 | | PICTURE SPEAK | |  | | IN DOLDRUMS: Empty benches and missing teachers | | Even as Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje pushes for a centre of excellence in academia, two high-level reports have attacked the higher education system in the state, raising doubts over the relevance of running graduate and post graduate degree courses when the actual attendance of students is a miserable seven per cent. With education minister Ghanshyam Tiwari at loggerheads with Raje, it will be worth watching how the chief minister harnesses these issues to question Tiwari's efficiency. Governor Pratibha Patil, who is also the chancellor of most universities in the state, finds education standards "dismal" and last year she had constituted a committee under Justice Dinkar Lal Mehta to probe the functioning of the state universities. In his report, Mehta points out that teachers shirk work and, in Rajasthan University in Jaipur, not a single teaching staff was on duty for the mandatory 40 hours per week. Worse, there is no record of the number of classes they take. | | PICTURE SPEAK | |  | | Raje (left) will use Tiwari's failures as education minister to push the top BJP brass into a Cabinet reshuffle | | The second report was from then principal secretary, higher education, Ram Lubhaya, based on visits to 25 government colleges over two months. Lubhaya notes with dismay, "Even when I visited after giving prior intimation in Ajmer, the average attendance was seven per cent." In Dausa, even the teachers were not present. Classes were being held only "on paper" and teachers filled in for colleagues who bunked classes. Another shocking revelation was that some of the colleges had eliminated internal examinations without informing the government. But students were still being charged examination fees. Lubhaya says, "The state of higher education in colleges and universities is extremely worrisome and such education has become irrelevant in today's age of globalisation." The situation is the same in Rajasthan's 11 universities and 752 colleges (114 government colleges, 559 unaided and eight under self-financing schemes) with 3.8 lakh students. That Raje is determined to set things right is clear-she has quietly allowed the Rajasthan High Court to ban polls to student bodies. She has the university authorities' support despite severe opposition from student unions, including her party's Akhil Bhartiya Vidyarthi Parishad. "I don't want students to force vice-chancellors to sit behind three locks," she says. The reports spell trouble for Tiwari and the teachers. Tiwari emerged as Raje's rival after he revolted over land acquisition in his constituency, Sanganer, over the creation of a special economic zone. The chief minister is bound to use these reports to convince the BJP top brass about Tiwari's failures, forcing a Cabinet reshuffle. The nearly-comatose education system in Rajasthan may be the unintended beneficiary. -B Rohit Parihar
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