[Reader-list] Communists on education: West Bengal Education speaks

[Rana Dasgupta]

Speaks for itself.

R



The Telegraph, August 12 2004

Oxbridge Will Take India Down The Drain: Kanti

NEW DELHI, Aug 11. - If the University of Oxford or Cambridge or the Massachusetts Institute of Technology set up branches in India, it will hurt the nation's culture and character, not to speak of the damage to national economic planning.  This is the view of the West Bengal education minister, Mr Kanti Biswas.

A Kolkata branch of say, the University of Oxford, will be against national interest, he felt.  In the Capital to represent West Bengal at the Central Advisory Board of Education meeting, Mr Biswas told reporters he strongly opposed India's decision to agree to the General Agreement on Trade Services clauses in the WTO, because the Oxbridge universities and MIT would open branches here or offer degrees to people based here. He found three major reasons to oppose such a move.

First, the syllabi would not reflect Indian culture and ideas, merely an alien one. Secondly, the institutions would be
coming to India simply to make money, not work in the interest of the Indian nation. As Mr Biswas, the Bengal minister for primary and secondary education, said, there is no guarantee about what will be taught. Thirdly, the presence of private institutions like Oxbridge would upset the system of planning for the country. If all higher education institutions are 'Indian' or government-run, the government can involve itself in long-term planning.  Also, these institutions, he
said, could teach something that may not be required in terms of manpower planning, suggesting that these people would be virtually unemployable.

Asked why graduates from elite Western universities were then given jobs in India, including in the government, the minister said there would be no objection to that. Dr Asim Dasgupta, Mr Biswas' Cabinet colleague went to MIT. Other prominent Marxist leaders in Bengal, including the former chief minister, Mr Jyoti Basu, studied in the UK.

Mr Biswas felt such institutions should be allowed in only if the Indian or state government were allowed to determine the syllabi and decide on what the tuition fees to be charged from the students. The damage has already been done, he warned. Two institutions, affiliated to the University of Cambridge, have been set up in Rajasthan.