Bibek Debroy: Make quotas price-based

Add up all the expenses the UPA's planned, and just give the money to everyone for voting Congress.

Six-two sounds like the score in a tennis match and had it been tennis, the winner would have been regarded as having walked away with the set. But 6-2 was also the majority/minority division in the National Knowledge Commission (NKC), when the NKC opposed the idea of additional quotas in higher education. True, the NKC hadn't quite examined this issue. Not in the form of a report, at any rate. However, given the impeccable academic and other credentials of members of NKC, surely it would have been a simple matter to ask NKC to examine the issue. Forget qualifications of individual NKC members, whom we all know. But ask a more general question. Given the broad mandate of NKC, these qualifications must have been taken into consideration when NKC was set up. And when a minister and an insider (who pretends to be an outsider) separately attack these qualifications, that is tantamount to an attack on the government's judgement, if not the government itself. The government sees fit not to respond, presumably because the government doesn't believe in such commissions in any case. There are several of them floating around. They needed to be set up to accommodate people. No more, no less. Who cares about their recommendations?

The enrolment in higher education in the 18-23 age-group must be increased from 6 per cent at the start of the Tenth Plan (2002-07) to 10 per cent by the end of 2007. This is a target that is often bandied around and is regarded as essential if India is to tap the demographic dividend. There is, of course, no objective basis for 10 per cent, it seems to have been plucked out of thin air on the basis of enrolment figures from East Asia. But if you look at enrolment figures now, they are already at around 8 per cent and not 6 per cent. What explains this recent explosion? Government documents will mention open and distance education. However, notwithstanding licencing restrictions that plague higher education, there is considerable private sector presence in selected segments. If we want access ratios to increase, as we should, a fundamental question is "" who will do the provisioning, the public sector or the private sector? Census 2001 shows that India has more places of worship (2.4 million) than schools and colleges (1.5 million) and hospitals (0.5 million) combined. There is an impression floating around, particularly at this time of the year, when admissions are in the air, that there is a supply problem. Higher education is characterised by a shortage and excess demand.

That's not quite true. Use the figures for universities, deemed universities and colleges. The present enrolment in these is 9,228,000. Use whatever figure seems to be reasonable for average enrolment in colleges and universities and do a back-of-the-envelope calculation. The capacity far exceeds the enrolment. There is excess supply, not excess demand. The point is that most of these colleges and universities, primarily public sector, provide junk. Ipso facto, increasing public expenditure on higher education is not the answer. Nor is increasing the number of public colleges and universities the answer. There is a caste system within public institutes of higher education. There are the IITs, the IIMs and medical colleges, the Brahmins. For this category, there is excess demand. And most of the others are SCs, STs and OBCs. For that category, there is excess supply.

Many people within the present government were involved in formulating the 1991 reforms. And given this scenario, in any other sector, they would have argued the following. Facilitate private sector entry to remove the shortage, inject competition and improve quality. Make the public sector (colleges and universities) more autonomous and decentralised. Like we scrapped the CCI, scrap the HRD Ministry.

What is so remarkable about higher education that common sense ceases to prevail? Incidentally, on disparities in access to higher education among women, SCs/STs, OBCs or even backward regions, inequity in access does exist. But this inequity is no more than in other socio-economic indicators and once one controls for class (income), connectivity and similar other variables, it is by no means obvious that caste is the deterrent. Indeed, the quality of education imparted in government schools, seems to be the major deterrent in preventing access to higher education. But all this will change now. There will be more IITs, IIMs and medical colleges, there will be more seats. Plough in Rs 10,000 crore more and the problem will disappear. In our stupidity, we hadn't quite realised it. It is all a resources issue. Plough in Rs 25,000 crore and social security for the unorganised sector will arrive. Plough in Rs 40,000 crore and all below-the-poverty-line families will have unskilled jobs. Plough in Rs 50,000 crore and all villages will have roads, water and electricity. There is another way of looking at this and that's much more transparent. All of this expenditure works out to Rs 200,000 crore a year (including the Sixth Pay Commission). If you vote for the Congress, each individual will be paid Rs 2,000 per year, each family Rs 10,000 per year. Make it price-based rather than quota-based.