“My mission is to meet and “ignite” at least 100,000 students. So they dream of a new India filled with peace and development.”These are the words of our former president and leading scientist in India Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam.
Actually every Indian has a dream to see his India peaceful and developing and students are the best option to fulfill their dream. Therefore, each parents proud to see their children studying in a well-known institution and ready to spend all their money for better future of their ward or in other words “better future of India”. A lot of organizations and institutions are giving scholarships to provide financial help to those who are poor enough to continue their higher education.(Not to talk of how much of it is reaching to actual needy students.)
Indian Higher education system is third largest in the world, after China and US. It has about 20 central universities, 100 deemed universities, 215 state universities and 16000 colleges including 1800 women’s colleges. Its national budget on education is about 31,036 crore rupees(7.05 bl$). Its literacy rate has continuously increased from 18.33%(male;27.16% & female;8.86%) in 1951 to 64.84%(male;75.26% & female;53.63%) in 2001.
Indian government spends a lot of money on education and 80% of Indian schools are government-aided. However, because of poor quality of education, 27% of its children are privately educated. Pupil teacher ratio in government schools is 1:37 compared with 1:31 in private schools. Researchers say that private schools always provide better results, but these schools are fail to provide education to poor families. And everyone knows that more than 58% of India’s population is poor. So, quality education is away from about 45 crore people. I don’t know how much attention is our government paying to these families and how much serious is it about providing quality education in its schools.
Students’ Role in a developing Society
Development is a combined name of ‘mind power’, ‘money power’ and ‘muscle power’. Whenever these three powers are united in a single society we say the society is developing.
Mind power is most important element in these three. There are no uses of money and muscle powers if you don’t have mind power.
Students are the mind power of any society. So, they are to play a vital role to make society developing----It must be noted here that student means excellence and one who has understanding of what is happening in the society nearby. Also has an ability to lead the society in the right direction. It does not mean “information box” or one who has every type of knowledge and information but not able to take any stand according to his knowledge-----Alright, here the point is how much are they serious about their responsibilities?
You will be surprised to know that 65% students do not know why are they studying or what is education for? They study just because others are studying. A remarkable number of genius students prefer to work outside India to get better salary. Okay, working outside India and getting better salary is not bad, but to work for India and getting lower salary is far better than to work for others and getting good salary. Here, in India, students are told to secure higher marks in examinations not to run behind excellence that is the first characteristic of students and it comes through asking questions. One who learns more asks more. Asking a question shows symptom of creativity and excellence in students.“Your questions which remain unanswered by your teachers are more important than the questions you learn to answer in examinations…. To me the most important questions are ‘why’, ‘why not’, ‘what’ and ‘how’,” says Prof. MGK Menon, leading scientist and advisor to ISRO. But asking question is not a culture in India. Only 15% students ask questions of their own choice, says a report published in Punjab Kesari(10.12.2010). The survey found that students have heartily desire to see their teacher happy at any rate. They fear of cutting their marks if dare to ask a question against teacher’s will. In the survey, only 15% students admitted that they have courage to challenge teacher’s ideology.
Again, from another point of view, 63% urban students spend over an hour online daily in “useless” things. A good number of students waste more than two and half hour on ‘DHABA’ discussing on the matter of no use.
Remain unsleeping in night is very common among students. A report of ASSOCHAM says that 66% students carry mobile handset while going to schools, attending classes and tuition session and use their phones frequently in the classes for SMS. It further says that around 20 messages are sent by each student per day just to say Hello and chat, while 56% of girls send almost 50 text messages every day. One can understand easily that how much attention will be paid on lecture while using phones for text messages.
This is one side of the coin. The second one is that there are some students who are for books only. They have nothing to do with what is happening in the society nearby.
The both characters are bad. We need reconciliation between both extremes. We neither do badly for our society nor will allow others to do bad for it.
Society Demands Justice
Do you know India is 87th corrupt country among 178 countries surveyed by Transparency International Report 2010? Indian “money mafias” has deposited 642 billion$ in Swiss bank, while BPL families are made to pay Rs.900 crore per year to get their fundamental rights as bribe.
Corruption and bribery have become a routine work in our society and people learn it faster than anything else. These words have become so familiar in India even among children.BBC World Service found that the most talked about topic this year among Indians was corruption. About 68%of people mention corruption as one of the most serious problems facing the world. Need not to go so far. Let’s start with recent corruption i.e. CWG corruption, Adarsh Housing Society corruption and the most talked about corruption in auction of 2G spectrum.
Now, let’s have a little talk of one of these three major corruptions. Take 2G for example. It resulted in loss of a mammoth 1,76,379 crore rupees in national exchequer.
Recovery of these monies, unscrupulously looted, is not only to reassert public morality. This recovery is much needed to improve the livelihood of the vast mass of Indian people. It has been estimated that to provide all Indian families(APL&BPL) 35 kg of food grain at Rs. 3 a kilo, it would cost an additional food subsidy of Rs. 84,399 crores. The loot in 2G spectrum scam is nearly double of what is required to provide food security to all Indians. Or, for that matter, ‘Education for All’ is estimated by National Institution for Educational Planning and Administration(NIEPA) to cost Rs. 34,000 crore annually for the next five years or a total of Rs. 1.7 lakh crores. This is less than what has been looted in 2G spectrum scam. In fact, the scam accounts for nearly eight times the Rs. 22,300 crore health budget for this year.
This is merely an example showing how the reach are snatching rights of the poor. Is there anyone to fight for the right of weaker section of the society???
I am sure the society will see students coming forward to establish peace and justice not only in India but in the whole world in near future.
"Revolution in soul and soil"
Study,Struggle,Service;Students for Social Change
Study,Struggle,Service;Students for Social Change
