Reborn In 17th century India with Black Technology

Bharatham Daily newspaper has already spread its roots and branches all over the empire. Sales channels have fully covered the southern part, where the newspaper could be bought even in some larger villages, with it being readily available in all the towns and cities. As for the northern part, although the coverage is not as dense as it is in the south, the sales channels have already laid down the groundwork.

Currently, in all the major cities in the north, except for those in Balochistan and Sindh, Bharatham Daily newspaper can be found in all the other cities, albeit with a little delay in delivery due to logistics. But this problem will not persist for long, as General Manager Bhaskaracharya has recently approved a sum of money for the construction of three factories for Raya Printing Services, all located in different parts of the empire, mostly to increase the reach of the newspaper in the north.

With such extensive coverage, when the University Privatisation Act of 1659 was put forward by the government and the policy was publicised in the newspaper by the Ministry of Education, the news reached all over the empire.

"Hey, what is this? Is the government allowing normal people to open their own universities? That's amazing," a father from Surat who was depressed that his son couldn't get into BIT University exclaimed.

"Daughter, daughter, come read this quickly," a caring mother from Patna was overjoyed when her neighbour told her about the news in the newspaper about there potentially being many more universities for children to study. The mother couldn't read, but she was still very happy that her daughter would get more opportunities in the future. She didn't know how to read or write, but being a single mother whose husband died fighting in the Mughal army, she knew how important education was for the society of today. So more than anything else, she wanted her daughter to learn well and go up in society. For this reason, she did not hesitate to work three jobs and had her daughter graduate from high school.

The mother quickly put the newspaper in front of her daughter and asked her to read it. The teenage girl, as soon as she read the headline, eyes widened and her face immediately showed the most beautiful smile of adolescence. Tears welled up in her eyes.

"Sob!"

"I can go to university, Mother. I can finally get a decent job," she sobbed. She knew herself quite well. No matter how hardworking she was, due to her not being educated since childhood, her academic performance was only average. No matter how many sleepless nights she spent memorising the textbook and praying to the Lord, she knew that she couldn't get into BIT University.

All she wanted was to get a proper job so that she could support herself and her mother comfortably. Such a thing was impossible before. With her high school education, although she would get a job as a small team manager or a textile labourer, the job would be extremely tiring and labour-intensive. But now, with so many universities opening up, by the time she graduates college, she could bravely pursue higher learning, giving her more opportunities for herself and her mother.

In the end, both mother and daughter hugged each other in a warm embrace while both of them sobbed with happiness.
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Such cases were witnessed throughout the empire. A grandfather from Jaipur, an uncle from Lucknow, a young farmer from Guwahati, a labourer from Lahore, and millions more were overjoyed by the university privatisation policy put forward by the government.

The joy in the empire was palpable. Poojaris in various temples were dumbfounded when, for no apparent reason, bookings for Poojas on December 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th were all filled up. They were totally confused and looked at the Panchanga to see if they had missed any auspicious day unknowingly, but to their confusion, they had not. It was only after the devotees explained that they understood what was happening. Even they were shocked by the policy put forward by the empire and happily did the Poojas for the devotees wholeheartedly.

The businessmen, entrepreneurs, and elites of the empire were also overjoyed by the policy put forward by the government.

In both the Western World and the Eastern World, be it in the Middle Ages of Europe or the Vedic period of Bharat, knowledge was something that was only accessible to the elite of society, be it to the kings, nobles, and priests of the West or the higher castes and Brahmins of the East. Knowledge was something of a privilege only they had while denying it to the majority of the masses as a way to keep them down and have control over them. So, when any policy for the liberation of knowledge was put forward, the reaction from both civilizations, either the East or the West, would be similar. It would be an uproar from the elites, and their revolt would be enough to shake the foundation of a kingdom or an empire, so the ruler had to be cautious.

However, as the whole system of traditional nobility and caste is completely taken out of the equation in the Bharatiya Empire, at least in theory, there are no chances for a revolt to occur. In fact, it is the total opposite. Since the Bharatiya Empire is on the cusp of an industrial revolution, many industries are opening up constantly, and production capabilities in the Bharatiya Empire are at an all-time high and only keep increasing further every day.

To support these production capabilities, a skilled labour force and a large talent pool is required. In the initial stages, government-run schools, colleges, and universities fulfilled the task, but this is no longer the case. The demand for talent has already outpaced the generation of talent.

The Bharatiya Empire is currently in a state of talent bottleneck. So, when the University Privatisation Act of 1659 was passed and the policy was officially made public, the people who were most happy about the news were actually the elites, entrepreneurs, industrialists, and business owners of the empire—not because they thought that the educational sector was profitable, but because they could now choose from a larger talent pool.

Frontier Construction Firm

Peshwa Reddy immediately threw away the newspaper and rushed to meet the chief engineer.

"Bang!" The door was slammed open

"Manas, have you read today's newspaper?" he asked excitedly.

Manas just put down the newspaper he was holding with a shocked expression on his face. "Director, do you think we should open a university?"

Peshwa Reddy did not hesitate and nodded. "We should definitely establish a university of our own."

He clenched his fist, thinking about the hardships of the company.

"Our construction firm is entirely focused on constructing Intricate architecture, which requires high technical abilities, so we have to always pick graduates from BIT universities to join the company. But until now, including you, we only have a dozen people who graduated from BIT University, and even among the dozen, only you are the top-ranking student in your grade. The rest are low-ranking graduates."

"Until now, we used to employ people from the college and train them up to our requirements, which cost a lot, and the cost came out of our pocket."

"But if we start a university, our talent pool will be larger. We will not have to pay for training them, as they will pay the tuition fee to learn knowledge, and most importantly, we can pick the best students who are suitable for our job."

" Isn't this what we need?"

Manas thought about it and felt like it made sense. "Alright, let's do it, director. But to start a university will cost a lot of money. Can we afford it?"

Peshwa Reddy thought for a while and put forward a solution. "The university we will start does not have to be all-encompassing and grand like BIT University. We could build a small campus the size of the local college. It should cost only a million to do that. And for the teaching staff, most of the teachers we can recruit from veteran employees in the company who have university backgrounds, like yourself, or experienced workers with more than five years of experience to teach them practical subjects, and university or college students in the company to teach them theoretical knowledge. We can make do with it for now. After a few batches graduate, we can pick the higher-ranking ones and employ them to be the teachers. What do you say? According to my idea, the whole project should be completed within 3 million Varaha!"

Manas nodded. "It can work, director. But a 3 million investment is a bit too risky. We are still only a medium-scale construction firm after all. 3 million Varaha is 40% of our working capital. We can't spend it all in one place. We still have a lot of expenses to deal with. The dam construction project we have taken on is coming up, and we cannot afford to mess it up. So let me suggest something else."

Peshwa Reddy showed an inviting gesture, as he had totally forgotten about the dam construction project his company had won in the tender.

"How about we join hands with other medium and small-scale construction firms? Our company has good relations with quite a few construction companies, isn't it? Let's contact them and see if they have a similar idea, the problems we face is not an isolated case after all."

Peshwa Reddy nodded thoughtfully

"In my opinion, we can build the university with a 10 million investment, with multiple construction companies putting in multiple investments."

"In this way, the talent pool available for all the companies will expand to 100,000 students or more per year, moreover, by combining the teaching resources of all the construction firms, the shortage of teachers should be adequately covered. When our company employees are too busy to teach, other company employees can take over the job, and when other company employees are too busy, our company employees can take over the job. We can arrange a schedule which best fit our needs."

Manas explained with enthusiasm. It could be seen that even he was bothered by the lack of talent in the company, which was holding back the efficiency of their construction project.

Peshwa Reddy's eyes immediately lit up. "Brilliant!" he exclaimed. "That's why you are the chief engineer, and all others are your assistants." He was excited, his face filled with blood, looking as ripe as a tomato. "Haha! You gave an amazing idea, Manas. I'll go right away and meet up with some friends," he said and ran away. Despite being 33 years old, much older than Manas, he ran like someone who was still in his teenage years.

A few days later, Peshwa Reddy, Manas, and a dozen other construction firm owners and major shareholders officially submitted an application to the Ministry of Education for the establishment of Frontier University.

Within a few days of approval, the construction of the university started in the city of Coimbatore, which is currently the construction capital of the Bharatiya Empire, as the empire's largest canal is being constructed through the city, attracting all major construction firms in the empire to Coimbatore.

Peshwa Reddy, the initiator of the project, was nominally the leader of the Frontier University Trust. The investment he obtained in total was 15 million Varaha, invested by nine different construction companies, excluding the Frontier Construction Company.

Land acquisition and construction were all paid from the pool of 15 million. As the main founders of the university were construction firms, the construction of the university did not take long. Within a few months, the university campus was ready to be used. Each construction firm sent multiple employees to act as teachers, and Frontier University officially opened its doors to the public as a university with tier-three functionalities that offered only a single bachelor course in engineering and management, more specifically (BE) civil engineering and Business Administration (BA).

In fact, Frontier University was only one of the larger universities opened between December and January. Ahom king, Jaya Dwaj Singha, opened a university called Singha University in the state capital, Guwahati. The Shetty family established a university called Hampi National University in the political capital of Vijaynagar, Hampi. Pawan Kalyan established a university, Kalyan National University, in the cultural capital of Kakatiyapuri, Anuradha Nagaram.

In such a way, industrial tycoons, business owners, and elites like Arjun Bakshi, Bhupathi, Akash, Ghana Prabhu Berunda, Joshi, Kombay, Jayamma, Naveen Ambani, Bajrang Dharani, Indrasina Reddy, Sarvesh Ranavikrama, Ramayya Senapati, Narasimha Nayak, and others established their own universities to train talent for their respective businesses or interests.

By February 1660, a total of 215 private universities were established, either wholly owned by private individuals or as subsidiaries to other large industrial groups.

The total number of students in the Bharatiya Empire suddenly jumped from hundreds of thousands to nearly 1.5 million in the span of only a few months.

Naturally, the quality of graduates drastically dropped in the Bharatiya Empire since most private universities were universities with tier 4 or tier 3 functionalities, with only a rare few having tier 2, 1, and above.

Although the tier of the university could not entirely decide the quality of the graduate since the graduate could choose whichever question paper they wanted, students who could rise above their environment in disadvantageous conditions were only a few. So, the majority of students from tier 3 and 4 universities were bound to be only functional members of society and not the pioneers and elites of it.

By the end of April, petitions started to appear in parliament for the government to privatise schools and colleges as well.

Overall, the University Privatisation Act 1659 was a successful step taken by Vijay on the path of the industrial revolution.

P.S. sem exams start monday