Bankrupt ideas on Restructuring Indian education system - The Economic Times

Despite big increases in the education budget (the Eleventh Five-Year Plan has been called an Education Plan), government just does not have resources to fund expansion of the system rapidly enough to meet the growing demand, given other competing resource requirements. Even within the education sector, priority will be given — quite rightly — to primary and secondary education. Dependence on government funds will, therefore, exacerbate the quantitative mismatch between supply and demand for higher education.(via Restructuring the education system- Opinion-The Economic Times).

Kiran Karnik a well known Indian 'intellectual', writes this long article on the education sector. His entire focus on how to mold Indian education system on Western lines, misses a few points completely.

80% of India's population is excluded from higher education as Indian higher system is predominantly in English. Hence, this puts a premium on English - and discounts Indian languages in the educational sweepstakes. The negative effect this on Indian self esteem is not even a point of discussion here.

The principle of exclusion (a colonial idea) is a dominant marker of the entire Indian education system - rather than inclusion. British (and before that Islamic rulers') colonial practices supported foreign languages on the backs of the Indian taxpayers' contribution - and actively worked on destruction of local cultures.

For instance, in the erstwhile State Of Hyderabad (equal to about 10%-12% of modern India), ruled by the Nizam, a large non-British kingdom, 2000 year old local languages like Telugu and Marathi were considered uncouth and barbaric languages - compared to a 700 year old language like Urdu, which was supported by the State. Thus anyone without the knowledge of Urdu was excluded from the system. So it is now in India, with English.

This restricts 80% of India's population from contribution and access to opportunity. Without looking at it from an ethical point, but purely as an economic question means we should look at the cost of this policy.

How does this hinder India? India loses every year about 200,000 highly educated people to the West. These 200,000 people have been educated at subsidized Indian Universities at a considerable cost to the poor Indian taxpayer. What return does the tax payer get from this? Negative returns.

What happens when English stops being an important language in the global sphere? What use will India's investment in English be at that time? And this will happen sooner than we imagine - at a greater cost than we believe.

What is the cost of switching from English?

Assuming that a 100,000 essential books need to translated into local languages, at a cost of say Rs.100,000 per book, it still amounts to Rs.1000 crores. Is that a large sum of money for modern India. Hardly.

What is the loss to India? How much does this reduce India's growth rate by? Hard numbers - but defintely big numbers.

So why is India persisting with this policy. Because all the high and mighty, finally want their children to 'escape to the West', with a good education from India - at the cost of India's poor. This vested interest makes this policy go around.

And a lot of propaganda.