Page 74 - EducationWorld March 2022

Postscript

Fairweather friend juvenile love story set in Varanasi, it provided Bhagat an
ideal opportunity to expose the sub rosa shenanigans
through which colleges are awarded licences aka NOCs
S THE RENOWNED ENGLISH POET JOHN
Donne (1572-1631) observed, every man’s death (no objection certificates) by corrupt regulatory organ-
Adiminishes us. More so if the man is a great leader isations such as AICTE (All India Council for Technical
who has contributed to the public good and welfare of Education), University Grants Commission (UGC) and
the general populace. Rahul Bajaj who passed away on star ratings by NAAC (National Assessment and Accredi-
January 13 at his home in Pune, was undoubtedly a great tation Council).
industrialist and business leader. The folklore is that when teams from these institutions
However even as encomiums and tributes to RB are visit colleges for inspection, they are royally wined and
flooding the media, for purposes of balanced assessment dined and then some, to award NOCs and star ratings.
of this frank and fearless business leader, it’s important With a little research and investigation Bhagat could have
to note that Bajaj was a hard-knuckled, take-no-prisoners blown the lid off this well-oiled racket which permits sub-
type of businessman who didn’t let morals and scruples standard institutions to obtain pristine NOCs and star
get in his way. This was evidenced in the brusque manner rankings. The critically important story of bribery and
in which he ousted H.K. Firodia — a brilliant engineer corruption behind the success of the engineering college
who built the first Bajaj Auto factory in Pune and whose is dismissed in one paragraph and ascribed to Shuklaji,
family was an equal shareholder in the company — a crooked politician who “took care of it”. Little wonder
by using his political clout and getting government IIDEs panned it.
institutional shareholders to vote with him. Nor was he In his column under reference, Bhagat advances the
content with that. He did his very best to oust the Firodias argument that anything the IIDEs like — English lan-
from Bajaj Tempo in which they were equal 29 percent guage book publishing, the Congress party and Netflix —
shareholders by persuading Mercedes Benz of Germany suffer the “kiss of death”. If his juvenile novels are also a
which held 50 percent of equity, to vote with him. But in casualty, society is better off.
this latter enterprise, he failed because Mercedes stood
firm. People's pulse?
As founder-editor of Business India and Business-
world, your correspondent was an unabashed admirer of
RB and wrote several cover features on Bajaj Auto which NE MAJOR ARGUMENT ADVANCED IN favour
sent the company’s market capitalisation soaring, and I of the country’s political class which has divided
even developed a friendship with Bajaj. However, many Osociety on religious and caste lines to win politi-
years later when EducationWorld was struggling, an cal advantage, and has wrecked the Indian economy with
appeal to RB for tax deductible advertising support, was its inorganic socialism experiments, is that they have the
rudely refused. Typical of India Inc leaders who pay lip pulse of the people. If so, how will apologists for duly
service to education and human capital development, RB elected people’s representatives, explain the timing of the
also turned out to be a fairweather friend. huge pay rise that Karnataka’s members of the legislative
assembly voting themselves?
According to Hunger Watch-2, a study of a representa-
Bhagat's broadside tive sample of 6,500 households in 14 states of the Indian
Union commissioned by the Delhi-based Centre for
HERE’S AN INHERENT PARADOX IN best-selling Equity Studies, following the third wave of the Omicron
author and newspaper columnist Chetan Bhagat. variant (December-January), 66 percent of households
TAlthough he writes thought-provoking and readable reported their incomes were below pre-pandemic level.
1,000 word newspaper columns, he also writes puerile Moreover, 70 percent report food insecurity.
and lazy 60,000-80,000 word English language novels Despite this, the BJP dominated Karnataka legislative
which no intelligent or discerning reader can stomach. If assembly has voted all its MLAs (members of legislative
his novels are best-sellers as his publishers proclaim, it’s assembly) a 50-60 percent pay hike. Under the Karnataka
an indictment of the country’s sub-standard education Legislature, Salaries, Pensions & Allowances (Amend-
system which certifies millions of barely literate youth as ment) Bill passed unanimously amid chaos over the issue
college and university graduates. The plain truth is that of an insult to the national flag, the monthly salary of
Bhagat’s simpleton novels are timepass fodder for ufortu- MLAs has been increased from Rs.1.4 lakh to Rs.2 lakh.
nates short-changed by the education system. Moreover, the monthly salaries of the chief minister,
Although your correspondent would be classified as assembly speaker and legislative council chairman have
a member of India’s Intellectual and Discerning Elite been hiked from Rs.50,000 to Rs.75,000; house rent al-
(IIDE) lambasted by Bhagat in an op-ed essay in the lowance from Rs.1.2 lakh to Rs.1.6 lakh; fuel allowance to
Times of India (February 11), I have no prejudice against 2,000 litres (from 1,000); travel allowance to Rs.40 per
him. I have read two of his novels and reviewed one of km (Rs.30) and ‘sumptuary allowance’ to Rs.4.5 lakh per
them — Revolution 2020 in EducationWorld. This novel year (Rs.3 lakh). Total increment because of “financial
was of particular interest to me as its protagonist is an in- trouble due to a steep rise in prices of diesel, petrol...”:
dividual who becomes rich by promoting an engineering Rs.92 crore. All this self-voted munificence at a time
college on land inherited by him and selling seats at vastly when the public is suffering widespread financial distress.
inflated prices. Although the novel is centred around a A finger on the pulse of the people? Doubtful.

74 EDUCATIONWORLD MARCH 2022