When the Times Higher Education World
University Rankings, which rates about 1,000 global institutions, was released
in May, not even one Indian
institute featured in the overall Top 100,
though The Indian Institute of Science made it in the reputational
rankings after seven years.
India’s poor ranking in global indexes of
higher education reinforced a growing sense of crisis, became a matter of
national shame and is increasingly being used to drive policy and funding
decisions by the federal government.
Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s
government took three policy decisions with far-reaching consequences while
considering these global rankings, emphasizing quality over quantity.
Mr.
Modi’s government decided to designate a few Indian universities as “Institutes of Eminence.” It granted “autonomy”
to 60 other universities and colleges. It chose to replace India’s University
Grants Commission, the federal body regulating higher education for
decades, with an even more centralized and controlling body called the
Higher Education Commission.
India’s higher education sector is vast, with 760 universities and
38,498 colleges. About two-thirds of colleges are privately managed, and more
than half are in rural areas. While adult literacy levels are rising, only 6
percent of Indian citizens graduate from a college. In absolute terms, however,
the numbers are large: about 31.56 million Indian students are enrolled in
colleges and universities.
Apart from low investment in educational infrastructure and bureaucratic
hurdles, the low number of international students and faculty at Indian
universities also affects the global rankings of Indian institutions. Less than
50,000 international students are enrolled in India.
Mr. Modi’s government decided that the new institutions of excellence
would be allowed to recruit foreign faculty and students, charge students
“appropriate” fees, without any obstacle from India’s affirmative action laws,
and design their own degrees.
Yet when the list of “Institutes of
Eminence” was announced recently, it was met with disbelief and biting satire. While the Indian
Institute of Science and a couple of Indian Institutes of Technology made the
cut and are eligible to get $146 million each in additional funding, the three
private universities on the elite list included the Jio Institute, which is promoted by Mukesh
Ambani, the chairman and largest stakeholder of Reliance Industries Limited and
the richest man in India.
India
knows “Jio” as the name for Mr. Ambani’s telephone network. The Jio Institute
does not exist. It has no known campus, academic leader, courses or faculty.
The criterion that helped the Jio Institute make the list is an official clause
that requires potential promoters to have a net worth of about $729 million.
Mr. Ambani’s net worth, according to the 2018 Forbes billionaires list, is $40.1 billion. Mr.
Ambani was also a major backer of Mr. Modi’s 2014 campaign for the prime minister’s job.
Mr. Modi has not been remiss in returning the favor.
The
inclusion of the yet unrealized Jio Institute in India’s centers of educational
excellence is a parable for the crisis of higher education policy
in India. An investigative series on the state of Indian universitiesbroadcast
on New Delhi Television, one of India’s leading news networks, showed that
numerous colleges had no toilets, no teachers and no exams for years on end.
Baba Bhimrao Ambedkar University in the northern state of Bihar, which has
200,000 students, has not held exams since 2015.
While none of these decades-old structural problems have been addressed,
Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist government has exacerbated the crises of higher education.
The few central universities that had a culture of independent research and critical thinking have
come under consistent assault since Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party took
charge.
Education has been a prime target of the B.J.P.’s
parent organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, known as the R.S.S.,
whose self-professed aim is to establish a Hindu nation. For this to happen,
the R.S.S. argues that Indians must be made to understand their glorious,
ancient Vedic Hindu heritage.
School textbooks in Indian states ruled by the B.J.P.
governments are being rewritten to erase India’s “Muslim past” or reduce the
centuries of rule by Mughal emperors and other Muslim rulers to one of darkness
and enslavement. Historical convention has always held that Mughal ruler Akbar
defeated Rajput ruler Maharana Pratap in 1576. Textbooks in the northern state of Rajasthan now
tell students that it was Maharana Pratap who won because he managed to run
away from the battlefield. Even the Taj Mahal, India’s most famous monument, built
by the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, has not been spared, with one B.J.P. member
of Parliament claiming it was originally a Hindu temple.
While the government is obsessed with making it into
world rankings in science and technology, the B.J.P.’s leaders display a
shockingly poor understanding of science. Satyapal Singh, the junior federal
minister for education, recently claimed that Charles Darwin was wrong because no one had
actually seen an ape turn into a man. He drew on creationist literature for
scientific support. A few years back, Mr. Modi described the mythical elephant
head of Ganesha, a much-loved Hindu God, as an example of the ancient Indian skill of plastic surgery.
Many of the
academics the Modi government has appointed to head national research
institutes or universities have no peer-reviewed publications. However, they
are longstanding members of the R.S.S., as is Mr. Modi. And they have publicly
expressed their admiration for the prime minister. In turn, these university
chiefs have brought in their own people, overriding longstanding academic
conventions around recruitment.
Scholarships for underprivileged students are being unconscionably
delayed, leading many to skip meals or drop out of college. A delay in his
scholarship was one of the reasons that led Rohith Vemula, a Dalit student at the University of
Hyderabad, to commit suicide in 2016, an incident that sparked nationwide
outrage about caste and discrimination on campuses. In March, the government
revealed in Parliament that scholarships worth $1.255 billion meant for scheduled caste —
Dalit and other lower caste — students had not been paid.
Academic seminars, film screenings, talks that
challenge majoritarianism or even invoke the Indian Constitution have
frequently been canceled because of threats of disruption by the R.S.S.’s student wing,
on the pretext that the speakers and the subjects are subversive, seditious,
unpatriotic.
Arbitrary and excessive fee hikes, the imposition of
unqualified administrators, discriminatory hostel and library timings for
women, not being allowed nonvegetarian food in dining halls and academic
censorship have triggered student protests across the country.
Whether the exclusive focus on rankings is what India
really needs is a question that nobody is asking. More funding, greater
autonomy and more studentships for existing public universities and a
concentrated push toward universal and effective school education are what
India’s students and teachers really need. Policies, which create a hierarchy
of eminence and ordinariness, autonomy and control within the university
sector, are at best a short-term fix.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/03/opinion/india-higher-education-modi-ambani-rss-trouble.html
