PDF The Social Perspective's of India's Higher Education System

[Pages:17]SAC04343

Menraj Sachdev PhD Candidate m.sachdev@edfac.usyd.edu.au

Faculty of Education and Social Work University of Sydney

The Social Perspective's of India's Higher Education System

The adoption of the knowledge-based society by the Indian society has increased the gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots" in India. The financial and consultancy assistance by the World Bank and various international organizations that were embraced by the Indian government in 1991 were taken hostage by the middle class to benefit itself while further displacing people of lower classes, lower castes and women. According to the World Bank, as of 2001, approximately 433 million people are living on less than US$1 per day in India, which includes 36% of the total poor in the world (World Bank 2001). The gap between the "haves" and the "haves-not" continued to increase at such a rate that since 1991 it has become more difficult for the less fortunate to break the hold the upper castes/middle class have on the economic and social dominancy of the Indian society. As explained by Dreze and Gazdar, "The high concentration of power and privileges deriving from the combined effects of inequalities based on class, caste, and gender has made for an environment that is extremely hostile to social change and broadbased political participation" (Dreze and Gazdar, 107-8). One area in particular that the middle class has utilized to control the "inequalities based on class, caste, and gender" has been the higher education sector. Due to their ability to influence the higher education system, it has taken on a more economic, market-oriented, IT direction, which has ultimately taken the focus away from breaking these inequalities in the Indian society.

This paper will first discuss the adoption process of the knowledge-based society by the Indian government, and then will shift the direction of the focus on the trends that have emerged within the higher education system which uphold the beliefs of the middle class, and has ultimately forced the system to disconnect itself from the people of lower classes, lower castes and women. The beliefs that the higher education has come to uphold from the new middle class are privatization and globalisation, to be self-interested, a consumer, pragmatic, and competitive (Vora, 284). And the trends that these beliefs have led to are, powerlessness, involvement of various ministries and organizations on policy decisions, "dilution and trivialisation of the aims of education" (Sadgopal, 12), "alienation of knowledge from social ethos" (Sadgopal, 12), rural/urban divide, continual lack of higher education institutions, and the digital divide.

Adoption of the Knowledge-based society

The financial situation in India during the 1970s and 80s was less than successful. According to the IMF, India's debt had increased significantly from the mid 1980s to the beginning of the 1990s. As stated by a IMF Staff Paper, India's external debt nearly doubled from approximately $35 billion at the end of 1984/85 to $69 billion by the end of 1990/91, medium- and long-term commercial debt had also increased from $3 billion to $13 billion during the same period, and the stock of nonresident deposits increased from $3 billion to $10.5 billion (Cerra, 402). Thus, the Indian government's only option was to accept the liberalization process in 1991 as laid down by the World Bank, to open up its markets and to agree to structural adjusted loans under stringent World Bank conditions.

Besides providing financial contribution to India, the World Bank also provided consultancy to assist India's road to development. Reports by the World Bank focused on India's ability to forgo its attempt to industrialize the nation, and to move ahead, or `leapfrog', with the use of IT strategies towards becoming a knowledge-based society. The idea behind "leapfrogging" was a term coined by Robert Miller in 2001, in his report `Leapfrogging? India's Information Technology Industry and the Internet', which is a World Bank report. In the past decade the information technology sector has been pushed by international organizations as the market that will allow India and other developing nations to increase their competitive economic production on the global economic scale. The advancement of the information technology era is seen as a `new age' where a nation's ability to meet the challenges of this sector will shape their economic and social future (Garrihy, 1997). Due to the lack of positive results over the past four decades, economically and socially, the Indian government decided to take the advice, in addition to conditions, from the World Bank and attempt to "leapfrog" the Indian society towards becoming a knowledge-based society.

However, in order for the Indian society to fully adopt the knowledge-based society, it first required the necessary manpower. The field of IT is a highly specialized field of `mathematics, management, computer science, electronics engineering, and other engineering sciences' (Nagy et al.1995, 21). Specifically, the IT industry consists of personal to `...involve the handling of information by electronic means: that is, information acquisition, storage, retrieval, processing, transmission and control' (Nagy 1994, 1). This new workforce is considered as the international division of labour (NIDL) (Sommers et al., 21) for the foreign and domestic IT markets that have opened up in India. Due to this transition of the Indian economy from an industrialized society to a knowledge-based one, the higher education system has come under pressure by the Indian government and industry companies, to create and train manpower necessary for the IT sector.

Due to the consultancy and financial assistance by the World Bank regarding plans and strategies towards transitioning to become a knowledge-based society, the Indian government since 1991 has placed an emphasis upon the science and technology sector

within the higher education, particularly the IT sector. This is evidenced in the Eighth Five Year Plan (1992-1997), `[t]echnical education...is one of the most potent means for creating skilled manpower required for developmental tasks. While this implies high costs of construction, laboratory equipment, library books and journals and high rate of obsoloscence, such high cost, being directly related to development, should be viewed as an essential productive investment, yielding valuable returns to the society' (Government of India, "Education, Sports and Culture" Chapter, 1992-97). Additional to the plans and strategies proposed within the Five-Year Plans, the Indian government has invested time and money in producing reports and taskforces towards establishing the IT sector. This unconditional support by the Indian government to the science and technology sector, particularly the tertiary education sector, has created manpower unlike anywhere else in the world.

At the higher education sector, the Indian Institute's of India (IITs) have been an important player of India's transition towards becoming a knowledge-based society for the past decade in India as well as abroad. The IITs were set up as Institutes of National Importance to be premier centers of education and training in applied sciences and engineering (Government of India 1994-95, Education Annual Report, 8.2.1). The IITs have been put in position by the Indian government to concentrate `...on technology assessment and forecast so that futuristic approaches could be re-oriented to take up the development of emerging Science and Technology trends in the country' (Government of India 1994-95, Education Annual Report, 1.2.15). The goal was to set-up a strong foundation, with global quality. However, at present there are only seven IITs throughout India therefore allowing a small population of students who are able to gain the benefits of these institutes of `excellence'. Hence, the Indian government decided `[t]o develop horizontal and vertical linkages with other institutions, research laboratories, industry and user agencies through multiplicity of programmes including consultancy' (Government of India, 1999-2000) in order for additional institutions, such as polytechnics and regional engineering colleges to gain consultancy and support to provide high standards of technical education throughout the nation. The numbers of institutions, as of the year 2000, throughout India are listed the table below.

Formal Educational Institutes teaching Courses Related to Computers in 2000

Particulars

Number of Institutes

National Institutes (IITs and IISc)

7

Regional Engineering Colleges

43

Degree Colleges at Universities

860

Diploma Colleges

1220

ITI s

730

IIITs (Indian Institutes of

2

Information Technology)

Total

2864

Source: Source: NASSCOM, The IT Software and Services Industry

in India, New Delhi, 2001, pp.82-83.

(As cited in Vicziany (2001).

The support and increase to the number of institutes emphasizing information technology, has led to an increase in the number of qualified manpower available for the IT industry in the past decade. Data from the Ninth Five-Year Plan (1997-2002) has shown that there is estimated 10,000 technical graduate per annum, in the diploma courses there are 170,000 graduate yearly, Postgraduate and Doctoral programs in engineering are available in 150 institutions, and about 60 polytechnics offer advanced and post- diploma courses (9th FYP (1997-2002), 3.3.27). According to Vicziany, there has been an increase of the number of institutions teaching courses related to the IT area from 1,904 in 1998 to 2,860 in 2000, producing approximately 122,000 graduates (Vicziany, 22).

Therefore, the success gained by the IT companies, foreign as well as domestic, due to the training by tertiary education institutes has allowed the IT sector to surge economically during the 1990s. `In the six years since 1994-1995, the output of India's IT industry has surged from a total value of US$2 billion to US$8.7 billion in 1999-2000' (Vicziany, 1).

However, as the World Bank and the Indian government continue to support technical education in the view that it will assist the nation to develop into a modernized nation, in reality the people of the middle class and above, particularly within the urban areas, are the ones who have been able to receive the majority of the benefits of the transition towards becoming a knowledge-based society. The support and emphasis placed on the IITs in addition to the success of the IT sector economically within India have only benefited a small population of the `elite' middle class who have the proper background, as illustrated within the Agarwal study.

According to a study done in 2003, by Ranjana Agarwal, a Research Assistant at the National Institute of Education Planning and Administration (NIEPA), the middle class are amongst the majority of people with elite backgrounds who have the resources and access to training facilities in the IT sector. The result of her study illustrated that the majority of people within the IT field include people who have had adequate pre-service training and are with elite background products of private English medium schools'. The data reveals that 79 percent of respondents, 94 percent of women and 64 percent men have studied in English medium schools. While at the same time, 72 percent of the respondents, 80 percent of the women and 64 percent of the men have studied in private schools. More so, factors such as parents educational career also plays into the factor of the respondents `elite background'. Ninety percent of the respondents have fathers who have graduation and above levels of education, 39 percent of them have professional qualification, 15 percent have a postgraduate degree and 7 percent have a doctorate degree. Additionally, 56 percent of the women respondents are children of doctorate / professional fathers compared to 36 percent of the men. The same scenario is found with the women's mother's educational background. For 70 percent of the respondents, mother's education level is more than graduation and above. This study conducted by Agarwal, clearly illustrates that the middle class are amongst the majority of people with

elite backgrounds who have the resources and access to specific higher education training to enter the IT field and to reap its benefits.

The IT sector has the potential to provide people within India, regardless of the their caste, class or gender with an opportunity to better their socio-economic position. However, due to the Indian government unwillingness to tackle the following trends within the higher education since 1991, the people of the middle class and above have been able to utilize the reforms of the system to benefits itself and further displace the people of lower classes, lower castes and women from modernization.

Powerlessness:

From the trends listed above, a trend that has had a damaging impact on the people of lower classes, lower castes, women and professors, particularly in the Education sector, is a sense of "powerlessness" towards the higher education reforms made by the Indian government. Due to the involvement of the World Bank on policy reforms at the economic sector and the lack of ability by the Indian government to respond to the demands of the IT manpower, the Indian government has had to allow the decisionmaking process to the trends of the market. This has ultimately taken the educationists out of the picture of policy-making at the education sector. Professor Gupta, an Education professor from a University in Delhi, supported this. "I as a person in education never felt so powerless as I feel today. Powerless in the widest sense. Because earlier you can go to the government...I could organize a demonstration, I can organize a seminar and a conference, often with government money, and tell the government you are doing wrong things" (Prof Gupta, February 25 2003). But not only has Professor Gupta felt disenfranchised by the Indian government towards the direction of education in India, various professors interviewed have noticed this change in attitude. Many professors have expressed their concern of the Indian government's handling of the reforms after 1991, but their concern has not only been with various international organizations, but on the ability of the middle class to influence policy decisions. This can be seen in a conversation with an Education professor in Pune, India.

Interviewer: What do you feel can break that elitist hold? Prof. Sood: That depends on political ideology. That's all. I: So it stems from the top? S: Exactly, unless the political system is very serious, unless the political system is committed to the nation" (Prof Sood March 9 2003).

The lack in confidence by Educationists in the Indian government's ability to place reforms and respond to the needs of the people of India has led professor's in India to deem that the people of the middle class and elite's are in control of the government. As a result, the choices made by the Indian government and the trends that have resulted due to them, are established to benefit the middle class and not the less fortunate.

Yet, Educationists throughout India are not the only collection of people who also feel "powerless" to the elite's hold of the reforms and policies that have been planned at the higher education sector. Due to decisions of the higher education policies residing on the trends of the market economy, people of lower classes, lower castes and women are directly placed in a disadvantaged position because their "propensity to consume is limited" (Vora, p. 278) which has become an absolute requirement to participate within this new economic society. Yet, while the disadvantaged groups struggle within this reformed society, the people of the middle class and above increase their opportunities and economic prosperity allowing them to further the gap between the itself and the less fortunate. As supported by Dutta, "It is becoming more and more evident that large sections of their population have been unable to actively participate in the modernisation process of industrialisation and urbanisation, and still lack the capacity to afford even the minimum subsistence needs for food, shelter, health and education" (Dutta, 2000, 2). The lack of access and services of "food, shelter, health and education" has exacerbated the "powerlessness" felt by people of lower classes, lower castes and women. For the less fortunate, the thought of attending a higher education is far from their minds when the bulk of their time and energy is spent on the needs of survival. The Indian government's unwillingness to put forth reforms and policies to assist these groups in accessing services to "food, shelter, health and education" has forced these groups to not participate within the new economic system resulting in them to being further pushed away from being able to attend a higher education institute.

Dilution and trivialisation of the aims of education (Sadgopal, 12)

India's transition towards becoming a knowledge-based society after 1991, has forced the higher education to transition its objective. However, before the Indian society was in any position to utilize information technology strategies to "leapfrog" the economic and social hardships, it required manpower. Therefore, in 1991 the higher education sector's aims shifted to adjust to provide the necessary manpower within the IT sector. This transition was illustrated within the Ambani-Birla report released in 2000 where it states, "India has to create an environment that does not produce industrial workers and labourers but fosters knowledge workers. Such people must be at the cutting edge of knowledge, be competitive and innovative. Education development has a major role to play in shaping knowledge workers..." (Ambani-Birla, 5.3).

Yet, this transition towards "shaping knowledge workers", plays in whose advantage? As discussed above within the Agarwal study, the people belonging to the middle class and above are the majority who are gaining access and therefore the benefits from this transition towards a knowledge-based society. Thus far, the shift to "leapfrog" the hardships and inequalities within the Indian society in actuality has left the less fortunate, further less fortunate. That is why the focus of this trend has emphasized the dilution and trivialization of the aims of the higher education sector. Originally, Sadgopal had observed this trend at the primary school level during the decade after 1991. Yet, as the Department of Education has allowed the middle class, international organizations and various ministries to influence the focus and aim of tertiary education, this trend holds

true for tertiary education. Professor Chopra, an Information Technology Professor, observed this trend during the past decade, he states,

"Well recently what I feel about higher education is we are slowly drifting away from the values. Somehow the education has become so technical, it's probably the perspective of education we look at, it's changing. Like today education for me would be probably look towards fetch me up a job. But I think education is much more than that, it should not be only the technical application, maybe a specific activity, but it also should develop the individual as a whole. So I think higher education, somewhat moving away from the strides of values development" (Professor Chopra, March 11, 2003).

Professor Chopra believes that the aims of higher education are not only to provide the student with the necessary tools but also with the necessary values. But he feels that due to the changes that have been made to the higher education sector over the past decade, that the system has moved away from what he feels is an important area, values.

However, all the professors interviewed in India did not share the opinion of Professor Chopra. Professor Kapoor, an Education Professor interviewed, believes that the aim of education is supposed to focus upon providing people with the necessary tools to gain employment, and therefore the education at the tertiary level has not become diluted or trivialized. "Yes, yes, because what happens, is that the ultimate aim of higher education is to produce a HR, human resource. So once the quality of higher education increases, the quality of HR will increase. And this HR will allow India to develop" (Prof Kapoor, March 17 2003). Professor Kapoor expresses that if people have the proper tools to work and be a resource to the economy, this will then lead India to develop. But who is to say that either one of these professor's is right? Yet, the more important question maybe who is the benefactor of these new aims of the higher education sector?

With different views from professors in the Education and IT sector, analyzing if the aims of tertiary education has become diluted and trivialized becomes a difficult task. However, if one looks at the changes that have been made within the past decade, since 1991, in policies at the higher education sector, it does not seem that the aims have been diluted and trivialized. The Indian government decided in 1991 that they wanted to shift India towards a knowledge-based society. As a result, changes were made to policy reports in the higher education sector to provide the necessary manpower for the IT sector. Additionally, if the aim of higher education is to support the needs and agenda of the middle class, then from the argument stated above, one is in a position to state that the aims have once again not been diluted and trivialized. Yet, both of these issues listed above supports the middle classes use of the higher education sector as a tool to increase their dominancy economically and socially within the Indian society, in addition to increasing the gap between itself and people of lower classes, lower castes and women. For the less fortunate, higher education has been an institution they only think about reaching. More often than not, people of these groups will never have the chance to attend a tertiary education institute, and that is where the dilution and the trivialization of the aims higher education have occurred. At the beginning of this paper Dreze and Gazdar pointed out that power and privilege originated due to the ability of the middle

class to continue the inequalities within the Indian society based on class, caste and gender therefore; as long as the aims of higher education sector continue to uphold these inequalities and alienate the knowledge that the majority of Indians require, then these groups of people continue to be compromised and left further behind.

Alienation of knowledge from social ethos (Sadgopal, 12)

Sadgopal has observed through his years at the primary school level that polices passed down from Delhi, were not connected to what was required at the primary school level. Through his experience he was convinced that the market-economy was the sole proprietor of decisions during the decade after 1991. His concern with this trend, was that the local knowledge, or the "geo-cultural diversity" of knowledge, has over the past decade since 1991 transitioned to a form of knowledge that is more "globally acceptable (i.e. marketable)", which ultimately benefited the middle class and strengthened their position within the Indian society (Sadgopal, 20). This shift of knowledge after 1991 has been due to the new aims of education in an era where the economy holds the priority and the agenda to fulfill the manpower needs of the IT sector to support the Indian government's decisions to convert the Indian society to a knowledge-based one. Although Sadgopal's paper observed this trend at the primary school level, as an educationist, he has also observed this trend at the higher education level (Sadgopal, 20).

The middle classes participation with the Indian government's decision to adopt a new aim of education that focuses on providing knowledge that is "globally acceptable (i.e. marketable)" illustrates the obvious lack of attention, resources and access the Indian government was and is willing to provide for the majority of Indians living in the rural area, in addition to people who are of lower castes, lower classes and women. What the higher education system has been set up to do is two fold, as explained by Professor Sood, an education professor located in Pune. He states that the system is to provide the elite's with an opportunity to maintain their "status quo" and two, to provide students with an opportunity to take their education and resource overseas, outside of India. "...Higher education is meant for two purposes, one is the elitist have the opportunity for higher education that is to satisfy their socio-economic status that is to maintain the status quo. Second thing is to have a foreign assignment. So these two things are very less to do with this nation, which is one of the poorest nations in the world" (Prof Sood, March 9 2003). More importantly, Professor Sood additionally illustrates that both of these agendas do nothing to assist India towards development. He feels that these two agenda's alienates people of lower classes, lower castes and women with accessing a tertiary education which could provide them the necessary tools that can be used to increase their social and economic benefits. The combined impact of lack of attention the Indian government has given these groups, and the continuous support for the middle class and their beliefs within the higher education system has allowed inequalities to carry on unabated by the Indian government.

The Indian governments unconditional support to the beliefs of the middle class within the higher education sector has spurred concern from many professors that the higher

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