The 'Babu-ization' of Bihar Education

by Thakur Vikas Sinha
Powai, Mumbai

July 2, 2006

Very well researched article. (Need for Temples of Learning in Bihar by Manish Kumar)

Hope our politicians take note.

There are a couple of other developments which should be noted in the context of the debate on education in Bihar.

There were several schools which were run privately in Bihar. These schools were built on land donated by the much maligned Zamindar families of Bihar. They had trusts running them. However, in the seventies, during the rule of Dr Jaganath Mishra, all of them except those run by the minority community were nationalized. In one stroke, the chairmen and secretaries of these school committees who were men of eminence from the local area and had a stake in the continued welfare of these institutions were replaced with nameless and faceless babus who had no aptitude, training, interest or time for such activities. In a sense, the babu-ization of the educational institutions had started a little earlier when Mr. Nagmani was appointed OSD for Bihar University superseding the bodies of academics who were perhaps too independent minded for the rulers that be. The hunger for power was only matched by the arrogant belief that cuture and intelligence never crossed over to the north of the Vindhyas.

In the event, there was a steep decline in the education standards all round. Teaching, which was regarded as such a noble profession in the land of Nalanda, Odantpuri and Vikramshila, became a chore. Is it any surprise that the only schools which escaped this period with their reputation intact were the Xaviers and Convents of this world?

The second is the privatisation of the medical colleges. Several private medical colleges were started in Bihar in the sixties and early seventies: NMCH, SKMCH, MGMCH, Patlitputra MCH, Magadh MCH. They quickly built good infrastructure and a name for themselves. Again, babudom felt threatened by the power wielded by those who were running these institutions as they were unfettered by the chain of command of the bureaucracy. They managed to convince the well meaning Karpoori Thakur to nationalise these in the name of "merit". In the process, what could have been the template of an educational revolution ahead of the Karnataka model was nipped in the bud. One can only imagine what kind of engineering and medical education infrastructure would have developed in Bihar had they been allowed to thrive.

I myself, having secured admission through IIT JEE at IT BHU, had been so brainwashed about the misplaced 'merit' theory that I thwarted the attempt of many a cousins who aspired technical education in the private colleges. I realised my mistake years later when I had to depend upon the masses of the Karnataka style private college graduates while managing large scale software dev factories. Where had Bangalore been without the benefit of these huge masses of engineers? Conversely, where would Patna had been with the steady flow of engineers in such large numbers?

Do hope decision makers would go by common sense rather than misplaced idealism.

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