Sick children

People’s Democracy joins issue with the government on higher education. “It took so long a time for the government to accept that both the children are sick. We are talking about the acceptance of the HRD minister about the ‘sick higher education’. For long we have been arguing that both the children are malnourished and need to be given sufficient and healthy diet. Many have disagreed with it and stated that one child (higher education) is eating away a major share of the food intended for both and thus it has to be starved to feed the other (elementary education). The government always had said that it couldn’t cater to the demands and needs of higher education and that they can be better looked after by the private partners. In this background it is really heartening to hear the minister state that higher education is a sick child and now the time has come to give it ‘its due’.”

As a percentage of the GDP, the magazine points out, government expenditure on higher education was 0.46 in 1990-91 and decreased to 0.37 in 2003-04.