Comment

Private schools and fee hikes

EVERY year the private schools in Delhi propose a fee hike just before the start of the new academic year, which commences mostly in April. Schools propose hefty increases in fees, parents and parent teacher associations protest stating that the increases are exorbitant, and others in civil society resort to hunger strike. The government, based either on the recommendations of a committee it appoints, or otherwise, issues orders allowing ‘some’ increase in fees for different categories of schools. The schools contest this in courts, as do the parents, while the government usually opts to wait and watch. There is never enough time for either the government and government appointed committees, or the courts, to carefully examine all the dimensions involved as the academic session has already begun. Hardly surprising that we see ad hoc and arbitrary decisions, a regular summer event in Delhi. This regular annual event assumes additional significance this year due to the Sixth Pay Commission that recommended significant increases in the salary of teachers on the one hand, and national elections on the other, both of which are also mutually related.

There are certain procedural aspects and some larger issues involved in all this. First, let us look at the procedural aspects that one expects to be settled somewhat easily. Some of the problems could be amicably solved if there were a regular consultation process in place that involved the schools consulting with not only parents and parent teacher associations, but also other governmental and non-governmental actors in education, including the civil society at large, on school related issues. The proposals so arrived at after a worthwhile consultation process are more likely to find approval with the government and judiciary. Most social tensions could thus be avoided. In fact, I would suggest that the consultation process should cover not only fee and fee-related issues, but also all issues relating to schools. This, incidentally, has often been suggested by the government and the courts.

Second, most private schools lack transparency in functioning. According to the Delhi Education Act, all recognized private schools are required to submit balance sheets every year, duly audited by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India. These should ideally include comprehensive financial statements on various sources of income – including tuition fee, other fees – their rates and total income, expenditure on various recurring and non-recurring items, including salaries paid to teachers and others (the pay structure and the salary expenditure), deficits, surpluses, etc., and what is being done with the surpluses and deficits. Though this is a mandatory requirement, many schools prefer to default. As they rarely submit accounts, committees like the ones headed by Justice Duggal in 1997-98 or recently by Justice Bansal, have to specially ask the schools to submit accounts before making any recommendations. Reportedly out of the 1800 recognized private schools in Delhi, only ten per cent have submitted the reports to the Bansal Committee.

To ensure transparency, it is necessary that authentic financial statements, along with other details, for example, on enrolment, admissions, including admissions of the weaker sections at no fee (as required by the government), should be made widely available not only to the government or the committees, but also to the students, parents, teachers, if not to the wider society on a regular basis. Perhaps they could as well be printed in the school magazine so that anyone can access it. That such data can hardly be obtained from the private schools even when special efforts are made by the researchers is also a well-known fact.

Third, most schools do not prepare financial plans. In the absence of any financial planning, schools make ad hoc proposals and irrational and sudden increases in fees, which unsurprisingly are viewed by the parents and others as arbitrary, illogical, ridiculous and exorbitant, meant essentially to increase profits.

Fourth, while the entire debate and controversy revolves around tuition fee, it is important to note that students are required to pay several other types of charges, the sum of which could be much higher than tuition fee in many schools. Some are charged at the time of admission, and many others during the year. It is necessary that the proposals, the recommendations of the committee, the court judgments and government orders should refer to all types of fees, and not just the tuition fee. If these procedural aspects are addressed at least some of the problems that we often encounter could easily be resolved.

There are indeed, larger and more fundamental issues that need to be addressed. Basically, all the private schools in India are established as philanthropic and charitable institutions. But many of them are de facto commercial, profit-seeking institutions, which aim at recovering full costs, if not surpluses, from students through fees and donations. No trace of philanthropy can be found in these schools. Voluntary donations, endowments and other non-student and non-government sources of income are almost nil. After all, philanthropy is an important and sizeable component of private education institutions in most civilized societies of the West or of the North. Unless genuine philanthropy is restored and guaranteed, should there be any place for such commercial enterprises in education in India under the garb of private educational institutions?

Given the large numbers seeking schooling, it is unlikely that even a steep increase in fees in private schools in Delhi will result in reduced enrolments. In fact, the total enrolment may continue to increase. But one should note that the composition of the student population will significantly change in favour of the rich, as the families at the margin – the lower and even upper middle income families – withdraw their children in favour of low cost or government schools. I am sure most of the schools though aware are not bothered about it; possibly they might actually be desirous of making their schools more elitist and confined to the better-off sections of society.

What is becoming increasingly clear is that most of the private schools in India want ‘total freedom’, which is not available even in free market societies. School managements would like to have unrestricted freedom to decide on fees, admissions, as also every other aspect. They tend to resent any intervention by the government, the courts, parents, parent teacher organizations, the students and society at large.

It is indeed ironic that even as the private corporate sector speaks about ‘social responsibility’, schools do not share the same vision. No wonder the courts have often had to intervene in almost every aspect of school management starting from nursery admissions, fees, bus charges, quota for poor students, teachers pay and working conditions, infrastructure facilities ranging from drinking water to medical provisions, and what not.

Unless we address some of these basic issues, the annual drama will continue. And the government, the courts and everyone else will be reduced to finding quick-fix solutions to draw the curtain on the show.

Jandhyala B. G. Tilak

 

A national security state

A fundamental justificatory principle underpinning the operation of the post-Independence Indian state is that constitutionally guaranteed fundamental rights and civil liberties of citizens can be set aside, partially or fully, in the interest of safeguarding the external and internal security and territorial integrity of the country. In pursuit of this goal, the Indian state has equipped itself with extraordinary coercive laws to deal with individuals or groups branded by it as terrorists, insurgents, Maoists/Naxalites or secessionists.

On the eve of independence, the Indian nationalist leadership had promised that draconian anti-liberty laws of the colonial state like the Defence of India Rules would be thrown off the statutes because they run counter to the values of a Republican democratic country. In a cruel and ironic twist of history the post-Independence state broke its promise and ‘detention without trial’ of ‘so-called’ suspect citizens became a near norm rather than an exception. The journey started with the Preventive Detention Act, the Maintenance of Internal Security Act, the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, 1967, the Terrorist Activities (Prevention) Act, 1987 (TADA), the Armed Forces (special powers) Act, the Prevention of Terrorism Act (POTA), among others, with all these special laws used at various times to ‘detain people without proper trial’.

Hence, it is wrong to maintain that just as 11 September 2001 was the defining moment of the United States, the Mumbai terrorist attack of 26 November 2008 legitimised our putting the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act, 2008 (UAPA) and the creation of the National Investigation Agency Act, 2008 (NIA) which deal with the establishment of ‘Special Courts’ on the statute book.

It is not only the central government which has concentrated extraordinary legal authority to deal with so-called terrorists or secessionists or Naxalites, many state governments too have equipped themselves on the pattern of the central government with laws and special powers to deal with ‘extraordinary criminals’. The best illustration of such a legal provision is found in the Maharashtra Control of Organized Crime Act (MCOCA). The story does not end here. The states of Manipur and Jammu and Kashmir are covered by the Armed Forces (special powers) Act (AFSPA) granting the security forces complete ‘immunity’ to search a house without a warrant, arrest a suspect without giving any reason, or even eliminate a ‘so called’ terrorist. By placing on the statute book laws like the National Security Act and Unlawful Activities Act, the state feels free to violate every normal procedure of justice based on the rule of law in a democracy and seems to have completely immunized itself from its obligations to defend fundamental rights. Each of these laws contain provisions which violate the basic principle of natural justice, that no accused is guilty unless so determined by the due legal process. Such is the basic legal philosophy of a highly militarized and over-policed national security state.

Concomitant with this enabling legal architecture, the Indian state has invested heavily in creating military and paramilitary capability to deal with external and internal security threats. India has well-equipped professional armed forces along with the Central Reserve Police, the Border Security Force, the Central Industrial Security Force, among others, to confront various internal and external security challenges. Moreover, every state government too maintains its own state armed police forces which, when needed, can be supplemented by the central forces. Nevertheless, every time the state confronts a new challenge, for instance, moments like 26 November 2009, it responds by creating still another highly specialized paramilitary force like the National Security Guards, the anti-naxal Cobra battalions or the Greyhounds of Andhra Pradesh. It is worth noting that the combined budgetary allocation for defence and internal security has over time increased to a whopping Rs 2,00,000 crore.

In sum, our security conscious state has rarely hesitated in disregarding the democratic rights and liberties of citizens in the belief that interests of state override the fundamental rights of citizens. Hence, the analytical question: Why does the Indian state feel the need for such draconian laws for dealing with various internal and external challenges? Does it really need more armed forces for dealing with domestic protests by citizens who may have decided to challenge the legitimacy of the state by taking recourse to the politics of the gun? Why does the Indian state follow the policy of bullet versus bullet when confronting gun wielding groups in society?

Evidently, our democratic rulers find it difficult to understand that only highly socially dissatisfied and disaffected groups eschew the path of democratic change through the ballot and take recourse to the politics of bullet. Both the President of India and the Prime Minister in their inaugural policy statements before the newly constituted fifteenth Lok Sabha have stressed that the Indian state will have to ‘eliminate’ the menace of left-wing extremism which has spread to West Bengal, Orissa, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh among other states. Even as we believe that recourse to armed resistance is misdirected adventurism, the deep social reasons forcing discontented groups to take to the gun for a solution of their social problems cannot be wished away. It is not accidental that the Naxal affected districts of India are not only underdeveloped and backward, they are also inhabited by completely neglected tribal populations. Or that the presence of men in khaki uniform protected by the Armed Forces (special powers) Act in Jammu and Kashmir and Manipur generates hostility in the people of that region. Witness the thousands of people who regularly come out on the streets of Srinagar or Imphal to express their resentment against the many acts of omission and commission by our armed forces.

Our ruling classes need to do a lot of soul searching about the reasons of social discontent prevailing among different strata of the marginalized strata which compels them to take to guns against the state. The structural logic of exploitation, oppression, inequality and disparity creates a breeding ground for social alienation. Unfortunately the state, instead of understanding and responding to the causes of anger and alienation of multiple and diverse social groups, has created a sophisticated war machine to respond to even the legitimate grievances of the deprived strata of society. Instead of finding remedies to deal with the causes of such ‘democratic deficit’, they prefer to take recourse to repressive powers to elicit obedience from alienated citizens. It appears that every class-divided, oppressive capitalist society prefers quasi-authoritarian military apparatuses to confront the resentments of the underclass. The ongoing war against global terrorism post 9/11 has only provided a new alibi to state to equip itself with draconian laws for dealing with its own ‘suspect’ citizens.

C.P. Bhambhri