Would it have been the same way in 1977 if LPG was available off the shelf? Would it be the case now if India had, instead of 5,000, some 50,000 IIT seats? Or 10,000 in the IIMs, 500 at AIIMS in Delhi, another two lakh in medical colleges elsewhere instead of 18,000? This artificial scarcity is not just the mother of today’s frustration. It is actually a festering national crisis. Since higher education seemed to concern so few, it was on nobody’s political radar screen. Even the most ideologically pro-active HRD ministers like Murli Manohar Joshi and Arjun Singh would never have seen any need to focus on it. But this self-destructive quota crisis which Arjun Singh has walked his party into changes all that. Suddenly, higher education comes to political centrestage, breaking out of a time warp where the political discourse was confined to Sarva Siksha Abhiyan and mid-day meals.

The total government control over higher education has produced a scandalous state of self-denial and man-made scarcity. We believe our advantage in the global marketplace comes from our superiority in technology, mathematics, sciences. Can we do that on the back of 5,000 IIT graduates per year? It might be sobering to look at some global comparisons.

The MIT alone takes as many undergraduates per year (4,000) as all of our IITs. Harvard Business School alone takes 900 students every year and Harvard Law takes 1,800 — almost 400 per cent of our NLSUI of Bangalore. Is that how a modernising, growing India, its economy driven by the engine of services and manufacturing, is going to find its rightful place in this globalising world?

... contd.