Telangana neglects state varsities, goes shopping for private ones

The Telangana government is allowing private players to set up universities in a state where 90% of the population belongs to socially and economically backward groups.

Reliance has plans to set up a varsity in Hyderabad, eyeing an education market valued at $100 billion in 2015-16, with higher education making up 59.7% of the market size.

But Mukesh Ambani's company and others can do so only after Telangana passes a legislation allowing and regulating private varsities as required by the University Grants Commission rules.

For the past few months, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi regime of K Chandrasekhar Rao has been working on just such a legislation. On 10 December, the cabinet approved the draft Private Universities Bill, though it was referred to a cabinet sub-committee to finalise the norms.

Despite the dismal condition of Telangana's universities and protests by students over the past two weeks, the KCR government intends to introduce the bill in the ongoing winter session of the legislative assembly, which was supposed to close on 30 December but it is likely to be extended.

There is a chance that the bill - originally supposed to be introduced in the assembly's budget session in March - could be delayed again. Sources said the cabinet sub- committee headed by Deputy Chief Minister and Education Minister Kadiyam Srihari was unwilling to introduce the bill in its present form.

There have been reports of divisions within the TRS itself, between those who want full autonomy for the private universities and those, apparently including KCR, who want stricter regulations as well as reservations. The contents of the draft bill have not been made public so far.

As the bill has taken shape, student organisations like the Telangana Vidhyarthi Vedika, Progressive Democratic Students Union, Students Federation of India and All India Students Federation have been protesting on the ground that it would make higher education unaffordable for the masses. The major centres of the student protests have been Osmania University in Hyderabad and Kakatiya University in Warangal.

In Hyderabad, students from several districts turned up for the "Chalo Assembly" protest on 23 December, agitating in multiple batches outside the assembly and other areas. Nearly 200 students were detained but later let off.

But the strongest opposition to the legislation comes from a key architect of the Telangana movement - Prof M Kodandaram, president of the Telangana Joint Action Committee, which comprises political and non-political groups that came together in 2009 in the last leg of the decades-long struggle for statehood.

On 19 December, Kodandaram held a meeting with all opposition political parties in the state, and they promised to oppose the bill should it come up in the assembly.

Kodandaram and KCR were once allies in the Telangana movement. A former professor of political science at Osmania, Kodandaram acted as a guiding force for the TRS. Since then, however, their paths have diverged.

Even before Telangana became India's newest state in June 2014, KCR had been promising "free education from KG to PG" for all - a pledge reiterated in his election manifesto.

The promise has not seen much progress, except for the recent announcement that around 250 special schools for some disadvantaged communities would be set up.