Poaching Lives in Coaching Factories!

Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us.

~ Hal Borland

Couldn’t find a better way of summating my thoughts for the beginning of 2016. Especially, when 2015 ended with an unfortunate lesson that we refuse to learn as a society. The suicide of a 14-year old boy Bhanu Singh just days before the year ended, the thirtieth such in Kota, known as the coaching hub for aspirational students pursuing engineering and medicine, highlights the shocking apathy that society has come to accepting this as a norm. As per reports, he was the third such student to commit suicide over just seven days in Kota – where annually over 1.25 lakh students join coaching institutes with dreams of cracking highly competitive entrance tests.

Dreams, that are rarely one’s own and often borrowed through societal validation or at its worst, thrust upon as per familial legacy or perhaps as an inheritance of aborted parental aspirations. I wonder what Bhanu’s dreams were that got plundered amid the gruelling high-pressured environment. But it doesn’t matter now, does it? In all probability his parents too didn’t know or understand. It isn’t surprising when reports paint a picture of shell shocked parents who couldn’t believe that their child would take such a drastic step. And yet, there are such incidences by the dime. Unsurprisingly.

Three things form the base for predicting the ‘success’ of any educational programme – 1. Learner aptitude and engagement; 2. The overarching goals of the programme and its fit with student aspirations; 3. Inclusivity – taking into consideration every learner’s needs and the corresponding environments’ 4. Partnership based model – where the programme dually, borrows through derivation while also contributing to societal solutions. Programmes designed to achieve stereotypical outcomes by standardising processes, therein alienating minds and disregarding the sanctity of varied environments are counterproductive. The term ‘rat race’ was conjured so for a reason!

If we look at engineering for example. Even with the numerous coaching classes, and institutions sprucing up, as per a survey in August 2015, around 2 lac engineers are unemployed in India. To make it worse, studies have also stated that 90% Indian engineering students are not employable! Of course, things are changing slowly. We have playschools and schools speaking of learner-based education that is fun and outcome based, wherein the outcome isn’t gauged typically. We have parents who act as the main support system in a child’s education and institutions realising the integral part they play, along with society. But it changes when a child crosses say the eighth grade; wherein s/he is supposed to buckle up overnight and choose among the same prestigious vocations. In comes the market of the million coaching institutes and substandard professional degree colleges in far flung areas just to cater to this frenzy. Our higher education system is crumbling. And evidently, it hasn’t happened overnight.

What is most shocking though is that we accept student suicides as ‘normal’. That even if children have to take the extreme step of ending their lives over something as trivial as marks scored in a subject, the presumption remains that the fault lies with them, their ineptitude. No one questions the veracity of a system that alienates a child from his environment, his inner self.  Bhanu will go on to be yet another unfortunate statistic among countless other youths, who chose an unceremonious exit rather than live and start afresh. Gives us much to think as a society when we rob our young the promise of a beginning.

India’s Budget for its Children

We just witnessed one of the country’s most interesting fortnights. One, it entailed the much-anticipated, first full-fledged, NaMo budget. Not soon after, the nation witnessed skeletons tumble out of its closet in the form of a BBC documentary – India’s daughter. Why mention both in the same breath, one might wonder?

The documentary, India’s daughter, as any educated, liberal mind would opine, is a clear reflection of the gross inequalities that persist in our system. From gender discrimination, abuse, poverty, closed and crude mindsets, it has reflected all and how it’s interlinked. It isn’t surprising then that the government (though of course one expected more from the current government) clamped down on viewing the documentary.

Why truth must not be faced as it is and when will we stop pretending to believe that all is well with our society? The country has one of the largest number of unemployed youth, one of the largest number of people living below poverty lines and in despicable living conditions, one of the largest out-of-school children in the world, and an alarming decline in the sex ratio especially during a period of unprecedented economic growth.  In the same breadth it also has the lowest spending on education in the world!

Educationists and activists were hence eagerly anticipating the budget wondering if the government ‘for change’ would finally allot the requisite funds towards educating the country’s children? Our future.  So, do we have reasons to rejoice? Unfortunately, not many.

Though some nominal measures have been undertaken that must be rather appreciated, such as  - Skill India Programme, the Deen Dayal Upadhyay Gramin Kaushal Yojana (for increasing employment among rural from 18-35 years), the Sukanya Samriddhi Scheme (part of the Beti Bachao Beti Padhao' campaign), proposal of setting up a fully IT-based Student Financial Aid Authority to administer education loans and scholarships to poor and middle class students for pursuing higher education.

There wasn’t much of a mention of a planned roadmap to tackle critical issues in school and higher education. The quality of education from school to higher education, dearth of qualified and trained teachers, Lack of crucial policies, lack of clarity on existing ones such as the Right to Education Act and the political will to implement them. We require increased and mapped outlays for sure to get the vast population of youth and children under one roof and a review of work done to ensure if we are on track or dreaming things up. Merely allotting an IIM or AIIMS is far from over when the current IIMs and IIT s are struggling to get qualified teachers and some, even students! Hence, the budget seems to have looked at the macro issues while being impatient to dig in deeper, which is required on an urgent basis.

A 16% cut in the outlay to education (compared to last fiscal) is a tad disappointing since now is the time to increase outlay to education and ensure to strengthen groundwork at schools, tighten and make the transition between schools to college and higher education thereafter more smooth and dynamic. Vocational education and skill building courses undoubtedly should be encouraged.

While we may choose to close our eyes and pretend all’s well, the truth is that depravity will only continue to thrive among inequalities or the varied ‘degrees of unfreedom’, as Amartya Sen would put it. We need to truly empower both India’s daughters and India’s sons to reach the best of their potential by working alongside and respecting each other and work toward a FREE and EMPOWERED Nation, free of biases, rituals, intolerance, poverty and self-fulfilling prophesies.