By Patricia Mukhim
Raid Laban College organised a two-day seminar on “Impact of Education on socio-cultural development of Meghalaya.” There were several speakers with their own take on the subject. But what struck me as weird were the views of a certain senior scholar of Economics from the North Eastern Hill University (NEHU). In his presentation he listed out the objectives of education. Education he said should encourage people to think more deeply, analytically and elaborately; it should transform medieval thinking and lead us to a more meaningful life; education should help organise society to transform its thought processes etc etc…. I hope I got the gist of the Prof’s words. If I messed up he can correct me. Now what he said about education is perfectly fine. It’s the preface of his presentation which I found bizarre.
“I am a pessimist”, he said and was not apologetic about that. He repeated the same confession about three times. He did look dejected; almost as if the entire burden of the educational stratosphere had fallen upon him. Like all scholars who think they are self effacing but use the pronoun ‘I’ liberally, the Prof said he has lost all hope that education could transform anyone in this country and the region. He came to Shillong in 1984 straight from IIT from where he studied economics. I am not sure how he was as a teacher then and if he was more enthusiastic than he appeared at the seminar on Thursday.
There was one phrase the Prof used which created a lot of stir. He said Meghalaya and the North East are beneficiaries of a rental economy. This term may be comprehensible to students of economics but the theme of the seminar was education and the captive audience at the College were mostly awe-struck students. It would have been proper for the Prof to illustrate to them why they are part of a rental economy and what are the negative attributes of such an economy which he later let slip, “did not and cannot encourage entrepreneurship.”
Later I asked the learned Prof the reason for his pessimism (which frankly had degenerated into bitter cynicism) and if he was not communicating the same burden to his students? His reply was very instructive. He said at one time there was a huge gathering of scholars of economics at NEHU and after a brainstorm that perhaps resulted in several heads going bald, it was felt that the economics curricula of the University should include the study of the economies of the seven NE states. That would make the purpose of studying economics more meaningful for students here. But after that intense deliberation the conclusion was that there were not enough teachers to teach the economy of the North East and therefore that could not be included in the curricula. The Prof revealed to a gasping audience that in 35 years NEHU has not been able to produce a single book authored by anyone in NEHU on the economics of North East India. Isn’t that quite a revelation? What was the Economics department of NEHU doing all these years? Whose failure is it? And if students here are unaware that their states subsist on an unsustainable rental economy, then whose fault is it?
Age is usually equated with wisdom. But what really is wisdom? Is the intellectual churning that happens in the portals of higher education like NEHU a slice of that wisdom? What have we as a society gained from the accumulated wisdom of NEHU? If all we hear from a senior Prof are tales of disillusionment then should we send our young aspirants to University? Does it also mean that NEHU itself has failed to bring in the transformative features that education is supposed to? In 37 years if NEHU has not been able to integrate into the Economics curricula something of relevance to the North East or to Meghalaya, so isn’t the very idea of studying the subject a futile exercise?
Liberal democracy requires a citizenry that is questioning and analytical; one which is able to interrogate into ideas and challenge conformity. At the same time liberal democracy also means that alternate views and ideas are allowed free flow and that they are challenged at the intellectual plane not through fisticuffs and rigidity. The Economics Prof said institutional structure of the economy needs to be studied. He questioned the western concept of democracy as being incongruous to the needs of the Indian polity. But that’s where the rub is. In 67 years India has not been able to produce its own idea of democracy. All books from the best scholars – Amartya Sen, Sunil Khilnani etc tend to take the western model of democracy as the benchmark of our democratic behaviour or the lack of it. All scholars have used the western models of democracy as the yardstick to measure whether India and Indians have deepened their democratic thought processes. The common man cannot be faulted for following the same train of thought.
Another important point made by the Economics Prof is also reflective of the malaise that has afflicted all universities of the region and perhaps of the country. He said when Mizoram and Nagaland University were created out of the erstwhile NEHU he had thought that they would carve out an entirely new path and bring in a new vision. But all that happened was a cut and paste job. They are all replicas of NEHU offering the same set of courses and following similar curricula. The Prof then let out a trade secret. He said the teaching community are not amenable to change. In fact many principals of colleges too share this dilemma. They can’t bring changes because of the resistance from within.
Now this brings me to the point I started with. If education makes people so cynical and hopeless then is it worth getting a degree? What circumstances have turned a bright young professor from IIT to such depths of disillusionment? What shocked all in the seminar was when the Prof said that he had been ‘teaching utterly useless things for 27 years.’ He said he has guided research scholars but even the research is not original discovery but all cut and paste jobs. I wonder who this Prof’s students were and what they make of his statements. But the NEHU teachers I meet from time to time tell me there are many such professors in the campus whose cup overflows with bitterness and who spend time writing constipated emails to their colleagues.
What a waste of education and what a waste of resources? Does it take 27 years for a person to realise he has frittered away his energies? Why stick on at NEHU and not go elsewhere, where the system is more amenable to change? Why mar the future of so many students who come to the university with high hopes of delving into the world of ideas, to engage in logical arguments and scientific enquiry training? Do we need such doomsday clairvoyants around the university? No we don’t because there is always space to break the gridlock of conformity in education. And if a person has failed to do so in ten years he/she should not just stick around for the salary.
(The writer can be reached at [email protected])