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Challenges Facing New Education Policy in India: Commentary
Challenges Facing New Education Policy in India: Commentary
Challenges Facing
New Education Policy in India
Arun Kumar
14
decline within a year. The malaise afflicting our institutions of higher learning
is old and needs to be identified if
corrective measures are to be adopted in
the NEP.
Political interference in top appointments is a crucial factor in the decline of
institutions of higher learning, but this
is not new. In 1952, A V Hill, the biological
secretary of the Royal Society of the United
Kingdom (UK), wrote to Shanti Swaroop
Bhatnagar who had just then been appointed the director general of the newly
established Council of Scientific and
Industrial Research (CSIR). He expressed
concern that the CSIR laboratories would
drain universities of talented scientists,
and asked who would then train the
next generation? Bhatnagar replied that
the universities are already in poor
shape because their vice chancellors are
political appointees (Kumar 2006). The
implication is that the malaise goes
back to the time of independence.
Often vice chancellors, directors and
principals have been appointed for proximity to the powers that be and not
their academic credentials. This makes
them beholden to political bosses or in
privately controlled institutions to the
moneyed and that erodes their accountability to their academic peers. No wonder civil servants and army men have
been appointed even though they lack
academic imagination. The rot is now
deeper, since there are persistent reports of money being the consideration
for appointments.
The task of those at the top is seen as
managing an institution rather than fostering creativity, or encouraging a questioning spirit. Such people aspire for more
favours to rise in the system and, therefore, remain compliant with the wishes
of their bosses rather than having the
welfare of their institution as their priority. Vice chancellors have increasingly
ceded ground to the bureaucrats of the
University Grants Commission (UGC) and
Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) rather than providing leadership, as was the case up to the early
1970s. This is as true of premier universities like the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) as of the lesser-known universities in the states.
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COMMENTARY
David Gross, the Nobel laureate, pointing to the leadership crisis, argues that it is
due to the mechanical nature of decisions.
He says,
most destructive and silly is the governments policy towards early retirement.
People are forced to retire here at the age
of 60 (65 in some institutes). It is extremely
difficult to find people in their 60s, which is
the optimal age at which people can assume
scientific leadership.
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Academic leaders often make their institutions playgrounds for caste, regional,
political and community politics. Appointments are often made for reasons of
such affiliations and/or by charging money
(corruption), making academic merit
secondary. Even when good academics
are chosen, they understand that to
survive, they have to cater to sectional
interests. As the number of such appointments increases, decline of institutions
is inevitable. The Allahabad University
in the 1950s became the arena for the
play between the Brahmin, Kayastha
and Baniya groups and merit became
secondary. In such a situation, many
question the very idea of merit and see
in it a design to exclude some.
The problem is compounded by the
feudal culture prevailing in most institutions of higher learning. Obeisance to
those above and compliance from those
below is expected, thus marginalising
excellence if not demoralising it. So,
challenging orthodoxy and dissenting
are becoming rarer even though that is a
prerequisite for originality.
Narayana Murthys lament is linked to
this. He said at the Indian Institute of
Science (IISc), Bangalore, There has not
been a single invention from India in the
last 60 years that became a household
name globally. In the same vein,
Raghuram Rajan lamented that a whole
generation of economists has been lost.
These are corollaries of nurturing sycophancy and suppression of dissent in
academia.
Attitudes filter down into teaching and
the learning processes of students who
mostly learn by rote while questioning
little. Exams test the capacity to mechanically reproduce what is mugged up.
Richard Thane, an exchange student
from the US, highlighted this fact in an
article where he described his brief stint
at the prestigious St Stephens College in
Delhi University. He wrote:
In 2007 I was a student at St Stephens College
for seven months as part of a study abroad
programme offered by my home institution,
Brown University. What is remarkable is
that all students in India know what I am
talking about. A real education being one
that challenges the intellect and questions
paradigms, not one of rote memorisation and
conformity. my entire study abroad
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