Changing Attitudes of our Universities

As a student I would like to talk about politics in universities which I have been following after clearing my plus 12 exams. I could have talked about national politics but for that I will require a lot more information and being a lazy person as my friends know, I am bit scary of taking the long route.

"Universities, are no longer ivory towers. They were meant to remain above politics, but are very at the very centre of it." - Deepak Nayyar former vice chancellor of Delhi University.

It is true that our universities are now at the heart of a grim and fractious political scrabble, which has pushed our most prominent deans and academians into exchanging terse, political one-on-ones with our politicians. I have witnessed it very closely during my 6 month student life in Goenka college (one of the Kolkata's prominent college). The path to this state of affairs has been a long way down. Early on, India's educational institutions were at the centre of our most positive iconography - our universities were a source of great pride, which gave Indians, as Nehru said a franker look and straighter back. Forty years on, India centered the 90's in the midst of massive protests against caste based system which was eventually implement recently. The way the protests over the role and control of our universities have protrayed on comments "Its not democracy, Its democrazy".

I personally thought that passing out from ISC approved instituition I would be better off when I land in universities, but on the contrary I was caught up in the beauracratic sink hole of our universities. It is very clear to all that our education system has become inert and incapable of adapting to a rapidly evolving economy, and its best universities are in danger. Their weaknesses have become particularly critical with the rise of the knowledge economy, and as India's legions of youngsters enter instituitions that seem less and less capable of giving them what they need. As a result students are going overseas for higher education. This trend was started with silicon valley revolution when Indian masterminds went to States to get good jobs. Contrary to that situation at present we have far more educated brains (in percentage) going, and/or willing to leave the shores, not only for better lifestyle but for standard education. We students complain about the competion in domestic market which have grown immensely as compared to 50 years ago, but the attitudes of our government have not changed a bit. They still use age - old methods, the syllabus of West Bengal board is still the same, my uncle and most probably my grandfather had studied the same subjects and same syllabus as people of my generation is studying. The embarassing thing is that students are still using age old books in which the measuring unit is pounds, which was abolished since India became a republic state.

In Kolkata, BESU, Presidency college and Jadavpur Uni are always under police scanner. Either there is student clashes or there is a student's strike against the system. These protests hardly bring any changes and the student clashes generally bring student in the headlines but not the agenda.

Guys you all know that the general election is extremely close and the demographic structure suggests that 50% of the voters are in the age group of 18 – 35. We must ensure that we vote for the best leader, not based on the ideologies of a particular political party. Having said that I don’t think there are any who we can vote for, hence we should abolish this voting system. If we do not vote no one will be elected. Or one of us can take the charge to lead. I really hope Pratik the owner of this blog to stand up and lead the countrymen. He has got leadership qualities and with good support he can change this bloody system. We citizens want changes to this current structure, the government runs under gandhi’s and nehru’s philosophies and ideas, which I personally think is obsolete in this global and digital age.

The choice is yours guys!! Make it or break it.

Warm regards

Aniruddh

P.S. Elections and our universities