The Ministry of Human Resources Development’s recent decision of hiking the annual tuition fees for the undergraduate courses at the IITs has raised a lot of eyebrows. The ministry has announced that the annual fee for the general category will be hiked from Rs. 90,000 to Rs. 2 lakh.
However, there will be a total fee waiver for the differently-abled and students belonging to the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes and weaker sections. Delhi’s students express their views.
Debayudh Chatterjee, MPhil, University of DelhiWhile the caste system perpetuates oppression and inequality in India, class also plays a factor.
Any decision to waive and subsidise fees for the backward general category students at par with the SC/ST students would certainly help in bridging that inequality.
But increasing fees for the other students would undoubtedly come as a burden for the middle class that comprise a major stratum in the Indian system.
At the same time, it is necessary to look into the demands of the OBC students, who, as per the latest guidelines in the Jawaharlal Nehru University, have been deprived.
Arijeet Mandal, PhD, University of DelhiThe privatisation of education sector is gaining its momentum keeping pace with foreign investments and corporate franchise. The new fees hike for IIT is just one of the ways in which it has manifest itself.
The rich can now buy education, and perhaps fill up the seats which the other sections cannot afford. This system will create a two-fold problem.
Firstly, the number of people who will have to take education loans will increase greatly. This means that a potential number of students will graduate with a ready economic handicap.
Secondly, the exemption for SC/ST and economically deprived students will hardly hold water in a premiere institution as IIT. Getting a waiver only works if you can reach the doors of the said institution.
In a poor economy as ours, we see a large number of the poor, dalits and other minorities dropping out of education early in their life. Therefore, it is but a token gesture from the government, almost like a double bluff.
A rigged game where you have to belong to a layer, belong to the choicest few to even get a chance to roll the dice.
Devika N., PhD, Jawaharlal Nehru UniversityWe have all been witnessing a united students’ movement in the past one year against fund-cuts in education, caste discrimination in institutions and against ‘brahmanism’ in education. There has been a rapid withdrawal of State funding from educational institutions accompanied by privatisation of education. Even the present fee hike in IITs for general category students should be seen in this context of fund-cuts.
This is indeed something that would cause distress and rage among many students, and let us not be blinded; this is precisely what the ruling dispensation wants. Education is our fundamental right and it is the role of the government to ensure that. Instead, if they continue to smother students through sky rocketing fee hikes and policies intended to exclude those coming from deprived sections, we will not be quiet. What good is education if we cannot critically challenge such structural forms of discrimination and exclusion?
