Monday, April 17, 2006

Mandal Again

Today most MNC's say that only 25-30 % of Indian Engineering Graduates from outside the Ivy League colleges are employable. Imagine a day when they say only 50% of the graduates of even the Ivy League colleges are employable! Wouldn't it be the death of the Indian Education system?

This is precisely where our country is going today, with the Human Resources Ministry allocation 49.5% of the seats of all higher educational centers to the so called "backward classes". From next year onwards, half of the students of any government funded university would not deserve to be there. They say that the "downtrodden" have not been given opportunities to excel for a long long time now and they need to be taken care of. Somehow, this reminds me of the story of "Ekalavya". Dronacharya, asked Ekalavya – an adivasi, to cut off his thumb because he was better than Arjuna – a prince. My heart cried out for the brilliant adivasi child when I read the story! But those times were different. The concept of equality was unknown. Moreover there is nothing I can do to change it now.
But our government is proposing to cut off the thumbs of hundreds of thousands of Arjunas – the so called privileged! My dear minister, have you ever heard of the fact that " two wrongs do not make one right"? Just imagine, the prestigious IIT's, the IIM's, the top universities, will all have an abundance of students who do not deserve to be there in the first place. In the coming years, you would have tens of millions of deserving children being disillusioned, twice that number of parents left disillusioned. Lots of revolutions have been started and sustained with much lesser numbers!

Frankly, I am not surprised by these electoral tactics! The so called privileged was always busy working hard, paying taxes, educating their children, raising the standards of living in this country. They have strived hard to help create the pillars of our economic structure today; they have been busy writing programs for the " Infosys's", giving engineering solutions for the "Reliance's", selling mobile connections for the " Bharati's", making automobiles for the "Tata's". In fact they were so busy that they forgot to pursue their own interests: They forgot to create a collective vote bank! We have discussed ideologies; we have discussed political agenda's; strokes, counterstrokes and masterstrokes in our drawing rooms, while watching the television. Have we ever taken to the streets collectively? No, we say only the uneducated protest. We have better things to do, right? Like what? Worry about paying our home loans; calculating our taxes, paying our utility bills, wondering which Australian University should my child go to, now that there is not much scope left here? Has it ever occurred to us that why are the naxals in the eastern belt treated with much more seriousness than the very people who have toiled to get India to the much talked about 8% GDP growth? Many would answer this question by saying: "its politics yaar! Life will still go on!" But the real question is: when will this exploitation stop? Does anyone here think that any politician will have the courage and conviction to change the law once the so called "downtrodden" are brought into the mainstream? What step do you think, will they take next? Get quotas for the private sector jobs, then what? Caste based taxation? When will this ever stop? Or is anybody under the illusion that it will ever stop?

This is not just the question about you and me! It is the question about our country, our children, our grandchildren. This is a question about how mediocrity and in-competency would plague our nation. Tomorrow, you would have incompetent engineers, incompetent doctors, incompetent managers, incompetent administrators; we already have incompetent politicians. We are writing the doom of our country by ourselves.

I am not asking you to spread this message!U can choose to ignore it. But If I were you, I would think how can we make a difference, cos just writing a blog like this also would not make any difference, but it surely is a start... The choice is yours…..

Thank you for your time