Towards the end of my last post I had said that I need to still think about the way forward with education reform which will essentially include free, fair, equal, quality and relevant education provided by the State. I still believe that the State should be the agency to provide education from kindergarten to the doctorate level. The question is how does one ensure this in a system that is corrupt and presided over by unethical and self-serving politicians? I must confess that I am yet to find that answer since I am still unable to understand how one can reform politics of this country by creating a public sphere that is based in deliberative democracy. I am heartened to note that the people of Egypt were successful in ousting Hosni Mubarak quite peacefully by coming together. That plus the homegrown example of India's own freedom movement perhaps show the way forward to better politics. But that still needs thinking and truth to speak I am not yet ready for my next post regarding the reform of the education system. So obviously this post is not about that.
I saw in the newspapers today that the Telangana Rashtra Samithi is calling for non-cooperation from all quarters by launching a peaceful movement for the realization of a separate Telangana. Fair enough, in a democracy every one has a right to dissent and demand whatever is legitimate. Ideally one should not have a problem with what the TRS is calling for. But then the TRS has given a twist to the story. They have asked all employees of the Government of Andhra Pradesh, in Telangana, to attend their offices but not attend to their work. They want to paralyze the administration. I need a small clarification here. Will not attending to duties involve the bills sections of the various offices in Telangana and will it include the staff of the Pay and Accounts Office? Going by the logic of paralyzing of the administration one will have to assume that those too will be included. But I suspect they won't be, simply because if they too suspend their work, then the employees do not get their salaries. I would love to see how many government servants go to work, do nothing and come back home and not collect salaries. So we will see all other work of the government come to a stand still but that bit of work that needs to done to get salaries will carry on. Interesting. This means that while the non-cooperation movement ensures that the government offices and officials will not serve the people for whose sake they are there, but will continue to serve themselves. Robert Merton would have been proud to see yet another perverse twist to his theory that bureaucracies fail because they concentrate on house keeping functions rather on the ones for which they have been created. Hegel and Max Weber needless to say will be turning round and round in their graves. So the movement of the TRS is not so much for the people as it is against them, since ultimately it is the work of the people that will not be done. Far cry from the Indian National Movement which tried to create problems for the rulers and not the people. And the rulers were foreigners in the days of the National movement, not people from ones own country. Fasts, hartals and non-cooperation are being made into a farce and I am sure young children who are taught about the freedom movement of India are already wondering how these things worked in the first place (fasts, non-cooperation etc). As if this is not enough the person who has given this call is an employee of a state university, in this case the Osmania University and continues to attend college (minus teaching like the rest of us) and gets his salary.
This post of mine also comes in the context of some discussion that I was having with a few friends regarding subsidies. Most seem to think that the farmers or the industrialists get unwarranted subsidies and that is what is weakening the economy unnecessarily. I think the time has come for people to talk about how much money goes into the payment of salaries of government and university employees and how much of that is actually justified in terms of output. While everyone is happy to bash the bureaucracy (and rightfully at that) they have forgotten universities which are breeding grounds for laziness. It is time that someone asked the government through the Right to Information, how much money is doled out (and I used that term fully aware of its meaning) to employees of the government and universities especially. Until people stop the politicians and their cronies from making a mockery of politics and the political system, the performance of the State and its institutions, including educational institutions will not improve. And until that improves there is no point in talking about reform in the field of education or any other for that matter.
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