Macaulay's Revenge

Macaulay's Revenge
(After the 4 Kerala blogs, am coming back to some more serious issues, am also trying to keep my posts short, primarily to allow me to post more often these days when I am pressed for time and not at all pressed for excuses to avoid writing)
This post is designed to be a brilliant and scholarly treatise on the declining standards of education and student morality in India, it's symptoms and causes. In case any of the logic and arguments used are found to be specious, incoherent and outrageous, it's only to be expected because I too am a product of this flawed and contemptible system. Heads I win, Tails you lose.
I read an article in the Times of India yesterday which made for some pretty disturbing reading and only served to confirm the vitriolic anti-lower caste prejudices that are alive in our so called "institutes of excellence", namely the IITs and AIIMS. Nothing about the IITs would ever shock me because they are India's premier den of filth and perversion, breeding a haughty and arrogant tribe of intelligent mammon-worshippers who have abandoned all sense of duty to society and to their country and exist solely to claim privileges they believe the country owes them because of their superior intellectual abilities as certified by clearing the JEE and whose sole avenue for leisure and creativity is in conceiving different ways in which to sexually assault their female batchmates, however to read that doctors in India's premier medical institute, AIIMS were giving close competition to IITians in terms of being petty, made for sad reading for they are far removed from the images of agents of mercy and healing that we, or at least I, have about them.
I can't reproduce the article here but it listed some shocking incidents in hostels and campuses of general category students crudely misbehaving with 'quota' students and humiliating them. It told of how these students are taunted for having the temerity to come in through the 'easy' route as against the scores of 'deserving' students, meticulously tutored by armies of personal coaches and training institutes, are denied in the name of social justice. The stories are the kind that would make all decent people hang their heads with shame at the kind of moral degradation that is taking place among students, touted to be the harbingers of a modern and progressive society. From the ubiquitous 'shaddu' term of adress for reserved category students, to stories of how they are humiliated in school canteens, taunted publicly by hostel officials about their fees being lower than those of other students and how they are systematically ostracized from hostel life by the mainstream. It referred to two incidents in the AIIMS campus, where hostel floors have been occupied along caste lines; one in which a quota student who had moved into a general category floor was promptly greeted with a sign on the noticeboard saying "All residents of this floor, except room number XX (guess who?), are invited to play football this evening) and the other in which a fresher from the reserved category was made to sit on the floor and say "I am from a lower caste" to a Brahmin fresher who was seated on a chair. In the 4 years that I spent at IIT Delhi, I don't think there was ever any incident of this severity (then again, I was not a hostel resident and it may be that such incidents were not discussed publicly but might have occured with individuals), but there was always a perceptible anti-SC bent of mind among the students and they were very unapologetic about it. From dismissing the abilities of 'Shaddas'as far as engineering courses were concerned (and I can tell you for a fact that 95% of all general category students use their remarkable intellectual abilities solely for discovering new avenues of academc dishonesty, fraud and embezzling money from student funds, most IIT students were so clueless about the fundamentals of technical subjects well into their fourth year that they would find it hard to be employed as laboratory technicians, who by the way are another breed looked upon with contempt by students despite the fact that without their help, most students wouldn't be able to turn on a switch without electrocuting themselves).
It would be interesting to read about the reactions of that fraudulent society, Students for Equality, about these incidents. I find them and their mission a farce because they invoke lofty ideals like 'equality' and 'freedom from caste' as if it is solely measures like reservations that are responsible for caste hostility between students, a nonsensical argument if ever I heard one. I have never known any student organization argue the case of reserve category students on any campus and campaign for an end to caste taunts. I have never heard any of them take up cudgels on behalf of the marginalized and the weak and worst of all, have never even heard them make an effort to help those less fortunate (though here I would be guilty of perpetuating my own prejudices in case I didn't mention efforts of student organizations like Prayaas in IIMA and Pragyaa in IITD which started evening schools for slum children, however, most of the students who joined these organizations did so to add CV points in their resumes). In short, the fraudulent students for equality are actually students who want to maintain the unequal terms that have seen them at an advantage in life. Till such time as I see them take tangible steps to eliminate mistreatment of SC/ST candidates in campuses, I will continue to find their goals and their mission fake and hollow. Let them bring out a charter saying that all 'students for equality' will demonstrate their commitment to a casteless society by starting initiatives to visit villages and campaign against mistreatment of Dalits, let them make a pledge to donate money from their hard-earned salaries to uplift the rural destitute, let all doctors and engineers pleadge to spend one year in a village (for doctors I believe the government is making it mandatory, the same needs to be extended to engineers, I believe serving in a village will enrich them far more than fraudulent summer internships, if only by making them appreciate the problems of the other India, from which they are actively trying to secede), then I will support them (if they care for my support that is). Till then, I would much rather have the pro-reservation lobby have its way.
The other shocking incident that is a pointer to the depths to which campus life in India has degenerated is the unfortunate lynching of a professor in Ujjain by students. The apologists claim that those that instigated and executed the violence could not have been students, however I beg to differ, I think they were no more violent than the average students of today. This was amply demonstrated by media coverage of other student disturbances, including incidents of rampage and destruction by girl students, who at least proved that the weaker sex can more than be a match for men in terms of rowdyism and crassness. Women everywhere please raise your heads with pride.
Lynching of professors may not be a universal phenomenon in India for the moment at least, however what is widespread is the lack of respect for teachers and professors. Once again I can substantiate this with illustrations from my time in IIT, where the choicest epithets were used for professors by a student body that was so enamoured by its own ideas about its intellectual prowess that I guess the ignominy of being subject to evaluation by others was too much to take. However, this is not something in which IITians are alone, the rot starts in school itself with students treating teachers with ill disguised contempt and hatred.
In light of the above incidents a number of theories have been propounded about why student respect for teachers seems to be diminishing and why student teacher interactions these days are characterized mostly by confrontations. Prominent reasons proposed are flawed parenting styles in todays fast paced world, a generation that is more aware of its rights etc. I think the problem is something else altogether. It lies in the commercialization of education, the coaching centre syndrome if one might call it. The present generation is one that does not value anything if it is not expressed in monetary terms. Post liberalization, it has seen money buy all the luxuries of life and in a vicious cycle, sees education as nothing more than the means to earn money. After Class 10th, a typical students life reveloves around coaching centres and parallel education systems, to get into an engineering college, to do chartered accountancy, to clear CAT, to join the IAS etc. In all this, school and college education is nothing more than an unwelcome inconvenience, with professors as the manifestations with their boring and useless lectures, their meaningless internal examinations and their strict attendance requirements. The average IITian sleepwalks 4 years in college just so that he can sit in placements and be hired as a software monkey, that is what he paid money for and slogged for 2/3 years in a coaching institute, hence it is only natural that he should have antipathy towards his misguided professors who try to teach him engineering, a subject he is not even remotely interested in. He basically paid money to his local IIT coaching centre to sit for placements 6 years later, that is the end of his interest in IIT, professors and studies be damned. Similarly, in all other colleges today, education is not valued because it cannot land people a job, hence how can we expect those who impart education to be respected. And did we mention that this generation is a generation in hurry, it wants results and benefits now ,not for it the abstract benefits of character building that come out of India's hallowed centuries old 'guru'shishya parampara'.
I think both the above symptoms can thus be explained by the instrumentality of education that we Indians have come to believe in. The upper castes want to preserve their hold on education, all in the name of merit, simply because there is a threat to their economic prospects. And the rapid commercialization of education has produced a debauched generation of students that is only seeking to get educated so that they can get a job somewhere, not for bulding character or values and refuse to do things like respect teachers as there are no economic benefits to doing so.
Thomas Babington Macaulay, when laying down the principles that would govern education in India, stressed that education must be used as a tool to produce clerks. More than 150 years after his infamous minute, it seems that he succeeded beyond his expectation, for education in India is still pursued soleley so that we can all become clerks, of different kinds perhaps, but clerks nonetheless.

(ok that wasn't short, but I couldn't help it)