By Babet Sten
One thing has made itself very clear when you look at the stories appearing in the Shillong newspapers. North Eastern Hill University (NEHU) is now being taken to task for all these years of disconnect. Now we are finally hearing the truth seep out from behind the walls of our local university. For a very long time we have known this but now it seems an all-out assault on our state educational institutions is yielding casualties. Or at least damaging the reputations, which is not a bad thing provided they are open to change. A lot of money has gone into NEHU and no one has asked about what it is being used for. This is not simply an issue of transparency but rather an issue about relevance. Is it relevant to spend more money on infrastructure development than on research? Is it relevant to spend money on beautification or on luring brilliant minds to teach and study? A friend who studied in NEHU for a short part of a semester was shocked at how little grant money was being allocated for his experiments whilst in China he was encouraged to pursue his work without too much financial constraint. This is alarming (not least because he went over to China) but because we are losing workers and (occasionally) brilliant people to other places.
Why is research important? Research is the cornerstone of an economy. This economy can be the economy of a country, a state or even an institution. Let us look at it in those terms. Research allows for breakthrough and innovation and generates income and employment. When research is pursued, new means are discovered and these means can be immensely profitable. The American economy is waiting for some research phenomenon which will ‘save’ them from this current mess that they are in. I am aware that there are other prescriptions for resuscitating an economy but I am interested in the significance of research. One can for example insist on FDI injections but these are really short term options (I consider 10 – 20 years short term). The downside of FDI injections is that they siphon off the wealth of the host country. One might impose duties, tariffs but really the end game is profit for the company or else it wouldn’t bother investing in the first place. This is one of the biggest gags of all time and we are all in on it – whether we want to or not.
Research though, need not necessarily function in this way. Research could have the primary objective of benefiting only the local and/or regional. NEHU could be the great beacon of culture for the state and also unselfishly for the region as well. No other university in the region has the clout of NEHU (perhaps undeservedly these days) I don’t know how many people within NEHU understand this. It can only do this if it moves away from the campus and into the lives of the people. There is far too much note giving and too little debating; there are a horde of students who believe that the syllabus is the end of their education. From the part of the teachers there is a dangerous cynicism at work. They seem keen on finding a few intelligent students but not how to get students to want to be intelligent. Intelligence is not inborn; (precociousness perhaps) it is acquired and it is the teachers’ role to reach out by being relevant to context. The student’s life is important and the teacher must wield the course around it. Playing with text, adapting it is considered sacrosanct when it should not be. Everyone is complaining about how useless the current educational system is. What does it do? It offers the students neither intellectual capacity nor (as many would have it) does NEHU actually impart vocational skills to students. They are utterly useless in the workplace and have to get enrolled in course after course in order to develop some employability.
Let us not forget that brain drains happen within national borders too. We are losing too many students to dodgy private institutions and too many workers to the metros. To an extent it is connected with the baneful economics of the state but really if the students actually received a ‘proper’ education they would be able to identify sources of income and initiate start-ups themselves. There are enough schemes for this. Real education imparts confidence. NEHU is firmly entrenched into the public life of this place. It really is. It ‘produces’ the people who run our state, the working staffs, the taxi drivers and so on. It is the duty of this university to help cure our society of the ills that beset us. The complacent attitudes, the herd mentality, the inviolability of authority etc are intrinsically connected with how people here are shaped. As a powerful social entity, NEHU has to share some of the blame for these things. We are threatened, now for all those years of inaction, with nothing less than complete cultural disintegration. It is no exaggeration. It is not the fault of outsiders.
This university is built on the backs of outsiders – their back-pockets anyway. Hundreds of, predominantly, Naga students still flock to NEHU for an education and to Shillong for a lifestyle. We will lose these students as time goes by if things go on this way and NEHU will lose money. I do not know. Perhaps there is a problem with their grades, perhaps that is why some students choose to come/stay back in Shillong and enrol in NEHU? This is something a friend of mine once asked me, which I found insulting. Perhaps we are nowhere near Delhi University or JNU in terms of excellence at the moment. Yet do our students deserve any less an excellent (loosely used) education than DU or JNU? In this respect, can NEHU not use the vast grants they have been accorded to develop newer disciplines and hire exciting new teachers? Can we not reverse the brain-drain in this small step? The administration has been sanctioning building after building and yet the most important infrastructure, that of the mind has been left behind in the shadows of these buildings.
NEHU seems complacent and afraid of competition. The reason I say this is because the majority of professors are all products of NEHU. NEHU people hire NEHU people. While there is some merit in endogamy, it is obviously fatal for any university.
The sad truth, at the moment, is that a degree from NEHU alone is pretty useless. I think the hundreds of unemployed youths will bear witness to this statement. NEHU courses are antiquated and as I’ve mentioned earlier disconnected from people. Go into Ri Khasi bookstore in Mawkhar and I assure you you’ll see tons of dissertations, which is great from an academic point of view if you’re the type of academic that prefers quantity over quality, but they are boring and longwinded and useless to lay people. The role of NEHU should be the infusing of thought back into this society not simply playing host to motocross rallies and Shillong Chamber Choir nights.