PRIVATIZATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION IS EVIL IN THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES

This author has written this news (in picture) in Garhwal Post in the year 2006. It is a small newspaper published from Dehradun.   

Mukesh Devrari

It started in the early nineties. It was the part of the initiation of economic reform juggernaut. Successive governments in India accepted the policy prescription from neo-liberal thinkers that the education sector should be opened for private players. All opposite suggestions were dismissed as leftist arguments, which had perhaps lost their potency with the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Humanist thinkers reminded the government that it must keep the health and education sector in its own hands. Hospitals and Universities cannot be allowed to function with the sole intention of making a profit, but all alternative discourse was out-rightly rejected. The result was an innumerable number of private colleges and universities cropped up around the country. Some of them are churning trained technical workforce for industries, others are just third class institutions ruining the lives of students, but all of them make sure to charge hefty fees.   

All private colleges and universities are charging an exorbitant amount of fees. Education mafia is becoming powerful day by day. Students coming from the weaker background cannot even think about studying in private engineering, medical and other technical colleges. Slowly higher education is becoming a fiefdom of privileged few. Structural arrangements are being made to exclude masses from accessing higher education. These private institutions flout all the rules, which are present on paper to bring some sanity into the system. Every year they sell seats to highest bidders. Parents do everything to pay the fees for the better future of their children. It is simple extortion.

Generally, the terse response comes from the apologists of privatization and liberalization to dismiss above arguments against privatization of higher education. Firstly, they argue that the government still runs many colleges and universities. Nothing stops students coming from modest backgrounds to study hard and feature at the top in the merit to get admission in government-funded universities, which are highly subsidized.

Above argument completely disregards the fact that performance in entrance exams depends on circumstances and investments parents of the child could make on coaching and training. Performance in entrance exams cannot be always considered as a parameter of intelligence. Preparation for entrance exams requires a heavy investment. It is a very cruel and inhuman argument. If you do not have money, then you are supposed to compete for few seats available in government institution by featuring at the top in the merit list. If you have money, then even if you are an idiot, not only plenty of Indian but perhaps many third-class British and American Universities are also vying for your attention. This makes apologists of privatization of higher education angry. 

Proponents of neo-liberalism claim, it is wrong to say, costly education debars people from accessing it. All the banks in India are offering loans to students at a subsidized rate. However, the reality is different. There is no bank on earth, neither in India or anywhere else, which pays loans to anyone without mortgaging anything or properly verifying repaying capacities of the loan seeker. The smaller the loan amount the more is the scrutiny. At least this the case in India. If unscrupulous capitalists ask for loans. Banks happily provide them loans. Barring few exceptions like IIM’s and IIT’s banks provide education loans only after seeing the economic status of parents of the student.

In the 21^stcentury, no one is arguing and requesting political parties in power to nationalize industries, which are making consumer products. At least state should take the responsibility of providing basic health, education and food security to every citizen so that every individual could have level playing field and succeed in the cutthroat competition.

The situation of unemployment is grave and capitalists are exploiting the situation to the hilt to their advantage. They know for every job there will be a queue of unemployed youth outside their offices, so they are dictating any terms and condition to the labourers of every kind. Here, the definition of labourers includes white-collar job seekers.  

The days have long gone where even a peon and clerk could do his job with the sense of security, where he could remain assured that there will be salary in his account next month also and he will be able to feed his wife and children. Thanks to Congress and BJP those days will never come back. Welcome to the Jungle only fittest has a right to survive here.

end.