Aheli Moitra
Educational qualification of leaders has been a question as old as your favourite shoe. In Nagaland itself, TR Zeliang and Neiphiu Rio have gotten into muddy waters over their qualifications. There is no reason to be too harsh to them given that the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, had his qualifications questioned to which the Vice Chancellor of Gujarat University said that the PM has a Master’s degree from the university in “entire political science.” Why, even India’s former Human Resources Development minister, Smriti Irani, had her degrees confused at some point.
One doesn’t need educational qualifications to master the political game—some of the best politicians have no degrees. However, most of us, citizens, need them to get by life. This obviously necessitates institutions of learning, from primary all the way up to higher education. One of the central roles of the government is to provide decent institutions of learning that facilitate the building of a decent citizen and a better human being.
India has plenty of them. Earlier in July, the Government of India granted the “institution of eminence” status to three public and three private institutes in India. Government institutes with the “eminence” tag will get funding of Rs 1,000 crore over the next five years, Union Human Resource Development Minister Prakash Javadekar said, according to the Press Information Bureau of the Government of India. Private ones will get academic and administrative autonomy.
The Indian Institutes of Technology of Delhi and Mumbai and Bengaluru’s Indian Institute of Science were the public sector institutes to get the status. The three private institutes that were given the tag were Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, and the yet-to-be-set-up Jio Institute by Reliance Foundation.
How a yet-to-be-set-up institute has become an ‘institute of eminence’ only the Government of India knows. But this is an opportune moment to remind the Government of India as well as the Government of Nagaland the condition of education in Nagaland State. Though the State has a government college each in almost all districts, the lack of government schools for professional learning, like medical, engineering or mass communication sticks out like a sore thumb. Teachers in higher education often worry about the quality of education being imparted in primary levels of government schooling making higher education difficult to part.
In India, the private sector has made a major entry into higher education. The TATAs, Birlas, Jindals have all tapped into higher education. According to the 12th five-year plan document of the erstwhile Planning Commission, while government-owned institutions for higher education increased from 11,239 in 2006-07 to 16,768 in 2011-12 (49%), private sector institutions recorded a 63% growth in the same period from 29,384 in 2006-07 to 46,430 in 2011-12. Yet, almost 44.81 million – 16.6% male and 9.5% female – Indian undergraduate students aged between 18 and 24 are too poor to pursue higher education, according to data from the National Sample Survey, 2014.
This is the national estimate; Nagaland will have a bigger percentage of those who cannot afford higher education. It should be the prime responsibility of the government to provide avenues of education affordable to all for building Nagaland not just for politicians but all its inhabitants. The Government of India had rather invest in this than imaginary institutes.
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