An HRD minister as a WMD

The IIMs are in the headlines again, the target of Dr Murli Manohar Joshi''s whims and fancies. Earlier, institutions like the Indian Council of Social Science Research and the Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR) were on his radar.
Then, he took on the IITs, objecting to the manner in which they were receiving donations from their wealthy alumni.In between, the learned minister for HRD had managed to scuttle a plan by wealthy US-based IT professionals to support a new IIT-like network of institutions in science and technology.
Joshi has been a vociferous opponent of private universities for which legislation was first introduced in Parliament in 1995. He has also stirred up controversies on rewriting of history textbooks by a pliant NCERT. Central universities are up in arms, saying that their powers to conduct entrance exams for professional courses are being eliminated.
Inexplicably, the Prime Minister has allowed the minister full freedom to run amuck. For a politician, Dr Joshi is intellectually very qualified being a doctorate in physics and having taught at Allahabad University for years. In private conversation, he is erudite. But the manner in which he has functioned in the past four-and-a-half years has been detrimental to the autonomy and professional functioning of academic institutions that enjoy great global prestige.
It is natural that he would want to pack institutions with colleagues belonging to his ideological brotherhood. The problem arises when these cronies have dubious professional credentials. He has bred sycophancy in academic bodies — the head of an institution that prepares textbooks for schools made an extraordinary claim in a signed newspaper article recently that before Joshi''s arrival on the scene, education was a class privilege!
Joshi''s stated goal is laudable. Institutions of excellence created and nurtured over the past five decades (something even Vajpayee''s formidable spin doctors cannot deny) must surely also take on social obligations. That is why, for example, the IITs have reservations for SCs and STs. Whether these reservations are fulfilling their objectives is a separate issue.
But to cut fees drastically against the backdrop of the huge subsidy that higher education already enjoys at the expense of primary education in this country is wrong. The state has a responsibility to ensure that no poor student — irrespective of caste or religion — is denied higher education in science and technology or management or the social sciences on grounds of cost.
True, instances when meritorious students have not been able to go through professional institutions because they cannot afford to do so are very rare. Even so, liberal scholarships linked to the ability to pay and loan schemes managed by banks can surely be instituted. A HDFC-type Educational Development and Finance Company can also be set up to manage loan sanctions and disbursements to the needy but demonstrably meritorious students. Mass access and excellence need not be in conflict, as Joshi is making it out to be.
Today, it is in the matter of fees. Tomorrow, it could be in the matter of admissions. This is how meritocracy will be subverted all in the name of social good. This is how politicians and bureaucrats destroyed the public sector and this is how the destruction of higher education enclaves will begin. That some islands of meritocracy have survived in India is a miracle.
The social complexion of these islands is changing gradually — the fact that Kota is a source of so many IIT entrants is just one reflection of this transformation. This transformation needs to accelerate. Cutting fees is no answer since it is not the problem. The answer really lies in upgrading the quality of primary and secondary education.