There’s no denying that the septuagenarian union  minister for human resource development Arjun Singh  is a man of strong will and determination. An unrepentant statist cast in the Nehruvian control-and-command mould, when in P.A Inamdar’s Case (2005) the Supreme Court reiterated the right of privately promoted, unaided colleges of professional education to regulate admissions and tuition fees without interference from the Central and state governments, Singh struck back by piloting a constitutional amendment nullifying the apex court’s judgement. Subsequently citing the unanimous approval of Parliament to the (93rd) amendment, Singh insisted upon an additional 27 percent reserved quota in Central government education institutions for OBCs (other backward castes) — a proposal no politician of any political party dared oppose. Moreover in keeping with his pro-downtrodden castes image earlier this year, he appointed Dr. Sukhadeo Thorat, a professor of agriculture economics at JNU as the University Grants Commission’s first Dalit chairman.

Thorat’s unexpected appointment as UGC chairman was widely interpreted as a setback for Dr. Rajasekharan Pillai, vice chairman of the commission since 2003 who was expected to succeed Dr. Arun Nigavekar who completed his four year term as UGC chairman in early 2006. But to Arjun Singh’s credit, he is not unmindful of proven talent. In mid October Pillai, a former vice-chancellor of the Mahatma Gandhi University, Kerala and founder chairman of the National Accreditation and Assessment Council who won golden opinions in these two assignments, was appointed vice-chancellor of the Delhi-based IGNOU (Indira Gandhi National Open University), which with its 1.8 million (distance learning) students is billed as the world’s largest varsity.

A distinguished molecular scientist in his own right, Pillai is reportedly delighted with his latest assignment. So after languishing in the shadows for several years, it’s a case of all’s well that ends well for this unpushy but brilliant academic.

Empty autonomy

In the ivory towers of indian academia the more things change the more they remain the same. This bitter-sweet truth is being experienced first hand by the managements of two of Bangalore’s top-ranked colleges which are belatedly trying to escape the smothering embrace of Bangalore University (BU) — once respected countrywide but now a hothouse of mediocrity overrun by quasi-literate academics with political connections rather than scholastic qualifications.

Earlier this year there was considerable campus euphoria in the garden city’s St. Joseph’s and all-women Mt. Carmel colleges, which many years after they first applied, were granted academic autonomy by the Delhi-based University Grants Commission. Within India’s rigidly state-controlled higher education system, the conferment of academic autonomy enables college managements to devise their own curriculums, introduce job-oriented diploma programmes and conduct their own exams, although the degrees awarded to graduates of even autonomous colleges, are of the affiliating university. Nevertheless conferment of academic autonomy is tantamount to acknowledgment of consistently superior academic standards maintained by the college, and frees it from micro-management by the affiliating university.

But more than six months later, the frustrated managements of the two colleges are discovering that notwithstanding the UGC imprimatur, BU is unwilling to cut the umbilical chord. BU dons are not only insisting upon minute supervision of the curriculums of the two colleges, but are also demanding quotas for university nominated students into the colleges’ postgrad and diploma programmes. Caught between a pro-varsity state government which pays their salary bills (and therefore dictates tuition fees) and BU which confers the degree certificates, autonomous college managements are discovering that the control-and-command culture has struck deep roots in the groves of Indian academia and that wresting autonomy requires more than a mere decree from Delhi.

Divided city

What a fall is there my countrymen! the garden city of Bangalore which two decades ago was the most aspirationally westernised city in India has rapidly transformed into one of the country’s most regressive urban habitations. A city of glaring paradoxes, on the one hand thanks to the entirely unaided efforts of pioneers of its IT (information technology) industry, it is perhaps the most famous Indian city worldwide and boasts a plethora of hi-tech shopping malls which have sprung up to pander to the multiplying millionaires of India’s silicon valley.

Yet beneath its glittering façade it is a deeply divided city, seething with sub-nationalism and rising tensions between its upwardly mobile, highly skilled westernised professionals and an incompetent administration swamped by quasi-literate first generation rural migrants. Disadvantaged by the sub-standard education dispensed by rural Karnataka’s government schools where the teaching of English in primary school was a criminal offence until a few months ago, politicians and bureaucrats who constitute the state administration have carted their baggage of pernicious corruption, casteism and anti-modernisation mindset of rural India into India’s fastest growing city.

This is the socio-economic backdrop against which a vicious assault on the 19-year-old son of fashion guru Prasad Bidappa by policemen on the premises of an upmarket bar lounge has generated great indignation and divided citizens of the garden city. According to the police, the bar lounge was open beyond the prescribed time of 11.30 p.m and when they entered the premises, young Bidappa remonstrated against them.

Surprisingly the local media hasn’t bought the more credible version that the cops as per custom randomly arrested some customers and demanded money with menaces and when young Bidappa protested, he was set upon.

At the bottom of a rash of similar incidents, is the seething sub-nationalism of rural migrants denied a share of the city’s new wealth because of poor education. This has translated into deep resentment of new-age businesses and industries which have made this city globally famous. Beneath its glitzy exterior, Bangalore is a city unravelling at the seams.