Kejriwal Barks Up Wrong Tree By Banning Management Quotas In Schools

Kejriwal has joined the ranks of those who seek to make problems worse instead of addressing the root causes of corruption in education: the absence of alternatives.

The assault on the autonomy of non-minority private unaided educational institutions – among the better-run in the country – continues. The latest to join the assault brigade is Arvind Kejriwal, Mayor of Delhi, who yesterday (6 January) ordered private schools to scrap the system of management quotas for admissions.

Since non-Hindu schools are anyway protected from excess interference by governments, Kejriwal’s diktat essentially amounts to an assault on majority-run private unaided institutions. Government-aided institutions are anyway subject to babu-mandated tyrannies.

Of course, no one in the Secular-Left Outrage Brigade (SLOBs, to use an evocative term mentioned in the latest issue of Swarajya Magazine) will outrage over this “assault” on institutional autonomy, for Kejriwal took care to sprinkle the holy water of egalitarianism to justify his actions when a court has already told the Delhi government to lay off.

Kejriwal’s logic is that some schools were pre-empting as much as 75 percent of seats for various categories, including some irrational ones. After his order, the only quota that remains is the 25 percent mandated by the Right to Education Act (RTE) in favour of the economically weaker sections. In other words, Kejriwal has re-endorsed that other broad-brush assault on majority-run unaided schools, too – the RTE.

It would be charitable to call this merely a misguided act, but the consistency with which the secular establishment has targeted only majority-run schools cannot be seen as anything but deliberate. When Kejriwal entered the political space, the least one expected was that he would not follow the established SLOB routines and discredited statist policies. But, barring regular histrionics and rants, he is sticking to the SLOB script. He has adopted the same bankrupt ideas advocated by the Left and various NGOs aligned to them.

Kejriwal, with his usual bluster, said he would derecognise schools which flouted his order and promised to personally appear in court to defend his order.

Well, he should get his bete noire, Delhi Lt Gov Najeeb Jung, to share his pool car on his way to court, for Kejriwal’s position is the same as the one adopted by Jung during the UPA’s years in 2013, when he abolished the management quota and tried to prescribe norms for nursery admissions. This was struck down by the Delhi High Court.

It is worth quoting Kejriwal’s statements in some detail in order to refute some of them and to point out that he is part of the problem. The Times of India attributed the following statements to Kejriwal.

What is management quota? Under it you get admission if someone is recommended by a chief minister, education minister, judge, police commissioner, SHOs or by an income-tax official. Either it is recommendations or seats are sold. Management quota is the biggest scandal in the country which the Delhi government is scrapping. 75 per cent admissions in the private schools will be under open category. Other than EWS category, there will be no other quota.

Clap, clap. But Kejriwal ranted further and issued threats against schools that fail to comply: The TOI quoted him thus:

If they (private unaided schools) do not budge, they can be derecognised or government can take them over….the mafia had captured the education system and made it a business. The government will not tolerate this.

Let’s deal with the threat first. Derecognition harms students, not recalcitrant managements. Derecognition makes sense when schools don’t follow the law (like paying teachers less, or not having toilets for girls, or abusing children), not for the criteria used for admissions. So Kejriwal’s threat makes him the mafia, and not just his targeted schools.

His threat is, however, an empty one. The fundamental reason why we even have a foolish law like the RTE is because state-run schools are pathetically run. If Kejriwal wants to ruin more schools, he can surely take them over and run them himself. Private schools are attractive because they are private – and accountable for results.

But the other observations of Kejriwal should also not go uncontested. He may be right to criticise private schools’ arbitrary criteria for admitting students, but he must ask himself these basic questions:

#1: What is his locus standi in judging them when the state had no role to play in creating and running these schools? An unaided school has the right to non-interference by government in all matters that don’t involve flouting the laws of the land because that is the meaning of private – it is not Kejriwal’s property. The state has not contributed anything to their upkeep.

#2: If Kejriwal thinks even private unaided schools must listen to the government, why hasn’t he said the same to minority unaided schools? They don’t have to follow the RTE or kowtow to Kejriwal’s whimsicalities. Why this eagerness to target only the 2,500 private unaided schools?

#3: Has Kejriwal asked himself why managements try and skew the quota system with some irrational criteria? The answer is simple: one of the reasons why people set up schools is to have control of admissions, as this article in Reality Check India argues powerfully. In any case, does autonomy not include the right to decide your own criteria for admissions? The market will decide whether these schools survive or end up closing down. The Delhi High Court specifically declined to micromanage the admissions process, but Kejriwal thinks he must now meddle.

#4: Has Kejriwal asked himself what the result of the RTE assault on schools has resulted in? Some one lakh schools were closed or merged. Is it not likely that by taking away private incentives to open schools, in which the management quota is one attraction, he too will end up closing more schools than making the admissions process more rational?

The simple takeout for Kejriwal – and all governments seeking to universalise education – is this. The problem is about the supply of good schools, not the egalitarian distribution of seats in existing schools. We have to enable the creation of more schools, not try and distribute shortages.

If Kejriwal wants to end arbitrary quotas in private, unaided schools, he should create so many new, good schools that the demand-supply equation balances out and quotas themselves will become counter-productive.

He is barking up the wrong tree. The only result of government intervention will be to drive openly discriminatory practices underground. The “biggest scandal” that Kejriwal ranted about will get bigger. And the average educational entrepreneur will find a fraudulent way to achieve what he cannot do openly.

For example, the naked interference in majority-run schools by states has ensured that most schools now seek the minority tag (the courts recognise both linguistic and religious minorities) in some form or the other. A Telugu school can be autonomous in Maharashtra, but not in Andhra. Does this make sense?

Kejriwal has joined the ranks of those who seek to make problems worse instead of addressing the root causes of corruption in education: the absence of alternatives.