NITI Aayog Vice-Chairperson Arvind Panagaria on Tuesday pitched for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s idea of “cooperative, competitive federalism” to be implemented in the field of higher education; where the best practices of one State can be replicated in the others, instead of borrowing ideas from other “cultures and countries.”
“Lessons from your own country are more easily absorbed,” he said, adding that there was a huge variation in the learning curve within India and the achievements made by a few States could easily be adopted by the others.
Mr. Panagaria, who wants the sector to be more inward-looking, said the NITI Aayog, following the Prime Minister’s cue had been advocating “learning from the States.”
“States are where most students are; that is where the action ought to be and there is scope for the largest value addition”, he said.
Speaking at the 11th edition of Higher Education Summit 2015, organised by FICCI in association with the Ministry of Human Resource Development, Mr. Panagaria argued vehemently in favour of both public and private sector expansion in higher education.
He credited the proliferation of engineering and management colleges both in the public and private sector for the growth that India saw in the past few decades.
The government’s recent decision to open more IITs, IIMs and AIIMS-like institutions has been criticised for compromising the quality of education being offered by these premier bodies, but Mr. Panagaria said the perception of their brand dilution was erroneous. To support his claims he cited the restricted entry to medical colleges vis-à-vis engineering and management colleges. “In 1965 there were five medical colleges in Rajasthan; in 1995 there were still five medical colleges — that is how restrictive the entry has been made by the Medical Council of India.” Had the All India Council for Technical Education restricted the expansion of engineering colleges, the kind of growth that India saw would not have happened.
