Will things change?
Pratap Bhanu Mehta has written a wonderful column today in Indian Express. Touching stuff.The worst part is that this could have been written 20 years ago, and it would still have reflected the reality then ( except the hopeful part, where he expects the expanding economy to provide opportunities, something no one could have told us when we were younger.)
With the cut-off marks for admissions rising, it is hard to know what genuine consolation to give to thousands of disappointed students. We can say to them: don’t interpret your inability to get into a college of your choice as your personal failure. It is our collective failure. Obdurate politicians, control-freak bureaucracies, insecure academics, ideas of social justice conceived in bad faith, the poverty of our imaginations, and our preference for control over freedom, levelling over distinction, have all conspired to ensure that you get very few choices. Consequently, that half an extra mark seems life-defining.
2 comments:
Strangely enough it reminds me of an old Indian saying that goes something like you cannot change the nature of something that is inherent in itself, somehow these are like that for good or bad!
Jera,
We've always lived in a world of supply constraints. constraints in education, in professional opportunities, and in imagination and its a neat little cycle. However, I do think the cycle is slowly breaking, there are more opportunities and imagination is more visible. The education sector is still a sad story and still heavily chained.
- ganglee
Post a Comment