16 SOCIAL SCIENTIST occasionally, of some broader policy issues. As a whole, it would not be unfair to call this phase economlstic, but the agitation and public debates were raising certain wider questions too. Thus the demand, put forward first by student and later taken up by the teacher organizations, for 10 per cent budget allocation for education raised the issue of budget priorities as between defence on the one hand, and education or public health on the other. Questions of educational governance led up to the implicit conflict between colonial-bureaucratic legacies and democratic forms of managing education. There was also the issue of privatization of education, on which teachers were able to develop a more-or-less united stance. But two serious limitations persisted in this second phase : the very uneven level of organization across states, and a general inability to grasp the linkages between education and overall government policies and peoples' problems and movements in a Third World context. The third, post-1985, phase, has been dominated by the New Education Policy, which has sought to institutionalize all the negative aspects of post-1947 government policies. What has developed is a systematic offensive, not sporadic bureaucratic aberrations due to the whims of some officials—for the Hospitals and other Institutions. Bill, delinking of colleges from universities, accreditation councils, so-called autonomy, privatization of education, devaluation of degrees and curtailment of higher education, the stress on 'non-formal* methods and 'vocationalization* etc., all form parts of a coherent bureaucratic drive. This, again, is integrally related to the capital-intensive developmental strategy of the ruling class, and so the institutionalization of previously scattered negative tendencies, and the introduction of new regressive measures, acquires a larger, anti-people dimension. In economy and education alike the policy shift from labour-to capital-intensive strategies tilts the balance towards the interests of multi-nationals. Higher education, it is being argued, has become top heavy—yet only 3.5 millions out of 75 millions in the relevant 17-21 age-group get institutional higher education today. Thus a proportion of 4 per cent is being condemned as excessive, and the ground is being cleared for restricting admissions through higher fees (in autonomous colleges, for instance): even an all-India test for undergraduation entrance has been suggested, while new universities are being discouraged. The future 'surplus* will be channelled into non-formal streams, and even the present 4 per cent entry will get whittled down. As for the related stress on 'vocationalization'. Government claims and plans in this respect need to be placed in the context of the 40 million population of child labourers in India today. This immense number do not have the chance of going to school, or are forced by poverty to drop out: for them, an enforced 'vocationalization' is already the reality, with miserable pay (Rs.50 to 100 a month or so), and inhuman working conditions which make them old people in their twenties. These are facts of life