By Ellerine Diengdoh
India is a massive, pointy bit of land located just to the right of the middle of the world, and pinned to the bottom of Asia so it doesn’t float away into the sea where the sharks are.
For those who don’t know, it is also famous for inventing the ‘zero’. It is ironic, really when you think about it, because ‘zero’ is also the exact number of exam papers that haven’t been leaked so far.
In India, education, in theory, is treated like a sacred cow. But in reality it is treated like a cow that has accidentally wandered into a very expensive china shop and started eating all the ming vases.
I know this for a fact, because a few months ago, we were rudely awakened by something called the ‘CJP movement’. The movement was not based on a grand theory, like gravity, or why we can’t see behind our own ears without two mirrors.Curiously enough, it grew out of a very casual remark, a thoughtless crude dismissal of unemployed youths who have been told AGAIN that they are the problem.
Now I will explain to you why this was taken so very seriously by the youths of India.In most countries, people have hobbies like football, or origami, but in India, the national hobby is “studying.” That is the only way out of crippling poverty here, and Indian parents are so dedicated to this hobby that they actually decide what their children will do for a living long before they are even born. While parents all over the world are wondering if their baby will have its mother’s eyes, Indian parents are wondering if the fetus has enough mathematical aptitude to get into a top-tier engineering college.But despite all this seriousness, and all the hours spent shoving facts into their brains, they wake up one day to find out, that the exam wasn’t actually about what was inside their heads at all, but about who is inside their dad’s WhatsApp contact list. It is heartbreaking that we are told that the ‘ladder of success’ is there for everyone. But in reality, it turns out the ladder actually leads to an alternate heaven with a giant door, and that door only opens if you arrive with a letter of recommendation from a man wearing a gold watch. The CJP movement is unusual because it converted a personal grumble into a big public question. People are no longer asking “why did this leak happen?” but “why does this keep happening?”.This is what experts call a ‘serious democratic failure’.When leaking exam papers becomes as normal as breathing, the issue is no longer about books but about the health of the Republic. And right now, the Republic looks like it needs to lie down in a dark room with a damp flannel over its forehead and some Enya playing quietly in the background.
The students, dignified as they are, are proudly calling themselves “Cockroaches”. This is a very bold move, because usually, when you see a cockroach, you don’t think, “There goes a future nuclear physicist”, you think, “EEEEKKSSSS! GET ME A SHOE QUICKKKK!!!!!!!!”. But they use the name given to them because, like a cockroach, they have to survive in the dark, eat literal rubbish, get screamed at and be ready to get crushed into the carpet at any moment.So, they took on the routine humiliation of being stepped on and turned it into a language everyone can understand, a language that is blunt and ridiculous.
But the government didn’t like the jokes as we have seen. When people protested silently, the state reacted like a psycho dad who says he’s “not angry, just disappointed”, while simultaneously trying to hit you over and over with a broom.
Now the protesters are called “anti-national”.It’s a brilliant word, really. It means everything and nothing. If you say, “Excuse me, my exam paper is being sold out of the back of a van”, they won’t say “Oh, sorry about that”, instead they scream “You are anti-national!” Turning a simple conversation about honesty into a conversation about flags, because it is much easier to wave a flag than it is to stop people from stealing.
So, if you can’t march against corruption, and you can’t ask why the “connected” kids get all the jobs, then what is ‘democratic’ about ‘democracy’? Is it just a fancy word for picking which millionaire gets to wipe their feet on you for the next five years?
A country isn’t strong because everyone pretends to be happy. That isn’t a country, that is a cult! A country is strong when people are allowed to say “This is utter rubbish!” without being battered with a big stick for saying so.
If the people in charge keep trying to stamp on the cockroaches, they might find out something annoying about cockroaches….. you can’t shame a creature that lives in the cracks of a broken floor. The only thing that kills them is light, but accountability in India is DEAD! So, the real horror isn’t cockroach infestation.The real horror is that the people in charge have let the nation rot so thoroughly, that the only thing left in the entire country with an actual, functioning spine is the vermin.
