The clout of Maharashtra’s education barons

MUMBAI: On August 14, two kindergarten students of a Badlapur school were sexually assaulted by a janitor employed by the school. The crime was heinous enough but what was worse was the plight of their parents who were made to run from pillar to post to get the school and police to take cognisance of their complaint.
Why did the school management not respond immediately? Why did the Badlapur police take 12 hours to lodge the complaint even when the parents produced medical reports of the girls? Why was there a mistrust of the police on the part of all the parents and people who participated in the subsequent angry protests? Was it because the people who run the school are connected to the ruling party?
The incident has brought the spotlight back on politicians who run educational institutions in Maharashtra—indeed, there has not been a single cabinet in the past two decades which did not have ‘education barons’ in it. The connections with power have bred a reluctance in government authorities and police to act against reported irregularities, an example of which was demonstrated in the Badlapur crime.
The incident and the anger
The incident became public on August 20, six days after the parents of the minors initially approached the school with their complaint. While it is imperative that such complaints be taken seriously, the school reportedly continued to dilly-dally even after the parents produced medical reports of the children.
On August 16, when the parents went to the police station, they were subjected to the same indifferent behaviour. Reportedly, the police station in-charge Shubhada Shitole-Shinde (now suspended) sent the parents back to school with two constables instead of registering their complaint.
Back at the school, when the parents once again showed the medical reports to the principal and demanded action, she informed a management committee member Tushar Apte, who is an active BJP worker and heads the party’s Jan Kalyan Samiti in Ambernath. Apte came to the school soon after Shitole-Shinde reached and they discussed the issue even as the parents were asked to wait on another floor.
Local Maharashtra Navnirman Sena worker Sangeeta Chendvankar, who had accompanied the parents, then called assistant commissioner of police Suresh Varade. “He understood the gravity of the situation, called Shitole-Shinde and asked her to lodge the complaint,” said Chendvankar. But even after this, Shitole-Shinde continued to play hide-and-seek and began the process of lodging the complaint a full 12 hours after the parents had approached the police.
Apte too told the parents that the CCTV recording was not working, which led them to suspect that attempts were being made to hush up the case. But after news of the heinous crime and the treatment being given to the parents spread in the school and across the city, protests were organised which turned violent.
Clout and irregularities
Among the trustees of the organisation that runs the school are a few politically linked persons. Tushar Apte’s social media posts show that his brother Chetan Apte too belongs to the BJP and was the vice-president of the party in Badlapur in 2021. Another trustee, Nandkishor Patkar, is an Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad member and the former president of the Badlapur municipal council from the BJP. The school’s chairman Uday Kotwal is connected to the RSS.
Apte, when questioned, said there were people in the management who were associated with the BJP but the allegation that they used their political connections to pressurise the police was baseless. “In fact, we supported the parents,” he claimed.
Several educational institutes in areas like Thane, Raigad and Palghar districts, where private professional education colleges have mushroomed in the last 20 years, have been in the thick of several irregularities. Arbitrary decisions regarding students, not paying salaries to the staff, not providing adequate infrastructure and not adhering to government rules are common in these institutions. Often, because of the clout or political links of the management, the education department administration too avoids taking action.
A teacher working for over ten years at the Shivajirao Jondhale College of Engineering at Asangaon said that for years, he and other employees had been getting much less than their salary on paper. “My salary is around ₹75,000 per month but I get only ₹45,000 in hand,” he said. “This is the case with all of us. Due to the relations of the management with all political parties and leaders, the authorities don’t touch them.”
In another instance, the Tasgaonkar Group, known for its proximity to a top NCP leader, faced a controversy after the staff launched protests for withholding salaries. A former employee with the group’s engineering college said that he left, as the management did not pay him his salary for 18 months in the four years that he was there. Another employee who still works with the institute said they were now being paid their full salaries albeit delayed. “But none of us have got the 18-month salaries that we were deprived of,” he said. “The management has promised us that in the coming years, they will be given in instalments.”
The education barons
Education barons started emerging in the sector the late 1980s. Maharashtra was then facing a dearth of engineering and medical colleges, and the then chief minister Vasantdada Patil introduced the concept of unaided private educational institutes in higher education. Under this, anybody could set up colleges without the government’s aid and charge fees on the basis of their expenditure. They could admit students from anywhere in India and also through a management quota. Thus began the practice of charging higher or ‘capitation fees’ from students who could not make it to the merit list which determined admission to colleges.
The law turned out to be a boon for private institutions in Maharashtra, giving birth to ‘education barons’. Politicians across parties entered this sector, as they had the resources and influence to set up private colleges. Some of them ran the institutions professionally while others turned them into an opportunity to profiteer, as the concerned government authorities often turned a blind eye to the irregularities.
Maharashtra has many well-known private education institutes, among them the D Y Patil Group of Institutions led by former Tripura governor D Y Patil; the Bharati Vidyapeeth founded by the late Patangrao Kadam; the MGM Group of Institutions founded by former higher and technical education minister Kamal Kishor Kadam; the Terna Group of Institutions led by former minister Padmasinh Patil; the VSPM AHE Group of Institutions led by former minister Ranjeet Deshmukh; the Mumbai Educational Trust led by food and civil supplies minister Chhagan Bhujbal; and the Meghe Group of Institutions led by former MP Datta Meghe.
Academics often lament that the influence of the education barons makes it difficult for the administration to ensure that the institutions run by them follow all rules and guidelines. Dr Bhalchandra Mungekar, former chairman of the University Grants Commission (UGC) and former vice-chancellor of Mumbai University (MU) said that the commercialisation of education was the root cause of an incident like the Badlapur one.
“Most private institutions are either owned or managed by politicians or their children and relatives. Thus, they violate rules, secure in the knowledge that nothing will happen to them,” said Dr Mungekar, adding that this was the reason it took the police 12 hours to file an FIR in the Badlapur incident.
Dr Mungekar minced no words while commenting on the police, saying that their role had become “absolutely criminal”. “Rather than acting against criminals, they have grown accustomed to succumbing to pressure from politicians, and do great injustice to aggrieved people,” he said.
Professor Sukhdeo Thorat, an educationist and former UGC chairman, questioned the policy of privatisation of the education sector. “Successive governments could have changed the policy by increasing the budgetary allocation for education but their priorities were different,” he said. “In the whole of Europe, education is still with the government, and there are no private institutions. But when politicians here want to set up their own institutions with a view to benefitting from them, why would they change the policy?”