In his latest book, The Nehru Development Model: History and its Lasting Impact (2024), Arvind Panagriya, professor of Indian political economy at Columbia University and currently Chairman of the 16th Finance Commission, makes a convincing case that half century after the pathetic failure of the control-and-command Nehruvian socialist national development model, the spirit of neta-babu socialism is still alive in the corridors of power in Delhi and state capitals, shady bowers of academia and the media. 

This perhaps explains a curious editorial (April 22) titled ‘Class Oppression’ in the venerable Times of India — “the world’s largest selling English language daily” — in which its learned editors excoriated India’s private schools which mentor 46 percent of the country’s 260 million in-school children. “Private schools charging exorbitant sums under numerous heads are now a routine nightmare for families. Some media reports say school fees have gone up 50-80 percent over three years. Even at half that rate of increase, it’s shockingly high,” thunders the editorial which invites government intervention for this “regulatory void”.

One would have thought that experience of 77 years of government controls over business and industry and education has made the ToI editors aware that government regulation is a prescription for runaway retail corruption. 

The obvious solution to rising tuition fees in private schools is to raise teaching-learning standards in the country’s free-of-charge 1 million government schools funded by the tax-paying public. In the UK and US, a mere 6-7 percent of children avail private school education as against 46-48 percent in India. The ToI editorial doesn’t say a word about the glaring infirmity of the public education system. Panagriya is right, gobbledygook socialism is alive and kicking within the establishment, media included.