The kind of education India should aim at
Pushpa M. Bhargava

24th March 2047

Satish Kumar had just got through Class XII. The school was five-minutes walk from his home. The maximum any of his friends had to walk to school in any part of the country was 15 minutes.

For the carpentry work he did, he received some money from the school’s shop. He felt rich. He had invited his friend, Riti — his household help’s daughter — for an icecream in the evening.

The parents of both Riti and Satish were relaxed. They did not have to send the children for private tuition that their parents had to. The last of the tutorial colleges that were found at every nook and corner of the city 50 years ago, had closed in their life-time. The teaching in their children’s school was good, and the teachers sensitive, sensible, value-oriented and good communicators. They cared for the students as was the case when the country became independent.

Two of Satish and Riti’s teachers lived in similar apartments in the same building. They were the most respected tenants of the apartment house that had many other professionals, such as lawyers, doctors, columnists, scientists and even IAS officers.

The entire country had adopted a common school system by 1922, led by Bihar in 1911. There were 500,000 of them in the country funded by the Central Government but run by the local self government with the help of civil society. There were no more any money-making commercial schools in the country. There were many private schools set up on a philanthropic basis and supported to the extent required by the government, but they were all a part of the common neighbourhood school system.

There was no one-time-a-year examination to decide the fate of a student. Instead, the young ones were continuously assessed for 12 years, from the age of 6 to 18 — from class I to XII. The students received a rounded-off education geared to make one an informed, responsible and useful citizen, irrespective of whether or not the individual studied further.

The education in the common school system was totally free with no hidden costs. There were a few residential schools (on the lines of what were called public schools in 1910s) which charged fees but only towards board, lodging and special activities such as riding. The government was spending 7 per cent of the GDP on education, out of which a little over 4.5 per cent was spent on the common school system.

Historians around the world had already begun to record the transition in India to the common school system as the basis of the country’s transformation into a leading world power. Reservations based on circumstances of birth such as belonging to SC, ST and OBC (phrases that only historians now knew) were long forgotten.

* * *

A village with some 500 families. The joy of open space coupled with every convenience within easy reach and no parking problems made many families opt to live in this lovely village in Kutch.

But what the villagers were proud of was not the excellent high school, or the village library located in the high school, but the two vocational training centres it had, that provided training in double Ikat weaving, metal work and vegetable dye technology. Students came from far-off villages. The teachers were local artisans who themselves were trained there, some of them after obtaining a bachelors degree. The language of instruction was English, but the idiom of teaching was Indian.

The country now had 150,000 vocational training institutes (VTIs), imparting training in over 1,000 vocations and avocations, as against 5000 giving training in less than 100 vocations 40 years ago. While virtually every child spent 12 years in the school from class I to class XII, one-third went after that for vocational training of their choice. India had become the largest training ground and exporter of people trained in a thousand vocations. It was not uncommon for them to earn as much as a university professor.

If you had talent enough, you didn’t have to have passed even a high school to enter a good vocational institution. The fee charged was reasonable and admissions were means-blind: that is, everyone who was admitted was supported, irrespective of whether the person could pay or not. Those who could pay, paid and did so gladly; others were either given scholarships or bank loans. As the standards of VTIs were high, the whole world was their stage for employment.

With another one-third choosing to start work immediately, the remaining one-third opted for higher education — professional or general. The country now had 3,000 universities with 5,000 to 10,000 students each. All universities had undergraduate courses taught by the best of their staff.

* * *

The following conversation was overheard in a university in a grade B town:

Tavish (to his much younger sister, Tasneem): "Well if you hadn’t done so well, I would have sent you to an affiliated college in a neighbouring country."

Tasneem: "What is an affiliated college?

Tavish: You have always been weak in history. In our country, in 2007, we had 17,600 affiliated colleges set up mostly for making money, as for shareholders in a company; 80 per cent of the graduates they produced were unemployable. Then the government took a bold decision. It banned all commercialisation (de jure or de facto) of education at the school or the university level.

"When did it happen"?

"I can’t remember the date. It was surely before you were born", said Tavish, "I better go and prepare for my GET" (GET is the national Graduate Entrance Examination conducted bimonthly).

Tavish, with his sense of brotherly duty, said, "I will advice you as to which universities you should ask your test score to be sent." The universities all over the country declare their first admission list on the 15th and 30th June and start functioning around the 15th July. As they had all adopted a course system, it was not uncommon for a student to study chemistry, physics and economics for his undergraduate degree. One could also audit (that is, sit through by paying the course fees without having to appear at an exam) as many courses as one liked and had time for.

All the universities had shifted to internal assessment. So there was distributed pressure all through on the students, and the Democles’s sword of the final (one-day) examination sealing their fate, no longer hung on their head.

The calibres of Vice-Chancellors was now as high as we had about the time when India became independent. The management of the universities was decentralised and the teachers in every university in the country were selected on a nation-wide basis as was the case with the selection of students. In fact, there were a large number of teachers and students from outside India in the country’s university setup.

The salaries of teachers depended on the market value and the eminence of the individual. The teachers — as long as they discharged their responsibilities adequately and were committed to the students and the objectives of university — had all the freedom needed to maximally utilise their potential and abilities, for example for research.

The admission to every university was merit-based (as judged by the GET score and the university’s own cut-off point) and means-blind as for vocational institutions. The language of instruction was English. Close to 70 items of infrastructure had been identified nation-wide and every university did its best to see that the infrastructure in respect of each item — be it provision of water, power, or facilities for repair of instruments, or simply the quality of secretarial staff — was outstanding. The faculty of Indian universities had acquired a reputation for independent thinking and acting as the eyes and ears of the nation.

With a workable mechanism of ensuring equity and excellence in the university system in place, it was not surprising that 26 Indian universities were amongst the top 100 in the world. Over 99 per cent of graduates produced by the university system during the academic year 2044-2045 were employed within three months of their graduation.

The newspapers screamed: "An Indian scientist awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology. It appears that out of over 100 nominations for the prize 29 were Indians. Therefore, India could expect to dominate the Nobel Prize scene in science in coming years. All this has been due to educational reforms in the last three decades that have transformed the scene of 2007. India has now reached its potential."

"A second Nobel Prize to India this year. To a Tamilian novelist. An ode to a living ancient language that gave us Shilpadikaran 2000 years ago."

* * *

Wake up. It is a dream, today, in 2007, but it can be a reality in 2047 if we all want it to be so, for no country in the world has the potential we have The question is: Do we? If we did, we wouldn’t have 78 per cent of our population living in less than Rs 20 (in price parity, two dollars) per day.

The writer is former CSIR Distinguished fellow and Founder-Director, Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology

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