What the robot reveals about India’s education

Regulatory gaps and rising commercialisation necessitate a greater focus on adaptability and social purpose

While the nation was attracted to the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi and distracted by the horrendous claims of a university on developing a robodog that was, in fact, imported from China, a different kind of attention was focused on twins who passed out with flying colours in the entrance exams that serve as the admissions gateway to the much-vaunted Indian Institutes of Technology. One is the story of lies presented in plain sight. The other is the story of achievement that comes after much effort and sacrifice, most of it in what has come to be called the exam coaching factories of Kota, Rajasthan, which is troubling in its own way. One is seen as everything that is wrong with India; the other as a high-water mark of Indian technical excellence, claimed by and accorded to institutions like the IITs.

The twin candidates will hopefully go on to do well and make their parents and the nation proud. Yet the two stories – failure of one kind and achievement of another – are equally problematic for an India that has an ever-increasing number of STEM graduates but a very poor showing in terms of creativity, innovation or world-class solutions that can justify the investments the nation and the students make in passing through an Indian university.

We have pilloried the private university that claimed a Rs-350 crore investment in AI-related infrastructure, but some troubling issues ride alongside. How do our regulators allow a university to function with almost every leadership position, academic and administrative, occupied by a member of the promoter family? How does patent filing become a game, as alleged in this case, or how does a paper authored under the university on banging vessels to kill the Coronavirus get written? The incident brought to sharp light how India has slipped into an education system run on high fees by private institutions with questionable credentials. Apart from a few exemplars in the private sector or the public sector institutions that have held up despite immense strain on resources and academic freedom, much cannot be said about the rest of the higher education sector in India.

This is worrying because an increasing number of students study in private institutions. The skew plays out in complex ways by adding glamour and compromising rigour, while the falling investments in public education take opportunities away from those who cannot afford to pay the demanding private sector fees.

Official data from 2021-22, the latest available, shows that government universities are 58.6% of total universities, with 73.7% of total enrolment. Private universities (41.4%), autonomous, degree-granting, and typically with fees at far higher levels, account for 26.3% of total enrolment, and are growing. But this is not the complete picture. Private aided and unaided colleges are 78.5% of total colleges. This leads to the case that the majority of India’s higher education is in some form of private sector institution.

What this incident with its shock value highlights is simple: in the absence of strict norms and regulations, education will become (like hospitals already have) money-spinners for a few while the bulk of India will remain uneducated, and therefore, not equipped to support the nation’s growth aspirations.

Watching the education sector is particularly significant as India prepares to implement the New Education Policy (NEP) with its expansive vision of education that is equitable, multi-disciplinary, holistic, and rooted in the Indian ethos. These goals are less likely to be reached without public investment and some reorientation towards a balanced view that makes education thrive as a public good and is accessible to all.

Skilled without imagination?

Yet it is unmissable that STEM education, particularly of the celebrated variety, has become an end in itself, as witnessed by the pressures, the cramming, and the hard labour young adults are put through in the training camps and IIT prep schools of Kota and elsewhere. In the celebrations after the twin brothers from Odisha came up with identical scores in the joint entrance exam (JEE) last week, we saw pictures of what was won but also what was lost – the children were put through a lot to fetch the scores that, it is believed, will change their lives (and bring more money to the prep centre the next cycle). But engineers in particular have to reorient in the age of AI.

As AI does all the tech work that was once the domain of engineers, it is only the vision of the NEP that can come to the rescue. We need to build holistically rounded students who can adapt and shine in the new world. Technical knowledge in the absence of context, values, and a community gearing, with the idea of serving the self and using the degree to rush for a job across the shores, is not aligned with the ideals of the NEP. In a fast-changing world, it will not serve the tech specialists either.

The philosopher Martha Nussbaum explains it rather well: “The educational culture of India used to contain progressive voices, such as that of the great Tagore, who emphasised that all the skills in the world were useless, even baneful, if not wielded by a cultivated imagination and refined critical faculties. Such voices have now been silenced by the sheer demand for profitability in the global market. Parents want their children to learn marketable skills, and their great pride is the admission of a child to the Indian Institutes of Technology or the Indian Institutes of Management... I fear for democracy down the road, when it is run, as it increasingly will be, by docile engineers... unable to criticise the propaganda of politicians and unable to imagine the pain of another human being.”

(The writer is a journalist and faculty member at SPJIMR; Syndicate: The Billion Press)

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)