"Sir, I actually wanted to tell you one
thing.....". On the way to our building inside the office campus, I came
across this Fresher girl who had just joined our project. A few days back I had
delivered a formal session related to project and software testing concepts to
her and 2 more people. "Your session was really very good..". No need
to mention that I was happy to hear that but I went ahead and asked her some
more question as I wanted to know my
plus points and minus points. "Why
because...... Actually after we left university, we didn't listen such kind of
session.... the Company training also was also not so good... they just
focussed on completing the syllabus stuff..... so after a long gap we got to
hear a session in which the concepts were explained so clearly... ".
I am not trying to boast about myself here(well not
intentionally :P). All i wanted to point out was about the education system in
place in our society today. Lack of good teachers is cause of worry for a long
time now. Parents in Cities trying their best to get their children admitted to
premier schools is common sight. In the name of providing good education, the
way these so called premier schools charge the fees is also well known. What is
the impact of all these? Quality education becomes a luxury that can be
afforded only by Uber Rich class. Providing education to children becomes as
expensive and as stressful as getting a house constructed on loan. Professional
courses have already become super expensive. No doubt about that. What I'm
talking about is the elementary school education.
The other day i was reading a
article in a newspaper (or Mag i dont remember clearly). The author had
presented a really nice solution for this potential-bomb. There is no other
service or job in our country which is respected the way Civil services is
respected. So why not have something called ITS - Indian Teaching service? Such
that bright people don't loose the opportunity to achieve their dream career of
getting into Civil services and also can contribute to the teaching fraternity.
It may be difficult to do it at UPSC level taking into consideration the sheer
number involved. But definitely it can be achieved by the state level public
services (with a little bit of effort).
The Govt hardly cares about the
root cause of any problem. It is only interested about the symptoms. There is
this Food Security Bill in pipeline, waiting for parliament approval , which
assures food grains for all BPL families at magical rates. There is a symptom
prevailing in the society - malnutrition. Any 7th grade student will tell you
that this symptom's root cause is illiteracy. But the govt and the people are
interested only in quick-fix for the symptom. Nobody gives a damn to the root
cause. What this Food Bill will do? Create some more burden on already strained
coffers of the state. This inturn will be passed on to the tax-paying middle class
people whose disposable income gets further shrinked, making it further
difficult to afford the basic things. Finally it boils down to this - drag on
GDP. The financial matter of this ill-concieved bill can be discussed with
finer details. But that is not the point i want to talk about here. I just
wanted to present the picture of what is happening at macro level .
During the recently concluded 93rd
convocation ceremony of Mysore University, the Union Education minister gave a
statement that it is impossible to make education available to everyone! It
took considerable amount of effort on my part to fight back the anger that
raged inside me when i read it in the newspaper. People with responsibility are
giving as absurd statement as this instead of concentrating on putting some
effort in the positive direction. There was this one more stupid Bill that was
cleared a couple of years back by our parliament - RTE Bill. The Right to
Education. The supreme court had to poke the govt to get it implemented after it
was passed (somebody had filed a PIL showing the lack of interest on the part
of govt to oversee the implementation of the bill). But alas, this was again a
quick-fix for the symptom that was growing. Lack of enough schools is glaringly
visible for everyone out there. But the Govt forced the(existing) schools
(itself) to induct min % of students from BPL families. This in turn pushed the
fee for the available seats (to others) further skywards. What did the schools
do? They sold these reserved seats to rich-class people for exorbiant rates by
fudging the records. A part of this money also went into the pockets of the BPL
family which had applied for that seat!
The only Asset that our country
has in abundant is Human Resource. The onus is on us to elect a responsible
govt, or to do something effective such that the country's economy improves in
a way that this HR asset's Capability can be tapped positively. Stagnant
Economy has little to offer for the Educated youth. If Providing good Education
is one half of the job then ensuring the growth of Economy is another half.
Hope we see a sea of change in coming years which can make these two things
happen.
