Long time back, I had read ‘New Brave World’ a novel by Aldus Huxley which depicted a possible future with mass production of conditioned people designed for specific tasks. Just as one acclimatizes bacteria, little children are forced to cultivate specific habits, capabilities, liking and disliking. The horror of such new brave world showed the evils of human greed and neglect of humanitarian values by capitalist forces. The novel 1984 by George Orwel on the other hand showed similar fate to individual freedom when socialist forces gain power and control over society.
Both these authors have cautioned the world against cruel overpowering of individual’s freedom by big organizations. Still, it seems to me that the world is moving steadily along the same route of disregard of human freedom and humanitarian values, which may lead the society from group of creative, free and happy individuals to bandwagons of slaves of some cadre controlled by some powers and fighting with each other.
Due to globalization, the western corporate culture in coming in big way to India and has shaken the traditional roots of stability in social and business life. The overzealous welcome to foreign big corporate industries with lucrative offerings of agricultural land through special SEZ system seems to have assumed indispensable need for development. Financial poverty has opened new avenues for big organizations to grab development projects in cities and interiors through BOT where small competitors are automatically eliminated. Nobody looks into the economics and profitability of these projects as capital funding is not required. The big industries also raise the capital through people for such projects, they grow in size and strength and do irreparable damage to local small industries and organizations.
The corporate sector converts its personnel into polished, greasy parts of their gigantic machine. These parts play a role assigned to them, but do not have independent functional ability. They are totally dependent on the employer. The propaganda machinery of corporate creates client base from mass media which is mesmerized by the wealth, infrastructure and lofty advertisements. The effectiveness and capacity of the personnel in large corporate isd mainly due to support of large well proven branded systems and protocols. They are least affected by outside environment and economical factors.
If the corporate is in loss, it is concealed so smartly that people, shareholders, employees and consumers remain completely ignorant about the real status. Collapse of such corporate suddenly creates great impact on economy, employment and social prestige as it happened in case of Lehman Brothers.
Small businesses on the other hand are constantly exposed to demand – supply variations, price fluctuation, taxes and customer choices. The personnel employed in small business have to be alert and active to counter the difficulty, compete the competitor and pursue the customer. But people do not support small businesses as they can’t stand in competition with corporate business as regards quality, wages, infrastructure, prestige and advertisement warfare.
Still these same small businesses are tough and flexible enough to survive in adverse economical environment. They retain the human vigor, freedom, provide local employment and are in tune with the local social fabric and economic level. They do no harm to agricultural lands and nature so aggresively and do widely dispersed and distributed development. Hence to my mind, instead of moving towards new brave world, India should concentrate on growth and stability of small businesses. It should give protection to small industry’s survival, encourage cooperation and collective progress keeping their own identities rather than attempting to replace them with big corporate industry.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Dark side of Autonomy
We are always pleased with shining moon in the sky and admire its beauty, but we forget there is dark side of the moon we have not seen. The same thing is happening for institutes attaining autonomy.
The new education policy is in favor of allotting autonomy to prestigious institutions. This policy was welcomed by all educationists who believed the necessity of authority and flexibility for offering new courses and framing syllabus as per the needs of market. It also ensured competition for excellence and quality education.
Administration is extra burden
Nevertheless it appears that the autonomy is rejoiced as achievement instead of responsibility to provide additional administrative services necessary for managing autonomy. Autonomy without appointment of separate administrative staff is counter productive and hampers the very education process. Generally senior and high qualified teachers are assigned duties of educational administration may it be admission, appointment of examiners, conducting examination or processing and declaring results.
Loss of good teachers and their use as bad administrators
As these are additional duties and are very crucial for institute, the teachers have to spend lot of time for the new activities. Naturally, they cannot pay attention or spare time for study, research or consultation activities in their field of expertise. The teachers are not generally not properly trained or mentally prepared to do administrative jobs. This creates a sense of loss or frustration in academically ambitious teachers and they seek outside job opportunities of their interest. In order to reduce the teaching load of seniors who are assigned administrative posts, new visiting lecturers are appointed on clock hour basis. These new teachers are not experienced, get less salary and their job also is not secure. Naturally the quality of education being imparted by institute reduces due to autonomy.
University is good example of separating administration and teaching
University has all necessary administrative setup to plan courses, frame syllabus through committees, conduct examinations, regulate admission criteria, declaration of results and award of certificate. All the works are outside the scope of actual education or teaching which is the core of any educational system. In order to impart quality education, there is a need of qualified, experienced and dedicated staff. Just like production and office administration are two separate but essential components of industry, education and administration of education system are two distinct activities. In India, we have central examination boards which keep uniformity of standards, security and impartial assessment of students. Giving authority of framing syllabus and setting question papers to individual institute is not advisable on many counts.
Though the new autonomous institutes might be boasting for their quality education, the acceptance final product by the industry and society is the real acid test. Mere name, past history or extravagant infrastructure is not going to qualify the student if real education aspect is neglected by these autonomous institutes.
The new education policy is in favor of allotting autonomy to prestigious institutions. This policy was welcomed by all educationists who believed the necessity of authority and flexibility for offering new courses and framing syllabus as per the needs of market. It also ensured competition for excellence and quality education.
Administration is extra burden
Nevertheless it appears that the autonomy is rejoiced as achievement instead of responsibility to provide additional administrative services necessary for managing autonomy. Autonomy without appointment of separate administrative staff is counter productive and hampers the very education process. Generally senior and high qualified teachers are assigned duties of educational administration may it be admission, appointment of examiners, conducting examination or processing and declaring results.
Loss of good teachers and their use as bad administrators
As these are additional duties and are very crucial for institute, the teachers have to spend lot of time for the new activities. Naturally, they cannot pay attention or spare time for study, research or consultation activities in their field of expertise. The teachers are not generally not properly trained or mentally prepared to do administrative jobs. This creates a sense of loss or frustration in academically ambitious teachers and they seek outside job opportunities of their interest. In order to reduce the teaching load of seniors who are assigned administrative posts, new visiting lecturers are appointed on clock hour basis. These new teachers are not experienced, get less salary and their job also is not secure. Naturally the quality of education being imparted by institute reduces due to autonomy.
University is good example of separating administration and teaching
University has all necessary administrative setup to plan courses, frame syllabus through committees, conduct examinations, regulate admission criteria, declaration of results and award of certificate. All the works are outside the scope of actual education or teaching which is the core of any educational system. In order to impart quality education, there is a need of qualified, experienced and dedicated staff. Just like production and office administration are two separate but essential components of industry, education and administration of education system are two distinct activities. In India, we have central examination boards which keep uniformity of standards, security and impartial assessment of students. Giving authority of framing syllabus and setting question papers to individual institute is not advisable on many counts.
Though the new autonomous institutes might be boasting for their quality education, the acceptance final product by the industry and society is the real acid test. Mere name, past history or extravagant infrastructure is not going to qualify the student if real education aspect is neglected by these autonomous institutes.
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