For the past three years the national knowledge Commission, chaired by the Chicago-based multi-millionaire telecom switching systems pioneer Satyen (‘Sam’) Pitroda, has been recommending that the wings of the University Grants Commission (UGC) and the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) should be clipped. For half a century UGC (estb.1956) and for over two decades AICTE (estb.1987), the apex level bureaucratic organisations, have been supervising the growth and development — and most important licensing — of humanities, science and commerce, and technical (engineering, business management, hotel management, etc) education respectively. Quite eviden-tly with less than conspicuous success. According to Pitroda, higher education licensing and collegiate/university appointment powers should be vested in an Independent Regulatory Authority for Higher Education (IRAHE).
As if to prove that these two moribund organisations have outlived their utility, scandals have erupted in both of them, almost simultaneously. Currently UGC is a convulsed house divided over the sudden ejection of Raju Sharma, a 1982 batch IAS officer, from the position of secretary of the commission. According to UGC insiders, Sharma had raised some inconvenient questions about the award of the commission’s ambitious e-governance contract to cover all of the country’s colleges and universities.
Likewise within AICTE the appointment of Prof. R.A. Yadav, hitherto “acting chairman” of the council has been confirmed reportedly at the behest of Union HRD minister Arjun Singh, notwithstanding this somewhat obscure academic having been claiming a pension from Delhi University while earning a salary from AICTE, strictly forbidden by government rules.
Pitroda is right. Never before has an IRAHE been needed as right now.