Solutions to Change

University Grants Commission (UCG) to Control Technical Education: But has its Existing Controls Benefitted Education in India? UGCs new guidelines to regulate technical institutions will vest this monolithic institution with more power to control the educational sector in the country. Before such a power is vested with the institution, we need to ask about the existing performance and efficiency with which UGC is handling higher education in India. If there are instances where the UGC can boast on its credentials, the latest move can be accepted. But this being sparse, considering that we have very few educational institutions that can compare its performances with international standards, I believe that the present move is nothing but a transfer of inefficiency from one to another regulator. It is also suspect that the UGC has been directly involved in improving the efficiency of hundreds of institutes offering higher education in India. I can vouch at least for the s...

  I always had the feeling that academic research in a reputable institution in India would provide us with the most democratic space to exchange thoughts and work freely. However, what is troubling, even after assuming that all these are available, is the question of sustaining this research activity. The pity is that what surrounds this seemingly democratic academic space is the hostile giant bureaucratic institutions like the University Grants Commission (UGC). UGC as far as I understand is a mess of activities with no transparency in what is being done. The simple story is this. The support that is offered by this regulatory institutions reaches the intended beneficiaries very late. When I say beneficiaries, I have in mind only the ‘sustenance researcher’ who has the ‘academic willingness’ but no ‘financial ability’ to work. There are many living realities amongst us who fall in this categories.   Researchers fall under definite categories: starting with the acti...