Women participation in higher education of India: the enrolment scenario
The role of education in development of the economy is well established. Since independence, the contribution of investments made by the government in higher education has been substantial however post 1980s there has been a decline in the same. Access, equity, women participation and empowerment have been an issue of deliberations all around the world. Higher education provided to women would mean independence in decision making and economic independence. It would develop capabilities to discharge duties and responsibilities in the fields of social, economic, political and cultural arenas. The objective of the study is to highlight the trend of women enrolment in different faculties of higher education and understand its contribution towards women empowerment. This study is based on secondary data available from Census of India, Selected Educational Statistics, UGC annual reports and research articles. The limitations to the study are inadequacy of the data and variance in the data available from different sources. At the end, conclusions and suggestions are presented.
Indian Higher Education Reform: From Half- Baked Socialism to Half-Baked Capitalism
This paper examines the political economy of Indian higher (tertiary) education. We first provide an empirical mapping of Indian higher education and demonstrate that higher education in India is being de facto privatized on a massive scale. But this privatization is not a result of changing ideological commitments of the key actors—the state, the judiciary or India’s propertied classes. Rather, this privatization has resulted from a breakdown of the state system and an exit of Indian elites from public institutions, to both private sector institutions within the country as well as abroad. Private philanthropy in higher education, which was supportive of public institutions in the past, is also increasingly withdrawing its support. Consequently the ideological and institutional underpinnings of this form of privatization remain exceedingly weak. The paper questions the extent to which the political economy of Indian higher education can be explained by the hypothesis of “middle class capture” and suggests that education policy, far from serving the interests of the middle class, is actually driven by a combination of ideology and vested interests. We also examine the role of the judiciary in shaping the regulatory landscape of Indian higher education and argue that it an important actor shaping the regulatory landscape of higher education, but in a manner that has done as much to confuse as clarify. Instead of being part of a comprehensive program of education reform, private initiatives remain hostage to the discretionary actions of the state. As a result, the education system remains suspended between over-regulation by the state on the one hand, and a discretionary privatization that is unable to mobilize private capital in productive ways. The result is a sub-optimal structuring of higher education. The most potent consequence of this is a secession of the middle class—ironically the very class whose interests these institutions were supposed to serve—from a stake in public institutions.
Unburdening the Constitution: What Has the Indian Constitution Got to Do With Private Universities, Modernity and Nation-States
This article critically analyses the decision of the Indian Supreme Court in Yashpal and another v. State of Chhattisgarh and others holding the establishment of private universities as unconstitutional. Swayed by the overwhelmingly irresponsible character of the respondent universities, the Supreme Court innovated constitutional arguments to uphold the claims of the petitioners. While intuitively correct in the context of the immediate facts, the judgment, when analysed in the abstract, reveals the self-inflicted harm it has the potential to cause. The judgment is technologically regressive: it fails to account for the emerging trends in education, especially those related to the use of technology and in particular about the emergence of e-education. It is also unconstitutional: it purports to add grounds for judicial review of primary legislation that agreeably is a constituent rather than an adjudicative act. Finally, it is backward looking: it proposes to reintroduce a moralizing rhetoric in the conduct of education, thereby, paving way for poorer educational standards in India. Underlying these distinct inadequacies is a common inability of the Supreme Court to de-link the university as a "project of modernity" from its status as "the ideological apparatus of the nation-state." Universities, for the Indian Supreme Court, are still an embodiment of the "popular will" and, therefore, incapable of being appropriated.