Better be educated than be an idiot

Rarely does my conviction about a particular thought get overthrown so easily. But this did happen when I came across a piece of writing in HT on Jan 16 by Sagarika Ghose “Idiot is as idiot does”.

“3 Idiots” – The nation seems to be caught by this whirlwind slating this movie as the highest bollywood grosser. The flick thoroughly impressed me with the innovative humour and smart characters-Centimeter, Virus et al.The exponents of the movie went bonkers showering all the adjectives in the dictionary, myself being one of them till I came across the write up in HT. The movie does make an impression but the point is whether the education system needs to be denigrated to this extent. It makes a strong statement using caricatures such as ‘Virus’ to blame the rising incidents of suicide and stress among students. But the point to be noted is how many of us have actually come across such a person in real life, very few.

The movie talks about pressure but fails miserably to explain which pressure is acceptable and which isn’t. There is a clear cut demarcation between positive pressure and negative pressure. Without pressure exerted some students may never realize their true potential and may jus resort to fate. It is only when you push yourself does the true self come out. It’s said “Necessity is the mother of all inventions” which is more than apt for this situation. The extent to which we may be an idiot at times is limited. If education is a waste we might as well throw this country away into hands of foreigners and sit brainless.

Most of us may actually never come across a “Virus” but just a negligible clone of his who may to the maximum just make us pull our hair, not more. Instead at times it can be seen that a teacher would go out of the way to help their students especially in esteemed institutes .More can be done than jus blaming the professors and restless parents, all they want are a bright future for their child. If given a thought we would realize the problem does not lie in IITs, Parents or demanding professors.

The primary problem staring us in the face is we have too little of anything to satisfy everything. We have only a handful of IITs, IIMs to cater to a population of a billion. Even more shocking state would be that of having just a single All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) for the 2nd highest populated country on this earth. The underlying theme of the movie is based on IITs is evident though it’s named Imperial College in the movie

The stress is not that Indian students are finding it difficult to study or do not want to study; rather it’s a well known fact that they are much better at it than their European counterparts’ .It’s this cut throat competition which is giving rise to stress related problem. When questioned many IIT students have confessed to the fact that with the facilities provided at IIT it’s much easier to study. The difficult part is they cannot afford to take a breather during the session as everybody is working hard to get that coveted placement. The fact that they have overcome a lot of competition to get a seat at the esteemed institute is just adding oil to fire.

The movie is undoubtedly funny but shows education as a mere waste unless people have immense potential. The major flaw is Ranchodas Chanchad was a topper, whatever the constraints may be but he had to prove that he was academically brilliant and had excellent technical knowledge to show his superiority over ‘Chatur’ at the end. Targeting education as a major failure can have disastrous consequences. We would not want our future generation not taking education seriously especially when India being breeding ground for talent. Playing the blame game on individuals, parents, professors would not serve the purpose.

The condition is that of “too less for too many”. This nation has tons of quality students but only a handful of quality institutes. The main issue is of wants, we have many to ask but very less to satisfy. Lesser the resources higher will be the competition.

The state would do better to set up more educational institutes rather than setting up counseling centers to console grieving parents and students. Some resources used to set up SEZ’s, cricket stadiums, bridges can very well be diverted to setting up world class institutions which would cater to generating knowledge pool. Infrastructure can originate from knowledge but without knowledge there can be no infrastructure.