In my four decades-plus and counting career as a development journalist (Business India, BusinessWorld and EducationWorld) I have consistently advocated the virtues of competition and more competition in business and academia. Therefore, I was always opposed to public sector monopoly enterprises promoted by the Central and state governments, and restricted competition within the private sector as mandated under the Soviet-inspired socialist national development model. Fortunately, your editor’s strident advocacy of abolition of State monopolies and licence-permit-quota raj contributed towards liberalisation and deregulation of Indian industry in 1991 and subsequently. As a result, the Indian economy leapt out of the 3.5 percent annual GDP growth groove in which it was mired for half a century after independence and has averaged 6-7 percent ever since.
Similarly, when I switched from business to education journalism with the promotion of EducationWorld on the eve of the new millennium, one of our early initiatives was to launch the annual EducationWorld India School Rankings (EWISR) in 2007, to introduce an element of inter-school competition so that they would strive for holistic education excellence. Since then, the annual EWISR has become increasingly sophisticated and evolved into the largest and most comprehensive national schools ratings and ranking initiative worldwide.
The next logical step towards improving national education standards is to evaluate how competitive our children are internationally following the example of our cricket, hockey and sports contingents. That is why the Union government’s decision to opt out of PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) 2022, a global reading, science and math attainments test for 15-year-olds, is disappointing. Especially as in 2019, the BJP government at the Centre had expressed firm resolve to participate in this global test designed by developed OECD countries in which teens from 81 countries participated. The causes and consequences of non-participation are discussed in our cover story.
The second lead feature of this first issue of 2024 is also about infusing international competition in higher education. After dithering over the issue for over two decades, government has permitted foreign universities to establish campuses in India. But the terms and conditions of entry are onerous and discretionary, and unlikely to enthuse top-ranked universities, especially in the US, to accept this half-hearted invitation. They tend to take the issue of academic autonomy seriously.
There’s a lot else in this content-rich first issue of 2024. Check out the first of our new series of despatches written by Dr. Larry Arnn from the US. Also the Expert Comment essay by veteran columnist Sudheendra Kulkarni just back from a lecture tour of China, interview with Nitish Jain, promoter-CEO of the transnational SP Jain School of Global Management, and review of Arun Shourie’s latest book.
Very best wishes for 2024!
