Roti, Kapda aur Makaan

The solution to India’s education problem.

“I have gotten a decent rank in XYZ Entrance Examination. Out of Civil, Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, which branch would be the most suitable for me to get a government job?”

I recently read this in one of the editions of Times of India’s Education Times. The answer was equally insightful:

Choosing Civil Engineering gives you a very good chance at a job at SAIL, ONGC, BHEL or a similar public-sector govt. enterprise.

No Indian recreational writer’s portfolio is complete without a rant on the system and here is mine; one on ‘engineering’ and the Indian psyche and the education system. I consider myself to be in a position to do the same since I’m 17 and moving towards college application and exam season at break-neck speed. I’m planning on giving the various JEEs in India as well as applying abroad, for you guessed right, engineering. So here goes…

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I love the idea of electrical engineering, or the major known in India as Electronics Engineering. You gain the knowledge to create amazing things with your own hands. I enjoy programming, but running code on a computer doesn’t quite get me going as much as moving and sparking things do. However, my passion in EE is completely irrelevant here. Everything is measured in numbers. Your worth as an individual is directly proportional to the number of marks you get in your final exams. You didn’t score as well as someone equally smart as you, because you were too busy coding and making things? Boo-hoo, go to some hellhole in the middle of nowhere. In the US of A, you have to actually explain why you have an interest in your choice of major and show it through your activities as well.

So the solution to Indian college admissions is American-style subjective admissions?

Lol, no.

Unfortunately, it isn’t as straightforward as it looks. I can afford to be so open-minded about my ‘interests’ and ‘hobbies’ because, to put it simply, I’m part of the educated upper-middle class. If I was a 17 year old in Belgaum, who had 3 siblings and whose parents were struggling to make ends meet, my own will and wishes would be overpowered by the need to put food on the table at the end of the day.

Roti, kapda aur makaan > Passion

Translation: Food, clothing and shelter > Passion

General awareness and mental well-being can go to hell.

IIT would be the only way out of this vicious cycle. I would graduate in 4 years, get a reasonable job at an MNC or a well to-do Indian company and send home a good pay-check, like any adarsh son/daughter. And I would have successfully fulfilled my purpose in society.

And therein stems the Indian obsession with Engineering, because it’s the only profession, apart from Medicine, which guarantees you a job. It’s the reason for the mass cultural delusion of the condescension towards the “humanities” stream.

This obsession with roti, kapda aur makaan induces a culture of fear of failure. You cannot succeed if you can’t fail and our system doesn’t encourage taking chances.

The moment you introduce a subjective or a communicative element into the admissions process, you alienate this portion of the population, which is unarguably the majority of India. They don’t have the same advantage as their wealthier urban counterparts, as they go to poorly-equipped government schools.

Subjective Admissions is the hero India deserves, but not the one it needs right now.

Admissions officers can, and will be, bought and influenced. Subjective admissions takes into account projects you have undertaken and teacher recommendations and so on, all of which can, and will be, easily forged and fabricated here. When the CCE system was introduced by the board in classes 9 and 10, and tried to remove the focus from marks, many children started getting their projects made by professionals, with no moral qualms in case of their parents.

It’s a wonder how the examination system is corruption-free.

Expecting integrity from officials, as well as the applicants themselves, is not a luxury we can afford. So you choose the only thing which removes humanity from the process. In a country of 120 crore people, with its huge disparity between the rich and influential, and the poor and downtrodden, a system solely based on concrete merit and numbers is the way to go.

Which means we’re back to square one.

All right, enough preaching. What’s the solution?

The solution is, simply, remove basic subsistence and survival from the equation. Once you do that, everything become surprisingly simple.

That kid in Belgaum will have the freedom to study what he loves, because he isn’t afraid of the consequences of doing so. And everybody knows that when you do something you genuinely want to do, you’re more likely to succeed at it. That’s why the American education system has produced generation after generation of thinkers and creators, while the Indian one hasn’t done much in terms of changing the world, since it’s too busy lifting people out of poverty.

Of course, I make all of this sound incredibly simplistic and naive. As if we didn’t already know that it’s necessary to remove poverty from the country. And that it’s easier said than done.

But it seems that the leaders of our country believe in superficial solutions. The moment election season comes around , you start reading things like this:

NEW DELHI: Midway through the Lok Sabha polls, Congress has launched an aggressive minority outreach, committing itself to “finding a way forward” on quotas for backward Muslims and Scheduled Caste status to all dalit minorities.

-Times of India, April 25, 2014

Don’t get me wrong. I support quotas and reservations to the extent that minorities can find a way out of the cycle of poverty. And it is our fault that they have been economically and socially-backward for so long, so it is our responsibility to fix that by leveling the playing field.

But these quotas and reservations can only help so much, if there are no decent government schools to give them a bare-bones education in the first place.

And then you read:

HRD minister Smriti Irani pushes for funds to set up 8 new IITs.

-Economic Times, June 2, 2014

NOH NOH NOH THAT’S NOT HOW YOU FIX SYSTEMS DAMMIT

Sorry. Anyway, the only way out is to build new schools. The issue isn’t quality versus quantity. It’s quality and quantity. We aren’t in a position to choose anymore. Teachers in government schools are underpaid, overworked and unmotivated. Invest in the HRD sector and give them back the love for their profession. Remove the uncertainty of the roti, kapda and makaan and you’ll see how the new generation will grow wings and dream big.

Just wait. Perhaps the next generation will get it right.

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Yes, the cover picture is a ‘70s Amitabh Bachhan movie poster. Retro chic swag.