Weekend musings: what Chanakya knew

A recent McKinsey report, based upon a study of schools all over the world made a very insightful finding:

The quality of an Educational System cannot exceed the quality of its Teachers

The report notes how students with similar intrinsics follow dramatically different life trajectories based upon the quality of teaching afforded.

Acharya Chanakya knew this over 3000 years ago. He noted the importance of teachers in individual development and, by direct translation, Nation building.
His beliefs were excellently paraphrased in the excellent TV serial from ~1990, which i only remember vaguely:

Shikshak koi saadharan vyakti nahi ho sakta, Dhana Nanda.
Prakruti uski god me khelti hai... main tumhaare raashtra ka pyaasa nahin.
Chaahe to main apna samraat swayam nirmaan karoonga.

Contextualised translation: A teacher is no ordinary man, Dhana nanda; he nurtures nature in his lap. I do not come to you with aspirations for personal power [but for the task of securing Bharat's borders]. If i choose, I can create my own Emperor [who can do the task of defending Bharat].
And he did.

But education in India today lies in ruins, its Chanakyas ideologically cleansed.
As a result, India's education system cannot create the next Chandragupta -- the Emperor who reunited a fragmenting Bharat.
Perhaps that is why we have to outsource the running of the nation to Italian waitresses.

Postscript: Visit YouTube for some truly evocative and inspiring clips from the same TV serial. Replace Magadha, Takshashila with modern names: Arunachal, Sikkim, Kashmir and the message is totally consistent.
We have forgotten our own history, and we're putting ourselves at significant risk of it repeating itself.
Post-Postscript: If any reader has the link to that sequence on YouTube or elsewhere, can you please let me know?

Becoming literate more expensive than becoming a doctor?

India's Education tragedy continues.

Families in India have to spend a considerable amount on the primary school education of their children, making the fundamental right to basic education a distant dream, according to a recent UNESCO report. In contrast, university education remains subsidised and costs just half of the primary school spending.

Take a deep breath, and read that again: going to School is twice as expensive as going to University. This when a University education can pay for itself (by making you qualified for more skileld jobs)and hence be rendered as a fee-for-service.

And Arjun Singh wants to continue meddling with the IITs and the IIMs.
Of course, we all know why -- seats at these schools are a powerful tool for political patronage.

In contrast, making functional primary education requires real work -- as you need to create millions of them to educate the hundreds of millions of Indian Children.

When the Government, despite focusing on Uiversities like a hawk, has still failed to create enough capacity, can it, by any stretch of imagination, ever provide enough Primary Education?

Education in India is the largest remaining bastion of the License Raj, propped up by rabidly discriminatory laws like Article 30 and surrounded by an impressive ring of lies, half truths and emotionally wrenching but factually empty statements (Private education will be too expensive. Education is too important to be given to the rapacious private sector. Private companies will fleece the poor etc. etc.).

This bastion must fall, for India to get anywhere. Otherwise, no amount of hand-wringing, staring at the demographic bulge, exhorting Indian businesses and companies or calling for innovation is going to help.

I despair.

SC tells Singh Parivar to focus on Primary Education

The Supreme Court is one of the few bastions of common sense in India.
Reflecting its common sense, it has asked a reasonable question: Why this undue haste to mess with the II (T+M)s when Primary Education is such a shambles?

Come on, your honours, you know the reason:
Because fixing Primary Education will require real work -- and real reform, including allowing private participation in Education.

The tokenist UPA has made no real reforms -- as the expose of Lalu's Railway turnaround also reveals (more like a run-aground, if you ask me).


On the other hand, continuing to meddle and micromanage higher education brings significant benefits -- political patronage, being the most important. Imagine being able to stand up in front of a crowd of "the disenfranchised" -- whoever that is -- and saying "your sons and daughters now have spots in the IIMs!"

Of course, only 10 of them will ever make it there, even as millions of "the disenfranchised" remain illiterare. But that rocks the vote!

The SC has demonstrated its solid common sense yet again. However, it should not hold its breath -- desperados of the Singh Parivar (MMS, Arjun etc.) have little to no interest in reforming Education. That'd be like shooting the chicken of continued poverty that lays the electoral golden egg!

Prime Minister's Independence Day Address -- Part 2

Education

Reforms in Education constitute the third focus for my Government.

Analysis of Government spending in education reveals a startling fact: expenditure on higher education (medical, technical, engineering and managerial development) is orders of magnitude higher than on primary education.

This is an unsustainable and unacceptable distortion. Insufficient investment in primary education implies that a significant fraction of Indians are not provided the opportunity to earn even a high-school certificate.
Overspending on higher education -- while neglecting primary education -- is perhaps the single-largest mistake we have made in perpetuating discrimination within India.

Insufficient investment in Primary Education (and, I may add, Primary Health) also means non-competitive and anti-merit steps such as quotas and reservations need to be taken to provide symptomatic relief for this underlying flaw.

Finally, international evidence has demonstrated that government subsidisation and control over higher education is largely unnecessary. This is because higher education is usually self funding since degrees typically translate directly into employment opportunities. This has also been proven in India, where private colleges, despite working in a highly restrictive environment, have created tremendous value. They have conferred degrees on lakhs of engineers, doctors and professionals who are now in a position to compete for -- and win -- global opportunities.

Against this background, my Government's Education reform agenda has two simple objectives: universal Primary Education, and a liberalised, competitive higher education sector.

We plan to treble investment in Primary Education -- buttressed by "Education vouchers" similar to healthcare vouchers -- to ensure universal primary education becomes a reality.
Even as investments in Primary Education are increased, the mode of delivery will also be revamped. Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) managed by educational professionals will be formed, under strict performance-payment contracts to ensure that Education is actually being delivered.

In conjunction, the Government will begin the slow divestment of higher educational facilities. Key institutions like the IITs, IIMs, Medical Schools and other higher educational institutes will be transferred to autonomous Trusts, with complete authority -- and responsibility -- for maintaining standards and remaining fiscally viable.
Liberalising the rules to allow private institutions, along with fiscal reforms to facilitate funding of higher education will ensure fee levels remain competitive -- and educational supplies flex to match changes in market demands for talent and skills.

To ensure that quality is maintained in a multi-provider environment, robust regulation is also required. A Primary Education regulator shall be formed to monitor the performance of the SPVs referred to earlier. Existing higher educational regulators (e.g. the UGC) will be vested with higher executive authorities to effectively regulate (as distinct from control) a more diverse higher education provider base.

We believe that, for a nation with a unique dempgraphic like india, a "students' market" that provides skills ased upon job seekers' needs -- rather than an "educators' market" which provides skills based upon suppliers' ability to provide -- is preferred.

Economic Performance
The robust economic growth shown by Indian enterprises since Prime Minister Narasimha Rao initiated liberalisation in 1991 is one of the major success stories of post-independence India.
This growth has weathered several storms -- recessions, boom-bust cycles and global crises. Even as Indian companies have made record profits, acquired global companies and expanded, domestic consumption of virtually all goods (commodities, services, retail) has increased strongly across all sectors -- demonstrating that Indian enterprise is second to none in value creation.

Given this stellar track record in value creation, my government believes that this responsibility should be left to the Indian private sector. The role of the government here should be restricted to regulating the system and preventing distortions.

This will free up government resources and expertise to focus on creating value in areas where the private sector is unable or not suited to value creation -- such as law and order, healthcare and education.

[to be continued]

Medical Education in Maharashtra - 1

Creating a robust Medical Education is a strategic imperative for India – healthcare is a critical sector of the economy in any nation. In a growing nation like India – with an absolute deficit of doctors, -- establishing a robust "pipeline" of medical talent is a critical element of development. After all, you cannot create economic surplus if you're sick.

Stewards of state are therefore expected to create an environment where talent is allowed to nurture and bloom.

Sadly, stewards of state in India -- and in Maharashtra in particular -- have done exceedingly well at destroying talent by establishing a deadening centralised license raj.

This is the story of what has happened in Maharashtra -- and what to expect as a result.

To begin with, starting a medical college in India is tough. You have to jump through multiple governmental hoops to get a green signal: from the number of beds you have/need, to the sizes of lecture rooms... even the fees you can charge!

However, the government worries very little about what quality of doctors you produce (in stark contrast, virtually all nations tightly regulate the quality of doctors produced; important, since a drop in educational standards can directly cost human lives).

As a result, many freshly graduated doctors in India are, to put it midly, incompetent. I had colleagues in my class who could not read a chest X-ray. This in a country where the first, second and third diagnosis for chronic cough is tuberculosis, tuberculosis and tuberculosis.

As a result, even after nearly 6 years of schooling, employment opportunities for a Doctor are slim (in stark contrast to graduates from engineering or management colleges).

No one comes to medical schools in India to recruit the next generation of Naresh Trehans or Nitu Mandkes: the cost associated with separating the wheat from the chaff is just not worth it. The best hospitals, in fact, simply do not entertain candidates until they earn credentials overseas – a simpler way (but more effective, at least from the Hospital’s perspective) of ensuring quality of supply.

Despite these flaws, the system was getting by: many doctors were starting out on their own, others were earning overseas qualifications and either returning or emigrating.

Somewhat predictably, the Maharashtra government began facing a crippling shortage of medical officers -- particularly in her rural areas.

Instead of freeing up the supply of doctors to address this shortage, the Government actually strengthened its stranglehold over supply and brough every aspect of medical education under direct governmental control.

All students were forced into mandatory rural service (girls from my class have served their bonds in Gadchiroli – a naxal infested area). Bonds were signed to make sure no student ‘slipped the dragnet’. Since the government could not "afford" to pay her resident doctors (doctors in teaching hospitals working to earn their MD/MS degrees), salaries were reduced. In fact, several resident doctors working to earn their DNB, do so gratis! Imagine a 27 year, unpaid neurosurgery resident!

Education delivery was next. Medicine programs that had run for perhaps longer than a 100 years at Mumbai and Pune University (among others) were dismantled and centralised to a no-name university operating out of a shed in Nasik. Centralised because the state found it easier to control one puppet university, Nasik because that was the health minister’s constituency.

To complete the picture, private medical schools in Maharasthra were also told by the government whom they must admit and what fees to charge!

As respected programs were demolished and replaced with an unknown and unwanted one, examination standards dropped; the new degree was even invalid internationally for several years. Doctors’ employability levels dropped further.

The result has been predictable. Lines to join medical school have been getting thinner. Growth in seats has stalled -- not one medical seat has been added in Mumbai in the past decade. Those already stuck in the system are leaving: fully half my graduating class has either migrated overseas, moved out of the clinical sciences or both.

Over a short span of ten years, vibrancy in medical education in Maharashtra was decimated, replaced by a deadening License Raj. A Raj of unmet demand, insufficient supply and poor quality.

But the divine law of supply and demand -- hated by the dirigiste state -- has caught up with Maharashtra. Over the next 20 years, Maharashtra will face a catastrophic shortage of medical doctors. This shortage will hit where it hurts most: public healthcare.

This catastrophe will not be easy to fix: it takes years to create a medical college of any standing (infrastructure, teachers, a working hospital) and nearly a decade to make a doctor (longer, if you include complex specialities).

By acting cynically to perpetuate their personal control over the sector, Maharashtra’s political leaders have virtually wiped out an entire generation of physicians, exposing her citizens to medical risk of institutional proportions.

They must be tried for criminal malpractice.

And yet, it is possible for Maharashtra to reverse the decay; i shall cover the topic in a separate post.