1. The Paradox of Enclave and Empire: Reforming India’s Education Systems
Barun Kumar Basu
Much is being written and seemingly done for the Indian education system in recent
months. Mr. Sibal has brought discussion on education out of the closet and from the
confines of academia into our drawing rooms. I therefore speak as a common middle class
senior citizen of our land with no more than a layman’s perspective drawn from the lived
experiences of three generations of my immediate family.
All education systems are built like a pyramid, with a strong foundation and an
aquiline-nose top. Yet they adapt to the shifting sands of time and preserve their integrity.
Needless to add, the Pyramid at Giza stands 3000 years in time as a solid testament to the
soundness of its foundation and architecture. The Indian school system needs the first tier of
reform since it is the foundation of India’s education pyramid. I am informed that my maid’s
children’s municipal school has a single computer that is in the home of its Principal. Yet
their teachers visit the semi-literate parents at home, checking and returning assignments
within 48 hours and ensuring that all their books are neatly bound in craft paper. These kids
speak better English than I do as the State sankritizes them. My grandson, while in middle
school in India informed me that his elite Anglo-Indian school in Kolkata, had told him to
memorize lines….to…. for a Shakespeare test. If he weren’t prepared he would be made to
stand outside the classroom, learning nothing! He doesn’t remember if the teacher explained
the import of the lines at all to the class. At the same time, his US public school not only
educated and taught him the responsibilities of citizenship and scholarship but that teachers
and counselors would speak to him, of their own, about his studies and welfare.
My son informs me that there are ready school buildings, in rural areas, with no
teachers, approach roads, transport, etc.; even the state government does not know how many
schools the state has! In fact, he has come across many instances of there being surfeit of
teachers in schools in urban areas, in some cases more than double their sanctioned strength
and even more. He also tells me that there are also huge unspent funds from Plan budget
outlays provided by the federal government to states each year. At the same time, his
colleague is credited with the success story of the sterling performance of Delhi Govt.
schools in the CBSE Class XII results this year – schools like the ones where my maid’s kids
study on a cold and wet floor. Again, I read of large disparities in marking between State and
central school boards; State students being denied admission in central universities while
States deny non-State students by some other mathematical juggling process
incomprehensible to me.
What am I to make of such contradictory viewpoints and information? Is it that the
existing empires need to be turned into enclaves of excellence simply because they have
become too large and unwieldy to handle as a single component of governance? Or is it that
civil society is content with occasional social criticism of educational governance which is a
major pillar of civilized society, without offering any concrete workable alternatives, thus
enclaves graduate into empires? Is Mr. Sibal therefore the symptom, malady or the cure?
Before talking of physical infrastructure, funding, grand and petty babudom, we need
to pause and think where we went wrong. In the 1940s Presidency College was the torch
bearer of academic excellence as was the Ballygunge Boys’ Higher Secondary School. I was
part of a student delegation to Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, then V-C of CU, seeking
postponement of their exams to study more; the request was most graciously accepted,
provided we put in more study effort! Titans like Shyama Prasad Mookerjee, BM Sen,
1

2. Sushobhan Sarkar, PC Ghosh, Bhabatosh Dutta and Taraknath Sen graced the faculty; they
gave and drew sustenance from their students. Posters were absent from campuses as were
political demonstrations, strikes, gheraos and physical violence by teachers, students and
administrative staff alike. Teachers were mostly apolitical (but nationalist); they did not
encourage the then political parties to indulge in campus recruitment or use them in
furtherance of their careers.
Today my grandson complains of classes not being held regularly, of assignments not
being assessed and returned, teachers going on strike at the drop of a hat, campuses plastered
with election posters, obscene amounts of funding for college elections, canteens being
unhygienic, potable water not being available, and hostels and libraries in state of advanced
decay. Yet, within these constraints, he informs me that his college has an e-catalogue,
sufficient copies of books and warning systems for late returns though the library is not air
conditioned and the furniture is average. The college even boasts of a Nestle fast food
counter, Coke vending machines, electronic shooting range, and et al. Evidently, not all is
bad, not every empire is evil, and enclaves of excellence do justifiably exist, sadly in
microscopic numbers. It is unfortunate that teachers, staff and taking a cue from them,
students, each have a hand in the making of this now inedible pie.
For a change therefore, why not ban political parties from educational institutions, ban
political affiliations of faculty and staff and political parties from supporting their unions,
introduce mandatory citizen inspection of government schools, governance by board
comprising citizens and government in equal measure, introduce licentiate system for
teachers with annual competence exams and renewable contract employment, hire Principals
on contract system by open advertisement through a citizen’s oversight board, fund schools
by earmarking, say 10% of income and 30% of property taxes, for them? Government could
extend the education cess as a percentage of the gross turnover of all manufacturing and
service organizations, public and private, to fund school education or earmark a share of
proceeds from PSU divestment for capital investment.
If we wish to reform, we should be willing to pay for it rather than turning a blind eye
to any workable solutions that consider economic and social constraints of a poor Indian
family vis-à-vis the illusory bottomless fiscal and administrative capacity of the State. If
billboards on campuses generate income, we should allow them so long as they are
reasonably unobtrusive. There is no gainsaying that McDonalds in Indian universities
reminds us of our colonial legacy and that socialist discourse alone can fix it by driving these
off campus as symbols of imperialism. Our education system itself is a colonial legacy and
therefore fiscal solutions to fix it must necessarily be the product of radical out-of-the-box
thinking that won us our Independence in 1947, something Mr. Sibal has, at long last, set out
to do.
Poor emoluments for teachers, physical infrastructure, petty bureaucracy, etc. are
being discussed in academia, as they have been done since the 1950s, while our campuses are
on the ventilator. My son informs me that the state university he attended charged in-state US
citizens over $11000 per annum for undergraduate and $9000 per annum for graduate
students. He also informs me that the annual tuition for my grandson in his last school in
India cost him nearly Rs. 5000 per month. Yet my grandson pays 20% less than this, that too
for a whole year’s study and facilities. Even if he is willing to pay more, the fee structure
would not allow him to do so. For a pittance of Rs. 300-350 per month, my grandson’s
college must provide teachers, classrooms, library, games, computers, electricity, water and
canteen. That they do bears testimony to the managerial skills of the Principal and his
2

3. dedicated administrative staff. I have not read of any workable solution except for andolans,
burnt buses and trains against fee hikes, led by kids of leaders who themselves have been
educated in the best of missionary schools, have their parental political legacy to live off and
hog media footage to follow in their parent’s footsteps. Our system is resilient and turns out
brilliant students, then why not support its enclaves of excellence, rather than criticize their
so-called elitism? Indeed such constructive elitism is welcome.
Turning to higher education, many have spoken of distinctions between state and
central university campuses in a Marxian sense of willful deprivation of the masses vs.
showering of selective federal largesse on the bourgeoisie. In the mid-1970s when my son
attended St. Stephen’s College, a large number of his friends came from Kolkata on the
grounds that annual and final exams in West Bengal universities were 2-3 years behind
schedule. All these children wanted were education; what they got was petty and often
violent politics with promises of andolan and more andolan by revolutionaries in search of a
revolution! Not many such students came from privileged backgrounds either. Similar
situations erupted in many other state universities causing migration to relatively stable
central universities. Agitational politics thus cost state campuses dear over the last 30-40
years while central universities are bursting at the seams – ample reason to expand enclaves
and create new empires for a noble cause. At the same time, politics replaced publications
and research by teachers.
As if this were not enough, 2-3 generations of students missed out on English
education. My son informs me that there is a severe shortage of good English stenographers
in Kolkata and elsewhere, even amongst young recruits, a sea of negative change. A
businessman neighbor of mine adds that the Howrah fitters don’t know how to operate CNC
welding machines although they were the best fitters in India! In sum, the possessors
dispossessed themselves and hapless millions by their self-centered populist actions! Indeed
the Indian Education Service that boasted of luminaries like my former teacher, Kuruvilla
Zachariah, BM Sen and others, should be revived and Professors in all universities
mandatorily co-opted into it and given a transfer liability. This way, academic assets could be
profitably shared by students all across India. Such teachers could also form the nucleus of
departments of excellence in universities that presently eke out a hand-to-mouth existence
and move on to other universities. The islands of excellence could then metamorphose into
archipelagos before joining the mainland.
Despite the passage of nearly three decades of such ugly politics, andolan still remains
the name of the game and campuses the preserve of political game hunters. Why would the
public want to bankroll such institutions any longer without much intellectual gain on
investment? Unfortunately, good components of such universities take the flak too. Would it
therefore not be reasonable to re-constitute such universities, separate their centers of
excellence and create new universities from such centers as their nucleus?
There is also an urgent need to separate academic research from research on education
methods and training for teachers taking a cue from foreign universities that boast of large
education departments. Eminent teachers speak against the negative fallout of separation of
research and academics but overlook the sad lack of qualitative and regular publishing by
teachers that is the precondition of research and continued employment in western
universities even after tenure track appointments. Not surprisingly, Indian teachers in foreign
universities or even on sabbatical perhaps author more articles in internationally acclaimed
journals than their counterparts in India. My son informs me that there are private web sites
in the US that put out such evaluation of university professors for a fee. Even state
3

4. universities mandate student opinion at the end of each semester on their teachers and hold
teachers to account while extending tenure tracks or confirming them in service. Freedom of
expression occupies the pride of place on US campuses yet does not detract from
accountability of teachers to the student community. All this may be possible only if separate
central legislation were passed, bringing universities under a uniform law and a centralized
statutory university regulatory commission. Accountability is the buzzword, both for students
and teachers.
Central and state law should therefore provide for selection of faculty and VCs and
other staff by public advertisement, selection of recruits by a single statutory commission
elected for a period of five years, enforcement of transferable credit-based syllabi, a judicial
disciplinary commission elected from the higher judiciary for five years, a statutory
Inspector/QA General Branch, a licensing branch for teachers and affiliated institutions,
separation of routine administration from teaching, ban on all political activity, permission to
collaborate with other institutions in India and abroad, raise moneys on their own, fix tuition
and fees, award scholarships, have no reservation in admission and recruitment on caste, class
or religious basis, authority to take over, prescribe targets and merge or shut down non-
performing institutions, authorized foreign currency holdings, create corpuses, chairs and
endowments, buy and sell their real properties, declare centers and departments self-
accounting units, etc.
Equally, it would be essential to liberate such campuses, as Mr. Sibal has rightly
stated, from the serfdom of government fiscal and administrative rules and regulations,
administrative slavery imposed by Ministries and state Departments of Education,
certification by bodies whose chief executives feather their own nests, and illusory reporting
to Legislatures. Unless we are willing to tackle the bull by the horns, our education system
would remain the sole preserve of the armchair debate and speculation while doting parents
and grandparents would continue to fume and fret and send their kids to study abroad or to
mushrooming private institutions, with or without sham recognition by discredited bodies. If
execution is inept, it is on account of huge doses of faulty planning and absence of any
coordinated monitoring by government, the teaching community and civil society.
Since we have proved ourselves incapable of fixing the rot in the system, is Mr. Sibal
wrong in inviting Yale, Harvard, North Carolina and Duke to set up campuses in India? In
doing so, Mr. Sibal not only echoes the sentiments of India’s 300 million-strong middle class
but also understates the resilience of our educational system to reform itself. The lawyer in
him also sensibly refuses steadfastly to waste precious time on such infructuous armchair
debates any longer. The proposed conversion of Presidency College into a university in order
to assuage the feelings of an understandably rebellious middle class on the eve of elections in
the state too does not therefore stand to reason as The Statesman has pointed out in an
editorial piece on Nov. 8, 2009. In fact, this only shows the intent of the teaching community
and politicians to make the educational waters even murkier.
With the advent of MRTS systems in many metros, we should perhaps look at school
campuses, akin to universities (something Mr. Narendra Modi has already advocated) in areas
like Rajarhat and Faridabad. The land occupied by government schools could be fairly
diverted for commercial use and the funds diverted to creating modern infrastructure
connected by MRTS in the suburbs of major cities and adjoining rural areas. For rural areas,
teachers need to be provided livable residential accommodation and recreation apart from a
50% rise in basic pay plus other perks such as free furnished accommodation, double house
rent, a 2-wheeler, etc. Instead of innumerable schools dotting the landscape, often in hilly and
4

5. inhospitable terrain, states could contemplate free boarding schools in each major
geographical region of a state and provide incentives such as free return journeys for each
major vacation to the kids, one-off cash incentives for enrolling a child (double for girls), a
fixed daily wage for farm labour substituting for children, all under the pain of law.etc. I
admit many of these suggestions are not new.
There is also the issue of attractiveness of courses and institutions. I understand
B.Coms and BBAs get good jobs straight out of the campus, so college does not matter. Not
so for the budding historians, political scientists, economist, physicists, chemists, biologists,
etc. Therefore fundamental research that is a major building block of a nation has few takers
while call center, bank and insurance jobs is the most one can aspire to after a non-
B.Com/BBA course. Thus there is a beeline for law, management and all other professional
courses to the exclusion of all else. At this rate we would have little intellectual capital left
and all business acumen. Even the bulk of the turnover of such business and technological
acumen appears to be generated or used overseas. As a hapless pensioner, I still have to visit
my nationalized bank branch and fight for my Pay Commission arrears since they do not
check their e-mail or have an online live chat. What good is technology when it is not applied
to the public sphere? How is our national interest served by call centers, overseas
consultancies and M&As when much income is generated abroad but notionally added to our
GDP?
I read about CSIR’s D-G firing an Indo-American techie for demanding too much
money, yet providing that organization the requisite approach paper on how to make money
from their inventions – something CSIR themselves were unable to do. I also read of Indian
scientists discovering water on the Moon, collaborating in breaking the genetic code and the
CERN Hadron Collider. Then why is it that fundamental research is neglected in universities
in India? Evidently, scientific jobs pay too little with the result Indian scientists look overseas
for self-perpetuation. My son informs me that many CSIR laboratories are being patronized
by the Indian and foreign private and public sectors for their infrastructure and expertise. Yet
there are large numbers of vacant seats in basic science courses in Indian universities every
year. Is this not a national shame for us? Have we thought of offering basic science students
any job tie-ups with such institutions on a large scale to keep alive the spirit of scientific
inquiry, notwithstanding the fact that India did produce Ronald Ross, CV Raman, JC and
Satyen Bose who worked out of decrepit laboratories in Kolkata bringing laurels to this
country and the world? In a recent report on www.news.in.msn.com, NASSCOM says that
75% engineering graduates are unemployable because they lack hands-on skills. The linkage
of educational attainment to a career geared to the national interest is therefore a crucial
missing link in our higher education chain and merits the most urgent redressing.
Last, but not the least, our education systems are premised on making a graduate out
of every student. Established social norms also dictate that a bhadralok family’s minimum
educational attainment should be that of a graduate. Must this remain the gospel truth
forever? The nation needs not just graduates; it also needs educated journalists, writers, auto
mechanics, videographers, paralegals and paramedics, to name a few. We have not tackled
the issue of quality control by way of newer teaching and learning methods, new syllabi,
international benchmarking of course material, new courses and vocational training. There is
an immense desire to learn among our young people. Mushrooming private MBA, BBA,
animation and graphics institutions advertize their services every day and there are takers.
But there is little by way of quality assurance in most such institutions. If not, the public and
private sectors of our nation would never be globally competitive since their knowledge base
is based entirely upon leaning by rote rather than by any deeper understanding of the utility
5

6. and application of their academic knowledge. What contributions have state universities
made in this regard? Or is it that our upper middle class mindset is content relegating such
mundane things to poorly equipped ITIs by relabeling them as community colleges –
something they would not consign their natural wards to? Incidentally, community colleges
in the USA sustain 70% of their working population by training students for the work place
and have facilities only marginally lesser than those of universities.
I may have exceeded my original brief as a student, parent and grandparent. Learning
by rote is a relic of the past; a holistic applied education consciously linked to careers is the
wave of the future and in our national interest. If we ignore the signals we may miss even the
last bus. Education is the muscle of a nation and no investment is too much for it, no sacrifice
too little. I therefore hope that my senile ranting will serve a useful purpose in provoking
readers to provide some food for thought for Mr. Sibal who has at least started some
preliminary but concrete action on the 50-year debate on reforming India’s education system.
I wish him Godspeed in his endeavour and look forward to my grandson bringing laurels to
his homeland with his rich Indian educational heritage and its values.
About the author
The author, a history alumnus of Presidency College, Kolkata, is a former Ambassador of
India and Visiting Senior Fellow at the Research Institute of Communist Affairs at Columbia
University, then headed by Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski. He has served on selection committees,
inter alia, for JNU, Delhi and Jadavpur Universities and the UPSC, and was a member of
several Indian delegations abroad, apart from lecture tours to several prominent foreign
universities and research at the India Office Library, London. He is an eminent expert on the
Sino-Indian border dispute and other Communist studies.
6