Most such education related norms have been imported from the West, often much before Independence. And these norms have been criticised often. Take this speech by Mahatma Gandhi at Chatham House (later, The Royal Institute of International Affairs) on October 20, 1931:

“The village schools were not good enough for the British administrator, so he came out with his programme. Every school must have so much paraphernalia, building, and so forth... There are statistics left by a British administrator which show that... ancient schools have gone by the board, because there was no recognition for these schools... I defy anybody to fulfil a programme of compulsory primary education of these masses inside of a century. This very poor country of mine is ill able to sustain such... [a] method of education.”

Note that Gandhi was not criticising the system on its colonial orientation, but on the norms that were being imposed by the government. He was also not criticising the norms per se, but was against making formal government recognition dependent on these norms. I make a less strong demand — even if the government does not want to recognise such schools, we should at least let them continue.

This decision is quite symptomatic of a deeper problem. When the quality of a product or service is suspect in the eyes of the establishment, it desires to eliminate that product or service by fiat. One can criticise such decisions on many counts: First, such decisions curtail choice and freedom of the consumers. Second, rarely can the government implement such orders efficiently enough. Third, it provides inordinate powers to the bureaucracy and results in corruption. Fourth, businesses love to use the “bad quality” argument to eliminate competition with government backing. And fifth, such acts curtail innovation.

... contd.