No Dr Joshi, no Arjun Singh, no fake ideology, no Left- the UGC a three-letter word from hell!

Mr Shekhar Gupta has an excellent article in today’s Indian Express. The following are some of exciting paragraphs. But all I think is the distorting all economics of education. 

• “young India will be a qualified, productive, creative and joyful pride of the global community. 
  
• the licence-quota raj created self-inflicted scarcities of telephones, scooters and cooking gas, our utterly authoritarian, cynical and intellectually bankrupt………….. policy has created humongous shortages.  
  
• Fulbright scholars, are given hell by our Orwellian (or you could coin an Indian equivalent, Arjunian, Murlimanoharian) HRD establishment. 
  
• do advertise for a security guard on naukri.com and see how many applications you get from MAs, MScs, even PhDs. 
  
• What brand name can Indian social sciences and the liberal arts boast of?  
  
• lack of intellectual freedom, diversity of thought and opinion. The few social science centres that we have, therefore, produce clones. Usually these are clones of professors steeped in the heady ideologies of the ’70s incapable or unwilling to notice that the “revolution” has passed them by. JNU is a perfect example. 
  
• This shortage, this criminal undersupply of quality education, is the most cruel atrocity on a society blessed with so much intellect, and such respect and longing for education. 
  
• This undersupply of quality education at all levels is entirely self-inflicted, and unnecessary. Every year we see a scramble for private and even central schools admissions, court cases, madness of 90 percenters failing to get into even economics and English honours in our better colleges (actually just about 10 all over India). And the definition of “better” college here is where at least classes are held regularly since the UGC, a three-letter word from hell or Kim Il-Sung’s North Korea, won’t even let a college charge its pupils more if they were willing to pay, or pay its teachers more than the salaries it mandates. The result then is the phenomenon you see on your TV screen all day. The advertisement telling you that India’s largest private university is Lovely Professional University in Punjab, of course with UGC certification. Now, why pick on a name, you might ask? The Americans have business schools named after Kellogg and, who knows, perhaps Mickey Mouse. But comparisons should stop about here.”