For the past few years, I’ve always held the view that education may well be a bigger bottleneck in India’s growth story than infrastructure. But for some reason that I haven’t been able to fathom, the challenges India faces on education seldom receives the kind of attention it deserves. And it is evident from the string of politicians who were picked to head the Union HRD ministry. That’s one of the reasons why I was among the lot who cheered the appointment of Kapil Sibal as the Cabinet Minister for Human Resource Development.
(This story appears in the 16 April, 2010 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)
Sir a wonderful article. One of the myths of people is that for profit industries pepetually increase prices which goes against principals of free market which clearly establishes that the price of service or good (in this case education) in free market is an equilibrium price which is greater that monopoly price (IITians spending few thousands and getting world class education thanks to implicit subsidies) but less than oligopoly price where few large players crowd everyone out of the market. What we need is a banking sector like model where private, for profit,corporates, ngos any one can get into education. Each has to be rated like a credit rating agency and there should be a central education regulatory authority like RBI which can set priority sector norms like in banking sector.
on Apr 2, 2010Wonderful article. I agree with the author that the big / renowned / worthwhile universities will not setup shop in India in a hurry. Also, the author has made a very important suggestion of allowing for-profit education... I think that the vested political interest in this area is far too much to allow corporates to make meaningful contribution to this space. But how will this country grow after 10 years when half the population addition in the last 20 years does not know how to count? I think Kapil Sibal has a significant challenge of making for-profit education available. I bet that market forces will ensure price control.
on Apr 2, 2010