At a recent seminar in New Delhi, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh was quite unambiguous as to what were his priorities insofar as India'seducation and legal services were concerned. His speech gave clear hints that the UPA Government would like the education and legal services to be thrown open for foreign competition. The reformist arguments were debated and discussed at the FIEO-organised International Congress on Trade in Services for three days, with the Prime Minister's?positive?? remarks on education being the highpoint of the deliberations. ?We need a policy regime which facilitates and promotes investment in education services.
There is a need for greater investment, both by the public and private sectors,?? Dr Singh said. Over three billion dollar is spent annually by students going from India to study abroad. This could be easily retained in the country if the educational facilities are expanded to meet everyone'sneeds, the Prime Minister said.
There is a merit in the premise to the extent the money being spent by upper middle class parents in sending their wards abroad will be retained within the country if the quality education was imparted within the country. For facilitating the quality education, the government wants investment in the sector. The investment must come from both the public and private sectors. All these years, the government has been building a case for the private sector investment in infrastructure sectors like roads, ports and airports arguing the State could spend money only on social sectors like education and health.
While education?both at the higher and lower level has been indiscriminately privatised along with the health sector, the government now wants to go ahead with bigger ambitions of allowing foreign direct investment in universities?new and old. Looking purely from the macro economic point of view in relation to the global economy, India certainly has a competitive edge in services. Education and health are no exception to this. These are the competitive advantages that the Indian Government, would like to play in the WTO regime of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS). If we allow scores of US, European and Singaporean universities to invest in India, it could open enhanced opportunities for our students.
But the question is which students are we talking about. In this context, we are talking about certainly those students who can pay lakhs and lakhs of rupees and not those who come from lower middle class and from 70 per cent of the populace which lives in rural India.
Since the International Congress, jointly organised by one of the government departments, was on ?trade? aspects of services, understandably there was not much discussion on the public investment or commitment to improve services.
However, in his presentation well-known World Bank economist Aditya Mattoo did talk about two Indias?one that organises seminars and discussions on liberalisation and globalisation about schools and colleges and the other India where there are roofless and teacherless schools. There is one India where surgeons like Naresh Trehans give lectures in CII about outsourcing of medical services; there is other India where basic facilities are non-existent in the primary health care centres. Leave alone doctors, there are no para-medical staff to handle these ramshackle health care centres.
It is only the super-speciality culture of metros which is highlighted day in and day out in the media whereas there is hardly any report seen in the press regarding the utter neglect of health services in a vast majority of rural and semi-urban areas. Even in big cities, the focus is shifting to Fortis and Escorts while patients languish at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in the national capital. To be fair to him, the Union Health Sector Mr P K Hota did express his concern about the super-speciality culture mushrooming at the cost of thousands of nurses and para-medical staff who are used but are not meted out justice.
But then, then the government agenda is mostly hijacked by the elitist business chambers and high-heeled bureaucrats who would like to see the country through conferences and workshops in five-star deluxe hotels and would not step out of the city limits.
The outside city limits might not look ?civil?? to them! The trouble is when Prime Minister and the Ministers also allow themselves to be influenced by certain vested groups, rest of the country has fight for itself with dengue and chikenguniya!
