Regulate private education: CPI(M)

PM assures discussion on more funds for education and health at National Development Council meet.

The Communist Party of India (Marxist) today urged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to appoint a regulator for fee and salary structures in private professional institutes and private deemed universities.

The party also demanded a national commission on education saying steady increase in private participation has brought about the need for government checks on the sector.

Leading a delegation of student leaders, CPI(M) Politburo member and MP Sitaram Yechury told the prime minister that if a regulator could be appointed for telecom and insurance sectors, there should be no problem in regulatory control over private educational institutions.

Yechury demanded that the government raise public spending on education to at least 6 per cent of the GDP or 10 per cent of the central Budget. He urged the prime minister to convene a meeting of chief ministers to discuss these issues. The prime minister is learnt to have told the delegation that he would talk to Human Resource Development Minister Arjun Singh on this. He is also learnt to have assured that a meeting of the National Development Council (NDC) is likely to be convened in the next few months to discuss the UPA government's commitments in agriculture, education and healthcare.

A proposed legislation on right to education and steps to hike expenditure on education to 6 per cent of the GDP would be taken up at the NDC meeting, Yechury quoted the prime minister as saying.

The party also came out against FDI and foreign participation in the education sector.

"If our university system is opened to foreign and private players, it will be to the detriment of our intellectual self-reliance. The experience of private universities in our country is already very bitter. Allowing FDI in education and foreign universities will in effect provide legitimacy to private universities and create a parallel higher education system in our country at a high monetary and social cost," a memorandum submitted by the party said.

Welcoming the decision to implement 27 per cent reservation for OBCs in central educational institutes, the delegation said the true intention of the 93rd Amendment to the Constitution was to ensure reservations in private institutions and hence "such legislation must be enacted immediately."

Yechury said the only way the country's youth "" at a time when half of India's population was less than 25 years of age "" could be converted into an asset was by focussing on education and health, and increasing budgetary allocation for these sectors.