….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