I am a highly educated person - and consider myself extremely lucky to be able to say that. Considering the average level of learning of my fellow countrymen, I would perhaps be in the 99th percentile in terms of academic achievement. I attended a good private school (not an elite one, mind you, but one that stressed good all round development), the finest technical institution in the land (and possibly the world) and went on to get a PhD in another fine university. Along the way, I had the support of teachers, relatives, friends and - of course - my parents.
My parents, for their time, were also well educated - my father got a bachelor's degree before he embarked on a long and successful career with the Indian Railways, while my mother actually went one step further and got a Masters in Economics. For the 1960s, this was almost revolutionary, as the typical Indian woman would have been married perhaps at 18 and have two children by the time she was 22. It was clearly a subject that she loved, as evidenced by the fact that, after raising her kids, she took up a teaching career in her mid 40s that lasted for another twenty years!
But that's where the story ends.
Neither of my grandfathers had stellar academic records - which doesn't mean they were not learned and wise (as Mark Twain once remarked "I never let schooling interfere with my education") - they simply did not have the opportunity, or perhaps chose not, to get fancy degrees, or venture to foreign lands in pursuit of knowledge.
And neither of my grandmothers came close to finishing school, having got married off in their teens. And while their husbands were reasonably fluent in English, having served the British Raj, my grandmas were both more comfortable in either Hindi or Tamil (in fact, I learnt all my Tamil from just listening to my maternal grandparents speak - although I can barely converse in the tongue!)
Shocking, you say. And yet this is the story of virtually every middle or upper middle class Indian today who is the CEO of a major company, a top university professor, a well respected scientist - in fact, pick just about any walk of life, and you can trace that individual's line back to an illiterate or semi-literate grandparent. This is not any different from the West, mind you - the rags to riches stories of entrepreneurs from the US to Australia routinely turns up people from humble backgrounds, with the absence of a ribbon wrapped scroll being a common denominator.
Which makes the debate around reservation for people from economically weaker sections (EWS) of society in private schools in India all the more challenging - and necessary. The attitude of the "middle class" parents, who have openly objected to their precious children being put in close proximity to those from "less desirable" backgrounds, is nothing short of hypocrisy, if one considers that they are perhaps no more than one generation removed from the same state. To deny someone the right to enjoy what you have been fortunate enough to get yourself is borderline criminal - and when what is being denied has the ability to free one's mind and lead a person out of poverty and to a life of dignity, then it is even less defensible.
I agree that providing reservation for EWS students is far from being a long term solution to the problem of educating millions of Indians - even if government schools were all operating at full strength and of the highest quality, there would likely still not be enough room for everyone who needed to go to school. And even if there were enough places available, the number of avenues to earn a livelihood at the end of the road would severely limit the progress to college and beyond.
But that is good enough, I argue - with a population of over a billion people, 70% of whom are engaged in agriculture, there is little point in aiming to graduate a million engineers a year, or a million newspaper reporters. Unless there is a catastrophic reduction in the population, to the point where widespread mechanization of agriculture is the only solution to feeding the population, the average Indian will still be engaged in farming. The difference is that if he or she is educated, they will lead far better lives and be less exploited than those who rely on a thumbprint to carry them through life.
The parents of "modern" kids argue that the EWS children will somehow corrupt their wards, and be a negative influence on them because of their manners, hygiene and poor English skills. I have to a stifle a laugh when I hear that, because if there is any corrupting to be done, it will likely be the other way round! The EWS kids will be entering an environment that is alien to them and, as a minority group within the school, they are unlikely to exert much influence over their richer cousins. Manners and hygiene can be taught - and schools that are successfully integrating EWS children are putting in the effort to provide education beyond just the classroom.
Which brings me to the last "gripe" - English (or lack thereof). It is only when you realize that Thomas Macaulay died in 1859 that the true impact of his "master plan" becomes evident. By bringing in English as a replacement for education in Indian languages and creating a "class" of Indians who would be more comfortable using the tongue of Empire and not their own, he has left Indian society in this no man's land where neither are we satisfied with conducting our lives within the confines of our mother tongue, nor are we able to fully embrace English as the single language that all Indians should speak.
To that extent, what Macaulay did was even more destructive than the French and Spanish conquerors in Africa and Latin America respectively, where they wiped out the native tongue and replaced it with their own. There are occasional reports of a language in the remote interior of some country which has but a handful of speakers left, and a few laments are made about the evil spectre of colonialism that was responsible, but ask a Colombian or Chadian whether he would go back to speaking the language of his ancestors and he would likely look at you as though you were crazy.
I have always maintained that one of the fundamental weaknesses of India when compared with our neighbor China is the lack of a common language. China also has some diversity in that regard (the western sector including Tibet clearly is less comfortable with Mandarin). But the sheer number of varied tongues in India, and the role that English plays in uniting - and dividing - us is perhaps unique in the world. No other country has to resort to using what is ultimately a "foreign" language to communicate with one another - and you will never find a German, Frenchman, Swede, Japanese, Arab or Russian who looks down upon his fellow countryman because of his inability to speak the global language.
Which is why the argument of Indian parents to keep their children away from those who would "confuse" them by speaking is strange tongues cannot be fathomed. It is as though, having crossed the "divide" and attained a modicum of fluency in English, they are now choosing to raise the drawbridge and keep the latecomers outside the fortress that protects their right to a good future. A strong nation can never be built when one section of society is able to discriminate against another on the basis of possessing knowledge that was till recently unknown to them as well. If the same argument had been used in the time of my grandparents, I would perhaps not have been so proudly flaunting my academic achievements, but rather standing on a street corner in Gurgaon, staring mutely at smartly dressed office goers who were all conversing in gibberish, while laughing at my native dress.
My parents, for their time, were also well educated - my father got a bachelor's degree before he embarked on a long and successful career with the Indian Railways, while my mother actually went one step further and got a Masters in Economics. For the 1960s, this was almost revolutionary, as the typical Indian woman would have been married perhaps at 18 and have two children by the time she was 22. It was clearly a subject that she loved, as evidenced by the fact that, after raising her kids, she took up a teaching career in her mid 40s that lasted for another twenty years!
But that's where the story ends.
Neither of my grandfathers had stellar academic records - which doesn't mean they were not learned and wise (as Mark Twain once remarked "I never let schooling interfere with my education") - they simply did not have the opportunity, or perhaps chose not, to get fancy degrees, or venture to foreign lands in pursuit of knowledge.
And neither of my grandmothers came close to finishing school, having got married off in their teens. And while their husbands were reasonably fluent in English, having served the British Raj, my grandmas were both more comfortable in either Hindi or Tamil (in fact, I learnt all my Tamil from just listening to my maternal grandparents speak - although I can barely converse in the tongue!)
Shocking, you say. And yet this is the story of virtually every middle or upper middle class Indian today who is the CEO of a major company, a top university professor, a well respected scientist - in fact, pick just about any walk of life, and you can trace that individual's line back to an illiterate or semi-literate grandparent. This is not any different from the West, mind you - the rags to riches stories of entrepreneurs from the US to Australia routinely turns up people from humble backgrounds, with the absence of a ribbon wrapped scroll being a common denominator.
Which makes the debate around reservation for people from economically weaker sections (EWS) of society in private schools in India all the more challenging - and necessary. The attitude of the "middle class" parents, who have openly objected to their precious children being put in close proximity to those from "less desirable" backgrounds, is nothing short of hypocrisy, if one considers that they are perhaps no more than one generation removed from the same state. To deny someone the right to enjoy what you have been fortunate enough to get yourself is borderline criminal - and when what is being denied has the ability to free one's mind and lead a person out of poverty and to a life of dignity, then it is even less defensible.
I agree that providing reservation for EWS students is far from being a long term solution to the problem of educating millions of Indians - even if government schools were all operating at full strength and of the highest quality, there would likely still not be enough room for everyone who needed to go to school. And even if there were enough places available, the number of avenues to earn a livelihood at the end of the road would severely limit the progress to college and beyond.
But that is good enough, I argue - with a population of over a billion people, 70% of whom are engaged in agriculture, there is little point in aiming to graduate a million engineers a year, or a million newspaper reporters. Unless there is a catastrophic reduction in the population, to the point where widespread mechanization of agriculture is the only solution to feeding the population, the average Indian will still be engaged in farming. The difference is that if he or she is educated, they will lead far better lives and be less exploited than those who rely on a thumbprint to carry them through life.
The parents of "modern" kids argue that the EWS children will somehow corrupt their wards, and be a negative influence on them because of their manners, hygiene and poor English skills. I have to a stifle a laugh when I hear that, because if there is any corrupting to be done, it will likely be the other way round! The EWS kids will be entering an environment that is alien to them and, as a minority group within the school, they are unlikely to exert much influence over their richer cousins. Manners and hygiene can be taught - and schools that are successfully integrating EWS children are putting in the effort to provide education beyond just the classroom.
Which brings me to the last "gripe" - English (or lack thereof). It is only when you realize that Thomas Macaulay died in 1859 that the true impact of his "master plan" becomes evident. By bringing in English as a replacement for education in Indian languages and creating a "class" of Indians who would be more comfortable using the tongue of Empire and not their own, he has left Indian society in this no man's land where neither are we satisfied with conducting our lives within the confines of our mother tongue, nor are we able to fully embrace English as the single language that all Indians should speak.
To that extent, what Macaulay did was even more destructive than the French and Spanish conquerors in Africa and Latin America respectively, where they wiped out the native tongue and replaced it with their own. There are occasional reports of a language in the remote interior of some country which has but a handful of speakers left, and a few laments are made about the evil spectre of colonialism that was responsible, but ask a Colombian or Chadian whether he would go back to speaking the language of his ancestors and he would likely look at you as though you were crazy.
I have always maintained that one of the fundamental weaknesses of India when compared with our neighbor China is the lack of a common language. China also has some diversity in that regard (the western sector including Tibet clearly is less comfortable with Mandarin). But the sheer number of varied tongues in India, and the role that English plays in uniting - and dividing - us is perhaps unique in the world. No other country has to resort to using what is ultimately a "foreign" language to communicate with one another - and you will never find a German, Frenchman, Swede, Japanese, Arab or Russian who looks down upon his fellow countryman because of his inability to speak the global language.
Which is why the argument of Indian parents to keep their children away from those who would "confuse" them by speaking is strange tongues cannot be fathomed. It is as though, having crossed the "divide" and attained a modicum of fluency in English, they are now choosing to raise the drawbridge and keep the latecomers outside the fortress that protects their right to a good future. A strong nation can never be built when one section of society is able to discriminate against another on the basis of possessing knowledge that was till recently unknown to them as well. If the same argument had been used in the time of my grandparents, I would perhaps not have been so proudly flaunting my academic achievements, but rather standing on a street corner in Gurgaon, staring mutely at smartly dressed office goers who were all conversing in gibberish, while laughing at my native dress.
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