Friday 25 January 2013

ILL-LITERATES


If you enjoy the privilege of a better memory than mine, you might be able to recall that there was one solution that was common to all problems we studied about in the wonderful school years, be it poverty, hygiene, environmental degradation or calamities. This one solution was awareness, or education. And India has achieved great heights in the field of education (hope you know I’m being sarcastic as usual). I thank the mentality of people for this, a problem which again roots back to education.

The Indian society in general has a very strange air about it. Education is considered as the most important asset to be acquired by our society, yet it’s the very thing that it so unfortunately lacks. It however, is laced with qualifications and degrees. Doctors (!) and engineers (!!!), managers and clerks, and nothing else. How frequently have you heard of people starting their own business? Students opting for athletics after high school? (No wonder a country with one-fifth of the world’s population isn't able to win every 5th medal in the Olympics!) How many have taken up research? Facts tell two out of a 1000 M.Tech students do a PhD.

After being ‘educated’, you get to work under industries and companies. For some or the other person. If not educated, you get to work as farmers, laborers and the likes. You can now imagine why India is one of the world’s few countries which switched directly from being agriculture based economy to being service based, without crossing the manufacturing stage. The repercussions are evident and more will be evident soon. The very few other people who received little or no schooling, but got educated in the true sense, are the people at the top. Industrialists, artists, sportsperson, entrepreneurs, and the like. Even the illiterate politicians are far above the class of literates. The root of the problem lies in understanding the true meaning of education.

Education is taken as another word for academics and quantified as number of degrees one acquired. It’s not about throwing away your life into the books whether or not you like it. It’s taking decisions, making choices about the field you want to take up your career in, and pursuing it with full fervor and labor. USA might not be the best example to state for education quality, (it’s degrading like anything in the past years) but clearly it provides a huge variety of options to choose as your career; real options.

Here in incredible !ndia, we have science, commerce or arts after tenth grade. In science we have only maths or biology (these are apparently the only two subjects that constitute science!). And maths means engineering, while bio means medical science! At the end of engineering, you get to choose from either CAT or GATE, as if they are the only two criteria to be declared human. Actually, it was meant to be business administration or m.tech, but the meaning has changed. Because its qualification that matters, not knowledge.

Take cities and then villages. Compare the voting percentages. See where people help each other more. Observe where neighbors are friends. Look up where crime is abundant. See where people are healthier (setting aside access to health). See where people are happier. And city people are expected to be more educated!

The situation that came up after the Delhi gang rape showed what education gives to literates. On the day the incident occurred, no one- not a single person stopped to help the victims. Next day you find the same shameless people (with a few of those who genuinely felt sorry) protesting. Once the police showed signs of aggression, they all vanished. Reading recently a case of the rape of a three year old girl which received no attention whatsoever, you can see the protest was a sham. And a shame.

And of course the babas in our society. Literates adore people like asaaram, nirmal baba (he asks you to eat samosas if you say that you have a bad stomach), and follow their instructions to the word. Once I went to a recharge shop, and was looking around. I found no pictures or idols of god. Just when I was about to mentally appreciate this fact; I saw a picture on the wall, incense sticks below it and quite evidently a symbol of devotion. It was nirmal babas. This man worshipped that fraudster!

It is not just the shopkeeper. Most of them are like him. Marriages are based on kundalis and manglik crap. They wear rings to avoid non-existent evil forces. Animals are killed in temples in the name of sacrifice. Sacrifice doesn’t mean killing someone else, it means giving up something you don’t like to part with. The word is sacrifice, for English’s sake!

So, we have an awesome education system, sometimes lead by next-to-god-legends like kapil sibal. I am proud to be an Indian. An educated Indian.

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