Lost the plot?

The secret behind the widespread persistence of licence-permit-control raj within the Indian economy, notwithstanding a mountain of rhetoric about liberalisation and deregulation of the Indian economy since 1991, is the ability of the Delhi durbar to seduce and co-opt reformers into the spoils-rich system.The latest victim of the Delhi establishment seems to be reformer par excellence Satyen (ƒš‹“Samƒšž) Pitroda who engineered Indiaƒšžs astonishing telecom revolution of the past decade and reportedly also the Congress partyƒšžs unexpected triumph in the general election 2004. In 2005 Pitroda was appointed chairman of a newly-constituted, high-powered National Knowledge Commission (NKC) with the brief to suggest a radical makeover of the countryƒšžs moribund education system ƒš‚ primary, secondary and tertiary. During the past year, despite some initial teething troubles, the commission has made several overdue and common-sense recommendations to deregulate and free collegiate and university education from the dead hand of politicians.But recently alarm bells have started ringing within liberal circles and establishments ƒš‚ EducationWorld includedƒš‚ following an astonishingly hare-brained suggestion made by Pitroda “for enabling and regulating mechanisms for private schools”. In a letter dated February 3 addressed to prime minister Manmohan Singh and also marked to socialist-style control freak Union HRD minister Arjun Singh, Pitroda inter alia recommends “the monitoring of private schools in terms of ensuring a transparent admissions process, regulation of fee structures as well as meeting set standards for quality of teaching and infrastructure” ƒš‚ a regulatory process eerily similar to that which governs admission and fees in the countryƒšžs bedevilled institutions of professional (medical, engineering and business management) education. Within Indian academia and NKC, speculation is rife as to how this regressive recommendation which would bring the countryƒšžs best-performing institutions of education ƒš‚ its high performance private schools ƒš‚ under government control, was inserted in NKCƒšžs carefully drafted 15-point February 3 letter to the PM. Meanwhile there are growing fears that Pitroda has lost the plot and has succumbed to the Circe-like charms of the establishment. Forced philanthropyThe foundation stone laying ceremony of a multi-crore class I-XII school in Daulatpur, a small village in Uttar Pradeshƒšžs dirt poor Barabanki district (52 km from Lucknow), on January 28 by Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan en famille, was a big ticket event which attracted a huge crowd including former chief ministers Chandrababu Naidu and Mulayam Singh Yadav. At full capacity scheduled to be attained in 2009, the Srimati Aishwarya Bachchan Mahavidyalaya (named after his daughter-in-law, a superstar in her own right) will provide class I-XII free-of-charge education to 200 girl children from Barabanki and neighbouring districts.But Bachchanƒšžs commitment to the cause of educating the districtƒšžs girl children would have drawn greater appreciation if the cloud of a land scam spanning Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra hadnƒšžt hovered above it.To purchase a salubrious farm property spread over 24 scenic acres in Maval on the Mumbai-Pune highway, under Maharashtraƒšžs archaic property laws, Bachchan was obliged to prove he had farming antecedents. No problem. The friendly Mulayam Singh Yadav government which was in power in Uttar…