M Govinda Rao: Unleashing creative power

What has the University Grants Commission been doing all these years

The whole world perceives India to be an important knowledge centre in the future. It has become increasingly clear that India has tremendous comparative advantage and opportunity to become a super-power not only in creating but exporting education.

India has the potential to create world-class educational institutions at a relatively low cost. Besides improving the standard of teaching and research in the country, it can "export" the service by training international students.

This could usher in another quiet revolution. The important question is: Do we want this to happen? Are we prepared to undertake policy and institutional reforms needed for the purpose?

Interestingly the UGC's website proudly states, "... In ancient times, Nalanda, Taxila and Vikramsila universities were renowned seats of higher learning, attracting students from all over the country and from far off countries like Korea, China, Burma, Ceylon, Tibet and Nepal".

That situation has ceased long ago. Can this happen now or is it that our students not capable of getting into elite institutions will have to end up in educational shops within or outside the country?

Will our students continue to have to get their training in tutorial colleges instead of the universities they are enrolled in?

Unleashing potential in this area critically depends on our capacity and willingness to reform, change policies to attract significant investment in both private and public sectors to create world-class institutions without hackles, de-bureaucratise the regulating institutions, and incentivise them to promote rather than hinder higher education.

As an aside, it is amazing and delightful to see what we simple Indians, once unshackled, are capable of achieving.

In a recent visit to Goa at the instance of Dr Pai Panandiker to address the Chamber of Commerce and Industry there, I had an opportunity to see the business outsourcing facility.

This firm recently shifted from Patna for strategic reasons by the owner Mr Venkat Rao and housed about 40-50 young computer wizards from Bihar, whose job is to convert the movies of the Second World War era from black and white to colour for Sony Corporation of the US.

It takes about 8 person hours to convert one second of the movie. The tape is divided into small parts, thousands of colours are mixed in computerised processing and the various parts are rejoined.

The value added for each movie is $200,000, which means that the earning per person second is a little over four dollars.

Thankfully, the government does not know that such things happen, except of course, when the cassettes are re-exported, customs officials have to be convinced that a small tape is valued at such a high price.

The simple point is, if we have the right environment, miracles can happen. But when the entire education system in the country is shackled with a bureaucratic mindset, the whole edifice of education gets into a rot.

The problem is when an important position like chairman of the UGC is considered a post-retirement patronage, the incumbents neither have the openness of mind, nor the energy, nor the initiative to improve the system.

In the process, it is the country that suffers. Sadly, while most people lament the declining quality of education and research in the country, the entire debate is seen to be a funding problem, which it is not.

In contrast to the Goa experience, it would be interesting to record a recent experience with the UGC. Having long realised that the quality of teaching public finance in the country is abysmally low, except in about a dozen of over 200 universities, the NIPFP undertook a four-week refresher training programme for university teachers.

Considering the low priority that the universities give to such events, it was decided to fund the programme with assistance from the World Bank.

The UGC chairman was requested to accord recognition to the programme similar to the one the body conducts for career advancement.

The first letter did not evoke any response and the reminder was met with a reply by the joint secretary of the UGC, who stated that to get the recognition, we should approach one of the UGC's academic training centres and collaborate with it.

We instead preferred to focus on imparting knowledge in public finance.

The UGC has become mainly a grant-giving agency. That being the main job, it sees the rest of the world as supplicants, except of course, the mai bap education ministry.

Thus, the entire orientation is the donor-supplicant relationship and it does not seem to know any other way. Not surprisingly, it considers everyone approaching it as a supplicant.

It cannot think that there are other institutions that take their social responsibilities seriously. The episode only shows that the mandarins in the UGC seem to have forgotten what their obligation to society is.

The mandate of the UGC, besides making grants to universities, is: "... coordination, determination and maintenance of standards of university education in India".

Surely, this includes taking measures to improve the quality of research and teaching in universities. For the purpose, it could surely approach academic institutions of excellence in the country outside the university system to promote better interaction between universities and such institutions.

The problem with the UGC is like institutions that were given the monopoly power of "making grants and co-ordinating, and determining and maintaining standards".

The absolute power to dispense favours and the sole authority to create and recognise the institutions have left no initiative to improve and innovate.

What, if any, has the UGC done for about 50 years of its existence to check depleting standards of education and research, and wide variations in the quality between universities?

Why should it continue when we know for certain that it cannot carry out the tasks it is entrusted to? Indeed I was enthused to read a recent piece in The Times of India by Gurucharan Das, who asks: "... hasn't UGC killed off higher education?" (June 19).

There are important questions of ensuring minimum standards and regulating the quality of education. There is also an important issue of why we should not have private universities.

The Chhattisgarh lesson should be seen as the inability of the system to cope with pent-up demand for education and the solution lies in creating the right type of institutions rather than killing them.

If we have to create many institutions of excellence in higher education and research to create a world-class knowledge economy, we will need considerable investment in private universities.

Here again, it is important to de-link teachers' emoluments from bureaucratic salaries. True, several eminent academics in the country are not driven by the lure of money and still continue contributing to international standards in reputed institutions, but such numbers are dwindling.

To make education competitive, besides allowing private sector investments, we have to free the institutions from bureaucratic control including the regulation on salaries, institute multiple rating agencies, and ultimately let the employability of the graduates determine the viability of institutions.

Let these institutions be guided by energetic leaders rather than retired academics who have nothing to look forward to except seeking position and power.

There are tremendous opportunities for India, if only we can think in new ways and unshackle ourselves from unnecessary controls.

There is indeed tremendous potential to make India the knowledge destination, but are we prepared to change?

The views are personal. The author is Director, NIPFP.

 mgr@nipfp.org.in