Twelfth Plan approach to education draws flak

Former Vice-Chairman of the Kerala Planning Board Prabhat Patnaik has taken a critical view of the Planning Commission's Approach Paper to the Twelfth Five Year Plan which calls for developing the education sector on the basis of public-private partnership (PPP).

He was inaugurating the 28th annual conference of the Mahatma Gandhi University Employees' Association at the university assembly hall here on Thursday.

Elaborating how the recommendation contradicts the actual goal of the education system, Prof. Patnaik said: “We know that the private sector is interested in making profits. The Supreme Court of India had actually made a ruling at one point, saying that educational institutions should not be run for profit. Therefore, the approach paper implies that this constraint on the private sector should be removed and that, as a matter of fact, we should now have a policy where educational institutions should be allowed to be brought for profit-making. That happens to be the position adopted by the Government of India,” he said.

Fiscal crisis

He said the fiscal crisis being faced by the Central government had impinged on the educational system. “Neo-liberalism has been associated to a fiscal squeeze that has affected the education sector. The government has always claimed that it had no money to spend on education. The reason is that, in a neo-liberal economy, foreign trade gets freed. This has led to decrease in customs and excise duties, mainly due to trade liberalisation. In addition, competing with other countries in attracting multinational companies would demand the provisions for direct tax concessions. These tax concessions are later extended to the Indian corporate sector. As a result of these factors, the government's fiscal capacity tends to shrink and, therefore, the spending capacity. This is because there is a limit to the extent to which the government can borrow by way of the Fiscal Responsibility and Budgetary Management Act, which says that the fiscal deficit cannot be more than three per cent of the GDP. This implies that if you have limited taxes, you will have to spend less. In addition, subsidies are provided to the private sector in order to ensure that they invest the actual undertaken investment. As a result, the amount that is left for education, health, and other social services is extremely small. The impact of this is felt in all the publicly funded universities.

“The (financial) squeeze on universities is dramatic in many States, so much so that whenever an academic position falls vacant, it is seldom filled. Alternatively, many universities appoint guest lecturers, invited lecturers, who are paid about one-fourth or one-fifth of what a permanent and properly selected faculty member would get,” he said.

University Vice-Chancellor Rajan Gurukkal delivered the keynote address. Pro Vice-Chancellor Rajan Varughese, Communist Party of India (Marxist) district secretary K.J. Thomas, University Syndicate member P.K. Harikumar, association president P.S. Satheesh Babu, general secretary P. Padmakumar, Federation of State Employees and Teachers Organisations (FSETO) general secretary A. Sreekumar spoke on the occasion.