Union Minister of State for Home, Shri Mullappally Ramachandran on Sunday said not even a single Indian university’s name figures in the top 100 universities of the world.

He was Inaugurating a national seminar on ‘Higher education: challenges and opportunities” at Vatakara, near Calicut. He said “it is not that we do not have world-class faculty in our country. We have best of students in our country“.

“It is also not true that all our institutes lack funds and resources”, he said, adding “in my view what we lack is the vision and confidence in our capability”.

It is not understood on what report the Central Minister has based his statement. However, the chance that what he said may be the fact also. In fact, the higher education in India has become a highly lucrative business and the education part has gone down. Already, the government has lost interest in the primary education. About 25% of the people in the country are illiterate, including a large number of eligible children of the school-going age. What the continued governments in the Centre and states have done to increase the literacy in the country. Many African countries above India in the percentage of education.

The governments and many of the politicians are not interested in a higher % of literacy, since it will strengthen the people’s’ capability to fight for their rights. Both the ruling party and the opposition at the centre are not at all interested.  Kerala, where the Left parties have been in government several times, the literacy is declared as 100%. The difference is for everybody to see.