Even after half a century of Indian Independence, the fate of education, educators, and students has hardly improved. The apathy of the power that is, including a large section of society, has not changed when it comes to human resource development and education. Even now, there are more than four crore educated unemployed youths in India.
India boasts of being the world’s third knowledge power, but effectively this is the lowest when judged against per thousand-population base. Societal degradation, inflicted by political might, is reflected in educational institutions across India. Aberrations have become the rule on campuses that are infested with self-seekers and politicians.
Democratization of higher educational institutions, though a noble concept, has in the past 20 years turned campuses into a cauldron of stinking filth. These are managed by affiliations charged with little regard for excellence, honesty, and intellectual probity. Unethical and politically motivated decisions serve a few and are reflections of societal catharsis.
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Geographic India consolidated into a polity by the British has muted into conglomerations of politically charged, disjointed entities and facsimiles of democratic degradation. The classic conservative yearning for an ordered polity and commensurate pursuit of knowledge on the campuses are missing. Whichever brand rules the country, this section of society commands no respect now. May it be students or teachers, who don’t have a voice, they don’t constitute an essential service, and education is not a national necessity. Being a state subject, educational policies suffer from innumerable deformities.
Though it is a constitutional obligation, the non-availability of funds and vested administrative setup have led to the mushrooming of universities, fake campuses, private enterprises, numerous makeshift education centers, and fly-by-air foreign campuses. It has proved to be a great financial endeavor with hardly any risk involved because it does not come under VAT or other financial constraints. India has by now more institutions of such type than colleges, an excellent opportunity to rope in knowledge-seeking youth and those who desire to fly off to greener pastures.
When it comes to the formulation of policies about higher education, structuring the system, financial assistance, grants, and salary, the statutory body-University Grants Commission is mentioned like a sacred cow worshipped and butchered in the streets. How far the UGC is autonomous is a common knowledge. It has become a post office, a government organization, disbursing petty grants, sanctioned by the Central Government, among universities or institutions with several tags attached to them depending upon the status of the recipient institutions, state, Central, autonomous, or deemed universities. There is a perpetual complaint about the non-availability of funds. The administration should appreciate that the jumbo cabinet and expenditure on legislatures could be cut down to feed and educate a few villages. The teacher wants to be a ladder upon which students could climb and scale new heights.
