दृष्टिकोण – Indra's Viewpoint

Very soon perhaps every state of the country will have an IIT and may be an IIM too, with establishment of IIT becoming a political decision. With this large a number it will be really difficult to maintain the brand image that the older IITs have earned after decades of hard work from the academicians and students at the institutes and their contribution in the industry and status in the society. It will become tougher for the directors to excel against the interferences from the bureaucrats in the operations of newer IITs.

Crumbling infrastructure at IITs will affect the potential of the students. If Golu, a simple young boy from a small town can find the facilities much below his expatiations, what will be the reactions of those coming from the first class private public schools with the world class facilities? Golu is shore about the three students occupying a small room of the hostel. Golu’s father with all his financial problems had rented a separate room with bath attached for him so that he could have his privacy and concentrate on his studies during his higher secondary schooling. At IIT, even if Golu’s father manages the finances to meet the expenses for a single room accommodation, he can’t get it for Golu. I wonder why IITs can’t outsource the hostel facilities to private entrepreneurs or some willing alumni as was done in IIT, Mumbai, if the IITs can’t do that itself. I am sure the IITs have hardly a problem of land scarcity.

Golu couldn’t get even his expectations of high-tech class rooms satisfied. The class rooms of IIT still have black boards where the teachers use chalks. Today even some of DU colleges have air-conditioned class rooms with digital interactive boards and other digital gadgets that are pretty common in the educational institutes and colleges in US and even in China.

Unfortunately, even the quality of teaching and its teachers at IIT, Delhi as narrated by Golu is far from the best that I expected to have changed over the last fifty years. Golu did attend some classes and practical that perhaps was perhaps in workshop practices and electrical lab. As I could guess with what Golu described, the instructors hardly explained the manufacturing process the group of ten carried out or the purpose of the experiments they carried. The practice hardly make individual student learn and understand anything. The institute and its instructors must see that every individual student gets opportunity to work by his own hand. The class room must teach the engineering sciences and mathematics behind the technologies of every stream of engineering branches. The shop practices and lab experiments must make the students confident in handling the equipment and appliances by their own hands. Unfortunately, Indian lacks the skill of working by hand. With the real involvement in practice, the students get interested in the subject; otherwise they carry on the studies mechanically just for scoring good grades.

Reservation policies of the government and the way IITs are being forced to handle it will certainly affect IITs’ brand image. It’s certainly demoralizing the students of general categories. OBC perhaps does need any reservation. Even the performance data prove this. The fall in cutoff marks for the entry of SC/ST students will certainly affect the overall standard of education at IITs. The solution is in the strengthening of free education and other supports of those students at the pre-entrance stage with best possible facilities and teachers to bring them up to a common standard.

If IITs don’t review its working and take the corrective measures fast, it will gradually lose its attraction and the students will get disenchanted. The report of many students shunning IITs this year must be taken as warning. With easy financing from banks, the best students from the emerging middle class today can also join the best institutes in the world who are more than willing to accept them with less rigorous entry barriers.

Some news emanating from IITs such as one about nano satellite from IIT, Kanpur may be exciting but let us not forget that the Indian engineering graduates are not considered the best in handling hardware. The IITs must see that the graduates get ready to take up assignments in the enterprises they join without further training for months there. That is really an irritant for the industrialists.

Sibal must work with CII to bring IITs nearer to the industrial sectors and make them mutually benefit from their problems and potentials to solve them with its synergies.

However, the main task before Sibal will be to provide the autonomy to IITs to operate freely integrating the latest innovations in teaching and researches.

I wish IITs retain its brand image.

In general, almost every one, the friends as well as foes is appreciative of the numerous radical reforms Sibal wishes to bring in education sector. However, some of them must move fast on priority.

As many perceive, ‘the vast majority of private institutions, ranging from mediocre to abysmal, are solely devoted to making money’. And those who run it have hardly any intention or will for imparting quality education. Sibal must do something urgently to correct it. The institutes can’t play with the future and career of the young men and women of the country. I don’t find anything wrong if private players in education sectors charge more as fee. However, there can’t be any compromise with the quality of education the private institutes provide. Sibal must force these institutes to get into accreditation from honest and capable agencies within a time frame. May be, the fee keeps some relation with the accreditation ratings.

The correct information about the institutions must be readily available for all the users-parents, students, and teachers on its website as well as through the printed literatures about the institute. And any confusing and misguiding information must invite heavy penalty including cancellation of affiliation of the institute.

Sibal must allow full autonomy to all the institutes of excellence and the ministry must not interfere. The aim must be to get into global ranking with regards to scale, original papers, researches and industry interactions.

Sibal must facilitate in building up the best possible infrastructures such as the teachers, libraries, laboratories, hostel facilities, conference halls, and sports complexes before scaling up the entry numbers.

The dismal shortage of good teachers must be tackled fast and effectively. Sibal must also encourage introducing compulsorily the system of teaching and research assistants in the institutes of higher education. The system will provide financial assistance to needy and qualified students, train and motivate the students to get into teaching and research profession, as it will make them appreciate the work.

The institutes must take initiative to keep its door open for the people with work experiences in the industry and administration who show interest in teaching and research work. Many a times there is bias among long time teachers against the men in the industry. The mindset needs to undergo change.

Another very important resource for the institutes is its alumni. The institute must try to explore wherever they can help including teaching and sharing of the experiences of interested ones with the students. Unfortunately, hardly some institutes are tapping these resources. In recent past, IIT alumni from developed countries have shown a lot of interest in education. I wish Sibal involves them and use them. As reported, “Some IIT alumni teaching in the US have come together to form a group called Indo-US Collaboration for Engineering Education (IUCEE) to facilitate training of faculty at the IITs.”

Sibal with his high respectability with corporate sector must encourage and involve industrial houses and established enterprises of futuristic missions and visions to have positive and dynamic interaction with the institutes of higher education with an objective to make education improving employability index and have focus on useful researches that can take the country ahead in competition with developed world.

The nation wishes Sibal succeeds in getting the education out of messes.

Sibal has too many reforms on his platter. He has started well and has already pushed the right of education bill through Rajya Sabha out. But will it substantially improve the number of students going to the schools or the quality of the education particularly of rural schools? Will it make the teachers in rural schools more responsible or accountable? Will the bill impose some responsibility to the failing parents or teachers? With 100 million children still out of schools, perhaps a door to door drive such as one for polio plus will be essential to realize 100% enrolments-the basic goal of Sarva Shikhsha Aviyan.

The most worrying aspects are the dropouts at different stages in rural schools. Nearly 30% don’t complete even five years at school, and a horrifying 50% of Indian children don’t go beyond eight years. And even in these years at school, they mostly absent the schools and hardly learn anything, mostly because of the lack of any innovation in teaching by the teachers to make the teaching or learning any more interesting and perhaps more so by the total lack of appreciation for education in the parents. The latest estimates from 2008 ASER report indicate that 44% of children in Class 5 cannot fluently read Class 2 level text nor do a division sum of three digits divided by one digit.

Unfortunately, no one talks about the parents’ accountability, may be because of political reasons for displeasing the reliable vote bank. And if a study is undertaken, it will reveal that the children who absent from school are not engaged in any other productive activity at home or elsewhere, as many activists and NGOs claim. Many a times the parents hardly know that.

Sibal will not be able to do much to push education at the primary level in rural India as it can be done only by the respective states. The standard of education in rural area has much to do with fixing of the responsibility of supervising the performance of teachers who play the major role as a majority of the rural schools are one teacher schools. Panchayats, its education supervisory committee with parents of students and responsible members of the community as envisaged in the right of education act must take interest in the education and related activities at the rural schools. I wish it would have included even the selection and appointment of the teachers. Sibal’s enthusiasm must permeate down to the state and panchayat level. Unfortunately, many panchayats are headed by persons with vested interest with hardly any concern and appreciation for the role of education. However, the work on educating the women promised by the first women President of the country may bring the miraculous change. It must start immediately and must proceed to keep the time frame. It will certainly improve the education significantly at the rural schools. I wish the education of the illiterate use the already proven TCS computer based learning. Another promise of taking broadband to every panchayat can make it very much possible, if the work is taken sincerely.

Many a times it appears that the children from the BPL families will have to be taken out to good residential schools away from the families to educate them in conducive surrounding. Only very few such institutions have come up. India Today in its issue of July 27 has reported about the wonderful work being done by some. Vidygyan, Bulandshahr promoted by Siv Nadar Foundation, the government of UP and the former cabinet secretary TSR Subramanian is one such institute. However, most of the institutes and individuals, be it Sikhya, Chandigarh, Prem Jyoti Prangan, Jamshedpur, or Thermax Social Initiative foundation, Pune are focusing on urban poor children.

Samarth Bharat Abhiyan of University of Pune is certainly a model with great potential where its 500 affiliated colleges have adopted 487 villages. Why can’t all the universities and institutes of excellence emulate that for equitable development?

Kanavu in Kerala and Friends of Tribal Society, West Bengal are doing admirable job for educating tribals. Sibal will have to discover a solution for upgrading the existing schools in the rural India for quality education. And rural India with 60% of the country’s population is still deprived of a good infrastructure for education. Nearly one-third of schools do not have a pucca building and classes function either in tents or under the open sky. How can one think of any education under this condition?

Instead of going for a new idea of model schools for each block, why can’t the idea be integrated in already existing educational facilities of Kendriya and Navodaya Vidyalayas, Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas? Why can’t these institutes be set up in every block or in every panchayat and its quality is upgraded to be in the line of the best ones? If 199 KVs can have a 100% result in the class X CBSE examination in 2008, why can’t all of 980 do that?

Who are the teachers in the rural schools? Has someone checked if their degrees or certificates are not fake ones? Have they attended a training course somewhere outside their own state? What were the feedbacks about their performances? Who takes actions on those feedbacks? Sibal can and must help in this area easily. He can come out with some innovative programme for training the rural teachers with a month’s practice in good private schools. It is necessary, as presently most of the teachers’ population constitutes of persons who scored very lowly in their examinations, and who couldn’t get any other job for living. As some opine, the teaching has become the domain of the ‘bored’ or ‘failed’ individuals.

Will Sibal discuss these issues with the chief ministers and education ministers of the states and make them agree to take some positive steps for the rural education?