Surojit Mahalanobis,
Quality professionals in India do thankless jobs. It is often found that one’s penchant for perfection at work all life and contribution at imbibing peers and environment effectively in quality practices, are destined to be ignored when the standard of functioning actually settles to speak for itself. The real performers’ influences are forgotten, the followers who emulate are lauded.
Quality education has always been in the mind of the nation builders after independence, yet a number of bottlenecks at governance were the results of socio-political ambition and wrong decisions. It was essential to ensure that all citizens are empowered with good Quality of life, affordable Quality of nutrition and healthcare, good habitat, clean environment, Quality education with value system and productive employment. All these, if were instituted from reconstruction days soon after the Chinese aggression and War (1962), the comprehensive qualitative development of the nation would probably have been possible.
The government in 1997 instituted a functional standardization norm by starting a Quality Council of India (QCI). The outlook was lopsided: to ensure participation of people for achieving required targets of national growth through personal achievement and realising high national prosperity index. After over a decade, India still is talking about Quality or absence of it in every walk of life.
Former President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam simplified the confusion in his inaugural speech at 2nd National Quality Conclave in 2007 in the Capital. He stressed on his definition of Quality, as national prosperity index equal to GDP. He included Quality of life for all, coupled with intrinsic value system and value awareness.
The QCI was lauded for working for improvement of Quality systems in SMEs, accreditation of hospital management, enhancement of Quality programmes in medical and engineering education and creating a quantitative and qualitative measure of evaluation of services. Five years down the line, the QCI is still being hoped to interact with the government concerned, industries and institutions and assist them in implementing Quality norms in a time bound manner.
However, QCI worked more as a certifying body, recognizing the scientific research, educational expertise, excellence at incorporating systems in highways, transportation, (airports, railways, bus, sea ports etc) but still required much to do to create the correct awareness of Quality.
As Quality is a continual process, and cannot be broken if is ingrained in the workman’s psyche, Quality becomes natural if ingrained early through education and training of innate skill. Probably this is the thrust in the QCI’s decision to sign up with the oldest Quality training and educational body, American Society for Quality (ASQ). For the first time now onwards, it is widely felt, that QCI would stop remaining only a body to certify others efforts.
It is expected that QCI now would rise to take responsibility to train and educate officials in healthcare, governance, education, services and manufacturing sectors. If that happens, reforms which were aired by Rajiv Gandhi government in 1984 and instituted in 1990, would meet quality with a capital Q.
In education, for example, there is a huge mismatch between gross enrolment ratio and motivation for higher education. According to a UGC data, in India the GER in higher education (HE) is still 14% of eligible youth between 18 to 25 years.
The distance education major Indira Gandhi National Open University between 2004 to 2010 posted a record contribution to GER in HE at over 13%-14% of the national GER percentage, despite the fact that there are over 450 universities in the country today.
IGNOU’s success was possible because of efficient governance during the time, as the university enrolled from 1.5 million to 4.5 million, with an average enrolment of about 2 lakh students every year.
In 2009, the cycle system was introduced and the university started enrolling in two cycles (July and January). The GER figure rose to about 2.5 lakh students every year.
With increasing GER, revenues also grew manifold opportunities for future revenues, — such as through seminars, training assignments, hosting of national and international educational meetings of such government bodies like UGC, State Universities, technological entities, novel government projects, novel research projects, international tie-ups at costs to others, etc. IGNOU thrived both financially and educationally, spreading wings to as many as 36 partner institutions abroad, over 50 collaborations with world-class universities, and dual modes of teaching and certification.
The nation also rose to laud both leaders of these times — Dr HP Dikshit and Dr VN Rajasekharan Pillai. Throughout the nation, in the remotest of the remote parts, these two innovative professors inspired the academia of the subcontinent. IGNOU’ academic course materials were widely appreciated, followed, and copied silently throughout the subcontinent.
After the tenure of Dr Pillai, all the built-up quality flopped abysmally. Ask the insiders, there will come complaints that IGNOU today has lost its earnings, losing about Rs 30 lakh every year. Its GER has fallen to 10% or even less of the gross Indian GER in HE. For the first time in the history of the university, in 2011-2012 session, IGNOU failed to declare confirmed date schedules of June and December examinations, well in advance. Study materials failed to be published and distributed to the learners. All advances were to meet a stubborn bottlenecks at decision levels.
IGNOU’s Quality of Professor Dikshit and Professor Pillai’s times, turned into misfortune for those who were to take over temporarily, because it is often difficult to keep pace with Quality, if you were not habituated into it from the beginning.
There are three indicators at IGNOU now which would prove slip of Quality from the grip of its current managers. One, the university witnessed large-scale strikes by enrolled face-to-face students who stood to lose at the new management’s decisions. Students were morally supported by the concerned academics who with Dr Dikshit and Dr Pillai worked hand in hand for developing Quality Education in distance mode.
Two, the government’s empowered committee short-listed replacements for Dr Pillai, but all were rejected at the MHRD for various reasons. Today the MHRD has a tough call to take for a plausible replacement who would be able to successfully complete a five-year tenure as VC of the IGNOU, and ensure Quality in governance that matters most. Three, the university’s neglect of its study centres, its systemic backbone, which was being corrected during the tenures of Prof Dikshit and Prof Pillai
At another seminar former dean, IIT Kharagpur and a former Vice Chancellor of the AMU Professor M.N. Faruqui said that India’s abysmal lack of quality in education can be directly attributed to administration’s and teachers’ apathy. Excellence is not only about buildings and equipment. It’s also about the attitude and ambition as basic instincts.
(The author is Energy Editor, IPA)
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