Student protests expose deeper flaws in India's growth and education model

The anxieties and aspirations of the youth are an opportunity for a more consequential debate on India's economic trajectory

The National Democratic Alliance government is facing a major political challenge in the continuing protests by several thousands of young men and women gathered at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar, but spilling into the adjoining urban spaces. The government has reached out to the youth leading the protests and to the social activist and educator from Ladakh, Sonam Wangchuk, who has been on a hunger strike in their support since June 28. The latest news is that Mr Wangchuk has broken his fast following assurances conveyed to him personally by ministers J P Nadda and Jitendra Singh, but the student demonstrations are likely to continue. 

The government may not be prepared to concede the key demand of the students that the education minister, Dharmendra Pradhan, should resign. They are unlikely to be satisfied by the reported removal of the secretary in the ministry. But Mr Wangchuk’s ending his month-long fast is likely to break the momentum of the student protests. 

Mr Pradhan and his ministry are being held responsible for the repeated leaks of question papers pertaining to the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test-UG (Neet-UG), the entrance examination for undergraduate medical courses in government and private colleges across the country. 

Neet was introduced in 2016 and the National Testing Agency (NTA) was registered as an autonomous body in 2018, charged with the conduct of not only Neet but also other important nation-wide entrance examinations, such as the Common University Entrance Test (CUET). This centralised structure was introduced in some haste, and the capacity and expertise to run it efficiently and transparently was clearly sub-optimal. The NTA reportedly has a permanent staff of only 25. Its responsibilities of running testing centres, managing the IT infrastructure, paper distribution and monitoring, including artificial intelligence-assisted monitoring, are outsourced to private vendors. This raises a question about the rationale for centralisation when all key responsibilities are outsourced. 

Why abandon a largely decentralised system, which had worked reasonably well, for a centralised one, which may not be the most suitable for a diverse, multilingual and multicultural country? It is the tendency of successive Union governments to centralise authority generally that has led to our current difficulties. The education field is of utmost sensitivity, because the future of our younger generation is at stake. Most of the ills that have arisen, including paper leaks, faulty marking and discretionary alterations of results, are the consequence of outsourcing to private vendors without due diligence and strict accountability. 

The angst we have all witnessed among the youth gathered at Jantar Mantar, is well-founded and must be addressed. The government may succeed in defusing what could become a larger and increasingly ugly political standoff. But the current educational dispensation is flawed and needs urgent and systemic reform. The Prime Minister himself has acknowledged the need for fixing responsibility for the many deficiencies in the existing system and announced new legislative measures to address them. There should be sensitivity to the legitimate frustrations and deep anxiety that underlie the demonstrations. The temptation to look for conspiracy where none exists or to put dark labels on the young demonstrators should be resisted. 

It is also necessary to see the obvious connection between the events of the past few days and the serious challenge the country faces in its inability to create a sufficient number of quality jobs for educated Indians. Our success in negotiating access for our better educated citizens in distant lands is not a matter of celebration. This barely hides our inability to offer reasonable careers and prospects for advancement to our younger generation. The software industry has been one of the few to offer a decent career to the aspirational young Indian. The rapid progress in AI is already threatening this service industry, which has remained behind the technology curve, shrinking its ability to continue to offer quality jobs. 

The global capability centres set up by major multinationals in India provide welcome employment opportunities, but they create intellectual property for foreign entities, unavailable to India. 

For several years now, successive state and Union governments have, step by step, divested their fundamental responsibilities of providing public security, education and health to our citizens without discrimination. The fastest growing segments of the Indian economy over the past decade and more are private security (10-14 per cent annually), private education (11-14 per cent) and private health care (12-15 per cent). Public security expenditure of the government has consistently hovered around 1 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP), with one of the lowest densities of police per hundred thousand of population, at 150. 

The education budget of the state has gone up to 4 per cent of GDP, but still falls short of the 6 per cent recommended by the National Education Policy. And total government expenditure on health care is estimated at 1.5 per cent of GDP. The scale and quality of these essential services delivered by the public sector have progressively declined. Quality education is only accessible to a minority who can afford private schooling and the same is true of public health. The commercialisation of these essential services has served ordinary Indians poorly and this reflects on the employability of entrants to the labour market at all levels. 

The current economic model that India pursues is not aligned with the country’s resource endowment. We have a large supply of labour and are short of land and capital. The country should be frugal in its use of capital and of its available land. It should adopt a labour-intensive growth strategy. (Note: labour-intensive does not equate to low technology. The Indian digital public infrastructure has been a success story in promoting inclusivity.) 

India adopted ambitious economic reform and liberalisation policies in the early 1990s, and these paid rich dividends in spurring higher growth. These were market-friendly reforms not avowedly business-friendly. A large number of new industries and businesses mushroomed across the country. The small and medium segment of industry registered significant expansion. It generated 40 per cent of India’s exports. Now the focus appears to be on nurturing industry champions with a global presence. The production-linked scheme  favours capital- and technology-intensive industries, which have low employment potential. This, too, needs a rethink. The challenge thrown by the youth movement creates the opportunity for a more consequential debate on India’s economic trajectory because it must remain centered on India’s youth as its driving impulse. 

The writer is a former foreign secretary