ALL of a sudden, the first few pages of leading newspapers in the country and especially in North India saw a dramatic shift in the advertisements in the last week. Before the beginning of the Navratras, Amazon, Flipkart and such other home delivery companies were dominant in exhibiting their products for purchase. As the news of the NEET(National Eligibility cum Entrance Test) results for the medical undergraduate qualifiers was announced, since then, without a break, these spaces have been occupied by various tutorials, education imparting agencies like Aakash, Allen etc., a majority of whom are based at Kota, Rajasthan, but have study centres in different cities across the states.

One can only imagine the kind of money that has been pumped in by these educational centres/companies to issue such advertisements to the national and local dailies that they have beaten companies like Amazon etc., during this period. But, why not?  Education and imparting training to medical and engineering students for their competitive exams has become one of the most flourishing businesses in India during the last few decades. Thousands of crores of rupees are spent by the parents on their children for imparting these preparatory training courses.

In an interesting report carried out by a national daily a few days ago, education and  technical firms have cornered almost all $ 100 million(Rs 733 crore) bracket funds post Covid. According to the report, in India, among the eight funding rounds of $ 100 million and above in Indian start-ups during April-September, five involved education-technical companies like Byju’s, Vedantu, Unacademy and Eruditus. According to data sourced from Venture Intelligence, one-third of the $ 1.5 billion(Rs 9,250 crore) raised in these eight investment rounds were by Byju’s.

Byju’s classes have raised $ 500 million(Rs 3,700 crore) in two rounds in June and September from investors including Tiger Global, General Atlantic, Silver Lake, Dst Global. Unacademy raised $ 153 million(Rs 1,000 crore) from SoftBank, IIFL, VC, Sequoia Capital, General Atlantic, nexus Venture Partners and many others. Likewise, Eruditus raised $ 113 million in August from Naspers, Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, Sequoia Capital. Vedantu raised $ 100 million from Midyar Network, Tiger Global, Coatue Management and other investors.

IS IT FOR EQUITABLE EDUCATION OR APPROPRIATING PROFIT
Why is such a large foreign direct investment taking place in the education sector in the country? Many of the ardent supporters of the government continue to argue the huge demand-supply gap paradigm to meet the rising demands of a near 250 million school-going students. This is an argument given to veneer the real intention of such a huge investment gripping the Indian education sector. The driving force for these investments happens to be to appropriate huge surplus of money to maximize their profits from the Indian consumers.

Ursula Hews, while contributing an article in the Socialist Register(page 65, 2019), states one of the major shifts in the portfolio of some of the large transnational corporations over a period of three decades globally is that they have shifted their investments from finance to utilities and services; education being one of the foremost.  The cities which are responsible for providing some of the essential services have been steered in such a way by large consultant driven city plans that instead of running these utilities themselves they are forced to allow these utilities(especially providing, water, sanitation, water etc.) to be run by the large TNCs. The major share of capitalist appropriation or generation of the surplus takes place in this form and the cities are becoming a facilitator to it.

What we are experiencing is the commoditization of basic services like education, health and IT etc. Massive expropriation and appropriation of the surplus-value is generated in this exercise.  Whilst the process of concentration was accelerating there was actually a slow- down in the generation of new production and employment. So, in other words, the largest TNCs were sustaining their profits not because of production but because of cannibalization of pre- existing production capacity.

According to her, of the 100 largest TNCs by 2006, 20 per cent were into services, which earlier was just 7 per cent ( 1997). In the UK in 2008 outsourced public services accounted for nearly 6 per cent of GDP of the UK which was an increase of 126 per cent for the same period.

The post-neoliberal era has changed the character of capitalism where maximization of profit takes place not owing to production but because of other predatoriness of capital, which is financial like the bundling up of housing credit, commoditizing services and likewise.

As Nik Theodore, Jamie Peck, and Neil Brenner point out, neoliberalism is marked by “deregulation of state control over industry, assaults on organised labour, the reduction of corporate taxes, the privatization of public services and assets, the dismantling of social assistance programmes, the enhancement of international capital mobility, and the intensification of inter-locality competition. This phase of development is quite evident in the Indian cities which have accentuated inequity.

Interestingly, a bulk of these funds borrowed by the educational giants are used for marketing or ‘inorganic expansion’.  More cannibalization is taking place by acquiring other platforms providing online education. Take for example Byju has acquired WhiteHatJr for $ 300 million.

This is happening at a time when the government is abdicating from its responsibility of providing education and also imparting platforms for preparatory educational forums. This platform is considered as a big a money-making machine where education instead of being considered a right is taken as a commodity.

No wonder that of the different forms of utilities that are being commoditized in the cities like water, sanitation, electricity, education is one of the leading ones to generate surplus for these companies.

THE ALTERNATIVE
We have seen how the marginalised and other sections are completely excluded from such mismatch and all the hullaballoo created about competition is nothing but a farce. But we have also seen how the ‘super 30 model’ in Bihar worked for the marginalized students belonging to the poorer sections of the society. But, this is also a piecemeal approach to tackle the problem. The government must facilitate centres for free coaching to all and particularly to the sections of the marginalized communities in the society. The communities, especially the student community and their representatives will have to create such platforms to guide students in this direction. I remember during my student days, holding pre-entrance test coaching centres free of cost for everyone in the university to ensure that a level playing field is generated, was a common practice. I believe the SFI holds such centres for entrance tests to JNU and other universities. The road map for reaching out to a large section of the students who are school going also needs to be created by the students' movement apart from incessantly demanding a proactive role of the State to address this question.