Social  Alienation  Redefined

Gone are the days when parents found their children engaged in ‘adda’ with their peers for long hours and felt anxious  that studies were hampered. The elders of various age groups also used to assemble at a ‘theck’ or ‘rock’ chatting and gossiping for hours. The discussions covered anything on the earth, often far off from the respective domains in daily chores. It can not be denied that these interactions created connectedness, understanding, harmony  and  social bonding among persons having huge diversities.

These  face to face ‘adda’ and ‘theck’ are now replaced by walls and posts  as well as chats on social networking sites like Face book  and  Twitter at the click of a mouse. That in this web-platform  the ‘friends’ never get a scope to meet and groom the friendship over a period of time and to know one another is of no concern to the clients. The ‘Confirm Friendship’ click is enough to complete the process.

The social and cultural implications of  networking sites like Face book and Twitter  are becoming a matter of concern in as much as the clients of the network or ‘Friends’ can interact only virtually,  completely cutoff  from the interconnectedness in the real world. Quite often, these friends know each other but they prefer to get connected not in the face-to face ( F2F ) mode but in the virtual mode.  These so-called  ‘friends’   have no interest  to meet and talk.  The number of ‘friends’ keep multiplying at any rate one may wish.

How one can become a friend without knowing each other at personal levels , exchanging experiences and developing a sense of love, compassion and mutual respect is  hardly a matter of debate to these ‘friends’.   But despite  these  demanding ideas and time-tested traditions  which can not be written off , the huge popularity of social networking sites is a fact of life.

These recent developments appear to be a pitfall of ICT-driven globalization.   People, particularly, the most potential segment of the population or the younger generation, are becoming  more individualist, consumerist, non-political, ignorant of  social dynamics and, therefore, alienated from the larger society in which they have to live and thrive. The sense of fellow-feeling , harmony and bonding, be it  within family, locality or the larger society is declining at a fast pace because the people just do not care to think beyond the self. The family bonding which is a distinctiveness and  a significant hallmark of  Indian culture  is disappearing. The grooming of our children in educational institutions are often responsible for the end result. In the name of ICT- based educational pedagogy, the children are taught to turn towards the virtual world of web    and be more comfortable  there far away from hassles of the real world. The society is becoming fragile being crowded with  individualist and selfish elements. Ultimately, the alienation ,  a product  of the new life styles of the so-called Gen Next, is causing psychological disorders  to them because   no one can live without interdependence and social harmony.

The poor ASWATHAMA of the Mahavarata epic was cursed by  LORD KRISHNA telling that ASWATHAMA will become immortal but will never be able to enter into a human society and   will have to live alone in desolate  terrains. The life of ASWATHAMA was miserable. In the 21^st century , the  countries are becoming more and more populated, yet the curse is that more and more people are becoming introverts, distanced from the neighborhood and  living alone.  A mindset of social alienation affects the younger generation the most even though they live in densely populated localities due to inability and indifference to   draw a line between the real and virtual world and resolve the contradictions.

রামগরুড়ের ছানা হাসতে তাদের মানা  /  হাসির কথা শুনলে বলে  / "হাসবো না না না"

Challenges before Indian Higher Education in the era of Globalization.

Globalization essentially means  intensive inter-connectedness among the learners and providers of education, particularly in the domain of higher education including technical and management education in the world as a whole. As a consequence, comparative skills and excellence in the learners  are necessary to interact with the peers and to find a place in the world of jobs. As the interfacing  with  the  Institutions across countries increases, the management of Indian Institutions are required to adjust their policies and governance mechanisms so that the competitive standards are not diluted.

With new regulatory arrangements and focussed action in key areas, as described below, we hope to build a robust higher education system that would sustain rapid economic growth, promote international competitiveness, while at the same time meet the rising

expectations of the young enterprising Indians.

 In India, the challenges in the frontier of higher education are many but speaking broadly, these are two-fold, namely, Access and Quality.

Access

Access needs to be increased significantly because  the GER is quite low. It is about 13% at the end of XI Plan much below the global average of 24%. A holistic and balanced expansion approach is needed to target under-represented sections of society who have traditionally have very low GER. Thrust should be on consolidating and improving the capacity  of the existing institutions. New institutions may be set up to bridge regional imbalances and disparities across disciplines and to address special economic, social and technological needs of the country. Further, traditional education should be supplemented with skill-based studies and institutional differentiation should be encouraged so that institutions grow along their own growth trajectories without being clones of each other. Open and distance education methods could be deployed to augment capacity optimally. In addition, the concept of Meta University aimed at collaborative and multi-disciplinary learning that redefines knowledge-creation and knowledge-sharing in the twenty-first century, could also be explored.

Quality

Regarding quality assurance of education,  there must be a strategic shift  to improvement in quality of higher education. For this, the focus should be not only on larger enrollment, but also on the quality of the expansion. The governance mechanisms should be reviewed and  overhauled for proving strength te curricular work by learning from the good practices of best institutions across India and elsewhere. Several other measures are also needed , for example,

accreditation should be at the core of regulatory arrangements and must have clear incentives and

consequences. This would require multiple strong and independent accreditation bodies. Governance system needs to be revamped by balancing institutional autonomy with accountability and developing institutional leaders. Full implementation of examination reforms, choice-based credit and semester system must be ensured to enhance flexibility and provide greater choice. The affiliated college system should be improved by deploying advanced technology and restructured so that a reasonable number of colleges are affiliated to each university and a ‘hub and spoke model’ established to foster curricular and

pedagogic reforms.

Research

 We need to create an ecosystem that encourages research and innovation in a self-sustaining manner. We must bring back the ‘lost’ research culture of Indian Universities so as to create new knowledge and improve teaching standards. Collaborative research, setting up industry incubation parks in Universities and institutions providing more research fellowships, promoting innovation through interdisciplinary research in new and emerging fields, strengthening Inter-University Centres etc., need to be emphasized. This would require more funding for university-based research and funding policies that create right incentives for quality research and promote collaboration among institutions. Related to this is the issue of faculty shortages which can be tackled through innovative ways such as technology-enabled learning and collaborative information and communication technologies (ICT). A complete overhaul of the Academic Staff Colleges that are used to provide refresher courses for teachers is also necessary.

Initiatives to improve the quality and availability of teachers in higher education need to be launched in a mission mode. 

More Resources and Better Utilization

There is an urgent need to step up both public and private investment in higher education   (including technical education)  and increase in the efficiency of its utilization. About 18.0 % of all government education spending or about 1.12 % of GDP is spent on higher education today. This should be raised to 25.0 per cent and 1.5 per cent respectively. An increase of 0.38 per cent of GDP means an additional allocation of about Rs. 25,000 crore to higher education for the Centre and the States taken together.

State Universities

The  State universities and their affiliated colleges that account for more than 90.0 per cent of the

enrollment suffer from severe fund constraints and poor governance leading to poor quality. Strategic central-funding based on State higher education plans should be leveraged to stimulate more state funding linked to academic and governance reforms which may include norm-based funding for State universities and colleges. Allocation of operating budget should be based on objective norms and new investments based on competitive grants and performance contracts. Institutions should be encouraged to raise their own funds through various legitimate means. Reasonable tuition fees in higher education need to be supplemented with appropriate publicly-funded financial aid. The scale and reach of scholarship schemes and student loans need to be enhanced. Government guarantees for student loans could be considered. The central principle should be that no student who is eligible to be admitted should be deprived of higher education for financial reasons.

Enhancing Employability

 There is a need for a clear focus on improving the employability of graduates. Indian higher

education is organized into ‘General’ and ‘Professional’ streams. General education which is an excellent foundation for successful knowledge based careers, often fails to equip graduates with necessary work skills due to its poor quality. On the other hand, professional education is often expensive, lengthy and usually imparted in narrowly specialized private institutions, with little emphasis on liberal arts, which is essential for the development of intelligent able-minded citizens. For both ‘General’ and ‘Professional’ education streams, integrated curriculum with greater flexibility in choice of subjects and innovative pedagogic practices are needed to improve the quality and hence employability. Graduates now require the skills beyond the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic (the ‘3Rs’). Skills such as critical thinking,  communication, collaboration and creativity (the ‘4Cs’) are now important in more and more jobs.

Accordingly, there is need to focus on the ‘4Cs’. Special emphasis on verbal and written communication skills, especially in English would go a long way in improving the employability of the large and growing mass of disempowered youth in a globalised world.

 The Vocational Education and Training sector in the country is small and this limited capacity is

under-utilized due to poor quality and lack of social status. There is an urgent need to develop a large sector offering short-cycle qualifications in the form of associate degrees catering to

intermediate skills in the higher education space within the National Vocational Education Qualifications Framework. Such degrees would carry with them social prestige, would be less expensive and academically.

Encouraging Private Participation

 Private sector growth in higher education (including technical) should be facilitated and innovative Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) should be explored and developed in the Twelfth-Plan. Private higher education accounts for about four-fifths of enrollment in professional higher education and one-third overall. This growth trend is likely to continue in the coming years. Currently, this growth is restricted to specific areas and there are concerns about quality and use of unfair practices. A clear policy is, therefore, required to manage private education and a statutory and transparent framework needs to be established for its operation for driving private growth further in a legitimate and balanced manner. The ‘not-for-profit’ tag in higher education sector should, perhaps, be re-examined in a more pragmatic manner so as to ensure

quality without losing focus on expansion and equity. Deserving private institutions could benefit with access to public funds in the form of loans, financial aid for students and competitive funding for research.

 Partnerships

 Higher education is an increasingly global enterprise; hence Indian institutions should embrace

internationalization that could provide them with new opportunities. Country’s rationale for

internationalization would be to enhance its soft power, improve standards of domestic provision and produce graduates with international competencies and skills. This can best be achieved by having more and more innovative partnerships. Given the historical advantage of India  in higher education (particularly among emerging market economies), the wide spread use of English language and low cost living, India can potentially become a global hub for higher education. We need to provide greater autonomy to our centres of excellence to enter into collaborative partnership with the best universities abroad.

10.34 In sum, with new regulatory arrangements and focussed action in key areas, particularly expansion

and quality improvement, we hope to build a robust higher education system that would sustain rapid

economic growth, promote international competitiveness, while at the same time meet the rising

expectations of the young enterprising

                        Imperatives of Reservation Policy  : A  Perspective

                                                                                            

                                                                                                  Dr.T.K.Chatterjee*

The Context

There is an eternal debate about the desirability of reservations in jobs and in admission in educational institutions in post-independent India.   One of the several voices of protest against affirmative action in general and reservations in particular for the  poor and  marginalized sections of our population in the  SC/ST/OBC categories is that  the disadvantages arising out of poverty  are not correlated to caste identity. A group of scholars, generally belonging to the upper-cast  urban dewellers, argue that  there are huge numbers of poor people across any  group having distinct identity along cast, class, ethnicity or religious lines   and each such group need  special support of the state irrespective of  identity. It is also argued that  poverty-related   disadvantages are randomly distributed between castes  and there is no case for focusing on specific groups. In other words, they object to the concept of reservations for the SC/ST/OBC communities as an instrument of state intervention  to ensure equity and social justice to these groups  with the overall objective of breaking  caste-barriers  in accessing social mobility.   

Another commentary against the policy of reservation relates to the fear of declining  merit  and other quality indicators in consequence, be it in education, professional jobs, services  or  other activities. The so-called cast-neutral scholars argue that the global standards of quality assurance required in higher education, particularly in technical and professional  education,  as well as in the world of services and jobs, call for entry only on merit to prevent murder of quality benchmarks. 

However, there are no data to validate these  contentions.  On the contrary, the experience of  development in the states in  South India where reservation in more deeply entrenched and the percentage of reservation is much more than 50%,  proves that   human resources from the backward castes could unleash their productive energy for economic growth as they came to terms with modern education. It has been well established by the level of development across other cities in India that reservations actually have contributed to nation-building  besides generating more competitiveness   and productivity among the stake holders in an ambience of social harmony and justice.   In India, the system of reservation provides a mechanism of peaceful transformation of the cast-centered society and a redefinition of merit.

The latent casteism  prevalent in the group of scholars and media under reference only  reveals their stark hatred towards the communities bearing the load of deprivations over centuries but in the guise of cast-neutral contemporary urban India. In fact, the operation of cast barriers and cast hierarchies over centuries come as natural and  eternal  to the anti-reservationist lobby comprising a large section of upper cast intellectuals and media. What is even worse, the domination of the upper cast mindset  among the wider public is such that these beliefs are not seen as casteist but their questioning is. It is also asserted that reservations were almost extinct before it was resurrected by the Mandal Commission and subsequently  asserted by  93^rd amendment of the Constitution.  These casteist arguments and loaded perceptions pose serious threats  to social cohesion and national unity as these are aimed to keep the majority of our population entrenched in  untouchability, illiteracy, underdevelopment, unemployment  and  poverty perpetuated  by brahminical cast hierarchies.

The imperatives of reservation

 As presented above, one of the key issues in the debate over reservation policy is whether cast,  as in SC/ST/OBC communities,  is a factor in perpetuation of discriminations of all types resulting in poverty and  marginalization. Dr.Aswini Deshpande ( Economic & Political Weekly, June 17, 2006) has done an elaborate study to prove that the  indicators of social advantage or lack of it are clearly stratified by caste. She has taken into account indicators like monthly per capita expenditure, land holding, occupational attainment, ownership of consumer assets, type of housing and poverty ratio among others from two national survey reports, namely, National Sample Survey ( NSS ) and National Family Health  Survey ( NFHS ). The Census Report was excluded because OBC as a separate category  is not counted in this report. The study unequivocally reveals gross disparity between communities belonging to SC/ST/OBC   and others ( non-SC/ST/OBC ) and that distribution of both income and wealth are highly skewed along cast lines. According to the data presented in the second round of NFHS, cast disparities in occupational attainment are : 68% of SCs, 75% of STs and 61% of OBCs are agricultural and manual labourers  while for the upper castes it is 47%. Among the professional/managerial and higher level administrative jobs, the share of OBCs is 8% compared to 13% for the  upper castes. In this study, the researcher has developed  a Cast Development Index ( CDI )based on five indicators like landholding, occupation, education, consumer durable ownership and asset ownership. It turns out that both in rural and urban India, the CDI for the SC, ST, OBC  are much less than for others or the residual population. The data for OBC include the creamy layer of OBC in absence of separate data to account for the wide divergence that indeed exists within OBCs. Obviously, if the creamy layer is excluded, the status of the more disadvantaged OBC will be much poorer.

The findings challenge the notion that social and economic  disadvantages are randomly distributed among poor people and that there is no case for correlating deprivation with  caste identity. It is now widely accepted that the cast –ridden Hindu Brahminical society has, over centuries, subjected the lower cast people to dual exploitations  on the basis of both poverty and  cast denying access to resources and pushing them to  abject marginalization. The study  has  established a case for special intervention by the state for these groups with reservation quota in accessing  education and jobs to bring to them the benefits of equity and social justice.

It needs to be emphasized that the disparities are not only hang over of the pre-independent past. Data released by the Govt. of India in various reports and the extant literature on the dalits reveal that inter-cast inequalities are not only very strong in contemporary India as measured by monthly per capita expenditure and other developmental indicators but these inequalities are steadily increasing together with wide regional variations. A similar situation exists in the labour market. There are pre-market discriminations afflicting the lower cast human resources due to differences in access and quality of education  other than treatments meted out by the providers. In the job market too, discriminations and cast prejudices lead them to different kinds of jobs and different wages for similar jobs. Besides this,  the role of cast in allocation of more traditional jobs in the rural belt is well documented. Additionally, casteist discriminations affect the job search process too. There is very little role of merit in job search where ‘who you know’ is often more important than ’what you know’. Various studies have revealed that even for highly qualified persons, there are big differences between dalits and others in job search process, eventual placement, salaries, waiting period and  job types.

Conclusion

The discussion  presented above  exhorts us to conclude that special support must be continued by the state to provide equity and social justice  to the deprived and marginalized masses. Reservation of seats in admission to education institutions of any level and in jobs  in public as well as in private sectors for the SC, ST, OBC categories  is an urgent imperative  in the interest of nation-building with social harmony and cohesion. Reservation is, however, just  one component of affirmative action, though the most important. Other empowerment activities like stipends and scholarships, incentives to female students, sensitization programmes to avail education, preventing drop-out rates, remedial coaching, special coaching for competitive examinations, vocational and skill development training etc. need to be taken forward with equal earnestness.  The democratic polity must ensure  equal opportunities to all sections of the population for faster growth and  development of the national economy. As enshrined in our Constitution, given the historical backwardness of the SC/ST/OBC groups in a cast-ridden social system, realization of a truly inclusive society  requires  that vigorous   efforts  in a mission-mode be implemented and concrete goals be set  to break the cast barriers. This national calls for special focus  to the dalits and oppressed castes  through active reservation policy and other affirmative action in order to generate social mobility to them  with complete equality of opportunities. Concurrently, it is necessary to monitor the outcomes very strictly in respect of both affirmative action and structural changes.

*Former Registrar, University of North Bengal ( tps.chatterjee@gmail.com )