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NEW DELHI: India should retain all options in the
education sector to be exercised at a ``suitable time.'' There should
neither be any haste in opening it to foreign participation under a
multilateral regime without adequate safeguards nor should the sector be
used as a bargaining chip for obtaining gains in other sector. These are
the broad conclusions of a policy paper prepared and likely to be
circulated by the Human Resource Ministry on the issue to Foreign Direct
Investment (FDI) in higher education.
The paper, prepared by the Higher Education Bureau of the
Ministry, dismisses the commercial trade-based approach of the Commerce
Ministry which had "restricted itself to a narrow, middle class Business
Process Outsourcing (BPO)-IT perspective.''
The likely skill shortage, the so-called Mckinsey's
missing millions, account for no more than 0.5 million by 2010 — a
miniscule figure considering India's annual higher education enrolment
figures of over 10 million annually, sources in the HRD Ministry point
out.
Opening up the entire education sector merely to provide
soft skill to BPO training to some 0.5 million city graduates would mean
barking up the wrong tree.
Problems of
contradiction
On the other side, opening up would also lead to real
problems of contradiction of access and increased dualities between the
richer and poor sections of society, the paper says.
Further, increased investment alone will not be able to
resolve issues of quality. A sound, effective and transparent regulatory
regime is required to eliminate distortions, encourage competition and
quality, penalise profit-skimmers and enforce transparency, according to
the paper.
The paper calls for better regulation of private capital
as a necessary step before any liberalisation in FDI.
It also calls for an alternative reform agenda in terms
of State-led inclusive growth with a long-term vision of generation of
knowledge through liberal funding of the research and for a number of
internal reform measures including educational autonomy, reorganisation of
funding and quality control. |