People's Democracy

Thinking Together

What do you think is the motivation of this Vajpayee government's direction to slash tuition fees in the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) from Rs 1,50,000 to 30,000 per year?  Is this also related to the forthcoming elections?

 S. Rajeevan, Mumbai

EVERYTHING and anything that this government is currently doing (mainly spreading disinformation and creating illusions) is related to the forthcoming elections!

However, at the outset, it is necessary to state that reduction in fees is welcome because it makes access  to higher education easier and wider. But, as you suggest, this government's motivation appears suspect  and far removed from the  noble objective of enlarging the access to quality higher education.  If this were the case, this government would not have or should not have allowed massive  hikes in the tuition fees across the board,  across the country during the last few years.  There are instances of the fees being hiked by twenty to fifty times in all major universities and institutions of higher education across the country.  Simultaneously, the other related costs of education such as library fees, hostel and mess  charges etc have also seen a massive increase.

During these five years, by adopting a policy of  asking universities and institutes of higher education to finance themselves and drastically cutting central funding, this government has made higher education more expensive and, therefore, more inaccessible.  Higher education has truly been reduced to a privilege.  Simultaneously, this government has also been facilitating the merciless privatisation and commercialisation of education.

In this background, therefore, the decision to lower the fees  for IIMs appears, indeed, curious. For one, the reduction in fees should not, in any way, lead to a dilution in the content of the courses.  This would be self-defeating.  The government has assured that it shall subsidise the institutes to ensure that this does not happen.  But the cost of the courses in IIMs  is not confined to merely imparting teaching.  The access to quality libraries, availability of computers and access to internet and cyberspace apart from reasonable living conditions and facilities are part of the earlier fees structure.   If these are now separated as additional costs, then the purpose of the fee reduction itself would be self-defeating.

By offering to subsidise the IIMs, the  Human Resources Development Minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, it is legitimately feared, will  now seek to make changes in the syllabus, admission tests,  etc etc. He has an "unassailable" reputation for rewriting history and changing the curriculum and the syllabi to suit and advance the communal agenda of the RSS.  We need not be surprised if a new course on the "vedic  art of management" is introduced!

Most importantly, however, it needs to be underlined that if the objective is to enlarge the access to quality education, then what needs to be done is to increase the number of institutes of  higher education that can cater to the ever growing demand for accessible higher education.  By seeking to open up "elite" institutions by reducing  fees, the government is abdicating from its responsibility of enlarging the access to quality higher education by increasing the number of institutions.  This is a sinister gameplan that needs to be thoroughly exposed and resisted.