Living in an illiberal Indian Society

There have been a number of reasons that have directed me into the line of thinking that is indicated by the title of the post.  Some of the most recent concerns have stemmed out of the fact that Indian society is increasingly showing two contradictory tendencies; indifference to others lives at one level and intrusion into the lives of others, unnecessarily, at another level.  It seems somehow that every individual is somehow trying to influence society into thinking in his/her way and this desire to influence is based in a delusional belief that the system of beliefs that he/she holds are universally and morally superior to those whose systems of belief may not correspond with his/hers.  Urban areas are concrete jungles, with open spaces and small houses that housed a handful of people being replaced by gargantuan apartment blocks that are not only an eyesore but also impediments to healthy and convenient living.  I shall not talk about this aspect in this post because that is not the concern of the post.  Nevertheless the reason why I invoke this category is that apartments are congested spaces where hundreds and in some instances thousands of people living in extremely close proximity without knowing who their neighbours are or caring for the problems that the other people in the building maybe facing and in the process requiring some help.  We have learnt to live by conveniently ignoring other people's problems and by dissolving social solidarity at the inter-personal and inter-family levels.

On the other hand however there is this phenomenon of moral posturing and policing where usually the lumpen elements of society make the most intimate of a person's concerns their own and interfere in ways which are not only embarrassing and irritating but criminally reprehensible as well.  This is a fascist tendency that has crept into Indian society with various self proclaimed individuals and groups taking up cudgels on behalf of a "perceived" culture and trying to protect it from its enemies.  The enemy is the cultural other who is defined by the religious community that s/he belongs to.  While I have consistently held the belief that in India there is no such thing as Hinduism (for me various cosmologies that have some points of intersection based in concurrence have been clubbed together to create a neologism called Hinduism) culturally speaking, political developments in the country have used this neologism to try and satisfy some political expediencies that relate to the capture and retention of power.  What is important is that here power is not a means to an end but an end in itself.  The attempt to create a fache out of a synecdoche has unleashed the illiberalism that has now become the norm of Indian society.  Despite there being many disadvantages with the cosmology based system of life which was manipulated by the Brahmins to their advantage there is still was a possibility of people living some aspects of their lives, mainly the intimate ones, by determining them the way they wanted to.  This is what Gandhi called individual autonomy in a system of social solidarity and the cosmologies that have been brought together to create a fache today have become monstrosities that destroy not only individual autonomy but social solidarity as well.

This neologism called Hinduism which manifests itself as this fache is always trying to control members of its own denomination by "protecting" them from the perceived other which is the other religious groupings.  Here in lies a tragedy of epic proportions.  While what have been designated as "Abrahamic Religions" have always tried to create a monolithic structure with an unambiguous and singular God and therefore qualify to be classified as religions because of this monotheistic aspect, what was caste cosmology did not have this feature of monotheism.  In fact, with good reason the Adi Shankaracharya has been called an atheist simply because for him there is no entity that is singular and different from the human spirit. One could argue that caste cosmologies if at all they are theistic, are either pan-theistic or poly theistic, an aspect of Indian society that has amused Westerners so much that they have lampooned the existence of so many Gods.  The ideal course of action would have been to ignore these illiterate comments and concentrated on reform in the caste system.  Instead of doing that, the neologism called Hinduism became a fache which became reactionary and revivalist and in doing so unleashed newer forms of discrimination and illiberalism while maintaining the other  traditional schisms that have been part of Indian society for centuries.  While more people from the discriminated sections fight to break the fache, the reactionary elements meet those attempts with bigotry that tries to strengthen the fache.  So reform and revival clash, not in the rational and deliberative phase, but in the actual physical realm.  This clash does not involve the majority of people, it is among the lumpen elements of that claim to side reform or revival that the clash takes place.

A reactionary and belligerent fache is kept alive despite the internal clash between reform and revival by always taking attentions to other easily available options of exclusion from the fache.  The other is members of other religions and to show the differences between religious practices is a fairly simple and straightforward process.  But the highlighting of differences in religious practices is not sufficient enough in strength to keep the fache tight and unified.  It is for that reason that religious practices spill out into the open, into the cultural space which at one level is a physical space that has people who are engaged in various forms of social transaction.  It is by disturbing this transaction by highlighting difference that what should otherwise be a matter of individual preference becomes the concern of many.  The best example of spilling over into real time cultural space is taking religious practices onto the street where they are bound to disturb normal life.  Bal Gangadhar Tilak may have created the now infamous Ganesh processions that dote Mumbai, Pune and Hyderabad to bring together members from various castes onto one platform to unite against the British. His choice of Ganesh or Ganapati as the God had to do with the fact that this God figured in all the various pantheons of Gods that different castes had.  By making Ganesh Chaturthi a festival that would be celebrated in public over a period of nine days, Tilak was trying to bring some unity in the area that was under the hegemony of the very orthodox Chitpavan Brahmins. Nearly a century after the practice was begun by Tilak it is impossible for me to actually evaluate if this particular practice contributed to any nationalism and unity but it is very clear that this practice has now entered the space of social disharmony.  The festival is controlled by the politicians and their henchmen who ensure that even those who do not want to be a part of this process at best can spectate silently.

These attempts from one fache are countered by others by adopting similar tactics.  Since religion is sacred anything done in its name cannot be questioned.  So in cities like Hyderabad newer processions were created by those in charge of the Islamic fache and one of them is a "pankha juloos" or procession of fans.  Ceiling fans are used in this procession for reasons that are completely incomprehensible to me.  Now the Christians have started an Easter procession carrying flags saying "Run for Jesus" while they are actually riding motorcycles or driving cars.  Newer processions have come into being in the Hindu fache where people now celebrate Hanuman Jayanti, the birthday of God Hanuman.  Interestingly the choice of Hanuman has everything to do with the fact that he too figures in all the pantheons of Gods that exist among various caste groupings. Interestingly enough another procession that is now a regular phenomenon is the Dussehra procession involving the female deity Durga.  I say this is interesting because in all pantheons of Gods there are various female deities who are generically called "Amma" or "Ma" which simply means mother.  Durga is Ma Durga and therefore involving everyone.  Islam has countered this with various processions on Milad un Nabi the birthday of Prophet Mohammed, where Muslim youth drive around on motorcycles with green flags in hand.  

The contradiction here is that the sacred is invoked in order to perpetuate most unsacred and politically divisive agendas.  However, what concerns me here is the fact that this tendency of illiberalism is growing and restricting the freedoms and autonomy that various people are entitled to constitutionally and civilisationally.  An illiberal society that is tending to become fascist is also uncivil and unconstitutional apart from being an affront on the sensibilities of rational and sensible people. While it is not really possible to predict the exact consequences of this illiberalism, what can definitely be prognosticated is a society and nation that will be increasingly burdened with violence and lack of peace.

I will now conclude this piece by grinding one of my favourite axes. People who designate themselves as intellectuals and teaching professionals talk of the ills of Indian society as being a result of liberalism.  In doing so they are unwittingly strengthening the hands of the conservative fascists who use the idea of liberalism as being an enemy of the people.  I am not defending liberalism here, but the critique of society cannot just concentrate on the economic damages brought out by a liberalized economy, but should penetrate into those socio-cultural spaces that have started harbouring anti social elements who want to create religion based faches.  If intellectuals and teachers subscribe to the minimal doctrine of being "politically right" and therefore not engage in discourse about the illiberalism of Indian society, then their conversations are very much in the domain of the imaginary and they will be conversations that have no bearing on society and therefore just another drain on the country's resources.

The prognosis of India's democracy based on its electoral and social politics-II

What I intended to write yesterday had become too long and therefore I broke the piece into two.  This post is a continuation of the arguments that I had begun yesterday, the substance of which is that Indian democracy is definitely in a crisis thanks to the nature of politics which are prevalent in society and also due to the nature of leadership of political parties.  Indian society which has always been stratified is now witnessing a kind of politics that is very much akin to marketing where there are clearly defined target-market strategies and any agenda of development is now just for lip service while the real agenda is the perpetuation of personal gain by politicians who have primarily started using caste as the variable for targetting electorates.  With the absence of any viable party or politician who can see beyond immediate gains, Indian politics and along with Indian democracy have reached a precipice which in my opinion is already a point from which there is no turning back.  Since politics are more or less the exclusive prerogative of those who have the two Ms, meaning money and muscle it is absolutely impossible that anybody sensible can enter Indian politics and make a difference to the country. Therefore there are large scale systemic changes, Indian democracy could become the greatest enemy of its people.

It is for this reason that I have been advocating the idea of supplementing electoral democracy with discursive or deliberative democracy.  I would like to bring to your attention that it was not just writing that I was doing but also trying to create discussion groups in colonies where citizens from all walks of life would meet without their paying heed to their economic status and their professions.  I must confess that the upper caste and upper classes are completely against this idea saying indirectly that it would be an affront to their social position and perceived self image to give the same weightage to the arguments of someone who was a sweeper, janitor or a maid servant.  Most, actually all uniformly believed that the problem with Indian democracy or democracy for that matter is that it involves the illiterate, uneducated and senseless hoi polloi and that they are responsible for the kind of leaders that we have in India today.  It is therefore not very surprising that they believe that there can be no such thing as a deliberative democracy that aims for the common good of all through the use of what Immanuel Kant had called the Good Will.  Some of the upper caste groupings which have actually become upper castes (they like to refer to themselves as forward castes) through a process of Sanskritisation that the sociologist MN Srinivas talked about, like to believe that for Indian democracy to be meaningful there should be the presence of upper caste leaders who take token support from the backward and lower caste leaders (by co-opting the latter into the money making process) and rule the country.  Again to believe that all upper castes are unified is absolutely nonsensical so each upper caste wants to have its own members in the charmed ruling circles so that their caste groupings benefit the most.

It is pertinent to point out here that I was once at a seminar where two scholars from two different castes in the Scheduled Castes list fought over the necessity for categorizing scheduled castes differently and providing them reservations in accordance with the numbers.  While one professor argued that this kind of categorization would lead to the dispensation of social justice the other believed that this would lead to the scheduled castes being divided and dominated by OBCs and upper castes.  The argument went on for sometime when I intervened and said that it perhaps time for the SCs and OBCs to ask for reservations even for the upper castes depending upon their population percentage in the entire country and people should apply for seats in schools, colleges and also for jobs competing with members of their own castes, be they upper or lower.  This was anyway the agenda of Periyar and the Justice Party who argued that two percent of the population of the Madras Presidency comprised of Brahmins but they were taking 98% of the jobs.  Nearly a century later the country seems to be still stuck in the same morass that it was once stuck in.  And things will continue to the same if the agenda of creating vote banks on the basis of castes and religious communities is not somehow countered.  It is indeed very disheartening to see that castes have crept into Islam and Christianity.  I was shocked to see a classification among Muslims which says Ansari surname holders are weavers, Qureishis are butchers etc.  The real meaning of those terms is very different but now it is being argued that people who converted from Hinduism to Islam started using certain surnames that now identify them as a certain caste.  The same is true of Christianity with an increasing crescendo among Christians claiming to be dalit Christians.  It is therefore wrong to assume that caste stratification is only among the Hindus.

But to return to the point I am making, the politicians create vote banks along caste lines irrespective or religion and in some cases use religion itself and these vote banks will remain alive only if they are kept backward.  The nature of this realpolitik has seen cracks in Indian society widening into crevasses into which the people of this country will fall.  The exceedingly disheartening and sad aspect of Indian society today is that people irrespective of their social and economic status are uniformly unenlightened.  I have many times said that the rich and the middle classes in India which coincide with upper castes sometimes have been irresponsible towards their own society and therefore schisms are becoming chasms.  However, the upwardly mobile from the backward sections of society (I refuse to use the term caste here because in this context it is meaningless and if you read on you will understand why I say it is meaningless) do precious little for people of their own once their upward mobility starts.  It is like the Indians who go to the USA believing that they have left behind their useless brethren in filth and squalor so will try to identify with the white Anglo-Saxon protestant population of that country.  Those people who have taken benefits meant for the backward sections for two generations should voluntarily give up their using of those privileges so that the benefits that come with them should percolate to people who after 65 years of independence are living in conditions which are for them not at all different from the pre-independence days.  That is why I was aghast when I learnt the Indian government is also collecting caste data along with census data.  Needless to say this data will be used by politicians and political parties for further dividing the people of the country for their own purposes.

Education should be provided only by the State in schools that it runs.  Any kind of private players should be forbidden from entering the education sector at any level.  Every child in India should go to a school which makes uniform mandatory and does not recognize the social and economic status of parents.  Only such a beginning can change things in this country.  The honourable Supreme Court of India has upheld the Right to Education and has said that even private schools should reserve 25% of seats for the underprivileged sections of society.  Immediately private school managements have said that the government will not reimburse fees and therefore they will look at legal options to challenge the judgement.  As long as there are private players in the field they will work only for profit even though their schools are registered as non-profit making educational societies.  Private schools mirror the divisions in society and promote elitism and therefore education should be provided by the State alone without asking questions of caste, creed and religion.  The State must provide free education till the doctoral level because that is the only way in which the privileged will learn to live with the underprivileged and treat them as their equals. 

But this is something that can only happen in the long term.  In the short term electoral reforms must be enacted to ensure that the executive is free from the legislature.  One need not go the American way, there is also the French way where the President is directly elected by the people.  Coalition politics can make scoundrels out of gentlemen since the expediences of realpolitik make it mandatory to make moral compromises in order to continue in power.  From where I stand, and from what I wrote it will appear that I am despondent, which I am.  It may also appear that I have a sense of hopelessness, which I don't.  What is the reason for my optimism?  I believe that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts and in that truth has a way of triumphing.  Ask yourselves how many people have successfully hidden lies from all for all the time.  You will see that there is not one such example.  Indian society has thrown up great human beings when it seemed that things were hopeless.  Mohandas Gandhi, Bheem Rao Ambedkar, Joti Rao Phule, Jawaharlal Nehru, Lal Bahadur Shastri et al have done good for the country when it was needed.  The future too will throw up equally great people and that is the root of my optimism. Truth cannot be suppressed and therefore it will triumph.  Jai Hind. 

The prognosis of India's democracy based on its electoral and social politics-I

There have been many people who have asked me as to why I did not write blog piece on the elections that brought the Samajwadi Party to power in UP and Mamata Banerjee in West Bengal.  Some also said that I did not express any opinions on the by polls in Andhra Pradesh and some close friends have even asked me if I ignored the results simply because the TRS has done well and I stand for leaving Andhra Pradesh as it is.  I ignored these comments for a long while since they had nothing to do with why I was not writing about these developments.  But the number of questioners has increased and I therefore decided to respond to them with this post.  If someone were to know why I did not write before the answer for me is a no brainer.  There is absolutely no need to write about them since they do not represent anything positive in Indian politics.  But off late I am being forced to think about governance in this country because the nature of coalition politics has become such that two bit political parties who have less than a handful members in the Parliament are dictating what should be done and what should not be done.  While opposition and checks and balances are an absolute necessity for a vibrant and functional democracy, too much of interference and unnecessary opposition to things become obstacles to governance and that is what is happening now in India.  I therefore decided that I will break my silence over this and actually get down to writing something about what we can expect in the future of India.

First of all let us take the election results.  What to do they indicate?  The futility of electoral politics.  Look at the case of Tamil Nadu.  Jayalalitha and the AIADMK have snatched victory from the DMK who had previously snatched victory from the AIADMK.  In effect, what we are seeing there is a phenomenon of people voting against a party rather than for a party.  After more than three and half decades of control over politics of West Bengal the CPI(M) finally succumbed to the agenda of voting against and therefore Mamata Banerjee and her Trinamool Congress have come to power.  To the average Bengali that has made no difference.  The only difference if at all seems to be that Mamata Banerjee is more dictatorial than anyone else thus far in the politics of West Bengal.  Her fascist tendencies can be seen behind the arrest and beating up of a Professor of the Jadhavpur University for simply having forwarded a cartoon which involved her.  A legal case has been slapped against the man, on the grounds that he had outraged the modesty of a woman. In UP previously the Samajwadi Party was defeated by the BSP or the Bahujan Samaj Party of the equally dictatorial and self-aggrandizing Mayawati.  This time around it was her turn to get defeated.  Obviously this was bound to happen, when the resources of the UP state are used for erecting statues of Mayawati there is not much to show in terms of development of the people.  The media of course is going gaga over this because it has thrown up a "suave and well educated young leader" in the form of Akhilesh Yadav, while the so called youth icon of Indian Politics Rahul Gandhi could not make a difference in UP once the bastion of the Congress party. You can safely put a bet that five years hence the Bahujan Samaj Party will come back to power and erect even more statues of Mayawati.

At this point it is relevant to ask oneself the question of why national parties such as the BJP and the Congress are unable to make an impact in the politics of cow belt states.  The answer lies in the complex social equations that are now driving the politics of states such as UP and Bihar.  The complex social equations that I mention pertain to caste alignments and their echo in the politics of the two states.  For long, the Yadavs and the Khurmis have wielded substantial power in these two states, power that equalled that of the Brahmin Bhoomihars (zamindars) and the Rajputs. It was VP Singh's act of dusting and bringing out the Mandal Commission report and implementing reservations for OBCs that has started the trend of caste based regional parties becoming powerful.  Technically speaking OBC stands for Other Backward Classes and we all know that a class is more of an economic stratification based in wealth rather than in birth which is what caste is.  The Mandal Commission identified some castes as backward and this was based in the caste census of 1931.  VP Singh's electoral gambit was that through the unification of castes along the lines of OBC and Dalits along with Muslims it would be possible to neutralize the growing power of Devi Lal who was rallying farmers around himself in order to become Prime Minister of the country instead of remaining Deputy Prime Minister to VP Singh.  This particular move saw the incorporation of the powerful Yadavs and Khurmis into the roster of OBCs in the states of UP and Bihar in the north just as one saw the powerful Vokkaligas and the Lingayats being in the list of OBCs in Karnataka.  VP Singh's gambit failed spectacularly and produced effects that he was not ready for.  By clubbing OBCs (who were being called Bahujans since Jotirao Phule who coined the phrase Bahujan Samaj belonged to a caste that post independence came to be incorporated into the list of OBCs in Maharashtra) and Dalits (a description that B.R. Ambedkar used to describe the untouchables of Hindu society and the OBCs actually were trying to create a rival icon in Phule) and the Muslims VP Singh unintentionally strengthened the BJP which was till then just a fringe party.  The BJP found it easy to convince people belonging to the "Hindu religion" that they were all one and should fight against the Muslims who were invaders in the country.

This was also the time when in Andhra Pradesh an important development was taking place.  The Telugu Desam Party (ostensibly under the leadership of Chandra Babu Naidu who operated from behind the scenes since his father in law NT Rama Rao was devoid of any political acumen) decided to inaugurate OBC reservations in the state and incorporate the powerful OBCs of Andhra Pradesh in the Telugu Desam party. In AP the powerful OBCs were the Yadavs and the Gouds whose power increased exponentially during the time that the TDP was in control.  This strategy was to break the stranglehold of the Reddy caste on the politics of AP and in doing so also rendering the Congress powerless.  The strategy worked till such time that Naidu's arrogance and his running of the state like a company led to his and his party's downfall.  But by now OBCs had gone into all parties operating in AP and became powerful so much so that without their support no party can win the elections in the state.  

These politics brought a new contradiction in the Indian society to the forefront.  As is usually what happens when an entire caste grouping experiences upward mobility, the new power centres become exactly that and see very little in common with the other oppressed groups.  So the unity of Dalit-Bahujan has only remained an aspiration because at the ground level things have been very different.  In the northern states of UP and Bihar the fight is between the SP which is essentially a Yadav party and the BSP despite claiming to be Bahujan Samaj Party is actually a Dalit party.  The interesting thing is that the BSP is not powerful on its own and therefore has co-opted the upper castes, especially the Brahmins into itself and started claiming that its goal was a Sarvajan Samaj and the media started calling this age old phenomenon a new thing by calling it new social engineering.  

For those who are wondering as to why a Dalit party would team up with Brahmins the perpetrators of all social atrocities originally, the answer ins simple.  The Dalits were fiercely controlled by the OBC sections of northern India and needed allies to help them step into politics.  The Brahmins were convenient because they were ready to team up with Dalits to wash the impression that they are still casteists.  I remember vividly in a programme called the Big Fight which is aired on NDTV 24X7 a Dalit leader joining issue with an OBC leader saying that in India there was consensus on reservations for the scheduled castes (dalits) and scheduled tribes and this consensus was broken by the introduction of reservations for the powerful castes who were actually the new perpetrators of casteism.  Needless to say that whole thing was a shouting match but the important thing is that it was for the first time that a well known Dalit leader said this in public.  In this process in the northern part of India the traditional leaders of the Congress and the BJP are still unwilling to hand over the reigns of their parties either to dalits or to OBCs and therefore in the caste ridden politics have become insignificant.  In the southern part of the country however, the story of Karnataka is interesting for both in the Congress and in the BJP leadership at the level of the state is firmly in the hands of the OBCs.  But since the BJP has been stronger in the more immediate past it has meant that there is no incorporation of Muslims into the agenda of that state's politics.  

One more reason why the BSP and the SP have become powerful in the northern states is the disenchantment with the Congress party that set in to the Muslim community who see it as having done nothing to protect the demolition of the Babri Masjid.  They also do not vote for the BJP because of the overtly communal ideology of the party.  With two of the biggest states taken out of the equation of the national parties coalition politics is the only way forward.  In the south AP presents a peculiar problem if different divisions at different levels.  One is now the overriding concern of all parties on the issue of Telangana and this has seen all parties saying that they agree to the formation of Telangana but nobody is coming forward to make that happen.  One OBC leader had once remarked that they are not interested in the Telangana that will be governed by the upper castes and as soon as he said that there were mutterings from the dalits and the tribal people that they wanted assurances that they would not be continued to be dominated.  While public utterances have said all the politically right things no leadership has convinced anyone of anything.  So politics in AP have taken an interesting twist.

Assuming that the Kiran Kumar Reddy led Congress government finishes its term in early 2014 it would be interesting to see what the outcome of the elections will be.  The Congress fearing reprisals from other parts of the country is remaining non-committal on the Telangana issue but more importantly is seeing a huge deficit in governance and therefore a legitimation deficit which makes it an unlikely candidate to come to power again.  If the pitch had not been queered by the Telangana issue one could have safely predicted that good times were ahead for the TDP, but Naidu's two eyes theory is not helping the party's cause.  It was interesting that after the results of the bye elections in AP were out and when in most parts of Telangana the TRS candidates emerged victors, a congratulatory message was sent to the party leader K Chandrashekhar Rao.  The congratulatory message came from the Forum for United Andhra Pradesh members in the coastal districts and it came with a twist.  It said that KCR should change his party to Telugu Rashtra Samithi from Telangana Rashtra Samithi and that people from Andhra and Rayalaseema would vote for his party and him. Most people tended to see this as a joke but I think there is a significantly serious message there.  People of AP are tired of the same two parties and now want a third alternative.  That KCR and the TRS will not be that is a foregone conclusion but it is definitely an expression of frustration with the two dominant parties in the state.

This basically shows that electoral arrangements are going to be primarily driven by leaders of parties on the lines of caste and that India is unlikely to see any one party have the strength to come to power.  Coalitions politics will be the way forward but what results will they bring to the country is the question.  That is a question that I will try to answer in part two of this because this post has already become too long and is bound to test your patience.  In the second part of this post which I shall post later I shall try and see not just the ramifications of the present politics for the future of the country but also explore if there are any better democratic alternatives to overcome these politics.

Education in India has truly withered away

It has been a while since I have made my last post.  The truth is that I have gone on to a new job position and that has come with a great deal of responsibility and work.  I have been enjoying doing work since the satisfaction that comes with doing something useful really has no parallel.  I have been entrusted with, among many things, the task of creating concept notes and blue prints for the future schools and centres that would be established in the new campus of the university that I am now working having taken lien from my old position with my previous employer.  Thinking and working out new concepts that will probably have some effect on the new campus of my present employer has been like an elixir of life with plenty to look forward to.  The sun has been shining and not very hot.  So you are wondering why I am singing paeans of joy in the post while the title of the post itself is so gloomy.  I assure you I have not lost my mind or my senses, it is just that from the setting that I have just described I have rudely been brought back to a situation where I see dark clouds gathering around the silver lining that I had been seeing.  If you have to understand me better then you must know a story; one that is true in every single detail.

I have a niece who is now writing her Board Exams for the tenth standard, a significant point in a student's life in India.  The girl has a problem; she simply hates studies and anything to do with it.  Since it is the tenth standard her parents were concerned and with good reason about how her education would pan out.  Their concern and the girl's complete lack of it had become a source of perennial conflict between her and her parents which only made the parents desperate still.  It was into this situation that I was catapulted and somehow found myself telling the parents that she could come and stay with me since my mother is still actively a maths teacher and I myself am capable of some teaching in various subjects.

The whole thing has been a roller coaster ride for me since I found the girl to be quite stubborn, distracted and prone to throwing horrible temper tantrums.  I am not very good at handling this and after trying gamely to instill some discipline in the girl I lost the plot and told her that I would only help her if she had any specific doubts and I also conveyed my decision to the parents with the disclaimer that if they chose to keep her with me and if she failed in her exams that will not have anything to do with me.  Despite my issuing this disclaimer, for reasons best known to themselves the parents decided to leave the child under my care. Before I had conveyed my decision to her parents, I regularly felt all the symptoms of nervousness which vanished once I told them what I had to.  So for the past couple of months the attitude has been live and let live.

This arrangement suited the girl fine who would very occasionally approach me with some doubts, I suspect with the intention to just keep me happy.  But I did get to see how she studied.  Her text books looked brand new and untouched by anyone.  The only book that she referred to was this thing called "All in one". My curiosity piqued I once looked into the book and was horrified to find that it was nothing but a compilation of questions and answers to those questions.  The question compilation was apparently of various questions that have appeared in the past years and there was greater emphasis on those that appeared more frequently than others.  For sometime now I have been claiming that the schools in Andhra Pradesh have formed into a syndicate and that they provide question banks to the Board of Secondary Education and that every year questions are chosen from that bank.  The existence of this compendium is the proof of this conspiracy theory of mine being bang on the mark. For many days I lamented the fact that this level of rubbish was what school education was reduced to before the euphoria of my own work took me away from this.

The Board exams began on the 26th of March and my niece has shown no nervousness nor any determination to study.  In fact, she has been so relaxed that she has been reading Asterix comics and my Calvin and Hobbes collection even on the days that preceded an examination.  She has also been chatting on the phone with friends on the phone organizing picnics that they would go to after the exams, planning movies and how they could get tickets and reach the theatres and things of that nature. I was well and truly flummoxed when I noticed the perseverance of the same course of action by the girl before her bug bears, the maths and science exams. And everyday the girl comes home with a glint in the eye and face radiating happiness. Unable to contain my curiosity anymore I directly confronted the girl and asked her how she was doing in her exams. My interrogation was met with some mirth and merriment and the answer was that she was doing well and that 90% is guaranteed.  I know for a fact that she knows nothing and I also know that she has not been studying at all. So I asked her if she was copying to which her reply was a resounding 'yes'. Even though I was horrified I still persisted with questioning and asked her why she was so sure that the person she was copying from was writing the correct answers and what came as the reply shocked even cynic like me.  She said that her invigilators were dictating answers not just to her but the whole class!!!! And this in a school which is not even the one where she studies (to ensure that there will be no help from teachers during the exam the Board jumbles up students and sends them to other schools for writing the exams).  When I asked her if she was telling me the truth the girl was quite adamant that she was.

The question that kept bugging me endlessly is why would teachers who do not even know the students they are invigilating dictate answers to them?  I therefore decided to find out more and from other students who were taking the exams, I set about asking the sons, daughters, nephews and nieces if this was a universal practice.  Apparently it is and has been for a few years now.  All the parents are aware of this. Quite a few even had theories about why this was happening.  I will list out the theories:

1. Most schools in Hyderabad are run by managements from coastal Andhra and since the separate Telangana agitation is on, they fear reprisals and are therefore doing this.

2. Goons from various Telangana political outfits are threatening schools and invigilators with dire consequences since they (the outfits) would be held responsible since the academic years are getting disturbed for the past couple of years due to the agitations that they launch.

3. Parents have been demanding that their wards be helped in this way so that they do not get left behind in the race for marks and that this is a standard practice in Coastal Andhra and only now did the Telangana people realize the beauty of manipulating the system this way.

4. Schools have formed cartels.  The jumbling of students happens in a set area and the schools in order to maintain their 100% pass statistics have decided to come together and bail each other out.

5. Teachers take money from rich parents but since they cannot selectively help only some (then they would get caught out as having taken money from so and so) they have decided to extend their largesse to all students.

6. The Government in order to avoid a backlash from unhappy students and parents has issued instructions orally to perpetuate this practice.

There may have been a few more of these theories but I cannot seem to recollect them now.  To me it is not important why this practice is perpetuated.  It is more important that it is being perpetuated and through the perpetuation the education system and the values that it should stand for are being methodically dismantled. All these years I have lamented that students were only being trained to pass exams but now I have realized even that crutch was a false one in the first place. Now, even though, I am teacher, I have lost complete hope and interest in this thing called education.

"We don't know need no education,

We don't need no thought control,

No dark sarcasm in the class room,

Teacher leave them kids alone".

Those are lines of a lyric written by my favourite poet and musician Roger Waters.  He wrote them in a different context though.  But somehow they seem to be as applicable to this context, the one that I am referring to.  God bless our children and God save this country. Amen.