Editorial 1: When degrees lose their worth
Introduction:
- The Diploma Disease, written by British economist Ronald Dore offers a structural explanation for a widely prevalent phenomenon, namely the urge to gather more and more degrees. Instead of focusing on the behavioural aspect, as most scholars do, Dore links the phenomenon with the devaluation of qualifications. Dore noticed that the desire to accumulate more and more degrees and diplomas was gaining rapid popularity in many countries.
- He selected three of them in order to examine the phenomenon: Sri Lanka, South Korea and Japan. Although India was not a part of his sample, the insights Dore presented are equally pertinent to India, where their applicability is growing rapidly. Certificates, diplomas and degrees are in great demand in what is literally an educational bazaar.
Indian education bazaar:
- Dev Lahiri had chosen this title for his book narrating his experience as a renowned teacher and principal: The Great Indian School Bazaar. The title is just as relevant to higher education now, where a vast and varied market of qualifications has grown since the mid-1990s. Its growth feeds on itself, in the sense that the greater the variety of qualifications on offer, the faster grows the demand for them. A young candidate enrolled in one course wants to enrol in other courses. Permission for dual degree admission has further boosted the urge.
- The driving force of this urge is located both within and outside the system of education. Internally, the system encourages students to gather additional qualifications by defining course content and its aims narrowly. Known as specialisation, this phenomenon is a response to the mystification of skills as distinct from knowledge. The phrase ‘job ready’ captures the attraction of sliver thin courses that cut the scope of learning so fine that one certificate can only lead the student to search for the next.
- The greater driving force is externally located, i.e. in the economy. Economic growth has not resulted in expansion of satisfying employment in many countries. In India, the scarcity of worthwhile jobs is quite severe in many regions, even in cities, not to mention villages. The fear of joblessness fuels the urge to gain new eligibilities. Candidates for jobs often select the relevant domain of their multiple certifications in order to represent themselves as being suitable for a job. The volatility of the job market also implies that no job can last for long; hence the anxiety to become eligible for as many types of jobs as possible.
Delinking did not happen
- In the 1980s, it was believed that delinking degrees from jobs might be a good idea to reduce the pressure on institutions of higher learning. The argument was that if jobs were delinked from formal qualification, it would discourage the young from accumulating certificates and degrees.
- The idea was reluctantly pursued due to the suspicion that self-educated job seekers might not have reliable qualities. In any case, the pressure to enrol in one course or another remained high. Students knew they could not be choosy, and their parents were also anxious to push their wards to stay enrolled rather than waste their time.
- Correspondence courses — now called ‘open’ learning — proliferated. Later, the Internet also enabled the self-learning market. It has, to some extent, boosted self-employment, but the lure of formal jobs has not diminished. In fact, it has maintained remarkably high growth in the coaching market.
- Competitive exams now attract countless youth to indulge in what Craig Jeffrey, on the basis of his studies in India, has aptly described as the “politics of waiting”.
Crisis of standards
- Dore’s thesis that devaluation of degrees is strongly associated with lowering of standards has proved correct. When a course does not give you what you expected to learn from it, you go for a higher level of the same course. The spiral is extended systemically when institutions face financial starvation, leading to chronic vacancies, dwindled support services and poor annual intake in libraries.
- Public institutions of higher education have suffered sustained hollowing out over the past three decades. Their inability to maintain standards while being forced to accommodate an increased number of students is reflected in the mass exodus to foreign systems and expensive private institutions. Students from deprived strata can’t avail of these options. Just when they had begun to knock at the doors of higher education, its offerings entered into descent mode.
- There are, of course, many other ways to explain the fall in standards of teaching and also in the expected diligence of students. Digital technology has made its own contribution to the noticeable changes in student behaviour. On a weekly consultation broadcast of the highly regarded Indira Gandhi National Open University, I heard the following statement one day: “Please read the programme guide carefully. Reading is a good activity for you.”
- That a university has to emphasise the value of reading is a sufficient indicator of the silent crisis that has engulfed the system of education. A plethora of reforms introduced despite the weakening of routines due to the pandemic may not succeed in resolving the basic issues and tendencies that Dore had underlined nearly half a century ago.
Conclusion:
There is a considerable gap between the discourse of reform and the reality of our higher education system. Unwillingness to acknowledge the persistence of older problems has become a source of further systemic enervation. The nature and choice of reforms can certainly be improved by looking at the residues of past difficulties and at the COVID-19 impact.
Editorial 2: Towards reducing India’s prison footprint
Context:
- At the Constitution Day celebrations organised by the Supreme Court in November 2022, President Droupadi Murmu reflected on her visits to prisons across India and the circumstances of those incarcerated. She highlighted that these individuals were often unaware of their fundamental rights and had been incarcerated for prolonged periods for minor offences, while their families, struggling with poverty, were unable to bail them out.
- President Murmu emphasised how the judiciary, executive, and legislature must work together to help them, and concluded by poignantly asking: How are we claiming that we are progressing as a nation, if we are still building prisons to address the issue of overcrowding?
Status of prisons in India:
- In stark contrast, in June last year, Lieutenant-Governor of Delhi (L-G) Vinai Kumar Saxena directed the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) to allocate 1.6 lakh square metres of land to Delhi’s prison department to construct a district prison complex in Narela. The DDA has received ₹135.79 crore from the prison administration for the land thus far, and is demanding a further payment of ₹29.88 crore.
- Officials claim that the prison is to be constructed in two phases, the first for high-risk offenders and the second for undertrials.
Re-thinking architecture
- In phase 1, which is expected to be completed by April 2024, a high-security jail is to be built in the complex with a capacity to lodge 250 high-risk prisoners. The prison administration has incorporated stringent security measures in the design such as constructing high walls between cells to prevent inmates from viewing others, and interacting with each other, as well as building office spaces between cells to facilitate surveillance.
- French philosopher Michel Foucault has extensively written about how the architecture of prisons is often used as a tool to surveil, torture, and break the souls of inmates. With this prison design, the Delhi prison administration is essentially creating solitary confinement which will have a severe detrimental effect on prisoners’ mental health.
- Frank Gehry, a renowned architect, offered a semester-long course at the Yale School of Architecture in 2017, on architecture and mass incarceration. As their final project, students were tasked with designing a prison facility to house extraordinarily violent offenders. Their models featured open and communal space, fresh air, and spaces for family visits and therapy.
- Their versions of prisons looked like university campuses, health and wellness facilities, monasteries, and communal complexes emphasising the need to break away from the traditional conception of prisons as mere warehouses and cages, even for the most violent inmates. The students viewed prisoners and prison staff as their clients, rather than the state bureaucracy, and this impacted their designs.
Defund prisons
- Prisons in India are still governed by the Prisons Act, 1894, a colonial legislation which treats prisoners as sub-par citizens, and provides the legal basis for punishment to be retributive, rather than rehabilitative.
- These laws are also highly casteist, and remain largely unchanged since they were drafted by the British. For example, some jail manuals continue to focus on purity as prescribed by the caste system, and assign work in prison based on the prisoner’s caste identity. Organisations such as the Vidhi Centre of Legal Policy have taken us one step further in identifying colonial legal continuities that India must shred, and the manner in which she can do so.
- Furthermore, Dalits and Adivasis are over-represented in Indian prisons. The National Dalit Movement for Justice and the National Centre for Dalit Human Rights’ report ‘Criminal Justice in the Shadow of Caste’ explains the social, systemic, legal, and political barriers that contribute to this. Legislations such as the Habitual Offenders Act and Beggary Laws allow the police to target them for reported crimes.
- The L-G’s claim to decongest Delhi’s prison complexes by setting up prisons in Narela is misguided. It is helpful to look towards President Murmu’s timely and emphatic clarion call at the Constitutional Day speeches, where she insightfully noted that progress is antithetical to setting up prisons, and we must address congestion in prisons in non-carceral ways. These could include releasing unwell or old inmates, reducing penalties, allowing bail at affordable costs, employing anti-carceral ways of holding people accountable for their crimes, and expediting trials.
Way forward:
- The primary reason why prisons are overcrowded is because India has not done enough to truly prevent crime. Our approach to crime should be preventive, rather than reactive. Instead of investing thousands of crores in finding “state-of the art” ways to cage and harm people, the L-G should reflect on the soul of India’s Constitution which imposes welfare obligations on the state.
- He could work with the Delhi government to channel public funds towards public goods such as housing, education, and employment, so that people would not be as compelled to, or have as much proclivity to commit crimes.
- We must take preventive measures before we realise that we have travelled far down this road, and have subjected several people to unnecessary trauma and confinement. With the warning signs beseeching us, we must amplify President Murmu’s message on the need to de-carcerate and stop building more prisons, so that the L-G takes adequate steps in that direction.
Conclusion:
As the three-judge Bench of the Supreme Court led by Justice U.U. Lalit recently quoted Oscar Wilde while commuting a death sentence, we must recognise that ‘Every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.’