August 1, 2024
Saugata Ray’s speech during the discussion and voting on the demands for grants under the control of the Ministry of Education for 2024-25
Thank you, Sir. I shall be very brief because I have very little time. I would like to say that education in India has dwindled to a bad situation. Currently, India has nearly 50,000 colleges and 1,100 universities. Fifty per cent of them are in the private sector. Education has become a place to make money by big capitalists. But this expansion in education shows lack of quality and uniformity. Dear Member, would you let the Minister listen to my speech? मंत्री जी, आप कृपया मेिीबात सन ु ें। I mentioned in the House the other day that there are no worldclass institutions in India. BJP has got so much time. Why can you not build a single Oxford or Cambridge or Harvard or MIT or a University of California? Even you have not brought a university of the standard up to Singapore’s National University or the Beijing University. Unless you can improve the standard of education in higher educational institutions, our best students will go abroad. Last year, I mentioned that 8,96,000 students went abroad from India. This is a brain drain which ought to be stopped. I also want to mention that … ैंसीरियस बातेंयहां बोल िहा ह ं, आप कृपया उनको सह ु नए। … आप तो डॉक्टिटै ह, ैं लेहकन कहां स, े मैंउसकेबािेमेंयहां नहींबोलना चाहता ह ं।वह महुआ जी बोलेंगी। I want to mention that Budget Estimate for Education is only 2.7 per cent of GDP. It got reduced from 2.9 per cent in 2022-2023 to 2.7 per cent. Now, one has to remember that according to UNESCO and World Bank studies, every dollar invested in primary education returns 15 to 25 per cent. So, how can you expect the standard in India to improve with such meagre allocation for education? As Prof. Amartya Sen never tires of speaking that unless you can improve primary education and health, the country will never go forward. India’s educational sector ranks 39th out of 67 countries in the IMD World Competitiveness Rankings 2024. I would like the Education Minister — as he has got five years at hand if the Government lasts — to at least make one world-class university that can compare with the best in the world. Otherwise, what is the point of having so many IITs, IIMs, IISERs, etc. at Central level? You are giving money, but you are not producing quality, and without quality you cannot compete. You would say that well, Indians are doing so well abroad. There is one Sundar Pichai in Google and one Satya Nadella in Microsoft, but most of the Indians who are going abroad are working as cyber coolies in American multinationals. This should stop. Lastly, I want to make a request to the Education Minister. I am told that you have influence in the … Why do not you persuade the … to stop interference in education? … सि, मैंनेक्या गलत बोला है? Sir, … has changed the history textbook. … They have omitted the Mughal period from our history. … They have destroyed our university. There was one Vice Chancellor of Visva Bharati University, by name … who installed two plaques for Santiniketan, in which he wrote only his name and Shri Narendra Modi’s name. It is a matter of shame. … You have one … who is a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT. He was made the Chairman of the UGC. Why? It is because he was recommended by the … You cannot run the universities with such type of people. … Education needs quality, not quantity. Education does not need political underpinnings. I ask the hon. Education Minister. He has got a good chance. He has won for the first time from Sambalpur. … Let him show some courage and get the … out of all this. …
