Who are the elite in India? Rather, whom to the masses perceive as the elite? Is it the people who hold a disproportionate amount of wealth and power in our society? Or is it people who had the privilege of quality education? Is it Lalu Prasad Yadav or Shashi Tharoor?
Beyond textbook definitions, there are two types of successful political leaders in India. Those who win elections and those who never face an election. The first kind, despite having amassed wealth, are considered by the people as one of them — like Lalu Prasad, Karunanidhi or Mulayam Singh.
The second kind never faces elections. They also own a considerable amount of wealth. But, more importantly, they are crucial to the functioning of the government. These are the ones like Arun Jaitley and Piyush Goyal. If you make a list of these two types of politicians, you will find the stark difference between them is education.
The same works for social activists. The difference between the grassroots worker and an international NGO representative is education. They may have the same qualification, but from where they earned it is what matters. The aspiration of the masses of the country, to provide quality education to their children, has slowly taken form as anti-intellectualism.
Today, intellectuals are among the most mistrusted by the common folk, narrowly beating media and opposition parties. A schism, to a certain extent, is manufactured by the Right Wing groups — which does a great job in dividing its elite, educated administrators and policymakers from motormouth and hate-mongering vote-seekers.
The root cause of this problem, however, are the liberals, elites and centrist political forces. Collectively, we failed to provide an education system that ensures quality across the board. In fact, we created a system where seeds of discrimination and classicism are sown in schools.
How many types of schools did we create? Government, low-cost private, Hindu Missionary, Christian Missionary, Madrassa, International… (Maybe one day I shall start a school for prospective Martians). And what has our experience been? Do IITs/NITs/IIMs in the country have equal representation from all these boards? (We do not have any Social Sciences institutions of global repute, so we will not be venturing that way.)
The average difference in salary between a teacher in low-cost private school and International school is around 60,000 — which happens to be the average salary of an experienced teacher in Missionary schools. This difference also reflects in tuition fees, capitation, donation to build a swimming pool and “output” of students.
Surprisingly, unlike most other commodities in our country, school seats are not sold to anyone and everyone. You need to be able to convince the school management. My child’s class, for instance, does not have a single student from a minority community. After dividing children on quality, class, caste and religious lines, our governments propose to make them compete on a “level playing field” when they apply for college.
In a country which has a million educational boards — CBSE, ICSE, IB, one State Board for each State, Matriculation and Anglo Indian to name a few — the government has introduced a common national entrance test to medical colleges. The test is based on CBSE syllabus. In the whole of South India, there is no government or low-cost private school that follows CBSE.
Simply put, at least in the South, the government has ensured that none of the rural students can become a doctor, unless they are willing to pay separately for extra coaching classes. This opens up a vast number of seats for kids whose parents can afford CBSE schools and coaching classes. If Delhi or UP has less seats, they can take admission in TN or AP, while local students here lose out.
Was the government really looking to level the playing field? If so, why hasn’t it put an end to the multiple Boards system? Why not just make all schools CBSE? Train all teachers in CBSE syllabus? Why hasn’t the government penalized State Boards that aren’t up to quality standards?
The answer is simple: The government is only trying to widen the schism. Anitha, a first-generation Dalit student from a village in Tamil Nadu scored 1176/1200 in State Board class-12 examination. She would have secured an MBBS admission in a government college, had the government not introduced the common entrance test, out of the blue, that year.
Anitha could not clear the common test with her State Board education. Her dreams of being a doctor and serving the poor destroyed, Anitha ended her life. Her seat probably went to a kid from Chennai, Delhi or Mumbai, educated in a CBSE school. It is unlikely that the child was Dalit and first-generation learner like Anitha.
The more the rural folk, the poor and marginalized are alienated from quality education and job prospects, the stronger will become their hatred for the educated. The nominally educated techie will hate the IIT-pass out engineer. The Silicon Valley-return will hate the Harvard-return doctor. All of them will hate the ostentatious intellectual.
The linen kurta-wearing, green tea-sipping intellectual will blame the government for its “anti-proletarian” policies. The party running the government will earn more foot soldiers — religion will replace rationale.
