Much as this blog of mine is about the separate Telangana agitation, it has also been one about the collapse of the education system in India in general and in Andhra Pradesh in particular. Even in my previous post I have written about the dismal state in which most universities, including the Osmania University find themselves in. The question of good education becomes all the more sharp when one sees it as the main tool of empowerment of people. In fact, I have even claimed that quality education should be provided free of cost to all people of the country. Most of the time our politicians are quite happy to promise a number of things free; but education has never been one of those promises except in one instance. Dr. Y. S. Rajashekhar Reddy, the late Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, promised free education to all belonging to the OBC, SC and ST sections in the 2009 election campaign. I was very happy seeing this but ultimately I was aghast when I found that the promise was made without adequately understanding the financial implications of such a promise. What ultimately came out in the form of realization of this promise turned out to be quite bad strategy. Free education mean 'free reimbursement'of students belonging to the afore mentioned category. And therein lies a huge problem.
We are aware that the a great percentage of education provider fall in the private sector. Except perhaps for the missionary schools that came into being as a social service, all other educational institutions are mainly profit making bodies. I have seen that most businessman find it easy to shift to the running of education institutions after a point because they have a way of sustaining themselves after they have existed for a few years, as against other businesses that need constant and intense attention in order to be profitable. The long and short of this is that ultimately in India, education is a business. In this scenario we must understand that fees collected from the students apart from other forms aid received from various sources becomes the generator of profits. Fee structures therefore are usually quite high in private institutions. Many professional colleges offering engineering, medicine and management education charge very high fees. Various reasons are cited for that; cost of labs, good faculty and the possibilities of high salaries for students after they have completed their education (in India and especially in Andhra Pradesh graduates from these courses also command very high dowries).
In this scenario it is meaningless for the government to reimburse the fees of students. It is so because of the fact, that is not the government's responsibility to ensure that private educational institutions remain profitable. Due to the government committing itself to this scheme it has to pay the said fees to the colleges but does not have the resource to generate the money since it is also subsidizing various schemes such as free power, Rupees Two per kilogram of rice etc. This has thrown the whole education system into a turmoil. The colleges are not happy because they are not getting the money they want. Since the government has directed a certain amount of funds to these institutions it has not been able to meet its traditional commitments to the institutions that it is supposed to fund; universities. With university teachers claiming that they need an increase in their salaries as per the UGC norms most of the funds that are available are being diverted to the payment of salaries. This means that there is little scope for any developmental activity since whatever monies are left are being used for the payment of mess bills, electricity bills etc.
Does this mean that I am arguing against the provision of free education? Au contraire I am very much for free education and vociferously at that. But any scheme before it is implemented will have to be well thought out and all the expenditure that is likely to incurred should be anticipated and a sufficient fund set aside to meet that expenditure. Here I would like to propose that all education from the elementary level to the higher education level should be purely run by the State just as the Universities are being run. There should be no private participation because then the profit motive which pushes up the costs can be totally eliminated. The real reason for this demand of mine is that today there is no equal quality or equality in education. The richer sections of society have access to the expensive and good schools in the urban areas whereas the poor in the rural and the urban areas have either no education at all or have access to pathetic schools which do anything but provide regular education. One cannot expect to have equality of citizens when they are differently enabled or some cases not enabled at all by the education system. I understand that this solution throws out its own set of problems, but there can always be means of overcoming them. I shall talk about those in the next post.
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