Higher education needs a better deal

One more annual session of the Indian Science Congress has come and gone. The Prime Minister delivered the ritual inaugural address, and it contained pious homilies of the kind served up on such occasions for at least three decades. The scientific community knows that the task of improving India’s universities calls for radical organisational and managerial reform. The omnibus one-size-fits-all application to universities of government rules, regulations and practices, especially in administrative, financial and personnel matters, stands in the way of substantive reform.


The government is extensively and micro-managerially involved in the quality aspects of the development and growth of teaching and research in universities, and not merely in the quantity aspects as argued by the Prime Minister. As the political and administrative policy-makers, governments ought to concern themselves with overall macro-level parameters of university governance, that too in the capacity of facilitators making critical interventions that are needed episodically in an otherwise self-regulating system. In the present circumstances, the ‘scientists and teachers’ addressed by the Prime Minister are in no way empowered to bring about any of the changes required to improve standards and promote excellence in teaching and research.

A university or college department can sustain a collegiate and stimulating intellectual environment only if it is staffed and run by people committed to a corresponding work culture. At the same time, bread-and-butter issues such as pay scales and teaching loads need to be addressed and conditions have to be radically improved, particularly in the colleges of affiliating universities. Governments need to support the universities, treating them on a par with the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research or the Indian Institute of Science, which have had the requisite backing to flourish as fine institutions. Why should universities in India suffer such deprivation in terms of human and material resources when all over the world they are acknowledged to be vital nurseries of talent?

The rot goes deeper and hence the good doctor must consider radical surgery. The University Grants Commission’s (UGC) practice of generously bestowing ‘deemed university’ status to institutions that are just not qualified has damaged teaching quality and standards, not to mention research. The same applies to the proliferation of State universities, which often have shoddy and even non-existent infrastructure.

Under such circumstances, the Prime Minister’s assertion that “the government [which includes the State governments] can at best ease supply-side constraints on teaching and research” is, with all due respect, misleading because what the government is actually doing is to ease quantity constraints, wreaking havoc on the maintenance of even minimal levels of quality. As a distinguished university teacher and researcher who has also served as Chairman of the UGC, Dr. Singh knows the grim realities. When Rajiv Gandhi castigated universities for their research mediocrity in his Inaugural Lecture at the 1986 Science Congress, he was rapped on the knuckles by the scientific community, which did not bother to explain why such a sorry state of affairs had come to be.

Remedial action

To get to grips with the real issues, the Prime Minister, while addressing the next Science Congress, should commit the government to remedial action by setting up a panel, independent of the UGC, comprising outstanding and independent scientists and scholars. That panel should conduct an impartial review of higher educational institutions that have been accorded deemed university status in the last five years for their compliance with norms, and recommend in which cases such status should be rescinded and under what conditions they could be restored. It should conduct a similar review of the State universities. Besides, the panel should review the working of the UGC and fix responsibility for the blatant disregard of norms which has resulted in an unholy mess.

Barely a month before his Science Congress address, the Prime Minister chaired a Cabinet meeting at which a poorly-thought-out Central Universities Bill 2008 was cleared with hardly any discussion. Writing in the Hindustan Times (January 7, 2009), N. K. Singh, member of the Rajya Sabha and a former member of the Planning Commission and Finance Secretary, pointed to the flawed nature of this piece of legislation: “The Central Universities Bill 2008 in its present form is a retrograde step. It negates citizens’ aspirations that contemporary legislation must reflect modern management and governance practices based on delegation and not old style regulations. It fails to signal any reform of our higher education system and more importantly, of investing them with the academic freedom and autonomy for encouraging research, fostering innovation and kindling the urge for excellence.”

It is puzzling that under these circumstances the Prime Minister could assert in Shillong that “the challenge before us is to ensure that (a) the light of modern education touches [one and] all, and (b) at the same time, the pursuit of excellence is encouraged and cherished.” The tight-rope walk this calls for is by no means easy. India’s record since Independence shows that time and again quality has been sacrificed at the altar of quantity, including during the tenure of Dr. Singh’s government. Yet the Prime Minister states that the theme of the Congress, ‘Science Education and Attraction of Talent for Excellence in Research,’ “is the priority of our government.”

However, in the entire address, the long list of initiatives taken or promised by Dr. Singh’s government did not include even one that reflected such an ‘emphasis’. Even the ‘action’ in the context of the recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission is worded thus: “The Pay Commission has made a recommendation that scientific personnel may be provided a new Performance Related Incentive Scheme (PRIS). The government has accepted this special recommendation and we will implement a suitable scheme to reward good performance.” Nothing could be more bland, more non-committal and non-operational. Contrast that with the across-the-board increase in salaries, not linked to performance, to officers of the defence services announced by the government just days before the Science Congress.

Both the Prime Minister and the Minister for Science and Technology are surely aware that the Scientific Policy Resolution (SPR), drafted by Jawaharlal Nehru and passed by Parliament on March 4, 1958, clearly said that “we, both the Executive and Parliament, are committed to providing the best of service conditions to our scientists.” Over the last half a century, governments of various hues have indeed honoured that commitment. But compared to other career choices, science and technology research or teaching in a university or a college holds little attraction for our youth. Even if they are not swept off their feet by careers in the field of information technology, they head for the elite triad of atomic energy, space and defence research and development which offers pay scales, working conditions, opportunities and challenges that are way above even the most favoured Central universities such as the Jawaharlal Nehru University or Delhi University, let alone in the Indian Institute of Science or the Indian Institutes of Technology.

These being the realities, mere exhortations by Dr. Singh such as “our higher educational institutions must be receptive to the needs of young people,” “they must promote younger talent, indeed youth, to lead,” and “scientific institutions must be led by intellectual leaders, irrespective of age,” are, even to an aspiring youth, water over a duck’s back. For all evidence shows that the government does not practise what it preaches. The reality is that Manmohan Singh and some Prime Ministers before him were unable or unwilling to effect change. Last year, scientists in the Department of Atomic Energy and the Indian Space Research Organisation had a bonanza of financial incentives showered on them, which no university department can dare dream of.

If this situation is not fundamentally altered, and altered fast, the numerous ‘new schemes’ listed at such length by the Prime Minister in Shillong will tragically amount to “much said but nothing done.”