A well-known Gujarati writer and professor wrote a fantasy ‘Eklavya’ in the seventies. It was a superb piece of fiction. The hero, a laborious village boy secures first position in the High School Examination. Principals of a number of prestigious colleges approach him asking him to take admission in their college. The pampered student takes admission in one of the institutions. He is so studious and so intelligent that after a few days instead of being taught he starts teaching the teachers who are not well, prepared. He becomes the President of the State University College Students Union. He gets a resolution passed that there is no need of lecturers in colleges. They require simply good coordinators who would play tape recorders or VCRs in the classes. It would save money that can be used for research and for helping poor students.
The fantasy, it seems, is gaining grounds in the present education scenario in the country. The deterioration started long back in Bihar and Orissa and has been spreading like wild fire in the Hindi belt. Instead of being centers of education many educational institutions have become innovative not in any branch of learning but in Mafiaism. Groups of young men can be seen strolling all over the campus during teaching hours.
Many of them do not take the examinations. Someone else represents them in the examination hall. Neither the Principal nor the teachers dare stop the rot. An Intermediate college in the rural setting in one of the districts of Uttar Pradesh was known for its notoriety during examination season.
The Principal and the Manager of the college pocketed lakhs of rupees every year for allowing large scale copying and manipulating a number of things. It was only in the Kalyan Singh regime in 1992 that anti-copying bill came into force and the two had to lick the dust. The next Chief Minister was a seasoned politician who won the elections on the promise of withdrawing the bill and scrapping the ‘Goondah Act’. If an invigilator is not required in the examination hall the students are not going to be examined for their ability in learning but in that of copying. Naturally there won’t be any need for scholars to engage classes. The universities will have to devise some other way of imparting knowledge to the young ones who want to have it.
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A number of medical colleges, engineering colleges and other professional colleges, specially in the South and the West are being run on capitation fee now euphemized as donor seats. Many of these colleges throughout the country are ill equipped both in educational aids like laboratories and accessories and in staff too.
Some educational bodies, in certain areas, look like empires of a large number of such institutions. They provide batal lions of graduates and post-graduates in different faculties every year. Many of them are known for their sub-standard teaching.
They are at least filling the gap that the government institutions are not able to. Within no time we shall have a large number of qualified medicos, engineers, technicians and teachers spread throughout the country. Having no employment opportunities in the country they are going to be export commodities. It is just one’s guess if they will be accepted in the foreign market.
Of late institutions of business management have proliferated in the country. Almost every university has one such college, besides many run by many colleges. There are postal courses for these being offered by university departments. There is a spate of open universities after establishment of Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) in 1985.
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These Universities teach through printed lessons prepared by experts in the subjects. The process of educating the people has been taken up by Doordarshan too through UGC programmes. Some of them are excellent. ‘Turning point’ presented by well known cine world personality Girish Karanad with Prof. Yashpal, the former UGC chief as adviser did yeoman’s service in its own way.
Thus, it seems that some alternatives are being offered in our country to provide knowledge through experts on the small screen, through communicative devices and seminars. There seems no harm in weaning away the students who don’t want to be taught and those who don’t want to teach seriously at the individual or institutional level. 40 minute tapes supported by small screen demonstration, 45 minute serials prepared by experts displayed through VCRs would do a lot in this direction. They may be continued for three months or so. To sum up the things quarterly seminars arranged at prestigious institutions in the country can serve the cause of imparting knowledge to the deserving youth better. Let it be a well organized plan and conscientious effort.
To minimize the human error the programme may be conducted through robots who can be experts in manoeuvring audiovisual aids. This all would be far better than gaining knowledge through cheap guides that are available now in the South too—a cheap prescription for getting through the examinations but quite cancerous for achieving the goals of life in the long run.