New Delhi:
On the occasion of Teacher's Day, NDTV took a look at the state of higher education in India.
Below is the full transcript of 'Educating India, The Challenge Ahead' on NDTV Dialogues.
NDTV: Good evening and welcome to the NDTV Dialogues, a show where we bring you a conversation of ideas. Tonight as we mark Teacher's Day we also look at the state of higher education in India. We talk often of demographic dividend but unless we actually nurture our young people both with education and employment, how productive can this dividend actually be? 'Educating India, The Challenge Ahead' is our NDTV Dialogue tonight.
Joining me tonight is Shashi Tharoor, Professor Dinesh Singh, Professor Yogendra Yadav and Chetan Bhagat, thank you all very much for joining me tonight.
Shashi Tharoor, looking at the state of education in India, interestingly it became slightly part of our politically discourse and then disappeared again. How seriously does the government actually take issues like education health, especially when I know the comparison between India and China created some headlines?
But even if you look at the comparison, the investment that China is making in terms of just creating higher institutions is more than India. They seem to have a long-term plan.
Shashi Tharoor: No, that's only because the amount of GDP they have is now so much larger than ours, that the same percentage generates more dollars for more institutions. We are actually, if you take private and government sectors expenditures, we are actually spending now a 4.8 per cent of our GDP on education, which is a significant rise from the 3 that it was when the UPA begin office nine years ago, but which is the not near the ideal target, we have all set ourselves, of 6 per cent.
I say all, because all the political parties have consensually said that we should try for 6 percent. So we have a way to go yet but we are putting a lot more money into education than ever before. But yes, the government takes it more seriously. I think if I can be so bold I would say that this is not just the social economic challenge for our country, the demographic dividend, the youthfulness of our population, which we can take a huge advantage of, because we will have this youthful, dynamic, productive working age population, when the rest of world including China is ageing.
But as you said we can only do that once we educate them and train them. But lets also ask as to what happens if we fail in educating them? And when I say education, I don't just mean high school and college. There are a lot of people dropping out before that stage we need to catch them and equip them with vocational skill.
But if we can do both those things, it seems to me a great. If we can't, we are looking at frankly horrendous alternative because there is nothing more dangerous to any society than frustrated, unemployed young men with no opportunities, no stake in the system no sense that they are qualified to do anything of the new economy offers them.
These are ones who have, in about 165 districts already proved prey to the blandishments of the gun, the so-called Maoists and Naxalists. Who are they; of the most part, men without education, unemployable as well as unemployed. So it's a national security challenge as well for us, not just the social economic challenge. We have to get it right, we have to seize the opportunities the 21st century offers us and we cannot afford to get it wrong
NDTV: Professor Yadav looking at the issue, we talked about the inputs, the rise in GDP that's actually been allocated, that is, someone who's both an insider and an outsider in a way to the system, where do we look at the actual output? When we talk of funds, where does it go? How does it get spent?
And the same issue, educating youth around India, not just about a concentration in some cities, because you have talked often about how higher education cannot be a vein in which more inequality is created. How do we actually end the disparities within our higher education system as well?
Yogendra Yadav: I think Dr Tharoor correctly pointed out two basic things. There is an opportunity here, for the first time higher education got the kind of resources, which were unthinkable twenty years ago, which was a great opportunity. And of course he has very correctly underlined the challenge as well. What is missing in all this is the tragedy of higher education, not in the last 10 years, where I have had some opportunity to look at it.
The tragedy is not that there is no money. The tragedy is that we don't know what to do with the money that's available; that we do not have structures through which we can channelise it.
We do not have any worked out societal priorities and I feared that in much of this talk about the challenge the 21st century has, a set of lingo that comes in. What gets sidelined is the real challenge, while policy documents keep talking about inclusion, equity and excellence, but really much of the emphasis is on a tiny little sector of our higher education, which needs to be polished and presented to the rest of the world.
The real challenge of inclusion, of 1 million additional seats, students per year, the real challenge of some equity and who gets what in this higher education, because unfortunately higher education which should be about knowledge, it's also a principle way of carrying of inequalities from one generation to the other.
And I really see and I don't blame one party, I think across parties, across the political establishment. This concern for equity in higher education is gradually disappearing and that of course worries me.
Shashi Tharoor: May I contest, everything Yogendra, said with all respect. First of the all that we don't know what to do with the money we are getting. Not so. We have very, very clear plans, which have been presented to Parliament. There is no serious contest with the school education level. A tremendous challenge of expanding the school system and at the same time putting resources in training teachers, because it's mainly about teachers who aren't up to it.
And we have the world record in teacher absenteeism as well. So by making a teacher's salary more attractive, having more in-service training of teachers, all of this was a part of our school education before.
And in higher education Yogendra, expansion is, in terms of numbers equity is, in terms including those who have been excluded in the past, reaching the un-reached I mean, done that in every conceivable way. People left out by gender are coming in now in significant numbers. There has been very great improvements in women's education, women's enrolment.
The reservations for OBCs and SC-STs have seen a tremendous expansion of education, we doing all of that. Excellence is an area where we have not done enough, we have to emphasize on quality, and one of the things we are doing is pumping a lot more money in research than ever before, creating research clusters. We have got a bill pending in Parliament to create universities for research and innovation, doubling the percentage of the money the government spends on the research.
Trying to improve our rankings internationally. So we've got a clear idea of what we are trying to do and how we are trying to do it; but it takes time to get done and that's the real frustration.
NDTV: I want to bring in Professor Dinesh Singh on that point actually, because we talk of inclusion, but even in a university like Delhi University we know that often OBC seats go vacant, because there is a gap perhaps between what the ideal is and what actually happens on the ground.
Now, speaking as the head of India's most prestigious university, we know students from around the country want to come here, yet this, always there is a horrendous supply demand situation, cut-offs which are absolutely unreachable. Where do we actually look at a more equitable, more higher education system or is it about merit in a sense, perhaps advantages that generations, families, of which are not first generation learners would have?
Dinesh Singh: Well actually before I address that directly I would just like to balance a little bit what you said at the beginning, what Yogendra said and to bolster what Shashi said. So of course there is 4 point whatever GDP education in for private and public sector institutions, but there is huge amount of money being poured in through our Science Ministry, huge, extraordinary, in the last Plan.
And that's being put to a great deal of good use. Our universities across the board, and institutes of research in India, in the last five years their science research has gone up very creditably. The graph, and I have looked at facts and figures, is very, very good. And that is not counted directly in the government spending on education and this trend has been evident for the last many decades, but the last five years it really shot up and we have put it to good use.
The other thing that's not being looked at, and whereas Shashi said this is going to bring in results in the years to come, the government has put in, you know, God knows how many thousands of crores into the National Knowledge Network. This is you know, to my mind, this is the IT equivalent of the railway revolution. It had to have railway tracks all across the country and then this brought in so many things in its wake.
In exactly the same way government has put in this network all across India, it's getting deeper and deeper and is reaching more and more. It has a long way to go, but it has reached many, many universities, it has reached every single college of my university. It has reached other universities in the neighborhood. Now you need to take advantage of that. Once it reaches villages and such places, district centers, universities plug in to the system to give and take both. That can be such a big hold for us.
So this is so called demographic dividend can really be made a dividend if we provide them the right education and that's the only way we can do it. If you build a hundred of University of Delhi systems, a hundred IITs, there is no way you are going to take care of that, two hundred million of youth who will enter the portals in the next ten years. This is the way we should do it and this is the way we are already working on.
It will take a little while. So I am not all that pessimistic. Education is something that takes time to build-up but we should be hopeful on that count. Coming back to this business of young you know OBC, exclusion, inclusion etc. Of course look, we only have so many seats. To set the records straight for once and for all, 55,000 seats is all we have for our first year undergraduate admissions and this year the number of students who applied to the university, tripled from last year. So we had four lakh students applying. You can take only so many and what is the way to do it?
It's a Supreme Court directive that you have to go by cut-offs and merit lists so that's through the CBSE and other board exam. So we have no way out. But what's happening at the ground level? You will be surprised, 70 percent approximately, students in my university do not study in the English medium, largely Hindi medium. They are coming from backgrounds that aren't all that well off. Not only that, I have been looking at the distribution of the way students perform in examinations.
And I notice the exam performance is now so well distributed across colleges and we have people taking first rank and rank holders from all sorts of colleges, coming from all kinds of areas, rural area, so forth and so on.
NDTV: Chetan your view, as somebody who is been through the IIT, IIM kind of a process, then the script for a movie which was a blockbuster. Really, because it really looked at the way we are being taught. So we are looking, I think so far the conventional ways of you know, the Indian system has worked pretty well, we are going with this, we are putting in more money and we will expand it, make it truly inclusive around India. Do we need to re-look at the whole question? Do we need to actually question the model of education?
Chetan Bhagat: Yes I think so. I think education is a very vast topic, and I think even today this discussion is more seeming, to veer more towards higher education, so let's just talk of that. You know there is a quality issue there is a quantity issue. Quantity wise some of you are saying there are measures in place but the fact is that there are just not enough seats. And education is like a service.
It's not, you know, when you have to give food you can give bad food, okay it's not tasty, but it will fill your stomach. But if you give bad education it's no education. I feel those people are unemployable. They have these degrees and there are lots of kids in this country who are getting a bad education.
You have to, whenever you are giving a service there has to be monitoring systems in place, what is the quality of that service. I don't think that is happening. The government is doing something but obviously it cannot cater to so many people. So we have private universities coming up which have some draconian laws, which don't allow them to make a profit. So all the unscrupulous people are opening universities.
People who used to open mithai shops, and sari shops, and liquor shops, they own, because they know how to make a profit in a non- profit organisation. Why don't we allow Reliance or an Infosys to open a university and make a return, which shareholders are happy and they will be; they will maintain a certain quality? Just charity is not going to be enough.
NDTV: Won't they create almost a parallel class divide?
Chetan Bhagat: No, but it's going to be, its already happening, but why not have good people open universities? Why not have an IIT professor say, "I'm going to Infosys and I will say open a university for you". These are, I'm giving suggestions, which are actually doable, but we are not looking at that.
Shashi Tharoor: No there is a judgment against such thing. Court says that education has to be non-profitable.
Chetan Bhagat: But then we can go to court again. I mean him, himself. The way he says I have to take the people. He is the Vice Chancellor of India's top university and he is saying my hands are tied. The Court has told me you have to take it on the CBSE marks. That means deep down he knows that this 99 per cent cut-off, 100 per cent, is not the true test. A place like DU, a place like an IIT is more than just education.
It is to pull out our future leaders. I would argue that, that is one the aims of your mandate. Other places may have different mandate, vocational training whatever. You have to bring out leaders. Now is the 99 guy a better person than a 95 guy, who may have topped in sports also? I don't know. But if this, nobody is going to take that ahead because Court told us then I mean if educated people behave like this, then what hope is there?
So this is all the quantity, I think if we get more private we can. And then, quality of course; the way we do our curriculum, a lot of corporate tell me that our graduates are not ready. I'm not making a criticism of the government. The skills that are needed, they say simple things. We want good presentation skills; we want somebody who can talk to your overseas office; therefore they need to be good in English. They need to be able to talk to them. These skills are alien and the courses were decided 40-50 years ago and how much has the world changed in 40-50 years.
And there's no dynamic process of revision, there's not any dynamic process of monitoring. These are issues we need to do. Statistics you can show, but please realise there is a big problem and there are a lot of kids who feel that they cannot get a job, and there is a lot of corporates who feel they can't get talent. So who is, why is that happening? I'm sure you agree with me that that's happening. Why is that happening?
Dinesh Singh: Yes, yes. No, I agree with that entirely Chetan. Let me just say one thing. Much as I understand the need for opening more institutions, there's a strange situation that's prevailing in this city.
There's a very fine university set up by the government of Delhi known as the Ambedkar University, that has very nice courses, a good faculty. A large number of them have moved from my university over there. But nobody wants to study there. I have no idea. My own daughter went and studied there and had a great time, but they don't want to go there. Something has to be done about that.
But leave that aside. I could open, as I said, a hundred Ambedkar Universities or a hundred University of Delhi systems. It will still not serve the needs of India. Unless you bring in technology in a big and meaningful way India's needs, will not be served. And it has been proven fairly conclusively, in many institutions of the world, that technology can make a huge difference. It has to be brought in meaningfully, carefully, but that is the one real way. Leave that aside, when you say that we are not providing meaningful education to our youth, I agree, no, no you are right.
Chetan Bhagat: I did not mean that. I meant employable. Meaningful is a very broad, you know.
Dinesh Singh: Let me put it this way, Chetan, my idea of education is a process of self-discovery. Every child, through that system, must be able to discover who he or she is. We must give them the method, the idea, the platform and let them find out. Are we doing that? I don't think so. That's what we tried to do at the University of Delhi and why; because the alarm bells have begun to sound in all institutions, not just University of Delhi.
Some months ago, before we implemented this new system of undergraduate instruction, I invited one of Bombay's best corporate institutions in finance. They had a huge number of jobs and they were willing to come all the way from Bombay to interview my students. And they were dead serious about it. They flew a whole team. We invited resumes from all our colleges. We gave them complete freedom.
Everybody could apply. And we applied our minds and looked at those that would be suitable. What were they looking for? As you said, good presentation skills, simple analytical skills, that's all.
They weren't looking for knowledge. We short-listed eleven hundred students from different colleges. We revealed nothing about them except their scores and their names. Nothing else. This team sat and did, God knows, everything they could, very thorough. Guess how many they employed. Just three. More importantly, they told me we are not coming back again. You are sitting on a time bomb there, unless we do something about it.
NDTV: I just, I want to actually bring you to that aspect because both the Professors, Dinesh Singh and Chetan agreed on something which I found interesting, that you know education as a means of getting a job in a certain corporate way and presentation skills; but education in a sense also of interacting with and for India around us.
Thus, education in way of creating future leaders whether it's in politics, whether it's in activism, whether it's in a way, beyond the set that I want a job for a certain salary a month. How much education actually gives, I mean we have seen this slightly again sort of, came up politically by both Mr Narendra Modi, Rajnath Singh, that you know I think, Narendra Modi made that statement, that modernisation without westernisation and looking also at what does an education system provide to an Indian young Indian of today? Do you think we sometimes loose site of that code?
Yogendra Yadav: I couldn't go very much by what Mr Narendra Modi says. I am not sure he understands the challenge of education very well, and if he is at all different from any of these productivity models. You know, give them education so that they can fit into a machine. I think the real point is that we are missing a historic opportunity here.
This opportunity of rethinking higher education is not merely an opportunity to somehow catch up with China, so that, which is trying to catch up with the west. The real challenge in the country of Rabindranath Tagore is to rethink to what it means to have a university. Do we Indians, are we condemned to copying someone else's copy or can we rethink the university education itself? So much of university education, whether it gives you jobs or not, is completely devoid of any content of this country, context and the challenges and India.
I thought, I hope, and I really thought this discussion would not be about defending the government and these silly, contentious issues. I think the real challenge is about rethinking the very paradigm of university. And what we are doing is producing a fourth rate copy of a fifth rate copy and that's why we need to rethink.
And India, India in 21st century, the real ambition for India should have been to say we would come out in the Shantiniketan tradition. We would come out with the different kind of university, where sciences are taught in way, which relates to the context of this country, where humanities and social sciences, and I am glad he mentioned language.
The point is that most of our students study, in much of the focus of higher education research and excellence etc. is for that little tiny elite. The reality of Indian higher education is that about 90 per cent of our students, especially in non-outside sciences, study in Indian languages. They do not have access to elementary decent textbooks, libraries are defunct, and most teachers are on contract basis. What kind of 21st century we are talking about? When I hear all these nice dreams ...
NDTV: I just wanted to get.
Yogendra Yadav: ...I really smile, that's all I can do.
NDTV: I just wanted to get Shashi Tharoor in on that aspect, time for our next big idea on redefining, in his sense, leaving politics this side, this government will be, now it's in election mode, so in that sense that I doubt can anything happen in six months. But if you were actually, say coming in to your term with five years ahead, redefining what higher education currently means in India? We have Nalanda University, is one attempt perhaps to recreate the glory of our power Shantiniketan and others re-looking what universities actually offer.
Shashi Tharoor: Not sure there are new ideas. I mean Shantiniketan was created by Tagore well before Independence and of course Nalanda goes back 1500 years. The thing is that ours is a large enough, diverse enough country for us to have a variety of models available, and we have to see what markets want.
In a globalised economy there is no question that you do need some universities which can hold their own, or whose graduates can hold their role with international competition. Indeed Indian companies are looking for those kinds of skills. I agree with both Chetan and Dinesh.
Do you mean the FICCI study about a year ago, which said that employers, 64 per cent of employers were not satisfied with the quality of graduates coming to them for jobs? And we have to acknowledge that once you get to pass top institutions in our higher education system, the rest frankly for the most part are really, I mean, these good institutions are sort of islands of excellence floating in a sea of mediocrity and we have to overcome that.
It can't be done overnight. One thing, do you need to pump in more resources? Attract better-qualified teachers to the profession that will give you better result as well? We also need to get away, one last thought, both in school and then higher education, from this examination culture.
Far too much of education in our country is linked to passing examinations with good marks. The Supreme Court sadly reified this in Delhi University, by that marks cut-offs are the only criteria and so on. And the fact is, that in reality this gives you kids who have got very well filled minds, but in the internet era you don't need that.
You can find any information you want with the click of a mouse. What you need are well formed minds, minds that are able to respond to the unfamiliar, because a truly educated person, the real hallmark of education, is what's left behind in your mind when you have forgotten everything you studied for your examinations. That we tend to lose sight of. And somehow changing that culture of education is going to be very, very important for us.
Chetan Bhagat: That's what I mentioned, the change. You know one way to do it, that the at least the excellent institution are, there has to be a way out. You cannot say that the Supreme Court has said. If it is wrong, it is wrong. If the top universities say, and you know, we don't think that 99 is better than 98 and this is the way we look at the life it will lead you somewhere. Tell me what to do to reform these criteria. I know US has a different criteria. They have their own problem in it.
Dinesh Singh: I know that this concerns all of us. I need to set the record straight. You know we only look at cut-offs at a handful of colleges. You will be surprised, I mean, and most of the other colleges where we have the same qualified faculty, the same curriculum, and as I told you I notice rank holders are coming from all almost all these colleges.
There the cut-offs are not anyway near what you read in the paper. I think all of you will be delighted to learn that the University of Delhi has launched an experiment, God willing, let it succeed. It's just started, where we are trying to converge everything that you have expressed concern on.
So the idea is to expose every child, not just to the sciences or to the humanities, in a sort of a holistic way, trans-disciplinary hands on. So we are looking at the needs and challenges of India through these foundation courses. That's what we are trying to do. I can't say that these will be there to solve the problems of India nor can I say this is the best way.
But this is a beginning. And as we go ahead we will get better. But that's the whole theme that's driving this effort and I really don't believe that vocational and knowledge should be set apart. And that is because I have seen enough in life and from the great ones. If you look at Newton, he was a great crafts person. You know he could manufacture things from his hands, great things. Even Einstein worked on the shop floor of his father's electro ...
Chetan Bhagat: But they won't make it to DU ...
Dinesh Singh: One minute, one minute, let me just finish.
Chetan Bhagat: ... or IIT for example.
Dinesh Singh: No no you are mistaken.
NDTV: I am going to let Professor Singh finish it and then come ...
Yogendra Yadav: I must confess that my heart sings when I listen to the conversation like this, because this concerns less than 1 per cent of Indian higher education. I must remind everyone that the real challenge of Indian higher education is about these thousands of colleges all over the country.
No library, teachers on contractual job, no proper classrooms. No proper textbooks in the language in which children can actually study. Is something nice happening? Yes because parents and children coming from the lower ends of society have discovered that this only hope of doing anything.
Yes, they are, despite us, they are increasing the GER. It's not the government or anybody. It is they who are pushing the GER. It is they who are producing these fantastic results. The question is are we, that is to say the system, contributing very much to it? We have had it a lot. I must say no self-respecting university anywhere in the world, the kinds of thing we talk about, would bring about the kind of changes in six months, the manner in which it was done in Delhi University. I should put it on record.
I was one of those consulted. I gave my input, I like, obviously, like my input, so I was not against this sort of thing. But I can't imagine any of the great institutions you and I talk about all the time. Changing from a three-year system to a four-year system, producing hundreds of courses in three months' time, four months' time.
Have you ever heard of anything like this? And this becomes a national policy. Ministers' talk about it without a proper debate, without even a decent Kothari Commission kind of a thing to debate these things. Is that the way we are going to produce excellence in this country?
Dinesh Singh: Well I really don't want to get in to that. I think somewhere you are been misinformed.
NDTV: But that's a live issue, that's an issue many are concerned about it.
Dinesh Singh: It's not a three-month process. No, no. It's a live issue. It's been debated ad nauseam NDTV.
Yogendra Yadav: ...I don't want to spend too much time on that ...
Dinesh Singh: ... and I have held a position, as I said I have held the position, a public position and somewhere, with all due regard to what Yogendra says, and I respect him both as a thinker and as a friend, but I think he has been grossly misinformed, and this is not the point, where I could at this place, clarify all those things.
But I will be happy to sit with you and explain what's really happened. It is not the three-month or a six-month issue. It is not as they say in Urdu "kisi ki ilhaam hua ek din", and someone got up and decided we need to change this. I mean all their signals, all the, and all the thinking had been in place for a long time. But leave that aside. The real concern as Yogendra says is about the millions all over.
You know Yogendra, you could put a hundred thousand teachers, it will still not serve two hundred million students. I keep repeating; you have to be out of the box. That the only way we can do that is what government has done, the National Knowledge Network. No one is paying; no educator seems to be paying enough attention to this. Bring it to some sort of, you know completion, and let it be connected with our institutions.
Yogendra Yadav: Sir, I do hope that we are not saying that my children will be educated by teachers who come to the classrooms sit with them in the tutorial, but millions of them will be taught by technology. I really hope you are not saying that.
Dinesh Singh: That's unfortunate because in the University of Delhi, as I said right at the beginning, that the National Knowledge Network has been brought and put to good use. We are beaming in courses from different institutions.
Chetan Bhagat: I think it's a great idea especially for primary education. Let me just tell you one thing ...
NDTV: Let me just get Dr Tharoor to respond, because he has raised some points about the Minister also. The issue of democracy in deciding the way universities like Delhi University should change its framework. I think that is an issue that comes up many times. You have responded to it earlier but I think just ...
Shashi Tharoor: Well on the question of the Delhi University decision my position was one of principle, that it's not right for politicians and bureaucrats to be telling Vice Chancellors and professors how to run academic institutions. What Delhi University did was within its own prerogatives as Delhi University, through the academic process, enshrined Delhi University statutes, passed by their Academic Council, by an overwhelming vote.
We give them the chance to succeed or fail at it. That is something the university has the right to do, and the Vice Chancellor has come up with. I felt it was wrong that, because people who knew me, could pick up the phone and call me and say this is terrible, that I should somehow try and put a stop to it, because tomorrow that precedent could be used by another minister for somewhat less respectable reasons.
And I think it's best to stick with the principle that the University will do what the University does, and ministers and bureaucrats will make policy, but not interfere in these details. That's on the first question of why we allowed Delhi University to do what they did, in a way in which it did, because we felt that they were following their procedure.
Yogendra Yadav: No, I am completely with you. The government should not be interfering in day today functioning and tomorrow this precedent could be used by someone else to destroy our education system.
Shashi Tharoor: Now let me respond on the technology point that is very important. I feel very strongly that the technology is meant to aid the teacher not to replace that teacher. The fact is that there is no substitute for a live human teacher.
Yogendra Yadav: So then why are we discussing technology in response to contractual teachers situation?
Shashi Tharoor: But many of those teachers are not properly equipped, right? They are not properly equipped in terms of either facilities or equipment or textbooks. Then a lecture from somewhere else, which they can help interpret in a local language, which they can help explain in simpler term to the students, can be an asset, an enabling device for them. Secondly, we look, when you talk in terms of how technology can be used, we also recognise as huge, infrastructure impediments.
What's the point of having a great video conferencing come in if you don't have electricity in the town at the time of conference coming in? So there are basics we still need to get right. I am not at all suggesting that technology will erase our problems overnight, and I don't disagree with your diagnosis that there is lot to be done, in particularly small town India, rural India and so on to overcome these problems.
We are trying to do it. You have talked about contract teachers. Why they are contract teachers, because we have tried to raise the standards of teaching by insisting on teacher eligibility test. So the people coming through that process will qualify for the very generous Sixth Pay Commission levels of payment, which frankly are better. Professors are better off than ministers. But obviously what many colleges do is having enough applicants who have passed the examination.
NDTV: Professor Dinesh is smiling at that point.
Shashi Tharoor: He gets a better salary than I
Yogendra Yadav: Please allow me to contradict you on facts.
Dinesh Singh: Vice Chancellors aren't better than professors. Let me tell you that.
Yogendra Yadav: Simply, Dr Tharoor you are in charge of this. This is simply not true that they are, this is teachers day, thousands of teachers are not just, thousand, tens of thousands are in universities on a contractual or guest faculty basis. Not that because they do not have the qualification, not because they have not cleared the NET. Because the universities of which Delhi University is one of them, would simply not fill positions. Four thousand positions are vacant.
NDTV: Is that because of funds?
Dinesh Singh: Where did you get the figures of four thousand from that's very strange, because we have done a huge exercise and let me tell you something; you know it's very easy to sit on the outside Yogendra and not understanding the mechanics of a system, and one can infer and comment and I give you that space, but do understand, you yourself admit that this is a big change.
When we make, go through a change, it went through huge processes. Just because you have fallen prey to some sort of propaganda I cannot help that. Our appointments were held up, not because we don't want to hold them, because there were strange regulations that were determining how teachers would be appointed.
And I personally took this initiative a year ago, with the government, which very generously setup another committee to look at the regulations, and we waited for them to come into effect. They have just come into effect three or four weeks ago.
NDTV: Chetan let me just bring you, on this whole issue which we talk education. I remember recently the French President came to India and said that we produce more engineers than the entire population of France. Recently in Andhra Pradesh, it's true, Andhra Pradesh, engineering is now, I mean, you can get, via reservation.
Via some management, you could almost get a zero in exams and get a seat in an engineering college. Yet this is glut of engineers, of degrees, which count for nothing, engineers driving taxis. What are we looking at?
Chetan Bhagat: So they are not becoming, people are not becoming engineers because it is in their genes. Indian genes somehow make us very fond of becoming engineers. Clearly lets, lets, look at the very top of things. Let's clearly see.
When you talk of elite institutions you have discussed, and their job is to bring leaders, and may be we aren't choosing how to select properly. Whatever. Now talking of the masses, most of the people who are joining college here, they are joining to jump class. They are joining to have a better life. We may want them to, you know, really learn the lesson and develop a curiosity for life, discover themselves.
They are joining because they want to step up in life. Where ever I go, they say, "Hume life main kuch banna hai!". Life main kuch banna hai means they want the good life. They want, and lets, that's okay. Everybody can have that aspiration, and that is not happening. I think even if the best of people, these people are not the best people, the best, educated people, best experienced people in our country.
The government can only do so much. They have sent some 200 million people; I think the private sector has to come in. I think private sector means you have to allow them a profit. I think you have to allow them a profit and people are ready to pay in this country for education. They send billions abroad just to give their child a good degree.
And the private guy will ensure that they give what is needed to upgrade those skills. If they can't then that university will close down. I don't know what is the view of the government, on the private sectors involvement in this. It is almost a confused view.
We want private, but it should be non-profit. So it's just bizarre to and yes so, why don't you let them do it? It's not like Indians are not ready to pay for education, right? I mean people are ready to pay. People take loans. You pay for education. People will pay, the private providers will have to provide the right thing otherwise they won't. I means, its why, why?
NDTV: Is this something a consensus can be created on? Actually it's too volatile an issue because there are so many different views to it.
Chetan Bhagat: What is your view, the blockages you are facing why don't you share your view?
Shashi Tharoor: On the question of private education things are very simply, that there is a consensus in both education policy, over successive governments, and in court rulings, that education is not a for profit activity.
So it can't be changed without actually attracting a court challenge. But coming to your question about foreign universities, provided, the Foreign Universities Education Providers Bill, it does not appear at the moment likely to attract consensus in Parliament.
However, one of the reasons that the Bill has come up in the first place is because foreign institutions would like to come to India, but are confused by the regulatory maze they face. And we thought, or our predecessors thought, that a law would make the platform clear. We can achieve much of the same objective through simply amending the regulations, which don't require Parliamentary approval.
And even, we are in the process of doing that. We have actually re-done the rules. Made it very clear that a foreign institution can come up as a Section 25 Indian Company and essentially offer education in this country. With some conditions, only cannot offer an Indian degree, probably can offer their own degrees.
But the fact is that they will be recognised as a right kind of brand. There are certain regulations still, about ensuring that only well ranked International Universities can come in.
NDTV: We talk so much about the government, but of course this, in a sense, also comes under the University Grants Commission. You are member of that Yogendra, how does it actually ...
Yogenrdra Yadav: Till today.
NDTV: Till today?
Yogendra Yadav: Yes, yes, I mean just on the sideline, I don't want to interrupt the discussion to be focused so much on this. Just, look at the way, I mean just so nice to hear Dr Tharoor about autonomy of institutions. But when an institution begins to exercise its autonomy, is a member of UGC, what did I do? All I did is to question a very simple thing.
NDTV: You have been asked to leave?
Yogendra Yadav: I simply questioned one thing. I said that this Verma Committee recommended an inter-university center to be created, on teacher's education. Lovely idea. The government says it should be created and it should be created in a technical university, which doesn't even have a department of education. And which is that technical university? No prizes for guessing, Kakinada. All I did was the UGC...
NDTV: Kakinada, which is the Education Minister's constituency?
Yogendra Yadav: You guessed it right. All I did in terms of autonomy of institutions, I said, but what are we doing? We are setting up the highest body for teachers' education in this country in a university that doesn't have a teachers', have an education department. And the moment you question it, what do you get? I get a notice today. Explain today why I should not be removed from UGC, within the next 7 days? This is the autonomy Sir that we are talking?
Shashi Tharoor: I am sorry. I was completely unaware of this as you can see. No, the UGC is frankly is autonomous of us. We can't give them this. They tend to make their own rules. But we certainly, I mean, now that you have told me, now I will go and see and I will talk to talk to my colleague, my senior colleague.
Yogendra Yadav: An autonomy talk is a very nice thing. The reality, as a member of UGC, I have seen how autonomy is eroded every single day. Directives come from the Ministry, not even from the Minister. They come from Joint Secretaries, and UGC and other institutions are simply ordered around by these things. And if you stand up and if you remind people that look this is, the UGC, let's remember, and all kinds of games begin to play. Now the kind of, the manner in which the institutions like UGC have been treated, I mean after that, I have been hear all this lovely talk, as I said, all I can do it, is to smile.
Shashi Tharoor: Well there is. He did mention the Kothari Commission not being a success. And there will be one. There is an Education Commission being set up, 40 years after the Kothari Commission, with the top educationists around the country. And they will have a chance to revisit all of these issues in great detail and perhaps come up with new ideas
NDTV: But this autonomy issue, being asked to explain or leave is, I mean it seems there may be other faces to it?
Shashi Tharoor: Yogendra is now a political animal, it's possible that, that was something that UGC has a problem with
Yogendra Yadav: I will clarify. That is exactly what the letter says. One year after, one year after my joining a political party, the government suddenly realises that I have joined. One year after my having informed the government in writing, that this is what I have done. The government says now, now suddenly the government discovers, because I happen to question something of their strange decisions of the Ministry, they bring this in.
This is the kind, this is the culture, all this is pit rage; you dare oppose us, we will kick you out. How do they select Vice Chancellors? Sixteen Vice Chancellors in this country were selected over two days. Is the same tragedy, the same farce, going to be played out in a few months from now? This is how we treat Indian universities.
Shashi Tharoor: Vice Chancellor selection commissions, there are sixteen. Not the same people are making sixteen decisions. Sixteen selection commissions were formed.
Yogendra Yadav: I am glad that I can inform you. One selection committee, over two days, selected 16 Vice Chancellors of the new Central Universities. This is what happened. And this is the same farce, which are going to play it out. If this is how we treat the leadership question in institutions, what are, we should stop talking about excellence, and these big things?
NDTV: No the HRD department is such a politically important one. Because you have seen with governments, the NDA government, the UPA government, the, who is the Vice Chancellor? What way education should go is considered extremely important. Do you think that's true Professor Dinesh? Have you seen, in some sense, some politicisation of higher education? Not perhaps in actual day-to-day running, but in a way appointments are made, in the way decisions are taken?
Dinesh Singh: Well, I mean. I cannot sort of be sitting in judgment on what my predecessors have been doing, but certainly not in my time, no. No we don't much care for anybody's political interference and in our appointments process. But let me tell you, there has been a tradition in my university of a certain ideology being pushed into appointments and all that. And that has certainly come to a stop. We do not subscribe to any ideology or any party. As long as I am in charge, we will stick to that.
Chetan Bagat: There is education inflation also. You know there was a time when, you could get a very good job with being a graduate. Now everybody needs a postgraduate. There is that inflation happening in education as well, that a simple graduate or in a doctor, most doctors says being an MBBS counts for nothing. You have to do an MD. So, you know that has also happened. So suddenly ...
Yogendra Yadav: Chetan your diagnosis and your medicine simply don't match. Diagnosis is, let's forget, as you rightly said, let's not talk of this elite 1 percent, 2 percent. Lets speak of the masses, of the real situations, and the solutions, is private institutions for profit.
Just think of the kind of money that they are going to charge. Yes some people can afford to pay. But would they be beyond the top ten percentile in this country? Foreign universities, who are they going to cater? Of course, it's good that some dollars wouldn't go and probably in this current crisis lovely. But who are they? Are they beyond the top 10 percentile? And my ...
NDTV: But you have seen the kind of education in private schools. That you have seen that even daily wage labourers have actually taken loans to go to private schools. So the aspirational element may be enough for people to mortgage everything to get their kids into the school. Not that that's a good thing.
Yogendra Yadav: NDTV, now that's exactly, what for a family which stays in rural India, for them to send their daughter to nearest mufasil to stay in a hostel, for where fees are very low, even that is such a huge expenditure for them. They are doing it. I am not saying that we should keep fees ridiculously low in the universities.
But do remember, while we talk of all the great western universities, where is the simple fellowship programme, Ministers Sir, scholarship, fellowship for undergraduate? That is not, as a member of UGC I am telling you, there is not even one decent undergraduate, postgraduate fellowship programme in this country.
Dinesh Singh: Oh, you are badly mistaken. At all our Indian institutions of Science Education and Research, every student is fully funded by the government. And they come from rural areas, much rural areas. You have to get your facts and figures right. I have been to these IISEs, have you been to a single IISEs? Just go to them. They are setup all over the country. No I have to contest this. Yes there is undergraduate too, straight out of school. These kids are fully funded.
Yogendra Yadav: Allow me to re-state what I am saying. I am not speaking of some of the top few institutions of this country. I am saying, Sir, please allow me to complete what I am saying, I am saying if I move from my village, if I go to this small state university or central university, hundred kilometers away from my village, I go for undergraduate education, where is that one single large scholarship programme which would give me three thousand rupees a month so that I can study?
This country does not have one. I have discussed it with your Minister, he knows it; there is not a single programme. All big fellowship programmes in this country, except in tiny islands, begins at M.Phil, PhD level. Unless we correct these things, how can we possibly be giving a decent education?
NDTV: That's a very good point, about the fellowships, is the way ahead. Let's just look at the way ahead. Leaving it beyond politics, beyond governments that will change or not change after elections. What do you think, as an educationist, is the key way ahead? You have made with the point the National Knowledge Network. But the biggest challenge that faces you today?
Dinesh Singh: Look, let me re-emphasize. It's not about me. It's not about my university. It's about this country. And once again I will draw an analogy. This great saint-poet Tulsidas, who said in Ramcharitmanas, what should a King really be like, when it comes to do good for his subjects?
So, should be like the Sun that draws water from the ocean without anybody noticing it, without bringing harm to anyone. And then that water should be returned exactly as the rains do, to bring good all around. He should collect his taxes that way and do good for his subjects. The National Knowledge Network is a golden opportunity for us.
You know railway tracks would do nothing unless you ride good trains, meaningful trains on them. Exactly the same way, you need to ride some good system of knowledge giving on them. This country doesn't have enough to distribute in a physical way to everyone. You need to collect all that good in some central way, and then redistribute it, exactly as water is distributed like in the monsoons. Through the National Knowledge Network, that is the only way we will serve the needs of the masses in this country.
NDTV: Chetan the disconnect between young people who you meet as you travel around, the young people you write about and what higher education gives them? What do you think we need to change?
Chetan Bhagat: I think we just have to keep it a dynamic process of revision. I think people here are aware of the issues. It's time we come up with very practical solutions, that helps. It's not that education is not the self-discovery.
It's that, plus being the best you can be in life and I think somewhere down the line, government has to play a role. It's not that which can be totally privatized, but the private sector has to be their role. And the solutions will come. We can't do it in just 45 minutes. But we have to realise there is a problem.
And come up with practical solutions. I think many of the things can be fixed in this. You know some problems of India, like corruption and things like that, is very difficult to fix. In this, 50-60 percent can be fixed by some right minds, modernising it and looking at it in a proper way. I think we can do it. We have to make sure these kids, and also, just creating educated people is not going to help.
There has to be jobs at the end of them. But that's another show, because if you have all these graduates and you create these wonderful knowledge network graduates, and there are no jobs out there, because our economy is not growing, that's not going to help. So these trained people then need to find jobs and that, they need to be made job ready and then the jobs need to be created. Somebody needs to care about the youth. Which not so many people seem to do right now.
NDTV: Shashi really as we end tonight, the challenges ahead, you know better than any of us here, are many. But just that one fact which again made huge headlines, fact that one Indian university features in the list of top two hundred even in the BRICS countries, in comparison Indian universities are lagging way, way behind.
Shashi Tharoor: There is a particular reason for that, which is that, no, no, we actually called the Higher Times Higher Education people and got the briefing as to how they do their ranking. And the weightage they give to research is extremely high. Whereas traditionally our institutions have been teaching institutions, our universities. And research is been done in small places, which don't do much teaching.
So that disconnect has been there. We are trying to remedy that. Anyway we are certainly interested in seeing more industry-academia collaboration. But very open to industry coming to institutions and saying, look we will finance this kind of research if your students are prepared to do it. We'd like to see more research clusters coming. I think, that the ranking story will be changed.
NDTV: Do the rankings, even if that changes, that hides the larger equality issue?
Shashi Tharoor: But see there is quality issue and there is equality issue as well. You want to look at the narrative of the Indian higher education today in terms of four Es. There is Expansion, second is Equity. We need to reach the unreached, include the excluded, all the things Yogendra is concerned about, that's very important. And we are trying to do that systematically and I believe we have genuinely made a good headway in that.
That's moving on. We have to improve Excellence, put more money into research, to get much more done in that. And the fourth E, which we don't talk about enough, is Employability and again Chetan's come up with that.
I mean Dinesh and I are trying to produce people who will fit all these qualities. We need to make sure that people actually can come out of the education system, that the economy needs and that the employers want to hire. That will meet this concern, that Zindagi main kuch bananan hai, to aap padhai kigiyee. You will be able to make something out of youself, all of this need to be done. It needs resources. It needs vision. It needs dedication.
It needs huge amount of commitment by the teachers. Because good, honest, committed teachers, none of this will in the end work out in reality. You can put arty money to create toilets and classrooms and computer science, places in school rooms where, but if their teacher doesn't show up to teach, or they don't tech well, we are in trouble.
You mentioned Justice Verma's Committee. He said, in Maharashtra of 300 teacher-training colleges, he recommended 291 should be closed down, they were teaching so badly. If we are teaching our teacher so badly, how will our teachers coming out of these colleges, teach our children?
So the challenges are enormous. But don't think for a minute that we are not aware of them. We are trying, our best we can. It's enormous, but I genuinely believe progress has been made. We have gone from a 16 per cent literate society in 1947 to 74 today and climbing. We have gone from 400, just 4 lakh students in the entire country in higher education, today we have two million, what am I saying, there are 20 million, we have two crore in our higher education today. This is the kind of expansion that has taken place.
NDTV: Of course, we have forgotten the 5th E, of course the Election. Hopefully whichever government it is, Education will be a priority. And I think that's really the key. You need political will and academic will as well, and democracy in education. Thank you all very much for joining me tonight, it has been wonderful having you. Thank you.