Yash Pal: Too explosive?

New Delhi, April 2: Transparency is welcome, but opacity wins when the fear of embarrassment lurks — at least for the human resource development ministry.

A higher education review impacting the future of millions of Indian students was withdrawn by the government from its website barely a minute after being uploaded, as officers developed cold feet over its contents.

The HRD ministry uploaded the interim report of a review panel under former University Grants Commission chairman Yash Pal but then decided its contents were too explosive, top government officials said.

The reversal in plans to make the report public is the strongest indicator yet that the government is likely to reject or ignore most key recommendations of the panel.

The government panel’s report, which suggests a blueprint for the future evolution of Indian higher education, unleashes scathing criticism on the HRD ministry and other arms of the country’s education administration.

“We developed cold feet. The fear is wide public support for the massive changes suggested by the panel, which would make it very hard for the government to then ignore these recommendations,” a senior ministry source said, when asked why the report was withdrawn.

The Yash Pal panel had submitted the interim report to the ministry on March 1 and the ministry had assured the panel it would upload the report on its website and seek public comments.

The idea behind the move was to ask ordinary stakeholders, including students and teachers, for comments on the Yash Pal report before finalising the country’s future higher education policy. But the ministry has now decided to abort this plan, government sources said.

Instead, the HRD ministry is drafting its response to the panel’s report, where it will argue that while many of its recommendations are ideal, they are impractical to implement, the sources said.

As reported by this newspaper first, the panel recommended transforming the IITs into full-fledged universities — a proposal the IITs are uncomfortable with — and asked the government to stay away from vice-chancellor appointments.

Criticising the multiplicity of regulators in higher education, the panel has recommended that a single higher education commission be created that can either co-ordinate work of existing regulators or replace them.

At present, the UGC governs universities, the All India Council of Technical Education lords over engineering and management, the Medical Council of India regulates medical colleges and separate councils manage dentistry, pharmacy, nursing and architecture.

The panel has argued that the multiple regulators — each tightly controlling their fiefdom — do not allow for co-ordination between different streams of education, limiting cross-stream education and research.

As reported first by The Telegraph on February 8, 2009, the HRD ministry has already downgraded the panel from the stature of a review committee when it was set up to a body with clearly defined advisory powers only.

The panel is now called the Committee to Advise on Renovation and Rejuvenation of Higher Education.