 budget cuts in higher education began from early 2000 onwards, behind it there was a theory you see behind all of this there is a theory, if you do not destroy public funded schools you cannot privatize. In order to privatize open the private school market you must destroy the public funded education. Similarly, in order to why do you want to destroy higher education now, why do you want to have budget cuts, because the theory was higher education is not a public good, it is a private good, it is a merit good, it is a private good only if you want to pay, if you can pay you can get higher education, if you do not want to pay, if you cannot pay you do not deserve higher education. So, it is not the responsibility of state to provide higher education, that was the theory behind it and in fact, the BJP minister of Atalbehari Baajpais government Dr. Moolimran Joshi led out a special paper at a UNESCO conference in 98 to 99, just when in first term, led out a paper talking about public good and private good about higher education and from then onwards started the downfall of higher education. In year 2000, a report was submitted on a higher education to the economic and trade council of the prime minister, economic affairs and trade council, appropriately not in the HRD ministry and economic affairs and trade council of prime minister, it was written by two of the greatest education India has ever produced Mukesh Ambani and Kumar Mangalambira, because it signals are clear, their education is and they are going to submit a report on higher education, because it decided to sell out higher education to the private market, is no more going to be the state enterprise, therefore it is going to go to them, so let them write the report, they wrote the report and something which you may, some of you have not noticed, even if you read the report, in very fine fonts on the inside cover of the report, it says drafted by a name of a computer company in Chennai, so actually written by them and only vetted by Ambani Beda, this made two or three very important point, all being applied now, one it said for primary education, if you want you can continue doing public funding, they won't say today, that was said in 2000, today they will now say, because today they are investing money in primary education also, secondary education start withdrawing support, higher education don't need to give any support at all, because market is ready to take over higher education, that's what written in the report and then they said and if market takes over, it is market which is going to determine what will be taught and what shall not be taught, who will be taught and who will not be taught, who shall be included in higher education, who shall not be included in higher education, market will decide, not the parliament of India and there was a big furrow in the parliament, entire left stood solidly against the report and start to stop it from being approved by the parliament and Dr. Mulimono Joshi played a big nautic there, he said, since all of you are so upset at the report, I in front of you I am going to tear it apart into pieces and put it in a dustbin, he actually did all that and people thought we are relieved of the report now, from next morning on the report was being implemented steadily all over the country, the nautic was over, this is also the time when it is his constitutional amendment bill passed, it is his constitutional amendment bill was called a right to education bill, to make amendment in the constitution and to place that article 45 which was placed in part 4, director principles in constitution assembly to bring it into the into the part 3 again, but before bringing in part 3, it made some important changes, he said, we are not going to bring, give fundamental right to all children up to 14 years of age as ordained in article 45, that will include children below 6 years of age, that also mean giving pre primary education, nursery KG education to all children that we are not prepared to give, it will also mean ensuring nutrition and health services for children, because without nutrition and health they cannot be educated. So, we shall not do that, we said from 6 to 40 years, article 45 was reduced in giving right to education, parliament reduced the coverage of the article, there is said the fundamental rights shall be given as a state may by law determine, we organize a rally in Ramayana Medan, 40,000 people came from all over the country to resist both of these amendments to right to education, so called right to education bill, it is an amendment bill, we did not get support from media or anyone else, it was people coming from rural areas who came and understood and opposed, of course the bill was passed unanimously without any dissenting vote, under this amendment the right to education act 2009 was passed by UP, it is an amendment by NDA and UPA 1 passed the right to education amendment act 2, UPA 2 not UPA 1, UPA 2, I will not spend time right to education right now, but just say this, right to education act was never designed to give right to the children of India, it was designed to give right to the corporate capital to mint money out of education, it has succeeded in its goal, right to education act was never designed to give good quality schools to the masses of India, it in fact it has all the formulation, all the all the provision in the act within the act itself clearly written to provide inferior quality schools to the masses, to provide contract teachers, even if contract teachers are provided, they will not be allowed to teach under section 27 of the act, they will be engaged in a number of activities, look at the discrimination, inequality, institutionalize, back to higher education and I will close with that, WTO now world bank is for school education destruction, WTO comes in the picture with the GATS general agreement of trades and services and WTO has a agenda of its own, higher education has been offered on a platter to WTO GATS, in 2000 from 2010 onwards, government of India started drafting bills in order to facilitate the entry of WTO GATS in higher education and allow the global capital to invest in higher education, six such bills were prepared, in fact there is a another book outside called neoliberal assault on higher education outside, which talks about how these, what are these six higher education bills, when were they prepared, what was the content of these bills, all analyzed by booklet all India forum and we resisted these six bills also, because of lack of adequate majority, that then UPA2 could not get them passed, but the present government is totally committed, more committed than even UPA2, to implement the UPA2 agenda and world class institutes, institutes now being talked about is a outcome of the WTO GATS agenda, there was opportunity in 2015, December to withdraw higher education from WTO GATS, when inter ministerial conference took place in Narobi and we organized is 8 day protest in Jantamantar, to persuade the Indian government to withdraw the present dispensation and the present defense minister, he represented us in the Narobi conference and did not say a word about, either withdrawal or not withdrawal of higher education, higher education was ignored. So, agenda of WTO GATS is being implemented very fast, it has many demands on Indian higher education, one of the demand is make it as uniform as possible, therefore schemes like common higher education act comes up, therefore idea like the credit based system comes up, because you can control all the diversity and plurality of the public funded education system will be withdrawn, all kinds of assaults are taking place from 2011 to 2011, one after another and continuing to date and institute of higher education are being destroyed. Now, the higher education, when budget cuts take place, when dictates are given from UGC or all India council of technical education or from the bar council of India, that you have to follow this syllabus, you have to follow this and no autonomy of the university system is going to be respected, then all the institutions are under attack. Now, orders are coming not only from UGC, AICT, they are coming directly from Ministry of HRD, it is totally unconstitutional, one of these attacks as I mentioned is neat, why are we raising the issue of neat? This is single examination, single standardized examination for entrance into medical institution or engineering institution, may be very welcome idea for the middle class and upper middle classes, because then we do not have to appear in so many examination, that is our outlook, our way of looking at neat, but look at it from the other side of the story. This means state boards will lose all their power to decide who can be admitted in medical college, who cannot be admitted in medical college. In Tamil Nadu, they passed two bills, knowing that what neat is going to do, they passed two bills in the month of January this year, one was about admission in the MBBS courses, another was about MD courses. The MBBS bill said and bill to be signed by the president of India under advice from the government of India, it has not been signed. The bill number one on MBBS admission said, why should we go for neat? Neat means coaching classes. Coaching classes cannot be afforded by the masses of our children in Tamil Nadu. So, we have been so far relying upon the state board results, the 12 class results and if state board results are there, educate basis for admitting children and we have been admitting under that. For MD bill, they said, therefore, do not apply neat to us, give us exemption. You can do it anywhere else, but not in Tamil Nadu. They also said, it is a matter of social justice. If you impose neat, then social justice will be violated. Then the MD admission bill, the government said, the bill said that the reason why we do not want it in MD also, no bill of this kind, because we have reserved 50 percent quota for MBBS degree holders in the rural health services of Tamil Nadu, because of 50 percent quota for MD admission reserved for MBBS degree holder, therefore, our rural health services are good shaped unlike other states of India. Please do not force us to destroy our rural health service. Give us exemption from neat. Exemption has not been given. So, there was a big agitation. After Anita has to say, big agitation, a very strong agitation, just like the same strength as the Jallikattu movement, same kind of a movement. It was ignored and Supreme Court eventually passed an order to the state government saying, it is our order to implement neat and anybody opposing neat must be stopped. When you read this document, UGC guideline, UGC Act, you find it continuously refers to ranking, ranking of higher education institutions. And laments, the look, not a single Indian university is anywhere in the top 100 or top 200. Let me begin by saying, friends, let us be bold enough to say, we are happy that none of our universities in top 100 or top 500. In top 500, I think there are a couple of them. Why should we be happy? We should be happy. Who does ranking? Have we ever asked this question? All ranking is done by companies, marketing agencies. The purpose of ranking is not only to find out who is giving good education or to define what is a good education, what is the purpose of education, but only to rank them in order to enable investors who decide where to invest. It is a total market phenomena. You read all the eight parameters which World Class Institute has mentioned in its document, UGC has mentioned for World Class Institute that these are the eight parameters and they are all about your employability in the global market. About redefining knowledge, knowledge is only what market wants. So, market does not want Jyotiba Pules' slavery document. Market does not want Bawaz Ambedkar's annihilation of caste in 1936. Market does not want the Naithalim proposal of Gandhi. Market does not want any and does not want the capital of Kalimaks. Therefore, World Class Institute shall not teach any of these documents. This is only part of sociology, history or political science. And what about sciences? Because sciences dominate the idea of ranking and ranking. It seems social sciences are undermined and sciences are dominating in all ranking, procedures, ranking, methodology, methodology. What about sciences? All the Indian universities are being increasingly told that we are not going to give you funds for science. You take it from corporate houses. So, CSIR, ICMR, ICR, all these institutions of higher education research in sciences are being told to take it from corporate houses. Government of India cannot afford to fund you. What will it mean? The whole character of scientific research will be reduced only to applying knowledge produced elsewhere. Fundamental knowledge will be produced elsewhere for which people will get Nobel prizes. Applied knowledge will be applied by Indian universities, by Indian scientific institutions. And therefore, all the patents of knowledge will be controlled by the really good higher education universities of Europe, Australia, New Zealand and United States, not America and some from Latin America as well. Indian universities will only be using the patent paying the full price for it. This is about WTO wards from all developing countries. In an article in EPW last year, I talked about skilling India and said is this skilling India or de-skilling India? Why did I raise this question? I raise this question because in the skill India document, there is a provision called recognition of prior learning. I never heard this word before in my life. So, that is with great care. Recognition of prior, please read it yourself. When you read it carefully, you find out recognition of prior learning is a provision for the unorganized labor. This in fact, highly skilled, not because of anything done by the government. They are highly skilled because they are, those are a traditional skill, they are very good. If you do not believe me, imagine if women of India stop transplanting rice every year, will India starve or not? Now, recognition of prior learning demand, these women have to apply for a certification. And who will certify them? Thus, the local sector-based skill council, who will be members of the skill council, representative of the corporate houses. It is all written there. I am not making it up. Read it. So, now, the unorganized labor skills will be certified by representatives of the corporate capital. Obviously, none of them will be certified. If they are not certified, they cannot get bank loans. They will not be, it is not just Adharkar, not having Adharkar will stop them from all subsidies, not having a certificate will also stop them from subsidies to their own enterprises. It is a major attack on unorganized labor. And demonetization, as we now come to know very late, we should have known right in the beginning. It was another major attack and GST is also an attack on unorganized labor. What is unorganized labor? Ninety-three percent of the productive force, ninety-three percent. Only seven percent in unorganized labor. And IT with such a high decibel around it, IT provides jobs only for 0.5 percent of India's people. So, skill, why then this kind of a skill India hyperbole? Because government has decided we want to exclude children in masses now. Therefore, earlier exclusion began from class 8 officially. Now, the exclusion will begin from class 5 onwards with the after parliament is going to amend act has already been approved by central advisory board on education already on the cards. Any day you will hear now exclusion will begin begin from class 5 onwards. And these excluded children will be asked to go to skilled shops. And these skilled shops will will turn them into semi-skilled or low-skilled labor, cheap labor. What is the special thing about producing cheap labor? Exclude them in cheap labor. Because cheap labor is what make India needs, not made in India. Make India requires cheap labor because only when you have cheap labor, finance capital from China or Vietnam or from Mexico will be shifted to India. It also will be shifted when labor laws have will be diluted. My dear friend, they have been diluted already. They already stand diluted and low interest loan will be given. So, we had the model in nano company being invited from Nandi Gram, West Bengal to Gujarat to Khera district by the then chief minister, Mr. Modi. And they were given a very low interest loan, 0.1 percent loan and first installment to be returned after 20 years. We must understand the linkage between cheap labor to be produced from education system by exclusion and then using the cheap labor for financial, attracting financial, finance capital.