Higher education faces crisis

EDUCATION in Punjab faces an unprecedented crisis today. The crisis will deepen and spread if persons like you who can intervene choose not to do so. We approach you in the optimism that your intervention will decide whether Punjab maintains its prosperity and peace or sinks into poverty and social unrest.

If the phrase “unprecedented crisis” in this context evokes no great anxiety, the reason is that it has been repeated hundreds of times. This is but one instance of the widespread governmental apathy to legitimate democratic dissent.

We refuse to buy that excuse that global economic imperatives require that the government should withdraw from its fundamental obligations. Governments represent people; they are not supposed to represent transnational anti-people interests. The corporatist and consumerist ideologies, with their extensive media presence and “manufactured consensus”, cannot be allowed to swallow democratic institutions and the interests of people. Privatisation and commercialisation are vital components of these ideologies: their wily pleaders are displaying them as if they were time-tested truths.

Higher education is the objective of corporate greed in the Third World because we have already entered the information age. Knowledge packaged as information will be the engine of economic growth in the future. The commodification of education, therefore, suits the corporate business agenda. With the withdrawal of the government from the institutions of higher education, they will reduce the colleges and universities from centres of learning to centres for earning.

Let those who care for this ancient country beware, for to throw higher education to the market forces is to invite the collapse of civilisation.

This government does not have the voters’ mandate to become a collaborator in this crime against people. It is expected to fulfil the promise of enhancing the state’s commitment to education, not to betray its manifesto by going in the opposite direction by reducing the existing commitment.

We want to know why the government has failed to make public its education policy. We are not averse to relating this failure to the government’s hidden agenda that is emerging in the scattered and fragmentary bureaucratic decisions and indecisions that obviously have secret political consent. These decisions and indecisions of the myopic and self-serving bureaucracy will spell economic, social and cultural disaster for Punjab.

A government that cannot take care of the education of the people has no moral right to remain in power. Political parties should understand that governments are expected to be more than mere policing authorities. With less than 3 per cent of the GDP being allocated to education and the meagre target of 6 per cent still elusive, is it not a scandal that the government should be talking of economic compulsions? And let’s not forget that merely 6 per cent of our youth receive higher education. In the event of higher education being commercialised, not even 1 per cent will be able to receive it.

The privately managed aided colleges in the state have been making a critical contribution to education but under increasingly trying circumstances. They provide education to 85 per cent of the students in Punjab. With irregular grants-in-aid, the 5 per cent cut, a freeze on sanctioned posts, a looming steep hike in fees and the hints of further cuts in grants, these colleges face a sinister threat to their survival. And unless we forget, this is part of a big threat with which Indian education is confronted today.

No teacher, no parent, no student, indeed no conscientious person would submit dumbly to this threat. It is time everyone raised his/her voice against it.

Dr R. K. Sharma, Prof Kamal Kapur
and many others
Hoshiarpur

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“Noisy” harassment

Recently I was on a three-week holiday trip to Punjab I stayed in Ludhiana during most of this time.

My stay was thoroughly enjoyable in every respect but one: sleep or lack of it.

Every night after midnight some stray dogs would make terrible noise out in the street and this would go on for an hour or two. As I would just start going into sleep after they stopped, the loud-speakers from one of the mandirs and a couple of gurdwaras in the locality would start at full blast (as if these were competing against each other) and go on until morning.

I was only able to cope with this by getting some sleep during the day-time. But I kept on thinking about those who needed a good night’s sleep after a day’s work, or a student who needs to study or a poor sick person who needs peace and quiet?

Whenever I mentioned this to my friends I was given to understand that nothing could be done against these, especially the religious institutions.

Is it really true that we as a civilised society cannot safeguard our citizens against this sort of “noisy” harassment?

JAGDEEP SINGH
Leicester (UK)
(Received in response to the Internet edition)

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Democracy vs dictatorship

Despite the demerits of a dictatorship and the merits of a democracy, it is observed that many people in this country, instead of looking down upon the dictatorship in our western neighbour, seem to have taken a fancy to the dictator in that country. Nevertheless, I feel that an effective democracy with honest leaders is better than a political dispensation under a well-meaning dictator.

The roots of democracy in this country should be further strengthened and sincere efforts made at all levels to uproot corruption, to avoid a situation when dictatorship is considered the panacea for all ills.

G.S. GURUNG
Panchkula

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Tailpiece

Question: How is a man known these days?

Answer: A man is known by the type of money he keeps — black or white, cash or kind, plastic or promised, hawala or diwala!

BALVINDER
Chandigarh