Newer shades of life

I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, “Mother, what was war?”.

I have a feeling Eve Merriam would have known that such a dream is mere utopian, and may be she also knew that the man who authored Utopia was beheaded.

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If I have to stop myself from being verbose, and state the one significant learning that I have had from my very tiring and challenging exploration of the little known towns and villages in Maharashtra, it has to be this.

Creating any form of social change is an extremely slow and deliberate process; only the very objective, grounded and realistic should venture on that path. As a friend rightly pointed out, it is not an easy task for a romantic like me, an emotional fool who has hardly ever been objective in life to fight a comfortably complacent system like this.

Every morning now I wake up to watch the sun rise; I look into the sunrays so that the bright light can pierce through me, filling me with the grit and courage to work with the very bureaucratic/hypocritical system with enormous amount of patience, tolerance and energy.

My very enriching journey begun when I learnt that the taxi driver who picked me up from this village railway station, is a Mechanical Engineer. He tells me how many of his many batch mates from the college are selling vegetables, running travel agencies, teaching in Government schools, working on real estates etc. And not out of choice, he affirms.

I realize that exotic dreams are only the luxury of a gifted few of us in the cities.
“Wouldn’t any of you like a holiday in Hawaii Islands?” I had asked a group of students in this small town Engineering College, which is located on the banks of a river.

(I must mention that this river is where the villagers get their drinking water from, wash their clothes in, urinate in, clean the buffaloes and themselves)

A very dirty looking boy stood up to tell me in his broken English, “Madam, I don’t know where Hawaii is. But I want to take my parents on a train to holiday in Mumbai. But before that I would like to make sure they get food three times a day, they have compromised on that to make sure I become an Engineer”. I was ofcourse humbled, and more importantly guilty of the grand life I have taken for granted.

The many Engineering colleges that have mushroomed across the country(especially in South and Maharashtra) mostly to indulge the not so “good” money of politicians has ensured that Engineering education is available to many in the rural parts of the country. This should have been very fine, considering the IT industry needs all of these Engineers, and more.However lack of teachers that are qualified, absence of a curriculum that is relevant to the world we live in, non compliance with many AICTE regulations and most importantly absence of many passionate educationalists has ensured that the employability of students in these rural colleges is at its lowest.

I agree this is only one side of the story. Ofcourse there are great institutions that produce great Engineers that work with great organizations. But let us forget about the cream, let us forgot about the average too, for they form a small percentage. Andhra Pradesh alone has 537 Engineering Colleges, the maximum no. of colleges in any city, which means they have about approximately 2lakh students passing out every year, out of which not even 25% are employable. What happens to the rest of the students that have spent a few lakhs to get educated, hoping they land a plum job? How do they pay off the education loans, and how do they sustain their livelihood?

My first interaction with this faculty from a very reputed college in Pune was very indicative of the experiences that awaited me. He walked me upto a seminar hall and spent 9 out 10minutes that we interacted, spitting the paan in his mouth indecently (not that one can spit in a decent fashion, yet). I very politely suggested, “Sir, your students are constantly watching you, and will be tempted to ape you. May be you shouldn’t do this”. He replies “I don’t drink whisky or see those kinds of magazines. But the students do it anyway. If I didn’t spit also, they will eventually learn to”.

In most of the tier 3 colleges, the 2007 pass outs teach the 2008students, and it is those students who don’t get placed that decide to teach. Well, it is quite obvious why faculties with doctorates and many years of experience will not leave the cities and teach in god forsaken towns/villages. (But I must confess there are some who do, like this IIT doctorate guy who has quit his very posh life to do this as his believes in the transformational value of education, such people are a handful though).

Not enough doctorate engineers who take to teaching, many such doctorates running off to the US, colleges not having autonomous power to take decisions, lack of funding for infrastructure etc are a few obvious issues that plague this sector. But beyond all these very specific huge obvious issues, which seem to have specific solutions that many research findings suggest, there are certain small issues. Small issues which have huge impact, and have limited solutions.

One such issue is that of the narrow minded, lethargic, old school mindset of a significant few educationalists. After all most of them belong to the generation of our parents who teach their children superficial values, criticize and abuse so as to discipline , and sit up there on a pedestal instructing youngsters what is right and wrong.

I didn’t meet a single faculty who advised the students to vote, but many who instructed the girls and boys to not interact with each other. Most of them expect students to keep the campus clean, but would spit on the roads or throw plastic mugs out of the window when they travel by train.

I wondered if I’m being too judgmental and extrapolating very stupidly my few experiences to form opinions about the entire community. But unfortunately my many ‘Engineer’ friends, the 3000 students that I worked with , the 250 faculties I have interacted with, the board of studies, the few ambitious educationalists, and the many research findings reaffirm my opinions.

My heart goes out to these parents who send their children to become Engineers hoping for a ‘bright’ future, to these naïveté students who hope to live a “respectable’ life, and the few spirited educationalists who are struggling for changes that are being met with too many challenges.

One of my friends mentioned that I will never understand what it is to be studying in an Engineering College in a rural area. True. Iam no Engineer. I would never really understand what it means to be one. Or to be studying to become one. But having spent more than 15yrs of my life studying in smaller towns living a middle class life, studying in closed non progressive schools and colleges gives me some idea.

What can I do? What can the program I work on do? How much change can we create, how many lives can I (we) touch? Isn’t the dream to transform an entire system utopian? Is it possible in a life time? Will my resolve to create change last forever? What can a romantic who has lived a luxurious life, having worked out of cushy cabins, and is used to seeking shallow materialistic dreams like owning a 1000Sqft. apartment do?

I don’t have all the answers. But I know, Change is slow. Deliberate. And possible.

As I sit and type this story on my laptop, I hear Sharukh Khan say ,in the Lead India Video, “Are we going to keep thinking about what we should be doing, or do something about what we are thinking. Thinking can happen from an armchair, while doing is the only way to get something done.”

I stop writing, and get started on my trip to Kolhapur.