SFS appeals all to Join PROTEST
MARCH from Students’ Center to University Market against the “Offer” of
Education Sector to WTO and other Anti-Student Policies of the Modi Government.
Date: 5th November, 2015. Time:
5:00 pm.
RESIST
THE PRIVATISATION, COMMERCIALISATION AND SAFFRONIZATION OF EDUCATION !!
In present times, when education is being
sold as a commodity, it is important to look into the direction in which it is
taken towards. Let us start from our campus’ AC Joshi library. In our
library, situation is such that students from various fields, courses and with
different degrees are preparing for same entrance exams (mainly UPSC, SSC).
The situation has worsened to the point that the number of students competing
for the competitive exams has increased to the extent that the entire day is
spent in struggle to book the seats in the library. These students are either regular
students or pass-outs from our university, who have managed to get admission in
various courses by competing with the best students from Punjab, Haryana and
Himachal Pradesh and other parts of the country.
The students of “Professional” courses (mainly
engineering and management) take admissions through cut-throat competition
with hope of good placements and large packages. Further they have to compete
with their fellows for placements as the opportunity for jobs is even less than
that was for admission. The students who don’t get jobs anywhere and also those
frustrated from harsh and insecure private jobs are left with no option than to
join their fellows in AC Joshi library. Even while studying in such a
prestigious institute they don’t see the “bright” future that they envisioned
while taking admission. Further, implementation of Semester System leads to a
very tight schedule with 75% compulsory attendance, sessionals, assignments,
pressure of reappears etc which hampers the overall growth of a student. The
situation is similar in other state and central funded universities as well. In
this way our universities are promoting Careerism, Self-centredness and
Individualism rather than Rational and Critical thinking, which is the soul
of Education.
The
Entrance Exams and Competition has become integral to a student’s life and the
present educational system. This is perpetuated as the need of the system to
maintain “quality” and “standard”. No one talks about the incapability of
present Education System to produce “quality” at the lower level and why there is “need” to
check it through entrance exams, either to take admission in successive courses
or to get a job. Actually, these Entrance Exams are not “Quality Check” filter
but a filter to quantity as the number of Public Universities and seats in
established universities are not increasing according to growth of aspirants. The
fact about jobs is that the policies of Free Market and Globalization cannot
create job opportunities for all. Their own economists declared these policies
as that of JOBLESS GROWTH.
On the other hand the Authorities make
situation worst for students with their policies like opening of more
self-financed courses and decrease in the number of seats in regular courses
etc. Increment of mess diet rates and fees of courses has mounted the pressure
on students’ pockets due to which some are studying on loan but most cannot
even dream of this. While a few who tried to resist these anti-student policies
of authorities were charged with false cases. As a result, parents, who are
forced to manage by loan etc ask their children to concentrate on their studies
instead of fighting against it. This whole situation pressurize students to
thrive for jobs immediately after completing their course and some are even
forced to work even in the student life.
But government, running like blind horse and mad dog, are putting
pressure on our parents’ pockets and is closing the doors for the vast
population.
It will be a surprise to know that we are
among the 3-4% of this particular age group of students of entire country who are
studying in a university. It will not be wrong if we call ourselves the cream
of the society as the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER) in India is 20.8% for 18-23
years of age group that passed +2. The opportunities are scarce even for small
section of youth that are can pursue higher education. What would happen if remaining vast majority of youth will have to be
brought up to higher education and shouldn’t it be made possible?
Our
government makes several ‘arguments’ or excuses for not
making higher education free and accessible. Of all the ‘arguments’, the most
widespread and persuasive argument has been the lack of resources i.e. the
government has no funds!
If this is the real reason, then the opportunities should have something to do
with the growth of wealth of the country. If we compare the GDP of the country
which is also a parameter of “Development” of a nation and public
funding of education sector, there is a huge disparity. V.C. Kulandai Swamy,
one of the eminent educationists of India pointed out that all over the world,
particularly the developed countries are allocating 5.5% of their GDP in
education, the middle-income countries stands at 4.5% and the low-income
countries at 3.5%. In India it stands at 3.2% despite the recommendation of
6.0% by Kothari Commission. On one hand the government is cutting the budget of
social sectors claiming the lack of resources, on the other hand it has reduced
the corporate tax from 30% to 25%. One wonders with whom the loyalty of our
government lies. It is the
responsibility of every government to ensure the provision of education, health
and other services to its citizens. The income generated by the government
through taxes constitutes more than 80% of indirect tax (VAT, Service tax etc.)
which is paid by every citizen while buying anything and availing any service from
the market. It is therefore the right of every citizen to avail the basic
facilities that the government is bound to provide. However, in the era
of globalization, every sector is being negotiated for trade to earn profits.
Another
justification against universal access to higher education is “need of
maintaining quality and standard” as its role also includes Research Work and
Technical Advancements.
Till now in India access to higher
education is very limited and competitive then what stalled the growth in this
field?
Actually
the crisis in higher education was rooted in the failure of the government to universalize
school education and provide common education to all masses irrespective of
caste, class, religion and gender. At School level, minority of private schools
(21.59%) charge high fees and provides “good” education to only top 10%
of people. But majority of “poor” government schools (78.41%) are being
utilized by the rest. Thus good education instead of being available to all
children from every stratum of society is available to small minority usually
selected not on the basis of “talent” but on the basis of capacity to pay fees.
[The situation in govt. schools is such
that there is only 1 teacher for 5 classes. To show development, government has
passed a law that till 8th class no one will be failed, so that
government can show their hollow development in terms of literacy but not
education in essence.]
The focus of education today even in the so
called “good” private schools revolves around “learning by rote” which is a
hurdle to the growth of critical and rational thinking that is reflected in
higher education as well. In fact Free
and Universal access to school level and higher education would make possible to
develop and enrich standard and research in real essence.
As Mao Zedong
said “Let a hundred flowers blossom, let a hundred schools
of thought contend.” Education
is not a homogeneous process but heterogeneous method of sharing ideas and
experiences i.e. larger the participants in research and discussion from
different backgrounds with different life experiences, the results would be
more fruitful. This can be understandable from the fact that no invention in
field of any sciences is not a work of a single scientist or person but product
of already existed theories and his companions along with his huge efforts.
We
have three major needs regarding Higher Education i.e.
1. Equal
opportunities in every field for all those reach up to higher education.
2. To make Higher
Education free and accessible to vast majority of youth who are deprived of it
till now.
3. To promote
Rationality and Scientific Temperament in content of higher education.
Contrary
to the need of the hour, in the name of “reforms” in Education Sector
the Indian government has been gradually backing out of its responsibility to
provide equal opportunity of Education and jobs to all. Further instead of
developing rationality and scientific temperament in content of education, the
government is promoting its agenda of Vedic “Science” and the idea of a
Homogenous Hindu Nation.
The unwillingness of Indian state to
provide education to masses is not new, no matter whose government is in power.
Even up to 1984, where the rate of increase in number of students was more than
9% per year, government expenditures increased by just 2% per annum (source:
Dalip Swamy and Badri Raina in “Subversion of Universities”, 1984).
However, rather than correcting and compensating for this neglect, ministers, policy-makers
and the media claimed that the public sector is inefficient to provide higher
education. Education was thus left a “PRIVILEGE” to approximately 10-12%
of the relevant age group, one of the lowest levels among all countries in
1998. The failure itself was used to propagate the idea of privatization of
higher education and the withdrawal of the state from this sector as well. The
government refused to notice that the cause and eventual solution to the crisis
in higher education was rooted in the failure of the government to universalize
school education and lack of required public funding in education sector.
Eventually, then Minister Human Resources Development
(MHRD), Murli Manohar Joshi advised institutions of higher education to
“raise their own resources by raising the fee levels, encouraging private
donations and by generating revenues through consultancy and other activities.”
(Address to the UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education, 1998). This
eventually paved way for the present policy of commercializing and privatization
of higher education.
The year 2000 brought with it the policy
initiatives that represented a complete reversal of fortunes for the higher
education sector in India. Firstly, the Birla Ambani Report which
was not a product of any committee of academics, but of Prime Minister Vajpayee’s
Council on Trade and Industry, explicitly stated that privatization and commercialization
were the chief instruments of reform for the higher education and that the
corporate sector should be invited to invest rupees 11000 crores to double the
higher institutions by 2015. Ironically, the present Modi government deducted
the budget of the same amount of rupees from the education sector in the 2015
budget. The Report strongly argued to ban the Student Politics in
Campuses to tackle the resistance against the drive of privatization. The
report was dropped due to strong opposition from the academicians and teacher
unions. But the policies that followed the report pursued the same
agenda of privatization of higher education. It is evident that the number of
private universities has been on the rise with consistent decline in the number
of regular seats in public universities. Instead the public universities have
started to open self-financed courses in them. One cannot ignore the consistent
hike in the fees of regular courses too in public universities.
[ To further met the
recommendations of report to depoliticize the universities, in 2006 govt. came
up with lyngdoh Norms & recently UGC put forward security guidlines to curb
the remaining democratic space. The police chowky in PU South Campus, Sector-25
is build under these security guidlines. ]
Actually the root cause of
our problems lie in the year 1991 with the introduction of policies of
Liberalization, Privatization, and Globalization (LPG). After that government
started disinvestment in major public and core industries to open market for
Multinational Corporations (MNCs) to invest, under the pressure of World Bank
and IMF (International Monetary Fund) as the India failed to repay IMF loan
taken in 1981. Even the crucial sectors like Education & health were
eventually opened for Private & Foreign investments.
The huge claims were made that foreign
investment would lead to development and creation of job opportunities, but
despite of GDP growth (which is parameter of “development” for government) employment
growth was still a distant dream as Foreign and private investors don’t come for
“Nation Building” but to earn profits. Also, jobs in public sector has been
declining due to disinvestment by government.
Education was therefore rendered a
commodity by the government whose sole purpose would be profit of the investors
in the sector. Commodities are produced primarily for exchange, for profit
rather than for intrinsic use value. Education once had value, now it had
price too. To make corporate investment profitable, it was necessary
for government to disinvest. This is the actual reason for slashing funds from
education in union budgets.
Escaping from all these situations, if
anyone was able to access higher education, it compromised scientific approach
and rational thinking. Rational and critical thinking is the soul of Education
whereas our education system is being regularly communalized and is amended
under the name of “bhartiyakaran”. With every passing day since
the Modi government has come to power, various RSS men are appointed as the
heads of various institutes like NCERT, ICHR, FTII etc. And on the other hand
our history books are being rewritten from a communal angle and irrational
Vedic ‘science’ is being introduced. Apart from this, government has recently
proposed central university bill, in which cultural plurality of entire country
is sacrificed, as in this, the 70% of the syllabus will set up by center while
only 30 % syllabus will be set by respective universities. With this the
professors will also be taken under control. With this government will force
only one type of culture on students, that is, brahmanical culture. Modi
government is thus killing scientific temperament which is a precondition for
every country to develop.
[To further deteriorate the condition
Modi Govt. recently slashed Rs.11000 CRORE fund from the education sector which
translated into increment of NITs fees by 300% & attempt of UGC to revoke
non-NET fellowship]
To add to
the damage already been done to the students, WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION (WTO) AND GENERAL AGREEMENT ON
TRADE AND SERVICES (GATS) made an entry into the
arena of higher education in India as India offered its Higher Education to the
WTO as a tradable commodity in the year 2005. The intervention of WTO in the
education sector in India would have adverse effects on the students seeking
higher education. The offer of higher education to WTO-GATS would become a
commitment with far-reaching consequences for the nation when the WTO’s ongoing
Doha round of trade negotiations is concluded in December 2015. In the name of
making trade “easy”, the WTO regulations will threaten the sovereignty of nation
and the rights of its people.
[ To make our education system
in compliance to WTO, CBCS(Choice Based Credit System) is passed, which will
pave the way for foreign universities as most of the universities (including
our Panjab University) are already in a “financial crisis” to provide “choice”.
Accordingly, the students will have to run to private universities to fulfil
their credits. ]
IF OUR EDUCATION SYSTEM
IS BROUGHT UNDER THE WTO-GATS REGIME, IT MEANS:
· High fees and an end to reservation quotas
and government scholarships will mean that the poor, SCs STs OBCs, minorities,
women, disabled and other marginalized sections will not be able to enter such
institutions. Educational loans are no answer. The world over students and
their families are being pushed into debt-traps as globalization promotes
“jobless growth”. The U.S. itself has a $1.26 TRILLION Student LOAN
Crisis at hand.
· Government will be legally bound to protect
the profits foreign and domestic corporations trading in education even when
these interests go against the academic and democratic requirements of India’s
students and teachers.
· Bringing our educational institutions in
line with the demands of WTO-GATS will also lower the level of course content,
teaching and evaluation to meet limited market needs. The market requires
development of skills suited to the economic functions demanded of workers, it
is not concerned with the fullest development of one’s personality.
· There is no guarantee that foreign
universities would provide comparable or even accepted standard of education
and research facilities. A World Bank survey has shown that “well-known
universities of developed countries established low standard branches in
backward countries.
· All educational institutes will be
regulated through accredited bodies formed under the Trade Policy review
Mechanism (TRPM), a legal instrument under WTO. This is an outright
infringement of the sovereign freedom of people and nations to formulate their
own policies.
In all cases, Indian students are the
customers, and private foreign and domestic providers earn profits because
India “opens up” a “market” for them. Our education system will become a part
of a trade dominated and controlled by global corporate forces. This is not a
global exchange of ideas or knowledge. But this is to create a market under
global trade regulations to generate profits for foreign and “national”
corporate investors. Central and union State governments in India will have to
provide them with facilities, land, grants etc., at par with State funded
Indian universities.
The
present era of Globalization, in which institutions like World Bank, WTO and
IMF are the representative of developed nations, is new form of colonialization
of developing countries like India. After globalization, the education policies are
guided by these institutions according to market needs of Multinational
Corporations (MNCs) of developed countries. The Bangkok conference of World
Bank in 1986 argued that there is no need for third world countries to spend on
higher education. The prescription here is that
money spent on basic research are an unconscionable waste of
resources, when technology – no longer of value in the 'developed' west - may easily be
imported with due regard to intellectual property rights. In one theoretical fiat, a
strategy for the intellectual and technical impoverishment and enslavement of
developing countries is thus laid down. Eventually our governments, being a puppet at the
hands of these World Powers, has been drawing policy line in same direction. Rather
than concentration on research and scientific temperament in higher education,
focus is on just skill development programs and irrational Vedic “Science”.
The skill development programs are just to fulfil the requirement of cheap
skill laborers for MNCs. It is nonsense to imagine that foreign universities
will upgrade the standard of our higher education. In essence there would be
MNCS, not universities, which would invest in education sector & earn huge
profits from our pockets.
There is need to expose the nexus of Indian state,
Hindutva forces and MNCs. In order to save our education from the web of
privatization, we need to fight against the “offer” of education to WTO and
build resistance against any form of anti-people policies of the State. The
talks will be finalized by December 2015, so understanding the gravity of the
situation, we need to intensify our struggle against it. We should force the
government to fund education and other service sectors. It is not a privilege,
it is our right and let’s all fight for it together.
NEED OF THE HOUR
There is a dire need of
resistance against the policies that are driving education sector towards privatization.
·
The
government should immediately withdraw the offer of higher education in
WTO-GATS.
·
The
public universities should regularize self-financed courses.
·
One
should resolutely oppose any trade in education and stand firmly against the
undemocratic system of education.
·
The
state must immediately take the financial responsibility for universalizing
free and compulsory education.
·
Facilities for all to access higher education
in fully public-funded universities and colleges must be rapidly developed.
·
Non-NET
fellowships should be Increased and Extended to other State and Central
Universities.
·
The
Central University Bill, Choice Based Credit System(CBCS), UGC Security
Guidlines should withdraw.