Page 40 - Education World July 2020

Cover Story

But after the assassination of Ma-
hatma Gandhi and the untimely death
of Sardar Patel — both of whom re-
spected and admired indigenous busi-
ness leaders who funded the freedom
movement — free India’s first prime
minister Jawaharlal Nehru, a natural
sciences graduate of Cambridge Uni-
versity who had minimal grasp of eco-
nomics, became enamoured with the
centrally-planned Soviet template for
national development and led the na-
tion down the inorganic socialist path
to national bankruptcy.
The price that free India’s citizens
have paid for aimless wandering in
the wilderness of Nehruvian socialism
for over 70 years has been very heavy. Nehru: inorganic socialist path Rajaji: licence-permit-quota-raj warning
For over three decades (1950-81),
the country’s GDP growth averaged a Unsurprisingly, even as 12 national graduate — paradoxically they dis-
mere 3.5 percent while the population five-year plans with ambitious GDP couraged private education institu-
increased (because of mass illiteracy growth targets — never achieved — tions at all levels. Although the lavishly
and neglect of primary education) were rolled out by a high-powered endowed Birla Institute of Technology
by 2.2 percent resulting in per capita Planning Commission chaired by the & Science (BITS), Pilani was conferred
income growth of a mere 1.3 percent prime minister, post-independence autonomous deemed university status
per year. With national taxes and sav- India mutated into the world’s most in 1964 under the discretionary power
ings deposited in nationalised banks corrupt democracy, a reputation it of the UGC (University Grants Com-
poured into giant non-performing retains to this day. In the latest Cor- mission) because of the sheer politi-
public sector enterprises managed ruption Perceptions Index, 2019 pub- cal clout of the late G.D. Birla, down
by over-promoted business illiterate lished annually by the Berlin-based south despite the continuous efforts
clerks, the modest material aspira- Transparency International, India is of extraordinary education mission-
tions of two generations of free Indi- ranked #80 among the 180 countries ary and entrepreneur Dr. T.M.A. Pai
ans were wiped out as India descended assessed. Coterminously because of who established the Manipal Academy
into the bottom decile of the world’s the establishment’s hostility to pri- of Higher Education in 1953, it was
poorest countries, with its population vate enterprise, contemporary India grudgingly awarded university status
eking out a ship-to-mouth existence is ranked #63 among 190 countries in 1993, four years after Dr. Pai passed
dependent upon American foodgrain evaluated by the International Fi- away.
aid and Soviet military supplies. nance Corporation (a subsidiary of Fortunately in India’s 29 states
Learned political leaders such as the World Bank) for ease of doing — K-12 education falls within their
C.R. Rajagopalachari (aka Rajaji) and business. purview — private greenfield prima-
Minoo Masani who cautioned against ry-secondaries were permitted to be
the dangers of India’s descent into ET IF THE NETA BABU promoted relatively easily. Neverthe-
“licence, permit-control raj” were ig- Y brotherhood harbours less large and small amounts of “speed
nored by the establishment including visceral hatred for pri- money” was — and continues to be
the country’s feeble-minded intelli- vate sector industry and — extorted from edupreneurs by the
gentsia and new urban middle class business, it has even greater animus bureaucracy, which is conditioned to
co-opted into the establishment with towards entrepreneurs in education. view all private initiatives in education
generous unmerited subsidies provid- Although with typical Janus-faced hy- with suspicion as “commercialisation
ed at the expense of the country’s rural pocrisy, the country’s upper strata of of education”. Given this officially and
majority. Moreover, continuously de- politicians and bureaucrats routinely judicially sanctioned prejudice against
prived of remunerative prices for ag- enroll their progeny in elite private private initiatives in education, it’s
riculture produce and unable to access schools — Nehru’s grandsons went hardly surprising that the proposal to
acceptable quality primary education, to the top-ranked The Doon School, establish India’s first post-liberalisa-
the rural majority regressed into the Dehradun and thence to British uni- tion international school mooted in
stone-age. versities where they both failed to 1979 matured in 1997 when the Ma-

40 EDUCATIONWORLD JULY 2020