Paper Truths

On the irrelevance of Smriti Irani’s degree

This is probably not a very apt analogy but to illustrate the point that subject expertise is completely irrelevant to results when it comes to a minister’s performance, consider the role of Lavrenti Beria in the making of the atom bomb. He was just Stalin’s policeman, but when the US nuked Japan, he was given charge of making one for the Soviet Union. And Beria, through the mechanism of massive terror and resource mobilisation, delivered for Stalin. A coarse unrefined man who knew nothing of nuclear physics had helmed one of the great technological achievements of the time. His boss, Stalin, was a drop-out from a seminary, but created an industrial empire carved over the blood and slavery of tens of millions. Stalin was self-taught and better read than most people in his country. An exam or a degree would have made no difference to his impact on history.

Is it important that Smriti Irani be a graduate to be India’s HRD Minister? Should AK Antony have been a National Defence Academy graduate to be made Defence Minister? Did Murli Manohar Joshi, as HRD Minister, not try to foist Vedic Mathematics—which is nothing more than redundant methods of calculation—on the Indian educational system despite being a PhD holder? His doctorate made no difference to his parochial approach.

It wouldn’t matter even if Irani were completely illiterate, so long as she has enough depth of intellect. It is absurd to equate college education with wisdom or morality. Most graduates would have forgotten almost everything in their syllabus a year after they get their degrees. And why would anyone who learnt how to build a bridge at an IIT or manage cash flows at an IIM be more honest because of that?

The second charge against Irani— that she filed a false declaration on her educational qualifications—is more serious. In her 2004 affidavit, she says she has a BA done through correspondence, and for the 2014 election, it has become BCom Part 1, which is short of graduation. This is going to be a hard one to explain, and even harder for people to accept, whatever explanation she offers. If you are a graduate, you don’t hide it ten years later and declare a lower qualification instead.

If Irani did indeed make a misrepresentation in 2004, then the irony of it is quite interesting. The only reason to declare herself a graduate would be that she herself places a premium on an unnecessary paper degree. This way, she becomes an illustration of the opposition argument that degrees matter. And it seems like a useless claim to have made—she was not going to get a single vote more because she had a BA degree.What may plausibly have inspired such an act was a form of shame in having to say that she wasn’t a graduate. For a self-made woman, who achieved so much by the dint of her own toil, a degree should be irrelevant. That she should think it was not is the condition of a society that sees a degree also as a statement of character.

Contrast that piece of paper against her success as a politician—she is now a minister after having lost two elections, and in the coterie of India’s most powerful man after having protested against him in her early political career. A successful politician is not necessarily a great HRD minister. But neither is one with a PhD against his or her name. The only reasonable way to assess Irani’s mettle as a minister would be by her tenure in office.

education qualificationHRD ministerSmriti Irani