How are we measuring the worth of our youth?

Stereotypical stories about achieving success captivate and abound us. A fallen hero who rises against all odds, an underdog winning a race, a college dropout founding a multi-billion dollar IT company, the rise of a leader from among underprivileged masses, so on and so forth. We find ourselves rooting for the protagonist, empathizing with his/her inner fears that surface in their quest. Such stories hook us for two key reasons - 1. The hope that even the ordinary – regardless of social/economic standing, physical attributes, academic background, character flaws etc. eventually find ‘success’ as they dream it and 2. Perhaps, more importantly, the reinforcement that success is implicit and a necessity to be vindicated. Who likes to hear about failures? Success sells.  

The board-result mania that gripped us this month with tutorials displaying advertorials and colossal hoardings of ‘toppers’, more prominent than that of key personalities or causes in the country, is indicative of how importantly society views academic success. What is ironical is that though everyone seeks success for themselves or others (children, spouse, sibling), the overriding belief is that there is a uniform formula to achieve it. It begins young. A student is tutored, made to memorise facts regardless if it translates to relevant knowledge. Every student is assumed to be a replica of the next – trained, evaluated and classified uniformly. Our education system has yet to reinvent itself - develop challenging, diverse modules for engaging various aptitudes and invent accurate assessment structures to aid in forming and gauging true potential across fields.  

It isn’t as if ‘topping’ an exam is a fool-proof indicative of potential or genius.  At most, it has attributed to a rat race with students pressured to perfect scores right up to 100^th percentile. This year, in Delhi, the number of CBSE grade 12 students scoring above 95% marks over last year jumped by nearly 3,000 students or by 50 per cent! Reportedly, the Delhi University received over 3 lac admissions in just a couple of days and apparently lacs of students who have scored above 90% may not get admissions anywhere. The city was also home to the ‘all-India topper’ scoring the highest-ever percentage score of 99.6! Education institutions have become hubs of breeding ‘toppers’ with staggering ‘cut-offs’ hence only admitting the best. Some schools even hold back students that are weaker in academics for the fear of compromising an elite pass-out rate.

With such reinforcements is it a wonder that most of us perceive success as an outcome and rarely as a continuous process?  Success is about winning a competition, a race, scoring top marks, setting records - assessing our worth.  Failure is dreaded upon and any such risks eliminated by following a tested formula. Although the basic tenet is that success follows when pursuing doggedly what one believes in! All that has come of such a system are millions of failed or stifled aspirations. There are far too many stories of doctors and engineers becoming successful after pursuing their life-long dream – as writers or artists, sportsmen, politicians, businessmen etc. While stories of ‘toppers’ are celebrated annually, there is a casualty – parallel stories of suicides among students touching alarming proportions.

In my tenure as a Principal of one of the foremost and respectable international schools, I have had students confide how parents don’t understand them. Students are made to feel guilty of been given the ‘best opportunities’ and goaded to achieve the dreams that their parents see for them. I have also been privy to the guilt and helplessness that some parents feel when their bright or talented children are made to sacrifice their dreams and settle for ‘safer’, unchallenging, ‘prestigious’ vocations, since society believes that certain occupations are best left to a particular gender or the rich (who can afford to experiment). To develop a lifelong love for learning is a key outcome a purposeful education system must strive for. Yet, we are stuck with archaic systems - conforming skills of a majority into a stereotypical mould; dreams killed in the process. And we wonder why true success eludes us.  Most of us nurture our dreams only in our minds, fearing ‘failure’. It explains our fondness for stories celebrating ‘success’ – ironically, it can hardly afford to be elusive in ‘reel’ life!   

An Emerging Economy’s ‘Disposable Half’!

The recent Badaun rape case wherein two teenage sisters from lower caste were brutally gang raped and hung from a tree only to have the perpetrators of the crime, high-caste goons, given police solicitation, is telling of the status accorded to the ‘fairer sex’ of the world’s largest democracy. That the girls were from an impoverished, minority caste makes their lives as valuable as the rock we see on the street and infinitely lesser than the rock we worship in our homes and temples. They were among the invisible pariahs, among the 300 million women in India, mostly underprivileged, who defecate in the open, lacking as basic an access to proper sanitation. Hence they had to wait until night fell to protect their modesty only to be preyed upon by gun-wielding brash unemployed ruffians.  The sisters remain another statistic of course; their death, a case to be raked up on media channels, having sufficiently roused the activists, politicians, media anchors and public from a routine slumber. Since then there have reportedly been four such hangings in a spate of two weeks!

In India, violence against women begins even before a girl is born and continues until her death. It is pervasive across domains, its form beyond the depraved sexual assaults. There have been so many such incidents reported of molestations, rapes, acid attacks, bride burning, female infanticides on a daily basis that the public has become largely numb towards it. According to the latest government figures a woman is raped every 20 minutes! The horrific Nirbhaya case attracted much international attention and while Justice Verma Committee did set in some stringent punitive measures, it attempts to tackle one aspect of a multi-dimensional problem. If we were to carefully listen to the conversations that envelop us – in our social circles, within our own and extended communities, our politicians, we realise that the seeds of rape are constantly being sown within the socio-economic and cultural fabric of the country. 

When ministers state that ‘boys will be boys’ and get away with it or question the character of the girl for being out at night or for wearing ‘provocative’ clothing – even as girls as young as one month old to women of eighty years are assaulted and raped. When a mother has to kill her unborn daughter in her womb lest she be burnt alive, when parents keep back daughters from traveling to school lest they get raped, when young girls are forced to marry without having a choice, when daughters are told that they can’t do something that their brothers/ males can, when men are taught to believe that it is ok to hit wives, ignore them and be arrogant. We teach our daughters to be submissive, to retreat, to yield, to endure, to be patient, to choose women oriented careers…Even the educated ones and working ones are taught to hold their tongue, yield in to demands of in-laws, brothers and father, nurture a child almost single handed and keep her needs at the backburner. This is not just the situation of the rural women, even the urban women go through varied degrees of unfreedom. We have six out of seven support female staff members who being married still have a single parent status, struggling to provide for the education of their children and as basic as two square meals a day, while the husbands choose to drink and make merry.  

The discrimination is obvious even within so called urban educated communities. We have often observed it’s often the women (mother-daughter or mother-in-law daughter-in-law) that initially come to check the school for admission. However, while they are convinced and enthusiastic about the infrastructure, curriculum, and ethos of the school, they yet have to go home and convince their husbands and fathers-in-law to permit them to take admission. Hence decision making still is within the male-domain, since it is the men who are the bread winners. Again, we have observed ample instances wherein given a choice between enrolling two children from the same household, decision is made in favour of the boy while the girl is sent to a nearby, relatively ‘cheaper’ school. At a juncture when mindsets are just being formed such discriminatory practices attribute to the imbalance.

It also doesn’t help that with the failure of our education system there are scores of unemployed, uneducated, impoverished youth, mostly men, frustrated, who have been taught to believe that their insecurities can be allayed by yielding power – which can unfortunately be freely sought by belonging to a particular caste or gender or lineage, further empowered by an inefficient judicial or legal system. Power over the gullible is considered a justifiable outlet and an uneducated, unemployed and repressed section makes good victims. To add to it, there is maximum stigma attached to a rape as if the girl has been robbed of everything because she has been sexually exploited. In a way this victimisation encourages rapists since they do so believing it will shame women. Women have anyway been trained to lower their gaze, run for cover and retreat rather than fight, scream, stand for rights or be trained in martial arts. We had undertaken a campaign against child sexual abuse in our school, ‘Chuppi Todo’ (Break the silence) to encourage children from 3 to 15 years to speak up against sexual assault. While some parents appreciated our efforts there were some who were slightly apprehensive. Sex education in India is frowned upon and misconstrued as that which will encourage pre-marital sex, especially in co-ed schools. Issues of menstrual hygiene, critical to maternal and adolescent girls’ health are also hushed and considered a social taboo; according to women’s welfare foundation, Dasra, 88% of the country’s 355 million menstruating women have no access to sanitary pads. Around 66% school girls skip school while having a period and one third of these eventually drop out of school due to lack of toilets and basic hygiene parameters. 

This is where the difference between being a literate as opposed to an educated society becomes starker.  With a desensitised society -- comprising doctors, lawyers, police, politicians, priests, teachers, nurtured by underpowered and illiterate women,  bound by archaic traditions, customs and hypocrisies -- bridging the gender and other social gaps will require tackling from a 360-degree perspective.  Currently, India has the lowest workforce participation rate of women among the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) due to socio-cultural reasons and low education levels. How will a nation progress when such a huge section of its population, which ironically grooms its future, is not empowered? Among the world’s top 20 economies, India is considered the worst in which to be a female, a notch below Saudi Arabia! Enhancing access to schools, improving infrastructure and sanitary conditions, making conditions conducive for women to work by tightening laws, strict and immediate redress of complaints, gender and sex and adult education will go a long way to ensure that women are empowered. Additionally, ensuring that educated citizens are indeed skilled to get jobs, enhancing job-skill match, will ensure that the youth are dispensing their energies constructively and taking the nation forward while taking along with them the marginalised sections of society – rather than them be discovered as unfortunate targets of an imbalanced society, found brutalised and hung from a mango tree like a disposable fraction.

Each One Lead ‘OWN’

India is still reeling under its euphoria of bestowing a unified mandate for the formation of a new government – an event that received unparalleled attention, nationally and internationally. With the earlier United Progressive Alliance party having failed to deliver on various critical counts during its decade of uninterrupted rule, it wasn’t surprising that a change in government was in tow. Essentially, the country voted for the promise of ‘development’, their right to be seen, heard, be participants of growth rather than witness it from side lines. The promise for a better tomorrow heralding inclusive development – for each Indian to live among educated, literate, healthy and empowered societies – has been an elusive one since the Constitution was framed in 1950.

While the past few decades have witnessed India grow tremendously backed by rapid industrialisation, strong service sector and growth of agro-based industries, we still have a long way to go. There are belts still perishing due to malnutrition, hunger, sickness. It is about time we had a makeover to transform what drags down inclusive growth – illiteracy and lack of quality education, poor access to quality and affordable healthcare and dearth of employment opportunities. While the genesis and reasons these intertwined issues continue to plague us are myriad and merits a separate debate, the question arises is this - how much of a difference can  leadership account for?

In my experience as an educator, a principal, I have realised the importance of inclusive leadership, which I believe is especially relevant in environments that contain diverse communities. For e.g. the running of a successful school is critically aided by the vision of the management and refined and executed by the principal. However, it is equally important to have every stakeholder from the student, teachers, parents and management involved. It then is a joint responsibility to lead from at whatever level possible – to optimise resources, manage and cultivate talent, engage communities. 

One of the key takeaways from these elections is the people’s belief of the change a strong, dynamic and decisive ‘leader’ (‘from and of the masses’) Narendra Modi would do. While history is replete with examples where the greatest revolutions and changes were first conceived, visualised and driven by an involved and genius of a leader, it is equally evident that the vision will not be set in motion without the ‘cogs in the wheel’ place – here, the citizens in a democracy  – the you and me.

The entire nation had been rooting for a particular politician to come into power, believing that he is the panacea of most of the troubles that plague us – that he will be able to get our child in that preferred school, or let us take a guilt-free overseas trip, or gift our retired parents a chauffeur driven car, or get the prices of the vegetables down or help us spend more time with our family or stop corruption or help us get that promotion. It is in human nature – to seek externally for inspirations or for belief – religion has taught us that! It is ok and humane to be optimistic, to be hopeful, to want to be led, to be participants, to worship, to follow. However, it is equally important to lead, to take initiatives, to learn and educate, to ask questions rather than just seek solutions, to be without biases and hence have an inclusive mindset, to be civil, be vigilant, to speak up – to grow together.

When each one of us takes the responsibility of leading one’s course of actions with the goals of an ideal India as a backdrop is when the winds of change will begin swinging in our direction and elevate us – ALL of us.  For e.g. instead of only complaining about filthy streets or buildings, what if we stopped littering and cleaned our surroundings; instead of just asking what ministers could do for protecting women, how about believing in our daughters and teach them to defend themselves, stand up for themselves and teach our sons to respect a woman – by respecting their mothers; stand up when miscreants break law and harm someone else’s child…there are so many scenarios wherein we are in-charge, leading, perceived as leaders. 

While these are the tenets of what true education should aspire to inculcate within any learner, that we are still placing maximum obligation of being a change agent on just one man is perhaps the most unsettling observation through this election story. Clearly, we have yet to learn our lessons! It is only when we realise the importance of the role each one of us plays to make India the largest, DEVELOPED democracy, will we be able to really live in one. The importance of empowering ourselves and the people around us by being individual agents, leading change across the most basic realms, is a powerful lesson for us including our children. Surely, we must know that just one man cannot change a billion destinies while a billion choose to watch and believe that ‘good days are coming’!