'You have to allow institutions to build their brands. The moment you do it for them, it will not work'

Sun, Oct 25 06:52 AM

Minister of Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal is one of the most active ministers of UPA-II. In this Idea Exchange moderated by Special Correspondent Anubhuti Vishnoi, Sibal discusses his roadmap for education

ANUBHUTI VISHNOI: The election results are out in Maharashtra, Haryana and Arunachal Pradesh. It's been good for the Congress.

Kapil Sibal: With UPA coming back to power with no perceptive stumbling block, people now believe it is time to deliver. And the results in these three states will cement the expectations. The advantage at this point, I think, is that the Opposition is at its weakest. But there are great expectations from the Congress. If it really performs well in the course of UPA-II, it will emerge even stronger. If the Congress does not deliver, there is likely to be some kind of confusion in the way politics is going to move forward.

ANUBHUTI VISHNOI: What are the areas in which the government must deliver?

Roads and energy. But the education sector, I think, is the biggest challenge. Unless you have a mass of people going to college, you are not going to get higher education moving, you are not going to get your wealth generation in terms of intellectual property moving. And if you don't have that mass in school and college, no matter what you do on the physical infrastructure front or the energy front, you are never going to move forward as a nation. How do we deal with that? We need to open up the education sector to foreign institutes and to the private sector. The most crucial sector here is vocational training. We have no drivers, no cooks, we have no paralegals, no paramedics. And the government has no policy yet on how to open up this sector. There needs to be a policy in place on how to have industry work with the education sector. In schools, we have these stratified courses of commerce, science and humanities. This stratification should go.

SHEKHAR GUPTA: What was the biggest surprise when you took over this ministry and how politicised was higher education?

If you look at any institution of higher education, a representative of the political class is involved. And that makes it very difficult to change the system. The whole education system is in the domain of the government. And that is why you get the kind of aberrations that you see. There is a huge amount of political patronising involved.

ANUBHUTI VISHNOI: You have rolled out a roadmap for educational reforms. Was there any specific guideline from the Prime Minister's Office on this issue?

We are working with the PM's office on all reform measures. I don't think we can get the reform process forward unless the PMO and the PM support it. And indeed we don't want to take it forward unless he supports it. The PM is a very wise man. He has always told me, "Be cautious when you move forward in the education sector."

COOMI KAPOOR: You were speaking of doing away with stratified courses in colleges. How do you plan to do it?

It has to be done by the experts. I will give you an example. Why don't we have a system of higher maths and lower maths? Why should we have one maths that is so tough? I mean, some student says he doesn't want to do tough maths, but wants to do lower maths with, say, music. So that's a kind of choice.

AMITABH SINHA: You have rolled back several of your predecessor Arjun

Singh's decisions.

Whatever I have done is to move forward. I look at the India of tomorrow.

MANEESH CHhIBBER: By having too many IITs and IIMs, don't you think you are diluting the brand?

First of all, I think that the existing number is not too many; there should be many, many more. Look at the need of the nation. Why should you limit a brand and say only seven can be excellent, 150 cannot be?

MANEESH ChHIBBER: But you don't have teachers.

So how do you get teachers? Give incentives to IIT people to go into research. Let me tell you this—in the last three years, there has been a huge expansion in research. These people will then become your faculty. You need to allow institutions to function, to build brands on their own. The moment you start building the brand for them, it will not work.

MANEESH CHhIBBER: Don't you think a better way to do this would be to first put people in place? You have the IITs, they are without staff.

That's not true. How many years will it take me to get people in place? Today we have the ICT (information and communication technologies) revolution in education, all these institutions are connected. Somebody in Kanpur should hear a lecture from somebody in Kharagpur. What's the problem? And as you increase your post-doctorates, the vacuum will be filled. So you achieve both. If you have broadband, allow your papers to be circulated, your course material to be circulated.

DHIRAJ NAYYAR: What are the realistic things that you want to get done in your tenure?

The realistic thing I want to get done is to have one single exam for admission to professional colleges. That's only possible if the state school system is geared to that. We have got a CABE Committee resolution on that, we have also a resolution of all the states who have joined together to look at this issue and I think after two or four years, we can think of doing this.

COOMI KAPOOR: But what about the states?

Tamil Nadu had four boards, they have now decided to have only one. So states are also moving in that direction. Nothing can be done without collaborating with the state government. If there is one thing I would like to do, it would be to not harass the students to have to go to every other place and take a different exam. If they were to take one exam after class XII, which will then decide, on the basis of merit, which institutions they want to go to, it will make the system much smoother and remove corruption. At the moment, I think state governments are keen. In fact, a curriculum is being drafted at this point in time with some representatives from the states.

AMITABH SINHA: What are the doables your ministry is looking at?

Now we have done away with the Class X boards—that was a doable. I hope the state governments follow suit. Change of curricula, revamping the entire curricula, vocational training, increase in research and post-doctorates, an over-arching body in the education sector that deals with all segments of education, an accreditation system that is independent of the government—all these things are doable.

DHIRAJ NAYYAR: Will the government set standards if the industry decides to enter the education sector?

Why should the government set the standards? All that has to be done is that the accreditation authority must give them accreditation. In other words, the quality has to be maintained, the rest is up to them. Today, we are telling new Central universities to devise their own courses; we have nothing to do with it. We should also allow the industry faculty to come into the education sector. Why can't a person in industry become a faculty member in an engineering college?

N.P. SINGH: There are two main problems in colleges. One is that the teaching staff is completely unaccountable, the other is that the UGC plays too much of a role in colleges.

Two responses to that. I have requested the UGC to have a guideline as to what is required of a teacher in a university. For example, there must be an obligation to publish, say, 'X' number of papers in a year before you are entitled to be promoted. So I think all these guidelines are necessary and we are contemplating framing them. On the UGC playing too much of a role, what happens is that when you take aid, 95 per cent of your costs are taken care of by the government. Now the best way to move forward is to allow institutions to be unaided.

N.P. SINGH: Why should the fee in universities be so much less than in schools?

You must also understand that all over the world, the revenue for higher education does not come from fees. It is huge philanthropies, huge investments made through those philanthropies, which, in turn, finance education. So let's not move to a model where increasing the fees is the solution to financing education. So you come back to the issue of financing. I have already charted out a way of moving forward. Either you should have guarantees or you should have a financing corporation to move forward or another financing system with a reasonable increase in fees. By reasonable, I mean whatever is within the paying capacity of the public at large, not reasonable in the context of 50 per cent of the total cost of education. That's not acceptable.

MANEESH CHhIBBER: Do you think something needs to be done about corruption in the All India Council For Technical Education?

We are taking a re-look at AICTE and UGC. And in terms of the Knowledge Commission and the Yashpal Committee, these institutions need to be subsumed into an overarching body, that overarching body should be or will be something that we are now moving forward on. But yes, the system needs to be restructured. We are doing that.

MANEESH ChHIBBER: How will you ensure that the new body is not corrupt?

If you have an overarching body of, say, seven people chosen through a process which nobody can challenge, then you will have the best people on the job and then you hope for the best. There can be no perfect system put in place.

ALOK SRIVASTAVA: There is no control on the quality of people coming out of private engineering and management colleges.

We have issued UGC guidelines that all deemed universities will have everything on their website, the faculty they have, the qualifications of the faculty, the infrastructure. All that will be transparent now. We are going to bring in the Educational Malpractices Bill. If any information on the website is found to be wrong, it will be a malpractice. So it makes the process transparent and makes the institution accountable. We have done both.

COOMI KAPOOR: Most of your statements have focused on higher education. Have you given advisories to the state governments on schools?

I have, in fact, spent much more time on school education. I cannot give advisories to state governments. I can only bring them on board. The point is that I cannot interfere in the state board process. Where I have jurisdiction, I have done so—in the CBSE system. But for example, with the Right to Education Bill, all the schools will have to conform to the statute. Which means, any school that does not conform in terms of both infrastructure and faculty will be derecognised. Now when this Right to Education Act is put into place, then the whole educational scenario in the school system will change radically.

J.P. YADAV: Do you see the Congress getting back to single party rule? Would you say that the era of coalitions is on the decline?

It's not an answer that I can give today. There are huge communities who feel left out of the system. The public perception now is that we now need a public party in place to take our national agendas forward.

VINAY SITAPATI: You have spoken about facilitating entry of private players in education. Currently there are all kinds of clearances that are needed, all of which provides scope for corruption.

The accreditation system is the one that will provide that clearance. Supposing I want to set up an institute, I need to have my infrastructure in place. If that is satisfactory, then you get an entry into the system. In other words, you can be given the permission to actually build infrastructure. Today the position is that you don't build the infrastructure, you get people admitted into the college, and then you go to the government, saying you have taken students in and what will happen to them. Now that must change. A serious player in education must provide the infrastructure first.

RAJ KAMAL JHA: After you announced your move to do away with the Class X Boards, things moved fast. Can you give us a sense of the internal debate that took place before the decision was made?

That the Class X Boards should be abolished had been recommended by various committees since the 1990s. The final National Curriculum Framework of 2005 made that decision. Consultations had taken place, but the recommendations were not implemented. When I came in, they told me it was pending. If children move from Class X to Class XI in the same school, why should we have a Board? We went to different regions and met stakeholders, and only when we got a favourable response did we go ahead with the policy and say we will implement it in 2011.

MAROOSHA MUZAFFAR: How will you assess the life skills of a student under

the 'Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation' system?

It is not just your ability to memorise and sit for an exam, but a whole set of human attributes that are exceptionally important to be successful in life. The evaluation system should actually pinpoint and assess those attributes. That doesn't mean examinations are irrelevant. Developing the personality of a child does not mean only doing well in examinations, but teaching them how to cope with life. That is what will develop them as citizens and that is what we ultimately want.

SHEKHAR GUPTA: You said that you can reform things at the Centre, but the results will ultimately depend on what happens at the state level. Have some states stood out for being positive and engaging?

For the first time, we passed a unanimous resolution at the CABE Committee meeting, where all political parties supported us. I think states are ready for reform. Ultimately, there is competition between states as well.

Transcribed by Maroosha Muzaffar

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