LETTERS

Issn 0012-9976
Ever since the rst issue in 1966, EPW has been Indias premier journal for comment on current affairs and research in the social sciences. It succeeded Economic Weekly (1949-1965), which was launched and shepherded by Sachin Chaudhuri, who was also the founder-editor of EPW. As editor for thirty-ve years (1969-2004) K rishna R aj gave EPW the reputation it now enjoys.

Privatising Schools
nand Teltumbdes article Keep Off Education (EPW, 8 June 2013) on the proposed privatisation of Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) schools is important because education cannot be left to the private sector; certainly not in the right to education (RTE) context. Education is a public good and not a tradable commodity as Teltumbde rightly mentions. Public-private partnerships (PPPs) in education are not new. In fact PPP in education dates back to the Travancore state, when from around 1865, private agencies received liberal grants to help expand basic education (K K George, George Zachariah and N Ajith Kumar (2002): Grant in Aid Policies and Practices towards Secondary Education in Kerala, NIEPA, New Delhi). This model, presumably being benecial, has expanded across most states, especially post-1980. Presently, between one-third to over one-half of schools are private-aided that charge a very minimal fee since the major cost of teacher salaries and some administrative overheads are provided by the state. However, a recent Pratham survey shows that the difference between BMC and private-aided schools in skills/ abilities is not very different both suffer from poor quality. So privatisation is unlikely to change quality and skills imparted. The question that needs to be addressed is why is it that education-based nongovernmental organisations (NGOS) and even the UNICEF are on this PPP bandwagon? The answer seems clear. There are huge public resources under RTE which the state/local government schools have failed (perhaps deliberately) to utilise and, with demand for education on the rise, the private sector, including service delivery NGOs, are waiting to grab this opportunity. In the 1970s and 1980s, when the aided schools policy was consolidated, there was a huge increase of such schools with the consequence that there was a huge migration from BMC schools to such aided schools. The middle classes deserted the well-run BMC schools and the latter became schools for the
june 22, 2013

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poor. This resulted in their neglect and led to their collapse any system just for the poor becomes a poor system. So this was the rst phase of privatisation, albeit with controls and regulation, assuring that the public good character of the schooling system was maintained. But what we are about to witness as part of neo-liberal reforms is a PPP which hinges around proteering from public resources. We need to prevent this. Even if we look at some of the existing aided schools, while they may not prot directly from education, they use the huge land and infrastructure with them acquired with state subsidy, to make prots by using it for lm and TV serial shootings, renting out for weddings and other sociocultural and trade events. So there are denite prots from a public resource going into private hands. This has never been under the scrutiny of a public audit. If BMC schools, many of which have huge lands and oor space index, are allowed to be privatised then it is going to be less about education and more about making prots from these assets once they are acquired by these private agencies as part of the takeover of BMC schools. This certainly must be stopped and we need strong civil society voices to oppose this. So kudos to Teltumbde for starting this debate. However one small advice for the author is that he should provide references for the data used in his article. We need to be sure that the data hold up. For instance, the per capita income for Mumbai and India quoted is perhaps at 2001 or 2004 prices and that should have been indicated because nominal per capita income for Mumbai today is very different.
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Success in Sports

he editorial (Gaming Indian Sports, 15 June 2013) correctly comments that in the hullabaloo over the sordid developments in the Indian Premier League (IPL), the role of sport and sport promotion in society has been forgotten. But some of its arguments remain questionable.
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LETTERS

For one, the undertone of the piece is that the popularity of cricket has come at the cost of other sports. If by some conjury all patronage to cricket were to go away, would it be replaced with a windfall for other sports? That aside, the editorial rests on the belief that crickets success has to do with its better organisation at the regional and junior levels. That might be so, especially since the past 30 years. But other sports, most prominently hockey and arguably football, had regional and junior-level competitions which drew crowds at one time. Why is it that these did not translate to success at the international level? Or in the case of hockey why did India fail to keep up at the international level? Though the edit does not go into all this, its line of argument assumes that terrible administration is the bane of Indian sports. True; but hackneyed. The rot is far deeper than bad administration. If this were the most important reason for poor sports, how could Indian cricket enjoy the success it does? And not just the senior team, the Indian junior cricket team has won three World Cups since 2000. But if you manage to secure the condence of a junior-level cricketer you will get to hear sordid tales of administrators. Many give up, and those who do not have to thank a good support structure that includes coaches who have not come through the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) system. It is such coaching, rather any state or national sport body initiative, that Indian cricket feeds on. Of course, the money (and fame) that cricket brings is a big motivator. But we should not forget that it is very hard competition. Only 30 to 40 cricketers at any given time can be BCCIs cash cows. Such coaching is holding up other sports too. Pullela Gopichand is turning out a good crop of badminton players who can hold their own at international competition. What has worked, in all sports, are coaches who have worked independently of state backing, at least to begin with. Many have used their success to push their way to state sporting bodies, but they retain their independence.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW

It is all too well to talk of rural sports bodies and infrastructure as the editorial does, but who is to ensure that these bodies do not suffer the rot that besets their compatriots at other levels. Are Panchayats any less venal than the larger Indian political system?
Kaushik Dasgupta
New Delhi

agriculture sector may, most likely, accelerate. Indias domestic consumptionled gross domestic product growth may have a positive effect reversing the scenario of a faltering economy. The impact of global factors may subside and satisfactory agriculture performance may provide a catalytic effect on the manufacturing and service sectors.
Archana Prashant Ghadi
Nasik

Growth May Revive

he editorial of 15 June 2013, The Faltering Economy, makes a valid point in identifying the reasons for the economy doing sluggishly in 2012-13. But the point is, why did the agriculture sector shrink from 7.7 % to 1.9%? Rainfall during the south-west monsoon (1 June30 September) in 2012 had been erratic and uneven. Out of 628 districts for which rainfall data were available, 62 districts (10%) received excess rainfall, 303 (48%) received normal rainfall, 235 (37%) received decient rainfall and 28 districts (5%) received scanty rainfall. Due to this erratic and decient rainfall, area under kharif crops declined as compared to the previous year. Coarse cereals and pulses, grown mostly in rain-fed conditions, suffered a major decline in the area under cultivation. These accounted for nearly 83% of the total decline in area under food crops. During the rst half of the 2012-13 scal, (April-October), exports ($167 billion) registered a negative growth of 6.2% over the corresponding period of the previous year. Imports ($277.1 billion) also registered a negative growth of 2.7%. As per the International Monetary Funds World Economic Outlook update of October 2012, world trade volume (goods and services) is projected to grow by 3.2% in 2012 as compared to 12.6% in 2010 and 5.8% in 2011. With the south-west monsoon expected to be normal this year, growth in the

Agricultural Universities

he current crisis at the Govind Ballabh Pant University of Agriculture and Technology, Pantnagar, Uttarakhand has prompted us to write this letter. The position of vice-chancellor of this university is vacant for the last two years; currently, ex-secretaries of the state are handling the universitys day-to-day affairs without providing any academic leadership. This university was the rst one to be established as a land grant pattern agricultural university in India in 1960. It achieved excellence, produced many outstanding scientists and made major contributions to the rst green revolution in India. However, during the last few decades, this university as well as most other state agricultural universities have been facing many constraints and the standards of teaching have gone down. We had written about it in EPW (Revitalising Higher Agricultural Education in India, J Challa, P K Joshi and Prabhakar Tamboli, 25 June 2011) and have been raising this issue in various publications and public fora, not just in India but globally. It is high time that decision-makers take prompt action to strengthen Indias higher education system for agriculture to meet the challenges of the 21st century.

P M Tamboli, Y L Nene
Secunderabad

Web Exclusives
The following article has been uploaded in the past week in the Web Exclusives section of the EPW website. It has not been published in the print edition. Read it at http://epw.in Delhi University and the Crisis in Indias Higher Education Arun Kumar Articles posted before 15 June 2013 remain available in the Web Exclusives section.

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Economic & Political Weekly

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EPW Economic & Political Weekly