NO to Modi Govt’s Impending Sell-out of Education at WTO!

Save Education, Save the Country!

Defeat Imperialist Diktats of Global Capital and WTO!

Education Is Not For Sale – A Campus Is Not A Jail!

Schools and Universities For People – Not For Profits!

Don’t Let Modi Govt Trade Away Our Education, Our Country!

In December 2015, at the Xth World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial Conference, the Indian Government is all set to accept “binding commitments” to make India’s higher education a tradable commodity. Such “commitments” at WTO will erode our sovereign decision making powers in education. The Govt will be forced to act as ‘facilitator’ for ensuring ‘free trade’ and ‘level playing fields’ for local and global corporate ‘traders’ of education, rather than providing inclusive quality education to all.

Interestingly, the country’s sovereignty and its education are being sold away by a Government that keeps making tall claims of being “nationalist.” Today, we are reminded that Bhagat Singh and his comrades gave up their lives resisting colonialism and imperialism. By selling away the country and its education to imperialists and their profit-mongers, the Government is betraying the legacy of the anti-colonial martyrs.

Myth of ‘Quality’ and ‘Choice’: Various myths are being peddled to claim that the ‘commitment’ to WTO will improve quality and allow international universities to open branches in India, offering Indian students greater ‘choice.’ This is utterly false. In fact, a survey report by the World Bank in 2000 on foreign educational providers has gone on record to state that “well-known universities of Developed Countries established low standard branches in backward countries.” Well, India already has foreign and private education providers – what will the WTO ‘commitments’ change?

The change that WTO-regime will bring: What will change under WTO regime is that the sovereign powers of the Indian Parliament and Government will be restricted and eroded with regard to giving subsidies and other facilities to public sector higher education institutions, which is necessary to ensure inclusive quality education for all. According to WTO diktats, India’s Government will have to ensure a “non-discriminatory… level playing field” for these foreign education shops – i.e. in order to honour its “binding commitments” to WTO, the Indian Government will be forced to stop subsidizing public sector universities. Subsidies to Indian universities will be seen as a violation of the WTO “commitments” and “discriminatory” to foreign universities, and will result in “WTO disputes” being initiated against India.

Also, inclusive policies of social justice such as ‘reservation’, ‘regional and gender deprivation points’, etc., would only be viewed by the business houses as ‘avoidable provisions that only add to the costs’ – and under the WTO regime the Indian Government would also be pressurised to give up these provisions.

So, there will be steady curtailment of subsidies and provisions of social justice in public education so as to guarantee a ‘level playing field’ for private/corporate ‘traders’ in education. This will further restrict education only to those who can pay high fees, and will divorce education from the social needs of our country.

Govt is already preparing to make our universities ‘WTO-compliant’: Already, many of the policy moves of the Government are headed in the direction of making India’s higher education WTO-compliant. With the massive 8% fund cut in Higher Education in 2014-15 Union Budget, forced imposition of CBCS, pushing for a common Central University Act, unwillingness to withdraw the LCR, the implementation of Rashtriya Ucchatar Shiksha Abhiyan -RUSA (which is nothing but a tool for channelling public funds to private institutions based on ‘performance’ and force public institutes into ‘compliance’), the Modi govt is already preparing the ground for accepting WTO “commitments” and “conditions”.

Blueprint to silence dissent and freedom of expression in campuses: The UGC “Guidelines” in the name of “Campus Safety” are also geared in the direction of making “WTO-compliant” campuses. For the managers of the commercialised campuses of WTO dreams, student activism and free social and political life of students must be curtailed. The UGC “Guidelines” already seek to stifle and suppress that social and political freedom and activism of students. The UGC Guidelines seek to create campuses surrounded by barbed wire, with close 24/7 surveillance on students using identity cards, CCTV cameras, police stations on campuses, police escorts, teachers/”counsellors” who will spy on personal and academic life of students and report to parents in “parent-teacher-meets” and so on. The net result of this will mean that the social and political freedom of students will be under attack. The ensemble of administration, police, counsellors and family will spy on students and at the slightest hint of political activism or personal relationships that challenge casteist or patriarchal social norms, they will discipline and punish the students. Unions or student activism will be strictly disallowed. Also, our home-grown model of patriarchy and all forms of social conservatism will be mobilised to enforce corporate “discipline” in WTO-model campuses.