Commercialized Education System in India
They say we are going through a phase of change. I think that’s an excuse. I believe we are forgetting our roots and into copy-cat move with western world. Much of the drive for this change is not demand of people as we may perceive. It is selfish interest of few who can now make money out of education also.
I am currently pursuing MBA part-time. In one of the family discussions, when someone asked me about the fees of the course and value attached to it. I told 6lacs and increase in knowledge as the value for pursuing future initiatives. The spontaneous reaction from them was that education is now restricted to people who can pay. I had never thought like that before for so many years. Being in job for 17 years, I started evaluating everything as a market of demand and supply and hence costs are justified. Someone charges as much as there are people to pay for it. It is this logic that seeds corruption and “might is right” culture. Not everything can be subject to market economy. Today, unfortunately, institutes like schools and hospitals are operating officially in market based constraints.
Quite some-time back, we used to think, higher education is only for people who are brilliant and is limited to few. I used to even say, it is denial of education to many in a country where you don’t have sufficient doctors, engineers, finance people, leaders, marketers, scientists. On top of that, infrastructure that grows at snail pace, relative to the growth of population. CAT, IIT-JEE used to be very tough not only because of question paper setting but the number of seats versus the population. Surely, lower income class like that of our family, could afford it, if we get through. Parents never used to worry about supporting the studies for the reason of fees, but for the reason of accommodation, travel and distance.
In today’s scenario, money seems to work everywhere and worst is that it is working in education in uncontrolled manner. For people like us education forms second biggest expense in monthly budget. If you remember, 20 years back, Government schools used to be the best as compared to convent, teachers used to take extra classes to help students prepare for board, tuitions were considered as something meant for students lagging in studies. There is complete reversal, at least in metros. Our professor put it sarcastically as a “great transformation of business”. True. It is a myth. Everyone feels that by going through a institute he/she will succeed. Take statistics, nowhere >50% get through in competitive exam. Students have lost faith in their teachers, and more importantly in them. Money has eclipsed the search within for true talent and hence pursuing it in life. Who is there to guide? Who cares? Where there is maximum money and opportunities (not happiness, satisfaction and lesser hassles), everyone wants to pursue that.
Students have become demanding customer where they can say “You can’t punish. I am not paying you so heavily to get punished.” OR “I am not paying to stand outside the class” OR “What is your problem” OR “Please mind your language” OR “Mind your language” OR class behavior like “Using phone, opening laptops and walking in and out of the classroom, while teacher is teaching.” You might see teacher who are behaving in more traditional manner saying “Shutup”, “You don’t know how to talk to teacher”, “Who you are?” What do we call this, if it happens? But are we expecting this? Look at it from teacher’s and institute perspective. It is difficult to get good, professional teachers in our country. Reason is that this is not well paid profession and gap has increased significantly between other jobs and this.
In such situation, whoever wants to teach for a noble cause of knowledge sharing, he is worthy of respect and he may not tolerate indiscipline in class. It is his personal capacity to tolerate or manage it. For those, who are not good teachers, their teaching standard will further fall. They will say “If they are not interested in learning but just degree is what they look forward to, who cares to teach them. Be one of them”. Also, such will be teachers, who will be scared of losing their job as well. I believe, even other good teachers can come in this bracket of job-fearing people, as they start to get very good salary in colleges where fees is also very high. As that happens, it is not more a “Guru-Shishya” relationship, it is more of “Customer – Vendor” relationship.
In a country, where right from childhood, we have been taught the status of teacher equivalent to God. “Guru, Gobind dono khade, kis ke lagoo paon, Bali hari guru aap ke, jo gobind diye milaaye”. It is Guru/teacher who helps us to get enlightened, who introduces us to God. He is live, we can see him. So, he is most respected being even before God.
I wonder where this respect is gone. Education has become a market, where student has become customer and teacher a mere employee. Customer comes and rank teachers. He says – “He is a good teacher”. “He didn’t know his subject”. “Kitnee der aur chaatega”. “Bahut pakaoo hai”. “There are no good teachers”. “Padhna toh book se hi padhegaa”.
I believe, we must introspect the system which we are promoting and see what needs to be changed, to get the status of education as it used to be ages back, in the form of Nalanda. It is not worth copying western culture even in everything mindlessly ignoring our value system or even killing that value system. Fortunately, new generation, seemingly have choice of opportunities to pursue. Not everyone wants to be become engineer, MBA or doctor.
Internet revolution has already done corrections in different areas of bureaucracy and market dynamics, I hope it will do the same in education, when it won’t be difficult to find good teachers for those who want to study, without paying heavily. I am sure that era will come back, when teacher and student both search for true match in terms of knowledge exchange and not in terms of money. It should bring an era where boundaries, distance disappear. There shall be more number of teachers with willingness to share their expertise with others without worrying about financial gains.
Even in current scenario, both students and teachers can understand the ultimate objective of the transaction they are into in a market scenario. Ultimately, the exchange of knowledge is what matters to place you at higher ranks. To make that happen, student and teachers must understand and respect each other.
