~Richard Bach
Point No 4 of Sri Jaytirth ji establishes one important fact....that people sitting in Universities/ Institutions/ Colleges are mostly recruited on merits apart from their true academic spirit and fervour...as long as it is there, the system cannot change......and this has been seen since last 10 years....unfortunately....--On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 7:53 PM, Virendra Goel <goel.virendra@gmail.com> wrote:![Boxbe]()
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--It is the result of his interventions that should decide whether it was justified and not the perception of any individual.
Regards
Virendra Goel
From: join_mtc@googlegroups.com [mailto:join_mtc@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Vizayakumar Karumanchi
Sent: Sunday, April 26, 2015 2:59 PM
To: join_mtc@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: [MTC Global] Letter to HRD MInister Smt Smriti Zubin Irani
Indian mind is different. I have seen a donor of a Business School in an IIT to intervene in regular activities and put his own people, either they are qualified for the post or not, Board and the Director use to dance to his tunes.
On Sun, Apr 26, 2015 at 6:14 AM, Virendra Goel <goel.virendra@gmail.com> wrote:
Appeared in the Swarajya Magazine
The author is the Chair of Sri Balaji HRD Trust which runs various Business Programs under the aegis of FOSTIIMA Business School in Mumbai / Delhi.
To the Hon. Smt. Smriti Irani,
Minister for Human Resources Development,
Government of India.
Dear Smt. Irani:
Everybody seems to admit that we are facing a crisis in higher education. Unfortunately, the Applebys in your ministry with their obsession on controls and personalities, are all the time focussing your attention on how your ministry can continue to influence individual appointments of senior administrators in various higher education institutes. This is because the civil service is convinced that such control is key to their ensuring their own importance. They have maintained and even strengthened this tradition inherited from our erstwhile British rulers who viewed the control of universities as critical. As a matter of course, they did not follow the traditions of their own country. What was good for British citizens was not good at all for Indian subjects.
In England and Scotland, from medieval times, universities have been treated as autonomous bodies run by their own "fellows" or "dons". If a king gave money for a college, then it was named "King's College". But this gave no rights to the king to decide who would be the vice-chancellor or the provost, what would be taught in the institution or what degrees would be awarded. In contrast, in British India, the provincial governors reserved for themselves the right to make key appointments. Every Indian civil servant I have talked to, irrespective of which party is in power is absolutely and fanatically determined to retain government (by which they mean ministerial, departmental) control over appointments in academic institutions, over compensation levels and so on. The argument they make is that since the government has given the land and the funds, the government has this right. Please note that the kings of England, despite giving money, voluntarily chose to waive this right.
Let us be one hundred and fifty percent clear about this. India will not produce world class, first rate universities until and unless these institutions are given genuine autonomy. Senior appointments must be made by independent boards of governors who should decide on their own composition and successors. At no stage, should a secretary of the Government of India be involved. If we do not institute this independent process, we can forget about academic excellence. Government interference will always result in bizarre outcomes like wrong biology being taught in the Soviet Union merely because Stalin approved of the syllabus or in first rate Jewish scientists being kicked out of German universities (ironically to the benefit of British and American universities) merely because Hitler hated Jews. One can argue that these malign examples are extreme ones. Given our national penchant for avoiding extremes, we will not see such happenings---we will instead witness slow atrophy, decline and decay of our universities----pretty much what has been happening these past decades.
The British thought of Indian universities as institutions that would prescribe syllabi, conduct examinations and award degrees. Our universities have admirably achieved the objectives and continue to achieve the objectives that the British set for them. The British were equally clear that all research and the search for new knowledge would remain the preserve of the West. Even if Indians were the creators of this new knowledge, they should ideally not do it in India. The British partially failed to achieve what they wanted during their rule. Raman and Bose managed to do world class research in British India. In free India of course, we have succeeded where the British failed, in banishing all original research.
Ramakrishnan may have "written examinations in Vadodara"----but his research is at Cambridge. We can count it as a pretty substantive achievement that we are committed to enhancing the human capital of other countries. We are after all, a generous people.
The many institutions that we have chosen to set up, under government control, of course, are specialized organizations----they will teach only Engineering or Medicine or management or Films. They will not succumb to the temptation of multi-disciplinary studies. And that has become their Achilles heel. Research that leads to new knowledge invariably happens where two disciplines intersect----Economics, Statistics and Psychology or Design, Engineering and Social Anthropology. It is in the pursuit of multi-disciplinary endeavours that our IITs, IIMs, NIDs, AIIMS-es and FTIIs are challenged.
I have the following suggestions to make to you:
1. Encourage the specialist educational institutions (IITs, IIMs, AIIMS-es, NLS-es, NIDs, FTIIs) and the CSIR Laboratories to become full-fledged multi-disciplinary universities.
2. However PLEASE do not tell them how to do it. To have a one-size fits all UGC approach will kill innovation and experimentation, introduce uniform mediocrity and allow the Applebys in your ministry the chance to exercise greater stultifying controls.
3. Give these institutions block grants guaranteed for a period of ten years provided each year they pass a simple financial audit test----not a negotiation with your ministry or the new Niti Ayog.
4. Give these institutions genuine autonomy apropos of curriculum, recruitment, promotions, rewards, recognitions etc. The sad fact is that under British rule, Vice Chancellors like Ashutosh Mukherjee and Radhakrishnan had greater flexibility and autonomy than today's education leaders. Please end this ironic and tyrannical position once and for all.
5. I suspect that some will do a bad job and turn out dismal performance.
6. On the other hand, enough will do well and the chances are that in ten years they will have a Nobel-laureate or two.
7. Do allow Private Universities---both "for profit" and "not for profit" ones to come up and flourish. But do remember that every great country also has a world class public higher education system. We need both. And that is when excellence will finally prevail in India, instead of the shoddy banality that our higher education represents today.
Wishing you luck in your endeavours,
I remain Sincerely Yours
Jaithirth Rao
Appeared in the Swarajya Magazine
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K. Vizayakumar
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