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Postscript

Sea of troubles unless MSMEs prosper. For a start, the country’s 63 mil-
The plain truth is that Indian industry cannot prosper

NE CAN’T HELP FEELING SORRY FOR THE lion MSMEs account for 40 percent of India’s industrial
trustees of Ashoka University (AU), Sonipat (Hary- output and employ 40 percent of India’s 493 million
Oana) India’s first crowd-funded university estab- workforce. Therefore their health and well-being is criti-
lished at vast expense (estimated at Rs.2,000 crore) with cal not only to keep the wheels of industry turning, but
successful members of the Indian diaspora mainly in the also to keep people off the street by generating employ-
US chipping in Rs.5-25 crore each. ment. Yet banks, including public sector banks which are
Ashoka U generated great excitement within the awash with liquidity, are averse to lend to them — too
country’s expanding middle class when it was launched in many small accounts to service and a tardy legal system
2016. But ab initio overt and closet commies who domi- which makes loans recovery very difficult.
nate the academy and media were disparaging of this Moreover, government and large well-established com-
private varsity which spared no expense on architecture, panies are slack about making payments for goods and
infrastructure and on recruiting best faculty from around services supplied by MSMEs. The average number of days
the world. They were — and remain — outraged that the of payments outstanding to supplier MSMEs is 75-90
fully residential AU levies the actual cost of education days, with some of the biggest companies in India rou-
provision to pay for its globally benchmarked campus and tinely delaying outstanding payments for months on end.
faculty. In his excellent under-sold book India’s China Challenge
Trendy lefties have a blindspot about calculating the (2020) Ananth Krishnan, the Beijing-based correspon-
actual cost of education of mainly middle class students dent of The Hindu, attributes the rise of China into the
in public institutions. Moreover, faculty and students are world’s manufacturing powerhouse to the rise and pros-
hell-bent on voicing opinions on sensitive political mat- perity of its many million town and village enterprises
ters, even though they are no doubt aware that govern- (TVEs). The average interest on easily availed accessible
ments at the Centre and in Haryana are bulldozer raj credit is 8 percent and as supply chain enterprises of the
administrations which have little time or respect for the People’s Republic large world-beating corporations, they
niceties of democratic governance. Or for fine universities. are assured of prompt payment and utmost respect.
Some two years ago, Harvard and Princeton alum Prat- There’s a moral in this story for government and
ap Bhanu Mehta, a trenchant critic of the BJP govern- industry leaders making announcements about India’s
ment, resigned his office as vice chancellor of AU in high inevitable great leap forward into a $30 trillion (from the
dudgeon, when advised to tread gingerly in his widely current $3.7 trillion) economy by 2047.
admired weekly column in the Indian Express. Angry stu-
precedented ombudsman as barrier between the trustees Curious reluctance
dent protests resulted in the trustees appointing an un-
and management. However, this didn’t prevent Sabya-
sachi Das, assistant professor of economics at AU from ITH ASSEMBLY ELECTIONS LOOMING IN
putting in his papers when questioned about a research several states including Rajasthan, Madhya
paper positing that the ruling BJP had “manipulated” WPradesh, Chhattisgarh and Telangana, the
General Election 2019. And when Sunil Bhikchanadani, minute one switches on the idiot box these days or flees
the billionaire (Naukri.com, InfoEdge) founder-trustee of to a magazine, one is assaulted with blaring state govern-
AU opined that parents didn’t send their children to AU ment ads and splashes of Prime Minister Modi inaugu-
to indulge in andolan (agitation), he was roundly trolled rating mega projects in Uttar Pradesh or another BJP
on social media by the woke brigade. ruled state. And in the latest India Today, Rajasthan’s
Alas, India’s finest university, innovatively funded with Congress government has highlighted the wonders it has
great expectations, is floundering in a sea of troubles. performed in the public interest over 15 pages of text
and evocative photographs, much no doubt, to the joy of
publisher Aroon Purie.
Respect MSMEs guls and print media tycoons, one wonders who is paying
While all this is highly beneficial for TV channel mo-
for these ads with their riveting copy and arresting graph-
HE LOUD FORECASTS OF PRIME MINISTER
Modi that India is all set to become a major 21st ics. In the unlikely event of it being the party, it might be
Tcentury superpower are likely to prove illusionary worthwhile for the Income Tax department to examine
unless the country beefs up — sorry, politically incorrect their books to ascertain its sources of income.
— improves its manufacturing sector. Currently, manu- Most likely these expenses are lumped under the head
facturing contributes a mere 15 percent of annual GDP of ‘establishment expenditure’ which hides all manner of
with services contributing over 55 percent and agriculture sins of the Central and state governments. For instance,
a mere 16 percent. And the reason why industrial manu- the establishment expenditure of the Central govern-
facturing is in the doldrums is because the country’s mi- ment at Rs.7.44 crore accounts for almost 15 percent of
cro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) are caught its budget revenue. Moreover, within the media (EW
between a rock and hard place. On the one hand their excepted), there’s a curious reluctance to call for slashing
credit needs are being ignored by banks, and on the other, establishment expenditure of the Centre and the states,
instead of being nurtured by large customer companies, all of whom report large inflation-fanning fiscal deficits.
they are bullied by them. Curious indeed.

188 EDUCATIONWORLD OCTOBER 2023