Different kinds of cities are on the rise. In the larger environment of ‘smart city’ promotions, with more than seven thousand crore pumped in by the central government, the south western state of Kerala is pitching in more. After the much advertised Kochi ‘smart city’, which in effect was an instance of pumping in capital, especially through state-land into corporate market, here comes a more problematic deal. Through the state Higher Education Council of Kerala (HEC), a Global Education Meet is on.
Once again, with the fetish of Dubai models, like the Academic City, the government seeks to throw open another (ever more!) treasure trove for private capital; education. With the self financing systems, management college dictated regimes, bribe – based ( this has fast become the norm in most place and is often known as ‘donations’ but bereft of the idea of gift or agency conveyed by the root idea ‘donare’) college intakes and ‘autonomies’; the ground was already set for such a fiasco. The officialdom uses ideas like that of hub, skill based partnerships, relevant to industry models (and concomitant rejection of the irrelevant to industries people / ideas- isn’t this the function of such ‘responsible’ governments??), and yes ideas of Special Export Processing Zones and all kinds or ‘real estate’ tongue (the higher education policy document could well be mistaken for a desktop pamphlet for DLF or Confident group of builders) to push in this totally OFF-EDUCATION agenda. There is more to this entire game, like single window clearances, PPP models…
And on top of this they project all of this as if it is about education as it happens in serious universities across the world. Nothing could be further from the truth. If things go on track, we can soon start hearing about legislations, land grabs, and gated community advertisements; all to finishing schools for private industries.
One must add that ‘models’ are a highly problematic concept unless clarified. Models are not supposed to take into consideration the formidable differences in the way things run from place to place. So there are crucial questions that arise from the Dubai model itself; like the problems with their educational zones, the different priorities in infrastructure, a highly different educational history.
If one does not keep close watch and act on such exercises like the Global Education Meet, which seeks to release the field of education for more profit mongering, with such totally un-educational ideas like repatriation of profit for the investor (by the way investments, knowledge transfers- KTs, and soft skills will now masquerade as academics) and tax exemptions for land and buildings; more disasters will follow right after autonomy-gala.
The word autonomy conveyed the idea of academic autonomy with state support as in world’s best universities or the best within the sub continent like the JNU/ or IITs (as they used to be!). Now there are only a few who manages to be innocent enough not to realize the fact that this is all about…administrative autonomy…administrative autonomy….administrative autonomy…and nothing else, and in its worst forms. Likewise the word ‘education’ in the Global Education Meet needs to come off the possible illusions.
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