The Hindu Business Line : Meddling game: Murli Manohar vs Margaret Thatcher

Judges are getting busy with balance sheets of B-schools and parents are counting on surpluses in fee account, even as blue chip honchos are fighting a losing battle to resurrect what seems to be a gone case.

There could be no better time to read An Encounter with Higher Education, by I. G. Patel, published by Oxford University Press (www.oup.com). The blurb has some explosive lines to hook one's interest: "Government should get out of the business of higher education in all matters other than financing. To make an educational institution truly world class one needs an ethos and a sense of mission."

Though the book is about his association with the London School of Economics as director, Patel recounts his days with IIM Ahmedabad, as its director and, more recently, as the chairman of its governing body.

An appendix to the book is a monograph titled, "The IIM (A) in 1984 — at the crossroads?" something worthy of re-reading almost two decades later. "I did not accept the LSE offer because I was unhappy at the IIM (A)," writes Patel. "I had a lot of labour trouble at the Institute. But the RBI had prepared me for it." Remember, he was its Guv. "Some of the teachers were a pain; but that was in the nature of things. I value greatly my association with the IIM (A)."

He showers praise: "It is still one of the finest educational institutions in the world. Its professorial staff is still among the best in Asia; and about our students I am prepared to go even further and say that they are among the best in the world."

After some nostalgic reference to Louis Kahn campus, parading peacocks, the culture of academic freedom and "devotion to excellence as well as relevance."

In his first year at the LSE, Patel found that the greatest challenge was financial, caused by `the mounting meanness of Margaret Thatcher's government particularly with regard to the withdrawal of support to foreign students'.

Elsewhere, however, Patel writes: "Alas, in India, the governments of all hues were more meddlesome than Margaret Thatcher."

The semi-biographical book meanders through many anecdotes such as how there were more Patels than Smiths in the London telephone directory; about the down-to-earth advice that Dr Amartya Sen gave him on the need to have medical insurance and a solicitor; and so forth.

`The Grand Debate' begins in chapter 5. The author raises some basic questions: What is higher education? What makes higher education `higher'? "There is no reason why useful and enjoyable knowledge cannot be given outside universities and may not include even tailoring or cooking combined with other more traditional subjects like literature, history, or mathematics."

Coming to the tricky financing issue, "Social usefulness is a necessary argument for government finance," but it is "not a sufficient argument". How? "Even cars are useful. We do not expect governments to finance them. There has to be additionally what economists would call externalities or benefits which cannot be appropriated by individual students to justify public financing."

A prescription-set that the author proposes goes as follows: "At the highest academic level, where creativity is important, individual rights should take a second place to merit and social needs... At the postgraduate level, recurrent costs can be recovered by fees and ample provision for loans should be made. At the undergraduate level, students should be financed by grants to cover a substantial part of the cost."

Is there a place for elitist institutions in a democracy? It is a `dilemma' that `will have to resolved' writes Patel. "We have to create public opinion in favour of a few world class educational institutions as a vital part of national policy. It is not just national wealth and or security that rest on such a foundation. Self-esteem, social harmony, values of decency, and the appreciation of finer things of life also rest on scholarship of the highest order."

A book that may act as a mercy petition before the axe finally falls on the autonomy of the IIMs.

Economics@TheHindu.co.in

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