I remember the day PM Modi completed 12 continuous years in office as India’s first elected PM (even surpassing Nehru’s record of 17 years!) a senior politician of the ruling party had visited my house surrounded by his cronies demanding that I give a soundbite on the occasion. I had looked quite blank at that unannounced moment, felt somewhat strange that a consummate politician like the PM would be collecting remarks about his achievements from much lesser-known individuals like me. I had, with the cameraman’s gaze and his camera focused on me, uttered some platitudes which may have satisfied the unexpected guest as he made a quick exit.
With PM Modi congratulating his Italian counterpart recently on her being the longest serving PM of Italy in the post-WWII period, I had expected PM Meloni to also stress on her caller’s previous feat before hers. But no such report came my way except a note of gratitude.
This would in any case pale in comparison to the “lighting of diyas” on 17 Sept to celebrate the PM’s 75th birthday and the month-long celebrations ordained at the tax payer’s expense in the name of ‘Seva Sankalp Abhiyaan’. The pertinent question is, with the enormous amounts of oil spent particularly in this time of several crises including fuel under which the whole world is reeling – and India is no exception – are these kinds of celebrations warranted, and are students to be penalised for not attending the function made compulsory in all govt schools and colleges. What about the crumbling infrastructure, the lack of teachers, the distances which students have to trudge in rural areas to reach their school in the absence of secure transport? What about the enormous vacancies of teachers in educational institutions which are kept vacant year after year?
And above all, what about the damages the New Education Policy has caused to the former educational system with its numerous iterations and half-baked courses and teachers harking back to the ancient ages euphemistically termed “Indian Knowledge Systems” which students have to compulsorily digest. And what about the universities, both public and private, where senior functionaries are briefed to hold a certain ideological predilection to be able to get appointed, as part of the imprimatur which the institutions have to necessarily undergo?
It could have been a strategic error on the part of the students to have dropped their protests helmed by the CJP two months back at Jantar Mantar in Delhi and several other parts of India after the then Education Minister’s resignation. For, the latter was just the symptom of the malaise, not the cause which has been camouflaged with the dexterity of the regime instituting some cosmetic changes and appointing a High-Powered Committee to suggest correctives. On the flip side an important takeaway from the protests has been that it unleashed the forces of fearlessness, defiance of authority and a daredevil attitude of comeuppance, which could serve well in future encounters with power.
Coming back to the celebrations, 12 years is a long time in politics for which PM Modi deserves applause, and now his crossing over 75 years with 25 uninterrupted years in power in the state (Gujarat) and the Centre, even more. But the rule which had been enunciated sometime back of getting the senior leaders of the ruling party “retired” and relegated to the ‘Margdarshak Mandal’ after they turned 75, would that not apply in the Prime Minister’s case?
The chorus among students through the ‘Chhatron Ki Goonj’ episodes witnessed in several cities across the country, more recently in Indore, demanding a total transformation of the education ecosystem of the country could get louder. The questions could get more direct and aggressive and pointedly call for transformative and immediate action. It is not enough to divert the nation’s attention with superfluous activities but to fix a broken education system and get each and every citizen from all segments of the diverse Indian society enlisted to receive quality education in the spirit of the Constitution and the Right to Education. If education is a pathway to employment, it equals the right to life and the right to equality as well. And that cannot be brushed aside as yet another minor disruption amidst the din of festivals, celebrations and foreign visits.
The ritual of holding on to the narrative weaved over some three decades for staying in power seems to have reached an impasse. The demands for withdrawal of all FIRs against agitating students and payment of just compensation to the victims of police atrocities on 20 July are still stuck, bulldozed with countertheories of those having committed criminal acts deciphered through facial recognition technology and delayed with political/judicial maneuvering. Now some 2,800 odd names have come up as those involved in criminal actions though what activities they were involved in and does that deserve incarceration are still left indefinite.
We then come back to the question, why was the nationwide students’ protest of last July withdrawn? Was it not undue haste as the movement was beginning to gather a critical mass strong enough to compel the govt to take notice. It may have been a tactical withdrawal but that needed to be bolstered with further determination to continue the movement with the objective of fixing the leakages in the system, and more particularly giving succour to the marginalised and impoverished sections of society who equally desire better education to let their children grow up in an age of high technology where employability is the need of the hour. In that context, the ‘School Theek Karo’ movement may be a humble augury.
In all fairness the govt with its marked corporatization of education does not seem to have given any consideration for the overlooked segments of the society who are in any case disenfranchised in large numbers through the doings of yet another constitutional body (after the judiciary), the venerable ECI and its prodigious scheme, the SIR. Thousands of electors’ names have been deleted from the rolls in the spurious charge of ‘logical discrepancy’ a self-contradictory voodoo term that means nothing actually. The joke goes that even important political figures and well-known public intellectuals find their names deleted from the rolls in Delhi under the same rubric.
Several questions add up to the biggest question mark, what does the regime want the future generations to get when the much-touted Viksit Bharat commemorating a hundred years of Independence comes. Futuristic assertions cloud the uneasy moments of today and the citizens of this country continue to wade in delusions conjured by the same system against which they had revolted just a few months back. The unending road of misgovernance seems to stretch to an uncertain future lugging a reluctant nation with a predominant young population where precarity of the journey is of utmost concern.
The writer is a retired diplomat, public intellectual and columnist.
