[Marxistindia] Opinion of CPI(M) on the proposed HECI Draft Bill

[news from the cpi(m)]

26 July 2018

Press Release

 

We are herewith releasing the text of the note containing the opinion of the
CPI(M) on the proposed Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) Draft
Bill. This note was sent to the Prime Minister this morning, with a copy
marked to the HRD Minister. 

 

The NDA-II Government has repeatedly targeted Public-funded Higher Education
and Research in the last four years. Its hostility against the culture of
democratic debates and rational social enquiry in premier universities, by
demonising and mobilising negative public opinion against sections of
students and faculty, its authoritarian challenge to academic and
intellectual autonomy, and its aggressive promotion of mythological beliefs
and supremacist bias against scientific and historical facts constitute one
dimension of this attack. The other, more systematic, way in which it has
tried to bring Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) down on their knees is
by continuously slashing budgetary allocations to the UGC, asking
public-funded HEIs to generate a part of their costs through internal
resources and loans, drastically reducing seats and fellowships for M.Phil.
and Ph.D. research programmes and promoting short-term contractual
employment of faculty and administrative staff instead of permanent
recruitment. 

 

Higher Educational Reform under the NDA-II Government is guided by twin
concerns that threaten to destroy the foundations of Higher Education in
independent India and impede the salutary role it has played, over decades,
in empowering the common people with learning, jobs and social confidence.
These twin concerns are (i) Privatisation, and (ii) Social Exclusion. The
twin agendas of Privatisation and Social Exclusion are strongly reflected in
the Draft Bill on the HECI (Repeal of UGC Act, 1956) Act, 2018 that the MHRD
proposes to introduce in the Monsoon Session of the Parliament.

The CPI(M) will approach all secular, democratic parties, educationists,
intellectuals, teaching fraternity, students and all other concerned
individuals and organisations to build a broad resistance against this. 

 

 

(For CPI(M) Central Committee office)

_____________________________________________________________

Text of the letter of CPI(M) General Secretary to the Prime Minister

Dear Pradhan Mantriji,

 

I am constrained to draw your attention to the draft legislation prepared by
the Ministry of Human Resource Development for establishing the Higher
Education Commission of India replacing the existing University Grants
Commission which had been earlier established by the Parliament of India. 

 

After carefully going through the provisions of the proposed Bill we, from
the Communist Party of India (Marxist) are compelled to come to the
conclusion that if the Bill is enacted in the present form and with the
approach that its provisions suggest, it will have a major adverse impact on
higher education in the country in general and public funded higher
education in particular.

 

As it is often said, it does not require an external enemy to destroy a
country; destruction of its education system is more than adequate to ensure
that outcome. I am afraid that the present draft Bill needs to be withdrawn
to avert that eventuality.

 

In order to substantiate my argument, I am attaching herewith our
comprehensive understanding about the proposed legislation.

 

***

 

 

 

Text of the Note

 

25 July 2018

CPI(M)'s considered opinion on the Draft Bill to establish the Higher
Education Commission of India (HECI)

 

HECI Bill Undermines Public Trust and Educational Needs of the People

1.     Introduction

 

1.1.            The Draft Bill for the HECI Act proposes an 'improvement' in
the regulatory mechanism for Higher Education without reflecting on the
shortcomings of the UGC or the reasons thereof. Instead of creating an
objective case for such a drastic legislation that dismantles the UGC and
replaces it with a markedly different structure and scope of regulation, it
vaguely refers to "changed priorities". Its dishonest emphasis on 'Quality'
of Higher Education is at the cost of the other two indispensable and
inseparable foundations, 'Equity' and 'Social and Economic Access'. While
the concern over Quality is repeated throughout the contents of the Bill,
Equity and Access do not even find a passing mention. There is not even
token representation of representatives from disadvantaged sections like
women, dalits, adivasis, backward castes, minorities or persons with
disabilities in the composition of the Commission, while the Industry and
Commercial sector has been singled out as a stakeholder and included in the
composition. In fact, the Draft Bill for the HECI Act signals a step
backwards in the history of Higher Education Policy and Regulation; it is
designed to arrest the progressive social transformation that marginalised
social groups and classes in India have, since Independence, historically
achieved through access to Higher Education. Through the Draft Bill, the
Central Government aims at restoring the exclusive educational privileges of
traditionally powerful groups in society and offering a "level-playing
field" (as per WTO-GATS diktats) to public and private institutions. It also
creates an authoritarian framework of regulation through
over-bureaucratisation and centralisation and undermines the federal
character of decision-making by completely ignoring the need for Concurrence
of the Centre and States in all policy matters pertaining to Higher
Education. Finally, by delinking Funding from the core functions of
Regulation and Maintenance of Standards, it encourages direct political
interference of the ruling coalition and institutional conformism to the
ruling political ideology.  

 

 

2.     Bureaucratic Standardisation and Authoritarian Micromanagement

 

2.1.            Uniform Standards - The Draft Bill proposes the setting up
of an overly bureaucratic body that will provide a level playing-field to
public and private HEIs by creating a set of uniform parameters of
assessment and accreditation, determining learning outcomes and standard
areas of research and measuring the effectiveness of courses and programmes
through a direct correlation with employability. This measure is the direct
outcome of the Government's commitment of Higher Education to the WTO-GATS
regime. This rabidly commercial approach destroys all scope to allow an
independent vision of Higher Education to evolve in tandem with the growing
educational aspirations of the masses. It ignores the fact the public-funded
HEIs are engaged in a qualitatively different range of functions that focus
on larger social inclusion and cater to diverse needs. It is silent on the
quality infrastructural and faculty inputs required by public-funded HEIs to
offer quality Higher Education in wide-ranging academic and vocational
disciplines at a reasonable and affordable cost. Instead, it imposes
financial autonomy on HEIs through the insistence on the widely criticised
Graded Autonomy, generation of funds through internal receipts like
student-fees and corporate consultancy fees, and also promotes commercial
initiatives like self-financed courses and MOOCs (Massive Online Courses
that can enrol large numbers of students without having to provide them with
much physical learning infrastructure).

 

2.2.            Regulatory Overreach - The Draft Bill takes over many
regulatory functions of the Commission by laying down the criteria and
process of application of authorisation and the conditions that would merit
the revocation of authorisation. By doing so, it precludes all debate and
discussion from which such regulations are expected to emerge. This
overreach is a clear illustration of the Central Government's intention to
disempower the regulatory authority and create a narrow regulatory framework
within which it will be forced to function mechanically.

 

2.3.            Closure of Institutions - The Draft Bill, however, allows
the Commission to order Closure of Institutions that repeatedly fail to
adhere to/comply with its regulations. Such regulations under the present
dispensation are bound to suffer from subjective criteria.  This arrogant
and fallacious proposal disregards the fact that public-funded HEIs have
been established through independent Central and State-level legislations
and that the prerogative for closure must hence lie with the parliament and
state assemblies that have established the HEIs, in the first place. Closure
of public-funded HEIs is a complex process that involves several decisions
like determining the future land-use, compensation or rehabilitation of
employees, disposal of infrastructure and assets that have grown overtime
through substantial public-spending etc. A nodal regulatory body for Higher
education cannot take such decisions involving public-interest. It is hence
absurd to allow it to order Closure.

 

 

2.4.            Academic Overreach - The Commission has been side-tracked
from the genuine functions of monitoring and maintenance of standards by
making it a body responsible for determining curricular structures, learning
outcomes and measure the effectiveness of courses/programmes. These are the
integral academic functions of the statutory academic bodies of the HEIs,
the prerogative of university-level committees on curriculum development and
faculty departments. By denying HEIs these rights, the Draft Bill creates a
draconian model of academic micromanagement that disregards the academic
autonomy of HEIs. Ironically, the Draft Bill explicitly mentions
employability as a measure of effectiveness of courses and programmes. While
employability of graduates is a genuine concern, it cannot be directly
correlated with the academic content of every discipline. Students should be
given the freedom to combine vocational subjects with academic disciplines
but the reduction of academic disciplines to employability can only result
in extreme commercialisation of courses and a gross undervaluation of higher
education as a critical-intellectual pursuit.  The objective of higher
education must be the elevation of intellectual levels even higher. Instead,
the primary emphasis here seems to be to produce, solely, cogs for the
production wheel of the economy. 

 

3.     Withdrawal of Funding

 

3.1.            Delinking of Grants from Regulation - By separating
grant-funding from regulation, the Draft Bill on HECI Act has broken the
spine of the regulatory body. Funding is not charity or largesse - it
involves the crucial process of determining infrastructural needs,
sanctioning faculty positions and staffing, monitoring utilisation of
resources and effective implementation of schemes. For public-funded HEIs,
standards of funding based on student-teacher ratio, research, remedial
teaching, library resources and laboratory equipment have historically
provided the key basis for growth and quality assurance. The Draft Bill
gives independent funding powers to the Government, thereby increasing the
scope for arbitrary funding decisions and direct political interference.

 

3.2.            No Monitoring of Quality Inputs - It is in this context of
neglecting the input requirements, that the MHRD's fallacious euphoria over
freedom from "Inspection Raj" needs to be seen. The glib reference to
Inspection Raj conceals the fact that regulation and monitoring will be
confined to an excessive emphasis on periodic institutional documentation
and mechanical adherence to assessment parameters. It will not involve
physical inspection of institutions and interaction with teachers, students
and staff. This will lead to a further abstraction of the notion of quality,
the ignorance of grievances and the elimination of objective feedback. The
long-term aim is to maintain a mechanical record of performance while
completely setting infrastructural concerns aside and going soft on
'fly-by-night' private operators who run universities with the lowest
inputs.

 

3.3.            Preparing for Loan-Funding - This retrogressive move has to
be also seen in the context of the attempted withdrawal of public-funding
and the shift to loan-based funding through HEFA. HEFA organises funding
through capital markets and envisages a loan-based system in which public
assets of public-funded HEIs will necessarily be mortgaged as 'collaterals'
equivalent to the value of the loan applied for. In other words, this is a
direct infringement of the financial sector and, in the long run, a devious
way to hand public assets over to private hands. 

 

3.4.            Such an overhaul in the funding mechanism will choke public
HEIs of required funds while applying the same standards of quality and
resource mobilisation that only big private corporate-run institutions can
meet, force them to mortgage their assets for loans needed to meet running
and expansion costs and eventually create conducive conditions for their
closure. This move of withdrawing assured grants and delinking funding from
regulation is the most brazen anti-people measure adopted to ensure that
public HEIs rapidly pushed into a state of 'sickness', declared unviable and
finally sold off to big businesses. It is nothing but a staged script in
auctioning off public-owned assets and educational infrastructure.

 

4.     Dishonest Silence on Reservation Policy

 

4.1.            Constitutionally-mandated Reservation for Scheduled castes
and tribes, the economically-deprived sections of backward castes, persons
with disabilities, and in many cases, minorities and women, has been able to
secure a modicum of Access for these marginalised sections in Higher
Education. As such, it is of critical importance that a nodal regulatory
body for Higher Education should be specially tasked with ensuring that the
Government's Reservation Policy is implemented across HEIs with full
transparency and accountability. The Draft Bill on the proposed HECI Act
completely ignores the context and significance of this need. By repeatedly
emphasising on managerial and financial autonomy of HEIs, and remaining
silent on their Reservation obligations, the Draft Bill allows a grey zone
of uncertainty to prevail over this crucial public responsibility.  We are
already confronted with many instances wherein HEIs have been allowed to
subvert or completely circumvent their obligation to correctly implement the
Reservation Policy. As a result, most HEIs have recorded large backlogs and
shortfalls in appointments to reserved posts (both teaching and
non-teaching). The Government is clearly not keen to acknowledge this aspect
as a failing of the regulatory functions in Higher Education, nor does the
Draft Bill offer any remedy.

 

5.     Bureaucratic Composition to undermine Academic Decision-making and
Federalism

 

5.1.            Reduction in academic perspective - The Composition of the
HECI Commission is heavily tilted towards purely bureaucratic and
administrative profiles. It swamps the Commission with Secretary-level
bureaucrats of the Central Government ministries and departments, directors
of other regulatory bodies and accreditation agencies under the Central
Government and Vice-Chancellors of Institutes of National Importance. These
direct beneficiaries of the Central Government cannot be expected to voice
or endorse alternative views that may be critical of the Central
Government's policy or the ruling coalition's political/ideological agenda.
Through such a Composition, the MHRD only intends to create an echo-chamber
of ideas voiced by 'yes-men'. Compared to the UGC Act, 1956, the number of
active teachers in the Composition has been reduced from a minimum of four
to a maximum of two. This skewed composition will only encourage an
administrative perspective on the various issues and challenges that the
regulations will seek to address. But the real ground-level challenges of
teaching-learning and institutional problems may get ignored or set aside,
as has increasingly become the experience of academic communities across
HEIs in the country. 

 

5.2.            No representation from undergraduate colleges and state
universities - The reduction in the number of active teachers and the
necessary condition that they must be "Professors of universities, reputed
for research and knowledge creation" effectively rules out teachers from
undergraduate colleges and state universities. In the context of the need to
maintain coherence across 44,000 undergraduate colleges and approximately
850 universities, as well as addressing their grievances, this Composition
is severely limited. This not only allows a narrowing of perspective in
decision-making, but it also undermines the Federal and Concurrent character
of Higher Education by eliminating the possibility of state-level
representation in the Commission.  

 

 

5.3.            While a "doyen of Industry" has been singled out for
representation in the Commission, no provision for representation from the
Constitutionally-approved bodies of disadvantaged sections like women,
scheduled castes and tribes, OBCs, minorities and disabled persons has been
given. It is clear that the new regulatory framework is designed to
accommodate Corporate interests but unwilling to ensure the effectiveness of
affirmative policies for social justice and inclusion. The selective
emphasis on Quality, at the expense of Equity and Access also gets reflected
in this selective representation from Industry and Commerce. 

 

5.4.            While the UGC Act 1956 clearly mandated that the Chairman of
the Commission "shall be chosen from among persons who are not officers of
the Government or any State Government" - precisely with a purpose to
maintaining the autonomy of the Commission from any form of direct
interference by governments - Section 3.6 of the Draft HECI Bill drops this
necessary condition for the Chairperson's appointment. The Chairperson of
the proposed Higher Education Commission can now be selected from among
functionaries of the Central or State governments, provided he/she satisfies
either of two conditions listed under Section 3.6 - none of which comes into
conflict with his/her holding an office of the government at the time of
appointment.

 

5.5.            The provision for an "Overseas Citizen of India" in the
eligibility criteria for the post of Chairperson to the Commission is
unacceptable. An overseas citizen may be an accomplished
scholar/administrator but cannot be expected to be acquainted with the
ground-level realities and challenges that prevail in Higher education and
HEIs across the nation. The real reason for this arbitrary provision seems
to be the Central Government's heavy reliance on sections of the overseas
community acting as a bridge between the financial and commercial interests
of local businesses and those of the international business community. This
also points further towards the agenda of Commercialisation and the
promotion of private capital investment in Higher Education.

 

6.     MHRD given Supreme Authority through 'Advisory Council'

 

6.1.            The HRD Minister will chair an Advisory Council whose
'advice' will be compulsorily implemented, as per Clause 24 of the Draft
Bill. This gives the MHRD supreme powers that further erode any scope for
autonomous functioning/decision-making within the Commission. Such a brazen
abuse of public-trust is unprecedented.

 

7.     Undermining Parliamentary and State-level Legislation

 

7.1.            Clause 26 of the Draft Bill is unconstitutional as it
brazenly violates the Federal and Concurrent character of Higher Education
in India. It gives an overriding effect to the HECI Act against the statutes
and ordinances of all Central and State legislations through which various
HEIs have been established. As a result, it overturns the public-trust
invested in each Act or Law through which State and Central universities
have been created for diverse and distinct purposes, bringing all of them
under one overriding parliamentary legislation. This level of centralisation
is not only draconian, but also dismissive of the multiplicity of
educational needs among diverse sections of the Indian peoples. 

 

8.     Conclusion

 

8.1.            Apart from developing employable skills and contributing to
knowledge-production, Higher Education has also been entrusted with the
responsibility of nurturing the essential Constitutional values of
democracy, secularism and rational free-thinking and enabling a
socially-diverse and interactive profile of students that will promote the
growth of an enlightened and culturally tolerant citizenry immune to
prejudices and having the strength to overcome divisive ideologies that
threaten the unitary fabric of the nation. That is why Higher Education has
always needed to be kept free from political interference and bureaucratic
diktat. Recent decades have seen the unprecedented growth of Higher
Education in India, parallel only by the growth in common people's
aspirations and demand for access to Higher Education. As a result of the
exponential increase in the Gross Enrolment Ratio (GER), hitherto
marginalised sections like women, backward castes and tribes, minorities and
persons with disabilities have gained access to Higher Education through the
public-funded system. Private initiatives can, at best, supplement, but not
address the gap in demand and supply of quality Higher Education that
currently afflicts and threatens popular aspirations. The huge expansion of
affordable quality institutions required in diverse regions and states of
India can only be undertaken through increased public-spending and clarity
about the importance of public initiatives in Higher Education. Clearly,
Privatisation and Commercialisation cannot be solutions to this crisis. On
the part of the Central Government, it requires a commitment to the overall
strengthening of public-funded institutions and the material empowerment of
States. 

 

8.2.            Unfortunately, the Draft Bill for the HECI Act does not
point this way forward. Instead, it is an instrument to appease Corporate
interests and attract private-sector investment in Higher Education, by
neglecting the challenges that confront public-funded HEIs and by being
dismissive of the larger public as a stakeholder in the fortunes of Higher
Education. It gets its priorities wrong: it is obsessed with mechanical
standards of assessment and global rankings. Public-funded institutions
require separate performance parameters and global rankings are not
sensitive to this need. They are based on trends perceived in elite western
universities that are financed through private endowments and student-loans.
The Government has not heeded the lessons of the American Debt Crisis in
which unpaid student-loans constituted the major component of Debt. It is
yet to acknowledge the role that exclusive access to Higher Education has
played, in the deepening of social fissures and faultlines in western
societies. It is willing to undermine its own affirmative policies (like the
Reservation Policy) and social-justice initiatives by encouraging
educational administrators to adopt Corporate models of governance and
resource-mobilisation for the narrowly-efficient running of institutions.  

 

8.3.            In public interest, there is a case for amending the
provisions of the UGC Act, 1956 and strengthening the UGC in a manner that
allows it to effectively and autonomously address the challenges of
increased access to, and growth of, public-funded HEIs while ensuring
minimum standards and public accountability of the privately-funded HEIs.
For that, widespread consultation with students, teachers and the public at
large, is required. However, there is no case for dismantling the UGC and
fragmenting the functions of regulatory bodies. There is also no case for
undermining the important roles played by the state-level authorities that
have Concurrent responsibilities of monitoring and maintain the standards of
Higher Education in the states. Hence, people's representatives and
political parties that are committed to upholding public interest and the
Federal character of Higher Education need to ensure that these concerns are
seriously considered by the HRD and Central Government and this  current
draft Bill  is withdrawn at the earliest.   

 

***

 

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