Why Are We Rolling Out Red Carpet For Foreign Universities?

GREAT GAME 2.0: The UGC’s proposed plan for opening up India’s education sector further comes amid an unreported foreign corporation-led recolonisation of various sectors of the Indian economy.

April 1, 2023

Two years ago, the national children’s rights body alleged that church schools in India had violated the Right to Education Act, cornering Rs 2,500 crore in the 2017-18 period by denying free seats to poor children. The NCPCR (National Commission for Protection of Child Rights) had reportedly detected that almost 13,000 church schools defied a mandate under the Act to earmark 25% of their seats for kids from economically weaker sections or EWSs.

Many of those schools, notwithstanding the impeccable quality of English-medium education they impart across India, are a legacy of centuriesold church missions that had once upon a time zeroed in on the Indian subcontinent from Europe to anglicise the native culture.

That chapter was about church schools. Now, fast forward to 2023. The NCPCR’s warning bells about the impunity with which some schools with an overseas legacy can operate seem to have fallen on deaf ears. On January 5, the UGC (University Grants Commission) floated a proposition that could pave the way for FHEIs (foreign higher educational institutions) to literally prise India’s economy open.

The statutory body regulating higher education in the country issued a notice provisionally announcing that all kinds of foreign universities should soon be able to open campuses across India with the commission’s nod, and conduct business with a high degree of freedom. The approval would be given for a period of 10 years.

A Free Hand

If the UGC’s proposal is finalised, FHEIs would enjoy unprecedented powers, such as hiring foreign staff and thereby ignoring Indian talent, charging exorbitant fees and thereby denying poor students access, and – most disturbingly – repatriating their entire profits to their home countries under India’s FEMA (Foreign Exchange Management Act).

The UGC’s draft has been posted on the regulator’s website. It awaits feedback from stakeholders and the public by February 20, after which the final rules would be announced and published in the government-run Gazette of India.

In a country where more than 3,200 foreign companies are already doing business, with many of them repatriating considerable chunks of their profits, the proposal has expectedly drawn sharp criticism from experts.

The UGC argues that the initiative is a follow-up of the New Education Policy 2020, and “will provide an international dimension to higher education, enable Indian students to obtain foreign qualifications at affordable cost, and make India an attractive global study destination”.

Apart from putting in place routine checks and balances, the UGC’s draft notice gives a free hand to what it calls “reputed” institutes to run their courses and programmes, including those from undergraduate to postdoctoral levels, and also award degrees, diplomas, and certificates in all disciplines.

Experts and teachers’ bodies have voiced apprehensions, pointing out that FHEIs are unlikely to land here with utilitarian goals, and might see this opportunity primarily as an offshore business venture.

Consequently, the gulf between the haves and have-nots in India’s educational sphere could widen further with students only from affluent families having the means to afford the hefty fees.

The free run to be given to FHEIs could hit hard the country’s reputed higher educational institutes as well, whose day-to-day functioning is already severely hampered by a lack funds and strict rules, explained Kolkata-based Partha Pratim Roy, secretary of the Jadavpur University Teachers’ Association, or JUTA.

“Government-run universities function under strict rules and regulations. The rules framed by the UGC for recruitment of faculty and programmes such as PhD are binding on us. But the FHEIs are being given full autonomy on recruitment and to decide and control their PhD rules, undergraduate and postgraduate regulations. So, there are apprehensions that they may do things on their whims and fancies,” Roy told Empire Diaries.

In Dire Straits

To buttress his argument about the financial distress gripping India’s top institutes of higher learning, Roy cited the condition prevailing at Jadavpur University, considered as one of the best academic institutions in the country, especially in engineering courses.

“While the Bengal government has curtailed the maintenance grant, the UGC grant that used to come under the Five-Year Plans stopped in 2017 as the Planning Commission itself was scrapped.

“Leave alone buying new equipment and computers, we don’t even have proper funds to change the ink for printers. We used the previous

(from

People with comorbidities, too, had a harrowing time, with the virus aggravating their pre-existing ailments and triggering fatalities that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. The virus was genuinely harsh on them.

(from page 04) had children, that too healthy ones, been blamed for the elderly catching an infectious virus. concerned with major childhood killers such as accidents and dengue. In fact, the vector mosquito of dengue is a daytime biter and cannot be taught to maintain so-called social distancing.

Raman feels the unchecked atrocities and the fear propaganda carried on by various governments triggered immense panic among the public during the pandemic. The events and anecdotes chronicled by the museum would ensure such mistakes are not repeated, he believes.

Another breach of evidence-based practice is the insistence on wearing face masks. Before Covid-19 and even during the early days of the pandemic, the WHO (World Health Organisation), and even the great Anthony Fauci, who, according to his own view, represents science, did not recommend masks for the public as there was no evidence that it will prevent viral transmission.

Duly parroting their western academic masters, the then director of AIIMS gave an interview, saying healthy people need not wear masks. Even a high-school student knows that masks cannot act as filters for viruses.

During the course of the study, a couple of good-quality randomised, controlled trials, one in Denmark and another large community trial in Bangladesh, established that masks have very modest impact, if at all. Strangely, defying evidence as well as common sense, the mask mandates spread like wildfire throughout the world.

Even now, the knee-jerk reaction of administrations and their pliable medical advisers is to recommend masking at the slightest rise in seasonal, self-limiting respiratory illnesses, notwithstanding that the latest Cochrane review (considered the final word in evidence-based medicine) has concluded that masks do not offer much protection.

Were these practices by various governments

(from page 06)

There’s Slumdog Millionaire, too, to cite as an example. It borders on glorifying poverty and misery in India – traditionally a favourite subject among many westerners. There’s The Departed, which glorifies gun-toting culture among hot-headed, trigger-happy cops on the streets of America. Or take Schindler’s List, for example. The film flows with only that narrative of Nazi Germany that the West wants the world to follow.

Empire’s Agenda

At the end of the day, one has to understand that Hollywood isn’t an isolated arena in the entertainment industry. American films and

Sacked Employees

Among several major losses inflicted on the masses was the spectacular culling of jobs and contractual work. In rich countries as well as poor ones, the years 2020 and 2021 saw workforces experience the pain and trauma of sackings, unending salary delays, and the shrinking of wages.

“As the panic recedes and the next generation is able to look at the happenings impassionately, the sheer scale of absurdities and atrocities will become clear. This will be critical to ensure that such colossal mistakes are not repeated in the future,” he said.

Those keen to contribute content to the digital lockdown museum can visit the official website of the Universal Health Organisation (uho.org.in).

nothing but public health quackery? Or were they a sinister design to control the people using fear as the key?

The Hancock Files awards are too influential for the American Empire not to use them as propaganda tools. that the employed class lived through for those two disturbing years. Every other day, we would get news of mass sackings in various industries due to shrinking economic activity and dwindling business.

Recently, leaked messages revealed that Matt Hancock, former British health secretary, wanted to “frighten the pants off everyone” to ensure compliance with restrictions by strategically “deploying” details of a new strain.

One can only hope that leaders all over the world are not following the same modus operandi.

In the context of the above deliberations, it is dismaying to note that the Union Territory of Puducherry has declared that schools will remain closed from March 16 to 26, and so-called experts are yet again recommending masks – the same experts who were parroting at the beginning of the pandemic that masks are not recommended for healthy people.

Not only do these interventions not follow the current available evidence, they will also cause much collateral harm – physical, mental, and social.

Such hypocrisy and public health quackery is also poor education for students who read science and then find that it is not followed in practice.

(Dr. Amitav Banerjee was a field epidemiologist for over two decades in the Indian Army. He led the mobile epidemic investigation team at the Armed Forces Medical College in Pune, India, from 2000-2004. During this period, he investigated a number of outbreaks in the country. He is presently a professor in a medical college in Pune.)

It is an important cog in the wheel for the US imperialist machine and its bid to fan its onesided agenda. Which is precisely why songs such as Naatu Naatu and films such as Schindler’s List, which are aligned with western narratives, are given special treatment.

The best way to get a sense of why it’s wrong for Indians to go ecstatic over Naatu Naatu’s Oscar certification is to imagine the reverse scenario. What if India awards a music video that shows Indians belittling Americans and US culture along racist lines? Would people in the US celebrate that song’s certification by India? Or will they be outraged? Think about it.

Small Businesses

The March 11, 2020 declaration of the pandemic also served as a death knell for lakhs and lakhs of small and medium businesses across continents, especially in countries home to the poorer half of the global population.

Once hard lockdowns came into force and outdoor life came to a grinding halt, the writing was on the wall for roadside businesses, mom-andpop shops, hyperlocal departmental stores, food and veggie stalls on carts, and cash-dependent domestic companies.

Indian cities and suburbs are a case in point, where the struggling owners of roadside shops on wheels selling perishables were dealt a blinding blow by the shock imposition of lockdowns. Countless such unorganised marketplaces simply vanished out of sight. With street-life wearing a deserted look for weeks and months, stall owners wrapped up their modest belongings in the city and retreated to cash-strapped villages.

Migrant Workers

A gigantic disruption was felt by a huge number of migrant workers dwelling in the cities of poor countries. It is estimated that in India, the lockdown call and other negative effects of pandemic-related moves dented the lives of several hundred million migrants.

The chilling visuals of lakhs of migrants leaving lockdown-hit Indian cities on foot and desperately heading back to their villages that are hundreds of kilometres away will remain as the darkest and most disturbing chapter of India’s pandemic story.

Natural Immunity

A crucial loss for the human race during the last couple of years was the harm caused to people’s natural immunity via the mass vaccination campaign. As crores of people queued up and took the jab, the largely untested vaccines’ experimental nature replaced the human body’s natural immunity, expectedly sparking a rising number of adverse reactions and deaths.

Doctors, scientists, and activists kept warning – only in vain – about looming health-related complications that a small but significant percentage of people would experience in the days to come as a result of the vaccine superseding natural immunity.

Two years into the vaccination drive, we are already witnessing a steady rise in heart-related problems, cardiac arrests, and neurological ailments across the planet. We’re are also experiencing a slow but steady upward tick in excess deaths.

Schoolchildren

Children across the world also suffered. While schools were shut during hard lockdowns, many of them continued to teach online despite a phased end to hard restrictions and physical distancing diktats.

While the trend of schools going online was documented by the mainstream media, the same press hardly bothered to dig deep and report on the drastic drop in the quality of education as primary and secondary schooling went online.

Moreover, long-distance schooling created a class-based divide between students from affluent families and kids from poorer households. While well-off parents were lucky to be able to arm their children with smartphones, tablets, laptops, or desktops required for attending classes online from home, financially unstable families couldn’t afford to buy the gadgets, leaving their kids falling behind in school. The divide caused irreversible damage.

Blue-Collared Workers

In another unnerving turn of events, the pandemic gifted to the human race two new ‘Apartheids’ – one in which the rich began distancing themselves from the poor citing virus fears, and another in which the jabbed started to keep the unjabbed at bay.

In the leafy suburbs of big cities, including in India, gated communities or housing societies turned snobbier than ever before, bringing Apartheid back from the dead. On the pretext of staying safe, the well-to-do owners of these artificial neighbourhoods brought in never-before-seen rules disallowing bluecollared workforces such as maids, cooks, cleaners, delivery staff, etc. from getting equal access to elevators and common passageways.

The northern Indian city of Noida is a case point here, where the management of numerous housing societies designating separate lifts, separate seating arrangements, and additional surveillance systems for blue-collar working class going about their work.

Most of the virus-related restrictions have now been lifted in Noida, but the new Apartheid seems to have become permanent.

The Unjabbed

The other Apartheid the pandemic has given us, of course, is the rise in toxicity in the relationship between those who hastily took the jab and those who mindfully avoided it. The difference between the jabbed and unjabbed has become so ingrained in society since 2021 that even many employers around the world compelled their staff to quit for not taking the vaccine.

Effectively, the minority of unjabbed people are seen by the jabbed majority not as critical-thinking people, but mostly as anti-science, irresponsible people who’re putting others’ lives at risk.

Cash-Dependent People

Yet another big sufferer of the pandemic blues is the class of the people who rely largely on cash use, and not on digital transactions, for their livelihoods and survival.

With a growing trend of people treating strangers with suspicion – thanks to the dark culture of physical distancing – exchanging cash went out of fashion across many walks of life, leaving cash-dependent people in trouble.

So, while the peak of the pandemic had plunged the entire human race into darkness, it also widened the gulf between the haves and have-nots, as listed in this ‘pandemic report card’. A tiny bunch ended up at the right end of the gun, and a vast majority stared down the wrong end of the barrel. The virus that causes Covid-19 may someday be gone from our lives. But the virus of extreme social divide resulting from the WHO’s pandemic call and its aftermath threatens to linger on for years to come.

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