India and quality of education

I recently came across a post on Facebook from a group called Hyderabad School Parents' Association (HSPA) in support of a protest organized by JAC SFR (joint action committee school free regulation). That post got me thinking about the attitude of us Indians towards government and regulation. We are so used to the wretched socialist system and government dole-outs that we have forgotten to appreciate that quality does not come cheap or free. As the lady in the video says, she wants the best quality school for her kid but does not want to pay the price required for the school to deliver services at that quality. Quality education is not cheap. You can't expect to own an iPhone at the price of a feature phone, can you. There are government schools that are run with our tax money but no one wants their children to go to government schools because those are poorly run and are no good. Everyone wants to send their kids to private schools for they are obviously better run and provide better services. But we do not want to pay the price for this better quality and demand for government meddling. Despite 70 years worth of experience we do not seem to realize that government involvement will destroy whatever little quality is left in our school education. Instead of forcing our elected representatives to better utilize our tax money and work towards improving the standards of government run schools, we want government to bully private schools. We expect good, talented teachers committed to their profession to work for peanuts. As Prof. CNR Rao once told a gathering of grad students in reference to salaries of university professors, if you throw peanuts you only get monkeys to dance. Just imagine the remuneration of lawyers, doctors, charted accountants or media professionals being fixed by the government. In all these professions, isn't the amount of remuneration determined by the market value of the services provided? Why should it be any different for education? Aren't medical or legal services basic rights of a citizen like education? 

At this point, the protesting parents would do well to rewind their collective memories to 2009 and answer what they did to stop Government of India from passing the right of children to free and compulsory education act, commonly known as RTE act. What protest did they carry out? What 'dharnas', 'gheraos', did they carry out? What pressure did they bring upon their Member of Parliament to prevent the government (with complete cooperation of opposition in parliament) from imposing this blatantly unsecular and unjust piece of legislation? Now, there is no doubt that every child deserves an opportunity to have access to quality education irrespective of the parents' financial status. But whose responsibility is it to create the physical and intellectual infrastructure that will give every kid born in this country access to quality education? Is it that of the government that collects the taxes or that of the private sector? It's been known very well for many decades now that the publicly funded school system is rotten to the core. The government instead of fixing this system so that even the kids attending government schools are provided with good standards, has imposed its responsibility on to the private sector through abuse of its legislative power. The RTE act mandates that 25% of seats in every private school be reserved free-of-charge for kids from 'economically weaker' families. Government is supposed to compensate the schools for the expense. But as is the norm for everything government in India, the schools were either not paid, paid very late or paid at a ridiculously low rates. In such a situation, where will the private schools raise the cost difference? Their only options are to either pass on the burden to remaining 75% of the students or take the losses and ultimately shut down. In both of the options, it is the middle class that is going to be adversely effected; either pay up more or have private school options reduced. 

If you didn't raise your voice to stop the RTE act because of decades of socialistic indoctrination, I don't think you have any moral right to now prevent the private schools from doing what they have to for survival. What will you do if private schools ultimately shutdown because of losses? At this stage another question needs to be asked. How much is the Indian middle class responsible for the decay of government school system? By not sending our kids to the local government school, haven't we virtually boycotted them? Hasn't this contributed to their ultimate neglect from the government? If our kids were attending these schools, wouldn't we have asked questions and demanded answers from our elected representatives about the poor administration of these schools? Finally, there is one thing that we need to remember. Nothing comes for free. Be it the schools, universities, satellite communication, free laptops, electricity, clean drinking water. Nothing is free. We will have to pay for the stuff that we use; in one way or the other; now or later; if not directly then indirectly.

P.M. Bhargava and the scientific temper police

When I started this blog, I had decided to strictly restrict the discussions to science, scientists and academic affairs and to completely keep politics out. But extraordinary times require rules for normal times be suspended. And what we are witnessing in India now is indeed an extraordinary time. The left-liberals who have for all these years since independence in 1947 had enjoyed a monopoly over government policy to decide how India should think and where she should go, are increasingly being challenged and sidelined. Having failed to influence the electorate during the 2014 general elections despite their best efforts and numerous open letters, they have now resorted to spreading canards about a democratically elected government. Latest in these shenanigans is a statement issued by a group of scientists. I was alerted to this statement by a news in Nature India. Third paragraph in this statement begins thus:

"The Indian Constitution in Article 51 A (h) demands, as a part of the fundamental duties of the citizens, that we '...develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform' "

Reading this reminded me of an op-ed that the leader of this group, P.M.Bhargava, had written few months ago. You can find it here. There he narrates why, how and, most importantly, when he got this article inserted into the constitution of India.

"The conclusion that our very own scientists — who would be expected to be leaders in the development of scientific temper — did not possess scientific temper themselves and were just as superstitious as any other group was supported by another incident in 1964. Following a statement by Satish Dhawan (who later became Secretary, Department of Space), Abdur Rahman (a distinguished historian of science) and I, set up an organisation called The Society for Scientific Temper, in January 1964, the founding members of which included distinguished scientists like Francis Crick, a Nobel Prize winner. For membership to the society, the following statement had to be signed: “I believe that knowledge can be acquired only through human endeavour and not through revelation, and that all problems can and must be faced in terms of man’s moral and intellectual resources without invoking supernatural powers.”

We were disillusioned when we approached scientist after scientist and all of them refused to sign the statement. Clearly they were devoid of scientific temper. Following this disillusionment, I persuaded Professor Nurul Hasan, then Education Minister, to have the following clause included in Article 51A in the 42nd Amendment of the Constitution in 1976: “It shall be the duty of every citizen of Indian “to develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of enquiry and reform.” 

Hopefully, I don't have to draw your attention to the fact that 42nd Amendment to the Constitution of India was enacted during the Emergency that India Gandhi had imposed. It was a time when democratic rights were suspended in India. It was the only time in history when something close to authoritarian dictatorship was actually imposed in India (forced sterilization of people, carried out by Ms. Gandhi's son Sanjay, is often cited as an example). The 42nd Amendment was therefore not enacted through a democratic process. It is also an amendment that has constitutionally imposed a political ideology, Socialism, on all citizens of India irrespective of whether they agree with it or even understand it (as an aside, I remember reading somewhere that the Swarajya Party of C. Rajagopalachari could not be revived in post-emergency India because they did not subscribe to socialism and hence were not in agreement with the constitution. So much for democracy and freedom of political association in India). 

So, here we have a group of people who see no problem in imposing their world-view, their way of thinking, their ideology on rest of the citizenry. They feel no compunction in actively collaborating with authoritarian dictators in the process. They see no problem in passing judgments on the scientific temper of a person just because they did not sign up to their "statement" and subscribe to their "society". The very concept of freedom and individual liberty seems alien to this group. Ramanujan ascribed all his math genius to visions from his family goddess. Newton spent a lot of time searching through Bible for secret messages from God. Now, imagine if the careers of these scientific geniuses were to be left at the mercy of Bhargava and his fellow scientific temper police. Well, you don't actually have to imagine. That is what has happened to Indian science for all these years since Independence. All life has been sucked out of it by this scientific temper police. 

Now, if only this "deeply concerned with the climate of intolerance" gang who have no qualms about collaborating with dictators to impose their ideology on rest of the nation, had looked up the word "IRONY" in a dictionary before churning out their statement. One only hopes they will finally be called out for what they really are, a bunch of hypocrites throwing a tantrum because they no longer have control over other's lives.