IS THIS GUY A SALES AGENT OF AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES?

We all know the "seminars" Australian Universities hold every year in India to catch the rich kids. Education is business in Australia and Indians are the biggest customers. Or, shall we say the raw material or the fuel to keep their teaching factories going?

But, Narayan Murthy is professing that India spends five billion dollars every year in educating our students in American Universities for next fifty years!

Mr Murthy! Why not spend five billion dollars every year in India to set up world class Universities? One can set up a Harvard style University in India for about 100 million dollars or say 700 crore Rupees. We could set up fifty Harvard Universities in India for five billion dollars. Fifty every year, that is. For next fifty years!

We will not get good teachers, you would say. Then set up forty Harvard style Universities for four billion dollars and employ the best professors for the remaining billion dollars. You could get the best in the world for that kind of money. 

The problem, Mr Murthy, is not sending 10,000 PhD students every year to the USA. The problem is what jobs we will offer them when they come back. Do we have the laboratories and research houses to employ ten thousand PhDs every year? And what salaries will we offer them? That of the peon? Didn't you hear that nearly two million candidates, some of them PhDs and MTechs, applied for a mere three hundred jobs of peons in Uttar Pradesh?

On second thoughts, why not spend half of five billion dollars in setting up twenty five Harvards or MITs in India and spend the rest in setting up high class research labs. But again, who will be the customers of such labs and of the fantastic designs they will churn out year after year? Does the Indian industry have it in them to absorb such research products? 

Well, Mr. Murthy! You need to read up some economics after all that COBOL programming that you have learnt. You can't develop an economy in such a lopsided manner. And please stop being an agent of the American Education system. It is sinking for some time now and it is going down for reasons well known to them. We will not prop them up.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india-business/Send-10k-PhD-students-each-year-to-US-Narayana-Murthy/articleshow/50780069.cms

BUREAUCRATISATION OF EDUCATION

When I was a school going child, the only authority I knew in the school was the Principal or the Headmaster. The Principal, aided by the Vice-Principal, epitomised all the powers that were to be exercised in running the school, from caning and disciplining the students, decisions regarding admissions, upkeep of the playgrounds and gardens, cleanliness of the campus, time-tabling, examination and vacation dates to meeting the parents.

 

In the last two to three decades or so, schools have come to be owned by "trusts". So, now we have a Chairman of the trust, a vice-chairman, a Secretary, a Treasurer and numerous trustees. The poor Principal is now placed so low in the hierarchy that he is probably just a trifle above his pupils. Same goes for colleges thousands of which have sprung up every few kilometres as one travels in the country side. Of course, the trusts are just a facade for ostensible "no-profit" venture that these seats of learning pretend to be. All the donations, building funds, development funds, proprietary sale of books and stationary to students from in-house counters and all other non-tuition payments form the real motive of these trusts, which only fatten their members and line their pockets. 

 

I was once invited as the Chief Guest to a famous engineering college in Salem, Tamil Nadu. The Principal himself came to invite me and I felt honoured to be visited by him. But, when I was seated on the stage, the Principal was nowhere to be seen. I had the company of the trustees and some other spurious dignitaries. The programme started and I was surprised to find the Principal getting up from a corner seat come up and touch the feet of the Chairman, the Secretary, the Treasurer and a few other members in succession. This was a shocking let down for me. I had always envisioned a Principal as the supreme authority in a college. As the programme progressed, it became clear to me that the whole exercise was a show of sycophancy, subservience and obsequiousness. The trustees were the reigning deities, who were paid obeisance by one an all, the Principal, the Heads of Departments and College students alike. In the melee the Chief Guest was also forgotten. The Principal, upon whose visit I had felt honoured, was merely a messenger of the trustees after all!

 

I remember my days in school and college, where the Principal and senior teachers were role models and symbols of dignity and probity. But, here I saw the Principal and HODs in a role so diminished that students would probably have no reverence towards them. They would all learn to stand in awe of non-academic authorities. I have, likewise, seen some schools that are run on "corporate" lines, many of which love to call themselves XYZ International School. We see a Managing Director, an Executive Director and a few Deputy Directors in them. Each one of them have office chambers in the school building and when they come avisiting, the Principal is seen running errands for them or flitting in and out of the hallowed chambers attempting to look like obedient junior schoolboys. And, when the MD himself visits, they line up small students from the gate up to the portico showering flower petals on him. In my school the Principal's office was a much feared or a much respected place depending on the type of student one was.  There was absolutely no authority above him. Today the Principal stands probably at number seven in the rank.

 

The school and college management has taken faithfully after the government or corporate bureaucracy. Teaching and learning are incidental and the main purpose seems to be massaging the ego of hierarchy that has been unnecessarily created. Money making and its laundering continues as the hidden agenda.

 

Needless to say, I never visited any such Institution again. 

चाय मैं क्यों बनाऊँ?

आप किसी बड़े होटल में जाकर चाय का ऑर्डर करें तो कमबख्त आपको चाय-पत्ती, चीनी, दूध लाकर परोस देते हैं। यहां तक कि छन्नी भी पटक जाते हैं। "लो जी, बनाओ और पी लो।" वह तो गनीमत है कि कोयला और अंगीठी नहीं दे जाते कि जाओ चूल्हा भी आप ही जला लो। पानी गर्म दे जाते हैं।

अब आप ही सोचो कि ऐसे होटल में आपको यदि चिकन-मसाला और पराठे खाने की इच्छा हुई तो क्या होगा? बेयरा आपकी टेबुल पर जिंदा मुर्गी और मसाले धर देगा और बोलेगा, "साहब जी, आप मुर्गी हलाल करो और मसाले कूटो-पीसो, तब तक मैं कड़ाही लेकर आता हूँ। और आटा आपको कौन सा चलेगा - शक्तिभोग या पिल्सबरी मल्टीग्रेन? आटा गूँथने के लिये पानी कौन सा चाहिए - बिसलेरी मांगता है या नलके का मारूँ?  अभी लेकर हाजिर हुआ।"

अब ये भी कोई आउटिंग हुई, साहब? ऐसे ईटिंग आउट का क्या मज़ा? अरे भाई, मैंने चाय मंगाई है। सीधे-सीधे एक प्याली चाय ले आओ। और ये क्या टेबुल पर काटना-पीसना-पकाना? तुम्हारा खानसामा भाग गया है क्या? मुझे बख्शो, बरखुरदार! आगे से मैं रामप्रसाद के ढाबे पर ही जाऊंगा।

                                           ---ooo---