State and govt. not interchangeable: Same goes for revenue and income

Hoax of free education and free health services

Continued from Yesterday

By Usvatte-aratchi-December 5, 2017

‘Attack on free education’ hoax

A hoax, when used to deceive people, is in a category somewhat but not entirely, different from the earlier concerns. The foundation of Free Education laid by Kannangara was that education was available free of payment of tuition fees from kindergarten to university. Sirimavo Bandaranaike buttressed that edifice when her government took over many schools in the private sector. It follows that major attacks on this massive structure must consist of a denial of that foundation and the weakening of those buttresses that strengthened the edifice. Facilities for education at the primary level became universally available as is evident with the universal enrolment in school of children aged 5-10. From age 11 years, opportunities are not available evenly over the country.

Educationally disadvantaged districts in the country are evidence of the uneven distribution of educational facilities at higher levels. This problem was to be resolved partly by providing scholarships, enabling bright children from poor families to seek education in higher quality schools. That process ran into problems as children of better off families grabbed opportunities to study in better schools using various subterfuges and by performing better at scholarship examinations. That opening was enough for Panzer Division attacks on the lightly fortified structure that was free education. Expensive private tuition as a determinant of how well a student performs at examinations dug in with mighty guns, with spies and weapons both light and heavy. It was teachers (spies and fifth columnists) in government schools who neglected to teach students well in schools and opened the gates to the citadel and dropped the bridge to permit the invasion. Teachers themselves put up shop to provide the market for private tuition. So died the scheme for free education that Kannangara had set up! It was then necessary to set up camps from where what was left of the free education system could be weakened. Those camps came disguised in the form of ‘international schools’, a misnomer if there ever were one.

Almost every member of the Government Medical Officers Association (GMOA) came into medical schools because their parents spent their private funds to pay to enter good schools and spent lavishly on private tuition classes. What more direct assault on Free Education? It is true that those who enter a medical faculty have scored the highest marks at the relevant examinations. It does not follow that they were the most intelligent students in their age cohort. They were the most intelligent and tenacious students1} in their age cohort whose parents could afford to get them into good schools and pay the high fees charged by tuition masters, precisely the situation that prevailed before 1944 and which the Free Education Scheme was designed to end. (It is necessary to bear in mind that before severe competition to enter medical faculties emerged, a few schools in Colombo and Jaffna sent whole broods of students to medical faculties. [The information is in the Annual Reports of the Director of Education for those years.] They did not have to cross a high bar of a Z score. The great advances in health conditions in our country were made under the care of these men and women and now we speak of them with the highest adoration. These graduates have done exceedingly well whether at home or abroad. The levels of intelligence and education were no bar to high performance in the profession.)The fundamental principle of Kannangara’s FREE EDUCATION scheme buttressed by Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s takeover of private schools was that education was free, free from the payment of tuition fees from kindergarten to university. The irony of it all lies in GMOA and university students parading streets in support of GMOA and in defence of ‘free education’, when every member of GMOA had entered the medical faculty by joining forces that brazenly attacked the free education scheme! The participation of the Inter-university Students’ Federation is an exhibition of the poverty of cognitive skills that they have developed at school and university. The irony of ironies is that the most successful tuition master was the Minister of (Free) Education in the country with the most successful entrepreneur with fee levying schools was a Deputy Minister of (Free) Education! That minister, faithful to his profession, now supports the claims of GMOA! SAITM was a logical extension of the market for higher secondary education that had developed to satisfy the demand by parents with sufficient resources (not necessarily rich) to buy the services offered. All kinds of shops with fanciful names have come up to teach other disciplines. If one conducted a survey to find the social and economic characteristics of parents of students who entered government medical faculties and SAITM medical school, say in 2016, he/she would find no statistically significant differences between the two groups. Members of the GMOA stopped paying for education when they entered medical schools and now want to prevent their erstwhile colleagues from continuing the practice in which they were colleagues. These doctors are perpetrators of a mighty hoax that has brazenly attacked the scheme of free education and now stand as a phalanx to guard their monopoly to earn rent on the scarcity that they were heir to.

Look at the business model that most medical practitioners follow. The exceptions are medical practitioners entirely in the public sector (of whom there are many) or entirely in the private sector (of whom there are a few). Most practitioners work in both sectors. They are in the nature of independent contract workers who work for a multiplicity of employers with different employment contracts with each. Take someone who teaches in a Faculty of Medicine. She has an employment contract with the university in which she undertakes to teach in the university and to participate in other functions of a university teacher. She might function as a Dean of the Faculty, Head of a Department and in many other roles. A part of that contract may be that she receives a monthly salary and a pension on retirement at a stipulated age. She might also work in a number of hospitals, not necessarily teaching hospitals, and enter into a different contract with each employer. She would work at a private for-profit hospital for an entirely different pay structure. She would earn as much as she would like depending on the demand for her services. She would earn depending on the quality of services she sells in contrast to the contract with the university where she has permanent tenure of employment and it is very rarely that her employment contract would be terminated for incompetence.

A medical practitioner working in a government hospital and a private sector hospital has a very busy schedule. How much more busy would be a person teaching in a university, working in a teaching hospital and working in several private hospitals, all within the twenty four hours of the day? It is not rare, though perhaps uncommon, for a patient to see a consultant at 11.45 in the night after that doctor had taught in the university and worked in a private hospital, since morning. He surely must need time to renew his lecture notes, which he began writing some15 years ago. The cost to the medical practitioner is his health, his leisure and any social life. (Try inviting them to an evening meal!) The costs to society are the services of an experienced doctor working with a relaxed and lively mind and time to spend more than three minutes seeing a patient, a university teacher abreast of writings in the advanced medical journals and someone who has the time to contribute to growing knowledge in his own field. Not even a common practitioner of medicine can effectively function now without acquiring new knowledge emanating from universities and labs and disseminated faster and wider than we have ever earlier. (The tendency to prescribe antibiotics in large quantities to patients is partly an outcome of this practice of not keeping up with developments in their field of work.) Yet, the best minds in the country can find hardly eight hours to sleep because of pre-occupation with concerns other than the pursuit of knowledge. Some scientists in the Faculty in Colombo are reputed to write good papers in micro-biology. It is common to speak with derogation about the lack of research by university teachers in the humanities and social studies. With the business models that teachers in the Medical Faculty follow, I cannot see how they can even keep abreast of writings in their fields, far from undertaking any research. The GMOA was vociferous in their denunciation of private sector medical education lest people’s lives should be in danger. Did they ever examine the ever present danger to patients consequent upon the business model that their members follow?

Robber barons, robber knaves and robber knave-barons

I am aware that robber barons inhabit the private sector of the economy. (This genus first appeared in the late 19th century in the Eastern sea border of US.) I am also aware that robber knaves grow and thrive in the public sector of the economy. Both politicians and bureaucrats are members of this Contemptible Order of Robber Knaves (CORK/with sash). Haven’t we learnt that lesson when a mansion appeared with no owner or when an expensive pent house changed hands with a third party paying some Rs.175 million for it? Haven’t we learnt that lesson when a court convicted two senior bureaucrats of malfeasance in the use of public funds, of course to shorten to their journey in sansara? (Can’t we draw a new map that shows a shorter and less arduous route subject to the proviso that one used one’s own resources?) A robber knave-baron is born when e. g. a primary dealer in government bonds in the private sector is in miscegenation with bureaucrats in the government sector (even with the danger of incest) to do precisely what Raj Rajaratnam did in the New York stock market to enjoy the privileges of a long prison term. We, in Sri Lanka, are reputed for greater hospitality and it would displease many, especially those from the deep south if our courts did not uphold that reputation.

Conclusion

The abuse of terms when it is not due to unfamiliarity with them is a clever but contemptible way to confuse and mislead the public to get them to believe that what the perpetrators say is true. This is ‘1984’, déjà vu, all over again! To betray one’s state as Velupillai Piripaharan did is a heinous crime with grave consequences. But to betray a government and switch to the opposition to bring down that government is not. It is noble to defend one’s state but to defend a government may be to serve selfish ends. For a private sector organisation to sell medical education under any conditions is anathema. It is fine for private sector establishments to sell medical care services for a fee and run at a profit. There is the same irresoluble conflict in objectives when providing medical care in private sector hospitals or under other arrangements or when providing medical education under parallel arrangements. The public has been massively confused and grossly misled by GMOA and university students simply for the benefit of agents who send students to second rate medical schools overseas to collect fees from such schools as well as from students and for the GMOA to perpetuate the monopoly of medical practice to maximise earnings for its members. Their pretence that they protect free education and free health services has been a clever hoax. If the objective of GMOA were to ensure high quality medical education, there would be far less stupid ways to achieve that. These men shout themselves hoarse that government expenditure on education and health must increase and, unbelievably, at the same time, castigate government for raising tax revenue to pay for that increased expenditure. Keep your eyes peeled lest these hypocrites, robber barons, robber knave-barons and robber knaves should steal everything that you value.