Your cover story ‘Fees freeze destroying Indian academia’ (EW July) was an eye opener. It’s incredible that tuition fees in some of India’s top colleges such as St. Stephen’s, Delhi and Presidency, Kolkata are as minimal as Rs.30 per month. But the real shocker is Delhi University where the tuition fee of Rs.18 per month has remained unchanged for the past 60 years. This needs to go down in Ripley’s Believe it or Not! But as Summiya Yasmeen writes in her well-researched story, freezing tuition fees for decades has had a disastrous effect on the quality of education delivered in India’s over-subsidised colleges and universities. Forever strapped for cash and dependent on grudging government grants, higher education institutions simply don’t have the resources to provide world-class education and academic facilities. Little wonder that none of our varsities figure in the rankings of the top 500 universities of the world. It’s time the student community wised up that you get what you pay for! It’s surprising that even tertiary level students don’t understand that quality education comes at a price. Savitri Shah Delhi Indisputable rationale Thanks for making the case for a Central Madarsa Board in your special report (EW July). There’s little doubt that Muslims in India are socially, economically and educationally backward. Especially in the Hindi heartland states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, their status is worse than Dalits and scheduled castes and tribes. A combination of ignorance and poverty has forced many poor Muslim parents to shun government schools in favour of madarsas. They send their children to madarsas with the expectation that they will receive religious and mainstream education. But that’s not the case as the curriculums in these institutions are arbitrarily drawn up by mullahs, and impart little secular and/or vocational learning. Setting up a Central Madarsa Board akin to CBSE will not only standardise madarsa curric-ulums but will make their certification acceptable to higher educational institutions. I’m sure no right-thinking Muslim can dispute the rationale of a board whose objective is provision of quality secular education to Muslim children. The Muslim middle class hasn’t openly been in favour of the Central Madarsa Board for fear of the bigoted Muslim clergy, who at the drop of a hat issue fatwas. This fear of being castigated by the clergy and humiliated in the community for being anti-Islamic has prevented the Muslim middle class from speaking up in favour of the madarsa board. Zulfikar Ali Mumbai Unjustified complaint It was very interesting to read your special report ‘Curious case of India’s unemployable engineers’ (EW June). The clamour for better quality from colleges is partially justifiable but industry on its part does little other than shout at the top of its voice. To put things in perspective, I have industry experience of 30 years and am currently teaching in a private engineering college affiliated with the Visveshwaraiah Technical University, Bangalore. Today everybody seems to think ‘industry’ is synonymous with the software industry. Although it is a fact that 90 percent of engineers are employed…
