'Modi disappointing on education':Dr. Devesh Kapur -Varghese K George

The trajectory of the Narendra Modi government's education policy has been "disappointing and makes one apprehensive," said Dr. Devesh Kapur, Director of the Centre for the Advanced Study of India at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on human capital, diaspora and political and economic change in developing countries.

"It makes me apprehensive. I don't see any fundamental change in a view - common to our Left and the Right - that somehow, higher education is something to be controlled, centralised," Dr. Kapur said, in an interview to The Hindu. He had expected the Modi government to do better in the field of education, and has been disappointed by the direction of the government, said Dr. Kapur. "Yes, I am disappointed. Because, I think that Mr. Modi's vision of taking the country forward is not possible without the right human capital."

Dr. Kapur said higher education in India has long been a theatre of political conflicts and Mr. Modi was continuing on the same path. "Politics has always been there. The decision of the UPA (Government) to give reservation to OBCs in higher education was one such. The Left destroyed higher education in West Bengal, the one sector the State was doing well. Mr. Modi is not being imaginative. Larger questions of centralisation, autonomy, etc, are not being addressed," he said.

According to Dr. Kapur, Mr. Modi's attempts to engage the Indian diaspora in the country's development may be possible in private sector, but would be highly difficult in public universities, unless the structure of higher education changes radically.