On November 9, Justice K Chandru dismissed a writ petition filed in the Madras High Court by some young women. It was more than just one of those cases; it was a case in point that spoke volumes about the state of education in Tamil Nadu and India.
Tamil Nadu boasts of more than 600 higher education institutions, its literacy rate is 74%; what is happening here is happening elsewhere in India as well. The rot begins at the top!
The 22 girls were very young, 19-20 year-olds, students of the Madha Teacher Training Institute in Thama-rai-pulam, Vedaranyam, in Nagapattinam district of Tamil Nadu. One of hundreds such small institutions dotting rural India, which draws the young looking for some training so as to be able to get teaching jobs.
The girls had taken a leaf out of Sanjay Dutt’s film Munnabhai MBBS (its Tamil version is Vasool Raja MBBS), and in June 2008, used their cell phones and SMS service to get answers to write an examination. A flying squad checking for cheating caught them. The Director of Examinations disqualified their answer sheets and also barred them from writing the exams for one more year. The girls went to the high court to get the punishment from the Director of Examinations rescinded.
These girls were training to be teachers. Justice Chandru, dismissing the girls’ petition said: “… the degeneration to which the petitioners have descended to will shock one and all…That such people are going to be the teachers of tomorrow really chills our spines.”
If nothing else, the case of the Vedaranyam students highlights the need for a different kind of examination system in India. In many foreign universities, students are allowed to use calculators and books while writing exams. The logic is if the student does not know the answer or the principle behind the answer, he/she can’t give the correct answer despite the hundreds of books at his disposal.
In India the thinking has been very different and continues to be so.
The numbers on the mark sheet assume life and death importance and forces ordinary students to resort to cheating and forgery. This has prompted the Directorate of Examinations in Tamil Nadu to photo-index mark sheets of Class VIII students of government run schools for their ESLC exams! Education minister Thangam Thennarasu has proudly told the media here, “We already have numerous security features in the mark sheet which are not visible to our eyes. Printing of student’s photo in the mark sheet has been discussed as part of reforms in board examinations.” The Minister claimed the success of the Class VIII experiment has made the government decide that Class X and Class XII state board mark sheets too must have student’s photo from the coming year.
A recently released NASSCOM study sya most “educated Indians are only half literate.” Most technology companies have to reject 90 per cent of graduates who apply for jobs and 75 per cent of fresh engineers too. Chairman of Tamil Nadu state council of Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), CK Ranganathan, MD of CavinCare, says, “…many graduates don’t even know how to write a letter. Its not the student’s fault, it is the level of coaching which needs to be upgraded.”
That most students come from teaching shops with appalling quality of teachers is overlooked in most discourses.
Last month, the Madras Medical College and the Madurai Medical College (both government run institutions) were accused by the Medical Council of India’s postgraduate medical education committee of admitting more than allotted students in their respective PG courses. The committee in September said, “most government medical colleges across India had violated admission norms and quotas” this year. About 32,000 doctors graduate in India every year, less than 10,000 get a chance to specialise.
The Madras High Court this week rejected a plea for a CBI inquiry into irregularities in filling up seats in the prestigious Chennai-based Anna University which boasts of affiliation to 300 technical and engineering colleges.
And who are the teachers teaching in all these colleges and universities?
G Thiruvasagam, vice-chancellor of the 152-year-old University of Madras, told the university senate on October 30 that it was “the research associates (students) working in the various departments who were conducting classes” in the university’s colleges!
Last year there was allegations that former Madras University VC, S Ramachandran, had allowed a transfer of Rs 45 crore from the university’s kitty (held in SBI branch in the university campus) to another account. “Part of this money (about Rs 12 crore) was used as a security for loan to a private trust,” Thiruvasagam told the senate meeting. The trust has misappropriated the loan and now a CBI inquiry has been instituted in the matter.
As the VC of Bharathiar University, Thiruvasagam had translated some of Chief Minis-ter M Karunanidhi’s writing into English. Thiruvasagam’s reward was the vice-chancellorship of the Madras University. Soon after his appointment he came up with the idea of an MA degree in “Kalaignar Karunanidhi’s thoughts”! The appointment raises the question as to how VCs and other teachers are appointed in Indian Universities.
In June, the Shree Balaji Medical College and Hospital and Sri Ramachandra University were accused by a media investigation team of demanding Rs 20 lakh to Rs 40 lakh as capitation fees. The Medical Council of India is supposed to be investigating the charges. The Union HRD ministry wanted to know if the deemed university status of these universities should not be revoked and the Tamil Nadu government wanted to know why criminal action should not be initiated against them. One of the universities in the eye of the storm names Union minister of state from the DMK, S Jagathrakshakan as its chancellor. “MCI president Ketan Desai and vice-president PC Kesavankutty Nayar are on the board of management of Sri Ramachandra University. The price this year for a post-graduate seat in radiology in most leading private colleges across the country is Rs 2 crore while in cardiology, gynaecology and orthopaedics are priced around Rs 1.5 crore”, the media reported.
In July, the Madras High Court issued notice to the Tamil Nadu government, the state police and Coimbatore-based Anna University on a charge that the vice-chancellor, R Radhakrishnan had violated provisions of the University Act and “accumulated wealth disproportionate to his known sources of income.” The VC was accused of introducing a Public Private Partnership (PPP) scheme to involve new private engineering colleges as a franchisee of the university, and this franchise was given to ‘Prahar Foundation’, whose trustees were the wife and mother-in-law of the vice-chancellor. Last year, this trust had purchased nine properties valued at over Rs 1.50 crore. The petitioner also alleged that Radhakrishnan had started an engineering college with 3,500 students in a temporary place which was contrary to norms laid down by the All India Council for Technical Education.
On October 10, one of the most respected educationists in Tamil Nadu and India, M Anandakrishnan, Chairman of IIT-Kanpur and a member of the Yash Pal Committee looking into higher education, in an interaction with the National Knowledge Commission on a CII platform said of education in India and in Tamil Nadu in particular: “The state university systems are very scandalous. The price of a vice-chancellor is Rs 10-20 crore and touts collect money all the way from Raj Bhavan to the Secretariat. Even appointment of syndicate members is a corrupt process and paid for. Private colleges deny capitation fee but we know that a MD seat costs somewhere around Rs 1.5 crore, while an MBBS seat will cost Rs 50 lakhs. Engineering seats come for Rs 15 lakhs.”
Anandakrishnan also pointed out that the multiple regulatory systems were spoiling the higher education scenario. “There is a world of difference in which the central, private and state universities function.
“The exam systems are so archaic. You cannot prepare students for an obsolete market. Public universities are extraordinarily handicapped by political interference. At least in central universities like IIT, no minister says promote my son-in-law.”
The educator did not spare private institutions either: “In India, private institutions are family-controlled organisations that need to be restructured. In Tamil Nadu, there are two political parties that are running only with capitation money collected from colleges. Eighty per cent of the colleges collect money and don’t issue receipts. PhDs are sold to professors for Rs 30 lakh.”
“Deemed universities are a rotten concept altogether,” he said. India has about 130 deemed universities, two dozen of these are in Tamil Nadu. It is the University Grants Commission which has okayed 120 private deemed universities in the country in the past five years. Professor Yash Pal has even questioned the existence of an institution like the UGC.
Highlighting how the very concept of university in India is at variance with the world’s idea, Anandakrishnan noted: “Universities are not factories producing graduates or places where degrees are awarded. Universities are meant to engage young minds.”
“Over the years, there has been lot of cubicalisation of educational streams (in India). Right from school days, students are made to believe that there is no link between physics, chemistry and biology whereas the trend now is of multi-disciplinary skills”, Anandakrishnan pointed out as the reason for huge skill gap and result of rigid testing.
India well below world mark
At the India Economic Forum policymakers this week agreed there is a crucial need to improve access to basic services such as literacy programmes, healthcare and clean water.
They noted that 70% of the 509 million people in India ‘s workforce have not received any primary education!
Of the 22 million children who go to school in India, only 12.4% go for further education, compared with 63% in the US and more than 50% in Europe. They said India ‘s immediate goal is to raise this number to 20% by 2020. That is another 12 years away!
In his speech on National Education Day on Nov 11, Union Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said the Right To Education Act would take quality education to an estimated 160 million students who are at present out of school. He assured that this right of passage would happen in the March Budget session, along with several other facilitating pieces of legislature.
He said India’s Gross Enrolment Ratio of 12.4 per cent was “unacceptable” as it was below the world average and that for countries in transition, the developed world and Asian countries. He wanted at least 30% of school pass youth to go for higher education!
Speaking about the demographic advantage that India has with 70 per cent of the population being below 35, Sibal said the “edge that the country had over others could be realised only if opportunities for education were expanded on a massive scale”.
Adviser to Prime Minister, Sam Pitroda is known as a man who was Rajiv Gandhi’s friend. Gandhi and Pitroda are credited with first pushing through computerisation in India and ‘Operation Blackboard’, launched in 1987 to ensure “minimum essential facilities” to all primary schools in the country, an initiative that steered Sarva Siksha Aviyan.
In the course of the last 20 years, India has also emerged as an information technology giant, with IT export targets exceeding $50 billion for 2010.
Twenty five years on India’s public distribution system (PDS) and land records are still not computerised, primary school infrastructure is still a distant dream in many Indian states. Unless schools are provided infrastructure and quality teachers, nothing will move forward everyone knows, but policymakers would rather talk of the future than of today.