— ✍️ Dr. Pankaj Tambe
The Cocroach Janta Party (CJP) should place one clear demand at the centre of its national education campaign: the Modi government must introduce 35 per cent government-quota seats with regulated lower fees in private deemed-to-be universities, following the model operating in Andhra Pradesh. This demand should not be presented as an opposition experiment or an attack on private education.
Andhra Pradesh is presently governed by an NDA coalition led by Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu, a major ally of the Modi government. The Andhra Pradesh government continues to administer the 35 per cent government-quota system in private universities and has fixed fees for these seats for the 2024–27 period. It is therefore an NDA model already in operation within an NDA-governed state.
The political question is simple: When an NDA government can implement this model in Andhra Pradesh, why cannot the NDA government at the Centre extend the same principle to private deemed universities throughout India?
The Andhra Pradesh system requires private greenfield and brownfield universities to earmark at least 35 per cent of seats in most programmes as government-quota seats. These seats are filled on the basis of merit in the relevant common entrance examination, while their fees are determined by the state’s higher-education regulatory authority rather than left entirely to private management.
The state’s rules describe these seats as being offered at subsidized rates to benefit poor children. The Andhra Pradesh government’s current fee order also confirms that a separate regulated fee structure applies to the 35 per cent government-quota seats in private universities.
This model rests on three democratic principles:
Private investment may establish a university, but public policy must protect access.
Admission must be transparent and publicly supervised.
A student’s future cannot be decided only by the financial capacity of the student’s family.
These are not anti-private-sector principles. They are principles of responsible regulation.
The Modi government often presents the NDA as a unified political alliance with a common national vision. It cannot praise the achievements of an NDA-led state government while ignoring an educational policy that could benefit millions of students nationally.
CJP must therefore declare:
The Andhra Pradesh model is an NDA model. What the NDA accepts in Andhra Pradesh, it must not reject in Delhi.
A Policy for SC, ST and OBC Students—and for the Open-Category Poor
The campaign must be presented as a broad struggle for educational justice, not as a benefit confined to one community.
SC, ST and OBC students require reservation because caste-based exclusion is historical, structural and continuing. For SC and ST students, government scholarships and fee reimbursement are essential because merely allocating a seat does not make an expensive course accessible. Andhra Pradesh’s scholarship system includes eligible students from SC, ST, BC, EBC and several other disadvantaged categories and provides fee reimbursement through government mechanisms.
At the same time, the lower-fee government-quota model can also benefit poor students competing in the open or unreserved category.
A poor student from the open category may not receive a caste-based scholarship, but that student still suffers when private-university fees run into several lakhs of rupees. The subsidized government-quota pool creates a route through which such a student can compete on merit without being forced to pay the full management-quota fee.
This is the political strength of the model.
It combines social justice with economic accessibility.
Reservation within the government-quota seats protects historically excluded communities. The unreserved portion remains open to all eligible students, including poor students from the open category. Regulated lower fees benefit every student allotted a seat in that pool.
A national version should go further by establishing need-based scholarships or interest-free educational support for economically weak open-category students, without reducing or interfering with constitutionally justified reservation for SCs, STs and OBCs.
The principle must be:
Caste injustice requires reservation. Poverty requires financial support. A democratic education policy must address both without using one to weaken the other.
Privatization Must Not Mean Exclusion
India’s higher-education landscape is changing. Professional and technical courses are increasingly being offered through private universities and deemed-to-be universities. But public policy has failed to ensure that the expansion of private institutions produces a corresponding expansion of social opportunity.
A university may advertise modern laboratories, international collaborations and employment-oriented courses. But for a family earning a modest income, an annual fee of several lakhs makes that university practically inaccessible.
This produces a dangerous educational division.
Students from wealthy families enter private universities with modern infrastructure, professional networks and emerging courses. Poor and marginalized students are left to compete for a limited number of affordable seats elsewhere.
Over time, this division will reproduce itself in employment, research, administration, technology and economic power.
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar understood that exclusion from knowledge was inseparable from exclusion from power:
“I have always held that Knowledge is Power in every field of life. The Scheduled Castes will not attain their goal of freedom and liberty until they drink deep of all knowledge.”
—Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Writings and Speeches, Volume 17, Part II, p. 72.
If knowledge is power, then making higher education unaffordable is a method of preserving social power in the hands of those who already possess it.
CJP should launch a nationwide “35 Per Cent Education Justice Campaign” with a direct proposal:
Thirty-five per cent of seats in every private deemed-to-be university should be brought under a government-supervised social-access quota.
The programme should include:
• centralized and transparent admission through a government agency;
• publicly regulated and substantially lower fees;
• reservation for SC, ST and OBC students;
• full scholarships or fee reimbursement for eligible SC and ST students;
• need-based assistance for poor students in the open category;
• public disclosure of category-wise admissions, fees, scholarships and dropout rates.
The campaign should emphasize that the 35 per cent pool is not exclusively a reserved-category pool. It is a lower-fee public-access pool within which constitutional reservation and open competition can both operate.
This makes the policy socially just and politically broad.
A Dalit student denied opportunity by caste will benefit.
An Adivasi student from a remote district will benefit.
An OBC student from an agricultural or working-class family will benefit.
A poor open-category student who cannot afford management fees will also benefit.
The beneficiaries will be different, but the democratic principle will be the same: family income and inherited social position should not close the doors of higher education.
The Central Government cannot claim that such a programme is impossible. An NDA-governed state is already administering regulated fees for 35 per cent government-quota seats in private universities.
The Centre cannot claim that private institutions will refuse. Andhra Pradesh has shown that government-quota obligations can be made part of the relationship between private universities and the state.
It cannot claim that centralized admissions are impractical. Government agencies already conduct large national and state-level entrance examinations and counselling processes.
It cannot claim that the policy benefits only one section. Lower-fee seats will assist poor families across communities, while reservation and scholarships will protect those who face the combined burden of caste and poverty.
The absence of a national policy is therefore not an administrative problem. It is a political choice.
The Modi government must answer why students in an NDA-governed state can receive the protection of a 35 per cent government quota while students seeking admission to centrally governed deemed universities are left largely at the mercy of private fee structures.
Ambedkar Did Not Separate Education from Affordability.
Dr. Ambedkar did not believe that opening institutions was enough. He insisted that education must be brought within the financial reach of the oppressed:
“Education ought to be cheapened in all possible ways and to the greatest possible extent.… The policy of this department therefore ought to be to make higher education as cheap to the lower classes as it can possibly be made.”
(Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, Writings and Speeches, Volume 2, pp. 41–42.)
This is the philosophical foundation of the proposed campaign.
A seat priced beyond the capacity of a family is not a genuine opportunity.
A reserved seat without a scholarship is incomplete justice.
An open-category seat with an unaffordable fee does not help a poor student.
Educational access requires admission, affordability and the financial capacity to complete the course.
Ambedkarite organizations should contribute to this campaign by transforming a political demand into an organized social movement.
They should collect information about the fees charged by private deemed universities, the representation of SC, ST and OBC students, scholarship delays and the experiences of poor open-category students.
They should conduct public hearings where students and parents can describe how high fees affect their educational choices.
They should organize joint platforms of Dalit, Adivasi, OBC and economically weaker open-category families. Such cooperation must not erase the distinct reality of caste discrimination. It should demonstrate that regulated and affordable education can create a broad democratic alliance while preserving reservation for communities subjected to historical exclusion.
Ambedkarite organizations must also ensure that the campaign is not reduced to an election slogan. They should demand annual progress reports from CJP and maintain independent pressure on the party.
CJP’s responsibility is to carry the issue into electoral politics and national policymaking. Ambedkarite organizations must provide research, mobilization, public education and accountability.
The strongest political narrative is not that the Andhra Pradesh model belongs to one party against another.
The stronger narrative is this:
The model is functioning under an NDA-led government. Therefore, the Modi government has no ideological excuse for refusing to apply it nationally.
CJP should tell the country that this proposal does not ask the Centre to accept an opposition model. It asks the Centre to demonstrate consistency with a policy already operating under one of its own most important coalition governments.
The slogan should be unmistakable:
One NDA, one standard of educational justice.
Thirty-five per cent lower-fee government-quota seats in every private deemed university.
The campaign should unite the demand for reservation with the demand for affordable education. It should protect SC, ST and OBC representation while opening a lower-fee pathway for poor students in the open category.
The Modi government must choose.
It can extend the Andhra Pradesh model nationally and demonstrate that the NDA is serious about educational inclusion.
Or it can remain silent and reveal that its concern for poor and marginalized students ends where the interests of powerful private institutions begin.
The gates of higher education cannot remain controlled by money.
What the NDA can implement in Andhra Pradesh, the NDA must implement across India.
- Dr. Pankaj Tambe is an Ambedkarite thinker, writer, and researcher based in Nagpur, Maharashtra. His work focuses on the thought of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, social justice, equality, democracy, constitutional values, and the struggle against caste discrimination. Through his writings, he promotes Ambedkarite philosophy and encourages critical thinking, education, and social transformation.
You can also join our WhatsApp group to get premium and selected news of The Mooknayak on WhatsApp. Click here to join the WhatsApp group.