It is so easy to improve things in this country — things are so bad that whatever you do has to be an improvement, doesn’t it? At least that is what we think. Take education for example.
Let us talk about the world ranking of our school students and of our universities — pathetic! How does it matter that many who go through our school system and through our universities are in great demand around the world. That has to do with their individual initiatives, their ambitions, and their quality. What does it have to with the system? What does it matter that we still haven’t been able to achieve universal school education? That is not our fault — it is the system. What can the government do — throw good money after bad? Our teachers are under-qualified, under-trained, and under-motivated. That is not the government’s problem — they constitute a lazy workforce that only wants the full benefits of permanent jobs without any sense of accountability. If teachers across the country went on strike we could close all educational institutions run by the government. Wow!
How can politicians or bureaucrats be blamed if they won’t find adequate funds for education? How can they be blamed if people are so poor that they cannot afford to set up a system of their own? Universal school education and all that is good policy for elections — for the middle class. When people are hungry, ill-clad, and have no shelter or medical help, talking about schooling is not even good vote-bank politics. In any case how can we create schools everywhere? Take a Muslim majority area. How can we have schools there? Who will be the students? We are fighting for a minority quota for Muslims. How can we have a majority of Muslims in schools. Let the madrasas take care of that. The same goes for Dalits — I mean we are all for them, within limits. Let them come to other areas and study as part of the quota system. They believe in agitation following education if they unite — so let education divide them.
In any case, good governance is about letting everybody make money — how does the education system that is fully funded by the government allow that to happen? Let us have private schools and private universities; let us have education loans as well as the education cess (and that was a beautiful idea, wasn’t it — make people pay a tax for education we don’t care about). People should be indebted for any education, forget good education. The people who elect need to pay for their decisions. We need more and more funds to get re-elected. Privatise, we say.
Ask educational institutions why they can’t teach 400 students in a class. Lazy teachers. Government schools and universities need to show more bodies for the bucks — so what if the infrastructure is already creaking or even broken down, so what if the teachers cant even remember the names of students in their class? Just deliver your lectures and let them get on with their lives. Actually record your lectures for virtual classrooms. People can learn by themselves and who but they are to blame if they don’t. Need I say, there is good money in this.