How the anti-black money drive will affect corrupt educational institution practices
Indian education system is a huge generator of black money every year. Capitation fees of around 50 thousand crore is paid at various educational levels from KG to PG in India.
Founders, owners and management of universities and colleges are in many cases politicians, agriculturists, zamindars and businessmen, who have no background, vision nor interest in promoting education. They use their political clout to acquire licences to run these educational institutions. They build large infrastructure to charge high capitation fees with scant regard to developing quality teaching systems and hiring reputed and credible teaching staff.
Not surprising that the black money these educational institutions generate often finds its ways to bribing politicians and government officials, terrorism, election financing and religious conversions.
Medical and engineering colleges are the biggest sources of black money with every seat going for lakhs of rupees. As an indicator, MBBS seats are sold for between Rs 30 lakhs and Rs 1 crore by private colleges which exposes the tip of the iceberg. The scam gets bigger, more brazen as medical graduates embark on specializations that are necessary for a successful career. The price this year for a post-graduate seat in radiology in most leading private colleges across the country is Rs 2-3 crore while in cardiology, gynaecology, paediatrics and orthopaedics are priced at Rs 1.5 crore and upwards. Though one cannot generalize, would you be surprised if the level of service orientation in many of the doctors who secure admission this way or in the matter of treating patients with professional competence and at affordable rates.
Several of these educational institutes follow several illegal practices and use the ill-gotten money to pay bribe to get accreditations from medical council and AICTE. Government now conducts a single common entrance exam NEET to fill the merit seats in these colleges, which helps reduce corruption to some extent, even the management quota seats still continue to be "sold" with huge capitation fees collected upfront or through big annual fees.
Auditing their financial statements, releasing them on websites, strict monitoring of their funds etc are some other measures being set in motion to reduce black money in educational institutes.
Thus we are hopeful to see times when educational institutes can no longer have usual donation practices and there is now a looming fear in the minds of people related to all sectors that tax authorities are keeping strict vigil at their activities. This will definitely pave the way to help poor and middle class parents to afford quality education for their children.
While the proof of the pudding is in the eating and it could generally take some more time to mitigate corruption in the educational sector, one cannot deny that some of the current reforms set in motion, paves the way for a cleaner system that will improve the quality of education by inculcating fear and discipline against corrupt practices by making such dubious educational institutions and management accountable.
Lastly it also instill fear in the corrupt and unscrupulous parents who have no qualms in going shopping to buy valuable seats at bargain capitation fees for their wards who do not deserve such admissions and in turn deprive seats to other eligible youngsters whose parents are middle class or belong to economically backward classes and cannot afford such exorbitant fees.
The above reforms may be regarded as a step in the right direction to ensure better quality in all fields of education and will improve skill development practices to tackle the unemployment issue which is the most challenging problem the government and our country is facing.