Page 42 - EW April 2025

Cover Story

INDIA’S BEST PRIVATE MULTI-

DISCIPLINARY UNIVERSITIES

It’s a positive development
in the national interest
that the EW league table of
private multidisciplinary
universities is lenghtening
every year. They are
valuable national assets
more likely to produce
inventors and innovators
urgently required by the
Indian economy

ne of the many errors of
control-and-command pol-
iticians and bureaucrats, Amity Chancellor Dr. Atul Chauhan (centre): hard work outcome
Oaka the neta-babu brother-
hood, who imposed Soviet-inspired obliged to add the suffix “deemed-to- unaffordable by the great majority of
central planning upon the Indian be-university” and are not permitted the citizenry.
economy after independence, was to to affiliate undergrad colleges. However the country’s fast-ex-
discourage private initiatives in higher Fortunately after belated liberali- panding middle class has welcomed
education. According to dominant so- sation and deregulation of the Indian them as a more grounded alternative
cialist mantra of the time, private cap- economy engineered by the late, unla- to American Ivy league, British and
italists who established HEIs (higher mented Prime Minster P.V. Narasimha Commonwealth HEIs which charge
education institutions) would mislead Rao, the shackles that bound the edu- foreign students higher tuition fees
youth away from the socialist, to the cation sector for almost half a century, than payable by indigenous students.
capitalist road. Although Article 19 of were loosened. In the new millennium Moreover, most left academics fudge
the Constitution permitted citizens to after some unsung lawyer discovered the reality that the actual per-student
pursue any trade, profession or voca- that since education is in the Concur- tuition cost of higher education provi-
tion, in effect this fundamental right rent List of the Constitution with state sion (paid by the public exchequer) is
was nullified by stringent licensing of governments equally empowered to greater or on a par with private uni-
industry, business and education. legislate greenfield private universi- versities.
The few private HEIs such as the ties, several private universities with Against this backdrop and in the
Manipal Academy of Higher Educa- globally benchmarked infrastructure, interest of sharply raising academic
tion and Birla Institute of Technology high-quality faculty, and contempo- standards in higher education, your
& Science established by nationalist rary, industry-linked curriculums, editors have unambiguously wel-
philanthropists like G.D. Birla and de- have mushroomed across the country. comed the belated arrival of new
termined educationists such as the late Inevitably the neta-babu brother- genre privately-promoted universi-
T.M.A Pai (1898-1979) who promoted hood and left-liberal academics — ties and HEIs on the education scene.
the Kasturba Medical College, Mani- reluctant to acknowledge the dismal Less bureaucratic and unencumbered
pal despite every discouragement of failure of Nehruvian socialism — are by multiple objectives, India’s latter-
government, were not permitted un- resentful of India’s new genre pri- day private universities driven by
til recently to describe themselves as vate universities. According to woke public demand are multiplying. An
universities. Even to this day, they are opinion, they are elitist, exclusive and even more positive development is

42 EDUCATIONWORLD APRIL 2025