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….AND WE CALL IT EDUCATION
 Photogenic
by creation, soothing by nature, half-way-from-nowhere by grooming,
haphazard by growth, errant by traffic, erratic by its dwellers and
characteristically laid-back….my Bhopal. I love my city. We have
seen each other grow. We have mutually helped our growth. We have
evolved with time. I owe my being to my city. It has given me
everything I could have dreamt of. Thank you, Bhopal….
Have still to figure out, why has it been blessed(!) with
successive governments that have been indifferent to its planned
growth. The population, over the years has grown manifolds and
resultantly, also with the advent of liberal credit policy of the
FIs, the traffic too has grown too large to be accommodated on the
now dated Bhopal lanes. Barring a few in the newer Bhopal, all roads
resemble lanes and bye-lanes! Pun (un)intended!!
Almost similar is the scene with education in Bhopal today. Too
many educational set-ups to accommodate the growing breed of
Bhopalites have mushroomed in every naive nook and crooked corner of
my city. Going by a rough estimate, there are close to a thousand
and five hundred schools (haw!) in the city, almost a hundred (God!)
engineering colleges, about a hundred and fifty (joking!) degree
colleges, roughly half-a-hundred colleges that give a degree (He!
He!!) in Management, Pharmacy and other disciplines too. One can see
a few medical colleges springing up too. Still, education is amiss.
These colossal numbers do not place Bhopal even anywhere close to
what Dehradun is to school education, Bangalore is to Engineering
edification, Pune is to Management paradigm and Chandigarh and Delhi
is to Medical tutoring.
It is a sorry state of affairs! And, here, Bhopal is no different
from the rest of India, barring a few exceptions. Far too many
institutes than actually are needed. Far too few, which impart
quality instruction to the newer entrants in the economic stream, to
make them employable. Nobody, especially the administrators, have
paid any heed to make the education-providers (yes!) accountable for
the quality that they provide which is adding millions to the
unemployable and consecutively, frustrated youth.
Education is the fundamental responsibility of the Government.
Period. Successive governments, ever since India gained
independence, have miserably failed here. Anyone who earns decently,
would never want his child to go to a government-run educational
set-up. A lot of budgetary allocation, but all goes down the drain.
Dismal infrastructure, meagre maintenance, non-committed teachers,
couldn’t-care-less attitude of the caretakers, no vision at the
administrative level, lack of sensitivity towards the child and the
inability to keep track with the changing world, have resulted in an
almost complete rejection of the governmental set-up.
As a result, education has had to move to the private sector. In
the initial days the Samaritans did a great job, moulding
dilapidated India into a progressively strong nation. The
characteristic ancient guru-shishya tradition continued. It changed
form though but it continued unabated. Gurus, when they caned or
slapped their shishyas, resorted to the corporal form only to iron
out rough edges….never out of frustration. It was corrective in
nature and not victimising. Academics were given the secondary
place. Creation of a strong individual – a true nationalist – formed
the core of the system then. Marks hardly had any relevance. The
competition among the students was healthy and cordial. No pressure.
Lot of respect for the gurus. Dignity of labour was instilled to the
core. Hats off to the private sector and its contribution to the
India we see today! And before the academia in India realized,
suddenly the world order changed! Yanking from below our feet, our
condescending smugness… and all the while our gurus remained
unaware.
After almost half a century, when the initial euphoria of
nationalism eventually faded out, education, from a sincere
vocation, came to be looked upon as a very lucrative profession.
Entrepreneurs found an opportunity and much scope, to make
respectable wealth. And here, almost two decades ago, the face of
education began to change. The pace of change, in its new avatar,
has intensified in the last decade. It is blatantly evident now.
Educationists and academicians (the Christian missionaries played
a vital role here), were gradually replaced by wealthy
industrialists, builders, politicians, even in some cases, criminals
and others who did not understand what education was all about, yet
were all out to make it an enterprise.
Talking of urban India, indifferent capitalists prevailed over
sensitive and selfless gurus and disciplinarians. And what a
transformation! Modest yet cohesive structures which were known as
schools, were soon replaced by huge construction, black-boards
suddenly became green, the barely functional desks-benches were
replaced by ergonomic equipment, stylus started replacing the chalk,
the worldwide web invaded the culture of a library, the symbol of
unity – the School buses – gave way to by flashy bikes and swanky
cars, the once-upon-a-time personally signed notes from Schools now
go out in the form of an SMS, gurus became teachers and
subsequently, teaching staff, corporal punishments are a crime now
and on their way out, strict talking will soon be labeled as a
misdemeanor on the tender minds of children, parents are now
consumers and lack of service on the part of the education set-up is
now being referred to the consumer forums.
Rural India is no different. The only difference is the
difference of scale. Smaller set-ups but the same junky mindsets!
Greed. People, who do not know what a convent means, run XYZ and ABC
Convent Schools! Laugh out loud! Actually, no. It is a matter of
great concern.
All have, it seems, forgotten that education is sensitizing an
individual to his or her immediate milieu, viz., the family,
fellows, environment, nature, society, traditions, even beliefs,
denizens and eventually, the nation. We suddenly find ourselves
groping in the dark ‘producing’ men and women who can read and
write, on a conveyor belt! Marks have become an obsession. The
competition is tough. Parents are competing at their own levels. So
do the children. The pressure to perform is immense and telling.
Speaking ‘English’ is the in-thing, however gibberish it may be. One
may not know the spellings because there is a spell-check on the MS
Word. A grammar-check covers up for the no-know! Before our
policy-makers could realise, Education had become a marketable
commodity.
Those who rule us have woken up now! They yell, “Lessen the
pressure on the child! Simplify the syllabus! Continuous and
comprehensive evaluation! No exams!” It is too little, too late. We
all are, by now, aware of the government mechanism, its speed and
the ultimate outcome.
Still, there is a glimmer of hope. Honesty of purpose! Yes. It
ONLY will work. Those who promote educational set-ups must wake up
and confirm to the fact that whatever they are doing is pious and
has a lot of gravity attached to it. Earning money out of education
is not a crime but one needs to take up responsibility and become
accountable without any one asking. The hand-book enlisting
benchmarks for obtaining approvals or affiliations may or may not be
adhered to, manipulation is a word, but remember that it is far more
heinous to be immoral than to indulge in something illegal. All
their efforts must gravitate to form an individual who has a strong
character, who believes in the dignity of labour, who respects his
or her gurus and parents, is not bowed down by the pressure to
perform, can find a respectable employment and add to the national
output. All this must transcend from the enlightened promoters to
the teachers and finally to the students. And all else falls in
line.
Can Bhopal take the lead? I pledge….
Best….
Sumeet Ponda
Chairman
The Red Rose Group |
