In the year 2000, American newsmagazine TIME asked its readers to choose from a list of 1000 items invented in the first and second millennia the one that impacted the people the most. It was not the computer or electricity or the printing press that the readers chose. 

The winner was the humble toilet. At the Toilet Museum set up by Sulabh International, near Dwarka in New Delhi, I saw a painting of life in Paris in the pre-toilet era. A family is throwing a bucket of human excreta onto the road from their first floor balcony with pedestrians holding their nose and trying to escape the fusillade. 

If such a list is made today, nobody would even look at Twitter, an American microblogging and social networking service on which users post and interact with messages known as “tweets”. Yet, when Parag Agrawal, IIT-Mumbai alumnus, succeeded Jack Dorsey as its CEO, Indian media celebrated it as a great achievement. 

They listed several American/Global tech majors headed by executives of Indian-origin like Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayan among others. Today, everyone knows how much Parag Agrawal’s pay packet is. Also known is how much bonus he would get if the company’s turnover increases under his dispensation.

As my friend Shastri Ramachandaran has in an article on Wion titled “On the Margin: NRIs and the Cult of Mammon” argued that their success would benefit the companies they head, their shareholders and their own family members. They earn in dollars, spend in dollars and lead their lives in big mansions in “exclusive” areas.

Yet, they are the role models for our youth who find that India is the best place to fly away from. Since 2017, 6.08 lakh Indians have left Indian citizenship to become citizens of countries like Canada, Australia and the US. In contrast, 10,645 applied for Indian citizenship between 2016 and 2020, out of which 4,177 applicants were granted citizenship.

Some of the islands of prosperity in several states in India, including UP, are because of the remittances from Indian workers in the Gulf. Yet, when they approach the Indian embassies for consular services, they are treated like dirt by some of the diplomats who plan to have their babies born in the US so that they become its natural citizens.

About 1 percent of the Indian population lives abroad. They hold high positions in society, though they may not draw as much salary as Parag Agrawal draws. The other day, I was happy to know from a disabled girl who owns a provision store that her sister was doing her Ph.D in the US. She is part of a team developing artificial tissues that can be grafted onto the human body.

In 1979, I attended the Indian Navy’s Day at Sea, off the Mazgaon dock in what was Bombay. I had an occasion to spend half a day inside INS Vela, a submarine. I also had the privilege of going from INS Dunagiri to INS Vikrant and back using a jackstay. The submarine was decommissioned. A new submarine bearing the same name INS Vela was commissioned a few days ago. The new INS Vikrant, an aircraft carrier, is all set to test the waters.

These are not small achievements for a country where famines and starvation deaths were as common as mosquitoes romancing at night. But for the setback the economy suffered as a result of Modi’s thoughtless actions like demonetisation and flawed implementation of GST, India would have been in a much better position now. 

Yet, the common refrain among those who valorise the past, especially the victory of dharma at Kurukshetra, where only five warriors and one charioteer survived the war, is that Macaulay’s education policy is to blame for India’s ills. 

They do not realise that it was social reformers like Raja Rammohun Roy who demanded English education, that relied more on practice than theory, instead of Sanskrit education, where the emphasis was on learning scriptural verses by heart. Not many realise that the Catholic Church was once against the spread of English. 
That is why Kuriakose Elias Chavara, now a Saint, born in 1805, set up a Sanskrit school, not a Malayalam or English school. Like Rammohun Roy, Syed Ahmad Khan, who founded the Aligarh Muslim University, realised that the Muslim community could not forever remain chained to Arabic and Persian and latterly to Urdu. They must learn English to advance in life.

It is this education which has brought India this far. When software writing became a big global business, Indians enjoyed a head-start, mainly on account of their proficiency in English. Indians speak and write better English than an average Brit and an average American. 

A matriculate student in India would have laughed at the pidgin English former US President Donald Trump spoke. In fact, the whole world laughed when they heard him pronounce the name of Swami Vivekananda as “Vivek Commananando” (you can check it on YouTube).

The Chinese took no time in learning English to take a slice of the business that companies like TCS, Infosys and Wipro considered as their birthright. As they were learning English, parties like the BJP and leaders like Mulayam Singh Yadav were promoting Hindi. The fact is that a large number of the Hindi-speaking population are still unable to read and write in Hindi.

English education was blamed for India’s backwardness. In fact, anyone who questioned their nationalism were called the children of Macaulay. Ever since Narendra Modi came to power at the Centre, every effort was being made to rewrite history and other textbooks prescribed in schools and colleges. As Chief Minister of Gujarat, he supervised and successfully implemented the Hindutva agenda in school education.

Recently, the parliamentary panel on education has recommended a bias-free portrayal of freedom fighters, greater inclusion of the role of women and more focus on ancient Indian wisdom in school textbooks. The panel chaired by Vinay Sahasrabuddhe submitted its report entitled, 'Reforms in the content and design of School Text Books', on November 30.

To be specific, the committee does not want textbooks to have any references to the Mughal rulers like Akbar the Great. They will always be portrayed as invaders. No reference will be made to Tipu Sultan, who was the first to wage a proper war against the British. In fact, he should be credited with starting the first war of independence. Instead, Pazhasi Raja, who sought the support of the British to protect his fiefdom, will be eulogised.

The committee wants the teachings of the Vedas to be included in the curriculum. I have read the Rig Veda and I am compelled to admit that what the great scientist Jagdish Chandra Bose said about the ancient text in a book he authored is absolutely right. It contains praises of mother nature. The Vedas, the Quran and the Bible need to be studied by those who have an interest in them.

Last week, the CBSE Term 1 board exam for Class XII began with sociology as the subject. There was one question that has rattled the CBSE: “The unprecedented scale and spread of anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002 took place under which government?” The students were given multiple answers like, “Congress”, “BJP”, “Democratic” and “Republican” from which they had to choose the right one. 

The board described the question as erroneous and “inappropriate” and promised strict action against the responsible persons. No doubt, whoever had set the question paper would have to face the music. However, to the layman, the question does not appear erroneous at all.

Now the question to be asked is: Did the question setter use his imagination while completing his assignment or did he rely on the textbooks prescribed for the students who chose sociology as an optional subject. 

The question was based on a paragraph in the NCERT Class XII Sociology textbook: “The two most traumatic contemporary instances of communal violence occurred under each of the major political parties. The anti-Sikh riots of Delhi in 1984 took place under a Congress regime. The unprecedented scale and spread of anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002 took place under a BJP government”. If the question was about the anti-Sikh riots, it would not have caused concern to the CBSE.

No doubt, the question setter depended solely on the NCERT textbook. Ten years ago, Prof TJ Joseph from Kerala set a question paper for his students. He chose a small passage from a book, authored by an expert on films who happened to be a Muslim and prescribed by the university for supplementary reading, to test their knowledge of punctuation marks. 

Yet, he was accused of blasphemy and his right hand was brutally chopped off by radical Islamists. Prof Joseph has in his autobiography released early this year described the whole story which I narrated immediately after the incident occurred in these columns. 
Will the CBSE punish the question setter like the poor professor in Kerala? The knee-jerk reaction of the CBSE shows how pliant and subservient it is to the political masters in the country. Come to think of it, the CBSE was once headed by the Jesuit, Fr Thomas V. Kunnunkal. Alas, the board has become an adjunct of the human resources development ministry!

School education is facing a crisis, accentuated by the spread of Corona, with students and parents in urban areas preferring online education, instead of the traditional classroom education. Now, the University Grants Commission (UGC) wants all Central universities to introduce a common university entrance test (CUET) to be organised by the national testing agency (NTA) to govern admission to all their graduate and postgraduate courses. 

The commission wants the new system to be in place from the next academic year. The ball is now in the court of the vice-chancellors. Being nominees of the Central government, the VCs would be only too eager to implement the UGC’s direction. 

So far, admission to the graduate courses in universities like Delhi University was based purely on the marks scored at the Class XII board examination. This year, some university functionaries tried to create a hullabaloo over students, especially from Kerala, cornering most of the seats in the so-called “prestigious courses” in “prestigious colleges” in Delhi. 

This was not because of the liberal marking in Kerala but because of the increasing migration of students. There are now more Keralites studying in Delhi University than at any time. The UGC plan should be seen against this backdrop. Take the case of Jawaharlal Nehru University where students from backward areas were given weightage in admission. 

That is why it attracted students from every nook and cranny of the country. The entrance test will change the character of JNU which will be like any other university. The entrance test will further reduce the value of the school leaving certificates. In any case, they are no longer checked for eligibility for jobs. For that the candidates have to clear the civil service exam and similar exams conducted by the employers. Yet, the students tried to score good marks only to get admission to “good” colleges and universities. Thus, the entrance test will reduce the value of school education to a large extent.

One reason why many students migrate to Delhi University is also to take admission to coaching institutes which have been proliferating. Anyone who knows the system knows that cracking the entrance test is more a skill than wisdom. 

When admission to medical colleges began to be through the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), the number of candidates who had the benefit of coaching began to dominate the show while the students from the disadvantaged sections began to fall by the wayside. Medical colleges like St. John’s in Bengaluru could no longer give weightage to those who were committed to serve in the rural areas after getting their medical degrees. The UGC plan will give a fillip to the coaching industry which also thrives on its marketing skills.

The Central and state governments have been increasingly withdrawing from the education sector, allowing the private sector to fill the gaps. They do not know that the private sector, which thrives on profit, can never substitute the government. Even in the Mecca of capitalism like the US, a large majority of the students attend government schools. My wife’s nephew used to pay a monthly fee of Rs 18 for his MBBS course in Rajasthan. He got a very good stipend when he did his MS. Can a poor student aspire to become a doctor now?

ajphilip@gmail.com