Former Prime Minister of India - Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Inaugural Speech of Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee at the Golden Jubilee Celebrations of the UNIVERSITY GRANTS COMMISSION

Dr. Murli Manohar Joshi, Prof. Rita Verma, Prof. Nigavekar, Members of the UGC, Vice Chancellors, Eminent personalities who are present here today, Ladies and Gentlemen,

I wish all of you a very Happy New Year.

At the outset, my heartiest felicitations to the University Grants Commission on entering the 50th year of its distinguished service to the nation. I join all of you in expressing our grateful appreciation of all those stalwarts of the past and the present whose vision and dedication has resulted in the phenomenal expansion of college and university education in our country.

This is my last official engagement of the year. But I must admit that it is one of the most important engagements of the year. This is because, I am convinced that education – especially higher education – is that endeavour which will catapult India into a higher orbit of development. It is that undertaking which will, in innumerable tangible and intangible ways, benefit all our other undertakings in diverse fields of development.

The linkage between education and development is direct and simple. Higher education enhances human capital, which in turn makes higher growth possible; and universal education universalises the fruits of development.

The importance of education and higher education transcends the material benefits it beings to individual and society. All too often, we tend to focus mostly on the economic benefits of education. That, of course is an important dimension, which must receive our paramount attention. However, the non-material benefit of learning to the learner himself, and to society as a whole, must not be lost sight of.

Education, in the truest self of the term, is a process of self-discovery. It is the art of self-sculpture. It trains the individual not so much in specific skills or in specific branch of knowledge, but in the flowering of his or her latent intellectual, artistic and humanist capacities. The test of education is whether it imparts an urge for learning and learnability, not this or that particular set of information.

Life makes difficult demands of us all the time – in our professional as well as in our personal lives. Does our education system equip our people to face new situations and fulfill difficult responsibilities? Does it enable the student to develop a well-rounded personality? Does it make them strong in character, service-oriented, caring, compassionate and tolerant, free of prejudice and sectarianism of all kinds? Does it make our students aware and proud of India’s priceless intellectual, cultural, and spiritual heritage and, at the same time, appreciative of the best in the world’s heritage?

I need hardly emphasise that young people have a keen searching and questing mind, hungry for answers to the myriad questions of life. By nature, they are energetic, idealistic, adventurous and open to positive influences. It should be the endeavour of our education system to develop and actualize this natural potential.

Vinoba Bhave once pithily said, “Education is the sum total of Yoga, Udyog and Sahayog.” To attain this ideal is the true task before our teachers, parents, policy-makers and administrators in education, and, if I may add, before our mass media too. For, unlike in the past, the mass media have emerged as one of the most potent carriers of ideas and influences in our time. The more we succeed in this task of channeling the energy of the youth towards positive ends, the surer will be our success in so many other tasks.

Friends, the start of the Golden Jubilee celebrations of UGC provides an ideal occasion to focus our attention on the many challenges before higher education in our country. I would like to share my views on a few main challenges.

I Access to Higher Education: Yes, as I said, there has been a phenomenal expansion of college and university education in our country. I remember how difficult it was in my student days to gain access to college education; and how rarer still was the entry into universities. We have come a long way since Independence in democratizing college and university education, which has moved closer to rural populations and also to the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and other marginalized sections of our society.

Nevertheless, it should be our endeavour to further expand access to higher education, especially to professional education, to levels comparable to those in developed countries. The Tenth Plan document has placed a strong emphasis on this as an essential requirement for raising our annual GDP growth rate to 8%. Enriching the knowledge base and enlarging the skill-sets of a far larger percentage of our working population is critical for achieving our objective of higher growth through higher productivity.

II Access to Quality Education: Access cannot be measured merely in numerical terms. Access to quality education is as important as access to education. I share the concern of many educational and developmental experts that the quality of college and university education in India has not kept pace with its quantitative growth. This is all too evident at the beginning of each academic year, when students and their parents have an agonizing time trying to get admission in good colleges, whose number is too small to cater to the growing demand.

I am glad to know that the UGC has drawn up several plans to address this issue. The setting up of the UGC Info Net, to provide quality courseware to all the networked universities and colleges, is highly commendable. Performance-based funding of universities, linked to monitorable attainment of specific academic indicators, is also a good idea.

Similarly, I welcome UGC’s decision to create a fast-track mode of developing colleges and university departments with a proven track record as Centres of Excellence. To use a current business terminology, we should improve the brand image of our universities. If our IITs and IIMs today have a global brand value, why shouldn’t we groom many universities and colleges across the country to acquire similar national and international acclaim? However, to do this, we need to carefully understand the reasons for the success of the IITs and IIMs and ensure that the lessons are followed.

The Ministry of Human Resource Development has taken the right decision to upgrade Regional Engineering Colleges into fully Centrally funded National Institutes of Technology. Another step in this direction could be to create a partnership between our universities, national laboratories and industry – a Golden Triangle for enhancing India’s R&D capabilities. In this context, I am happy to announce the establishment of three Advanced Centres for Science Education and Research with direct tie-up with research laboratories and industry.

III Export of Higher Education: What I said just now is closely linked to the other challenge – and opportunity – before us. It is the export potential of Higher Education in India. I recently read in newspapers that India has overtaken China as the country that sends the largest number of students – 68,000 last year – to study in universities in the United States. This means that there is an enormous outgo of foreign exchange from our country on account of so many students going abroad for higher studies.

I am not suggesting that they should not go. Indian students who study abroad contribute to our nation-building in many ways. But the issue that I would like to pose is: Why shouldn’t we make India an attractive destination for similarly large number of foreign students – from both developing and developed countries – seeking quality school, higher and professional education? This will bring numerous benefits to our country. Above all, a systematic endeavour in this direction will lift the standards of higher education across the board and benefit Indian students. The Government is prepared to introduce necessary changes in its rules and regulations to achieve this purpose.

IV Relevant, Employment-oriented Higher Education: Friends, I have heard many people tell me that our college and university education has not shown sufficient flexibility and adaptability to respond to the needs and opportunities in the external environment. Take, for example, the fact that the share of services in India’s GDP is consistently growing and today accounts for about 50%. In the coming two decades, almost 60-70 % of the jobs would be in the services sector. I do not think that our system of higher education is adequately geared to meet this need.

Similarly, it should also gear itself up to seize the rapidly expanding opportunities in the global employment market. Experts have pointed out that in twenty years from now, when many of the advanced nations would have a fairly large percentage of senior citizens in their populations, nearly 45% of Indians would be in plus twenties. This demographic change can be turned to our advantage if we improve and re-orient higher education in our country to harness the opportunities provided by the globalisation of the employment market.

I, therefore, urge the UGC to be futuristic and global in its outlook and planning. The Chairman has already initiated a welcome debate on the need to encourage and enable our universities to make their three-year basic degree structure more flexible so as to allow students to both get a sound grounding in the basics and pursue employment-oriented certificate or diploma programmes in various skillsets.

V Reforms in Education: The last point I wish to drive home is the urgent imperative of educational reforms. It encompasses many tasks, and some of my earlier observations also pertain to this point. I would, however, like to point out three additional tasks.

One is the fee structure in higher education, which is very low in non-professional streams. It baffles me that the Central and State Governments subsidise higher education even for those students whose spending on private tuition and pocket money is several times more than their college fees. Yes, higher and professional education must remain accessible and affordable to the poor and the needy primarily through “merit-cum-means” scholarships. The scope of educational loans also needs to be vastly expanded. But if we cannot make the rich pay fair value for education, how can we make it widely available to the poor?

Improvement in the governance of educational institutions is the second area where reform is urgently needed. Generally, our Vice Chancellors, Senate members, College Principals, and other senior functionaries have to spend a lot of their precious time and energy on routine and inessential matters – and not on tasks that deliver better academic performance. This is partly due to importation of the bureaucratic rules and anti-excellence culture of Government departments. This must change. We must learn from Best Practices Abroad in management of higher education.

I wish to draw your attention to yet another governance issue. Quality education is not merely a product of greater resources and better facilities. It depends equally on the attitude of teachers and students. In this context, I cannot but express my anguish over the atmosphere of indiscipline and non-seriousness that pervades many college and university campuses. If teachers do not show a sense of purpose and commitment, if they do not set – and demand -- high standards for the pursuit of academic excellence, how can they expect students to behave differently? All of you will agree that this calls for serious introspection on the part of all the stakeholders in education.

The third reform imperative is to expand the scope of Public-Private Partnership. Although the Government has considerably increased spending on higher education, it is obvious that the need far outstrips the provision. Hence, we need to adopt innovative and flexible methods of leveraging the financial, managerial and teaching resources in the private sector. For example, is it not possible to lease the physical infrastructure of government-run or government-funded colleges to private educational institutions to run a second shift for imparting training in specialized skills and services? Similarly, to offset the big gap in competent and qualified teachers, can we not enable managers and professionals outside the formal academic system to work as part-time teachers?

Friends, if the UGC forges ahead with a reform-driven, futuristic vision, I have no doubt that its contribution to nation-building over the next fifty years will be even more glorious than in the past fifty years. I assure you that the Government will fully back you in this endeavour.

One last suggestion. If the UGC’s future path is going to be radically different from the one that have traversed so far, why not give yourself a new name that better conveys your mandate and your mission – University Education Development Commission, rather than University Grants Commission? This could be considered when you take a re-look at the UGC Act, changes in which are long overdue.

Thank you.