he might learn to repair mobile phones. I suggested that their local Industrial Training Institute might suffice for that; if he could fund his son through university, the young man might work for a telecom firm, or set up a business himself. I left this dutiful father, with some schooling and experience of city life, more confused than encouraged by the prospect.
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