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Cover Story

EW INDIA HIGHER EDUCATION RANKINGS 2020-21

INDIA’S

TOP 500

ARTS, SCIENCE & COMMERCE

COLLEGES

To create level playing fields, in this issue we present league
tables ranking private autonomous, government autonomous
and Top 100 non-autonomous colleges separately on five
common parameters of collegiate excellence

Dilip Thakore

P ERHAPS THE GREATEST TRAGEDY private education, India’s academy and public intellectu-

als at best bleat a weak chorus in support of top budgetary
of post-independence India’s failed
national development effort is that
and resource allocation for educating the world’s youngest
even the brightest and best of the
youth and child population of over 500 million.
country’s intellectuals are unable
In the Union budget 2020-21 presented to Parliament
to fully absorb the proposition that
high-quality education across the
Sitharaman allocated a sum of Rs.99,312 crore for educa-
tion — or Rs.122,312 crore if one adds the allocation made
spectrum from pre-primary to Ph D and the people on February 1, finance minister Nirmala
is the essential prerequisite of national prosperity. This is for ECCE (early childhood care and education) in the coun-
why despite using reams of newsprint to propagate their try’s 1.6 million anganwadis run by the Union ministry of
prescriptions for socio-economic progress and growth of women and child development. But this sum adds up to a
the nation, the public intellectual who recommends top mere 0.54 percent of GDP. If the provision made for public
budget priority for education is a rara avis. Despite a education by India’s 29 state governments and Union ter-
mountain of historical evidence in the public domain tes- ritories is added, it aggregates to Rs. 6.8 lakh crore, equiva-
tifying that the dominance of OECD nations in the global lent to a mere 3.1 percent of GDP. Against this the spend of
order is attributable to sustained investment in public and 190 countries around the world averages 5 percent of GDP.

30 EDUCATIONWORLD APRIL 2020