Why Varun, Mamata Faked a Foreign Degree

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Earlier this week, Varun Gandhi was revealed to have done a Mamata Banerjee. The BJP politician's claim of holding degrees from the London School of
Economics (LSE) and London's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) were found inaccurate. The revelations seemed to echo the row over Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee's much-flaunted doctoral degree from East Georgia University a few years ago. The university, it was discovered, didn't exist.

But Gandhi and Banerjee may be just the two better-known faces of a rampant Indian problem. By all accounts, it's common to find doctors, engineers, professors and businessmen flaunting fancy foreign degrees, many of which are fake.

So, are Indians simply so hung up about a 'phoren' degree they want one even though they have no claim to it? Is this proof we love all things 'phoren'? Or do we have a talent and aptitude for deception and fakery? "Foreign things have a status value which the swadeshi doesn't," says social scientist Shiv Vishwanathan. In other words, another instance of our love of the foreign tag, a colonial hangover.

More important, when people tom-tom degrees from non-existent universities, it should be seen as an "appeal to an intellect they don't possess", adds Vishwanathan.

Dipankar Gupta, professor of sociology at Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University says that "a degree from either the UK or the US matters a lot (to) people in the developing world". But he adds that any dispassionate analysis shows "that some international universities are superior to ours and it helps to study there. But for many, it's not about acquiring knowledge, it's about showing off."

It is a platitude that India still prizes education above most other attributes. A highly qualified person commands more respect than one without. This increases manifold if the degree is from, say Oxford or Cambridge.

But Gupta says it's surprising prominent Indians flaunt real or fake foreign degrees. "It just shows their hypocrisy. They need either foreigners or foreign degrees to prop them up."

Headhunters admit false educational achievements on resumes are a besetting headache.

Ronesh Puri, MD of headhunter Executive Access, says, "At least 30-40% resumes are incorrect." Vishwanathan says this trend shows the "second-rate understanding of education."

Similarly, the resume of Ashwin Kapadia, vice-chancellor of South Gujarat University, claimed he had a Ph D in alternative medicine from a Sri Lankan university. But it didn't exist.

Sometimes, discovery of a fake degree can save lives. A few years ago, police caught 'Dr' Vikramjeet Singh, who claimed a degree from the Karanganda Medical Institute in Kazakhastan. He was employed by a Delhi hospital.

The University Grants Commission has published a list of 22 fake universities. Uttar Pradesh topped it with nine. The only cheering detail is Indians aren't the only ones flaunting fake universities. It's a reality everywhere. It says something that John Bear and Allen Ezell's study of the history and the economics of the slide toward fake degrees is titled 'Degree Mills, The Billion Dollar Industry That Has Sold Over A Million Fake Diplomas'.
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