One size can’t fit all

According to reports, the University Grants Commission is all set to increase its stranglehold on Indian universities. The latest proposal under discussion calls for standardisation and homogenisation of curriculum across all Indian universities. The ostensible rationale for this proposal is that it will make for greater portability across Indian universities. But if followed through, this proposal will squelch the few remaining vestiges of autonomy and creativity left in the Indian university system. It is one more step in the direction of a colossally ambitious centralisation of the Indian university system.

The centralisation is premised on a number of deeply entrenched principles. First, that homogenisation of institutions is better than a diversity of experiments. Second, that the academic community, teachers and students must not shape courses, syllabi and new frontiers of knowledge; rather these should be shaped by a small cabal that controls India’s education bureaucracy (usually statist in their orientation). Third, this centralisation is premised on the thought that accountability has to be vertical, where institutions answer to some top authority. It has no room for the thought that the only way to make institutions more accountable is to foster competition amongst them. Fourth, while recognising the infirmities of India’s education system, this approach harbours the illusion that more control and supervision will somehow produce the pedagogic creativity that Indian higher education needs.

The drive towards a uniform syllabus for all Indian universities is symptomatic of the dangers that afflict the system. Such a move undermines the very integrity of the concept of a university. The very core of the idea of a university vanishes if it cannot, within some constraints, control who it can teach, what it can teach, and how it teaches. It is a community of professionals accountable to students, peers, and a sense of vocation. The worst thing about the UGC’s approach is that it also treats deemed universities on par with state universities, exercising the same degree of control over them. Indeed, it is toying with the idea of even centralising admissions to all deemed universities under its own aegis.

Second, it is an act of colossal hubris to even suggest that all Indian universities should have similar curriculum. Why confine our appreciation of diversity only to identity, rather than a myriad of institutional forms and intellectual experiments? The great wave of creativity in Indian university building, when Delhi University, BHU, Jamia, Shanti Niketan came up, was premised on educational innovators trying out different things. Surely India can have room for the pedagogical philosophies behind a Gandhian institution like Banasthali Vidyapeeth on the one hand, and out-and-out new economy institutions on the other?

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