Killing The Future

After the fourth Lockdown when some parts of the country started opening up, PM Narendra Modi came out with yet another grand idea of India turning yet another corner. He called it “Aatmanirbhar”. In translation, self-reliance or you cook your own “Roti”. Many saw it as an implication of avoiding Chinese goods and beating Chinese products and creating Indian substitutes for them. Although Modi made no mention of Chinese products in his sermon. This “Self-reliant” stuff is not new. It has been going on since the days of MK Gandhi with different words such as “Swadeshi” or “Make in India”. It is just another hogwash to dodge serious problems facing us.

Some of the modern refrigerators have a two-door frame. One door opens to regular storage of milk, vegetables and stuff. The upper door opens to a deep-freezer which is mostly used to store meat and frozen foods. Some families have more items to store so they cram the fridge beyond its capacity. Such cramming makes retrieval of items difficult. To pull out one item, one may have to pull out many others. And just like an attic, there are many items thrown into the fridge that are never used beyond once and they stay there for centuries. Such items finally get thrown out only on the day of annual “Diwali cleaning” when the item has rotted and is probably stinking when you open its container. In short, the fridge has a limited space and there is a limit to how much you can cram inside it. It might sound like an odd comparison but a child’s brain too has a limited space in which it can absorb new facts and information. It is like a sponge that can absorb a lot but beyond a point it will just throw out the excess. That’s why frequent tweets like this surprise me:

Dr Frawley is an admirer of Hinduism and Yoga and everything that goes with all this. All he wants is “one” chapter on Yoga. But there are others demanding Vedic this, Vedic that. Someone wants Gita as a regular course. Someone wants Sanskrit to be the medium. Many others who send their kids to English schools want the teaching medium to be local language. The actual need is reducing the load on what is being to taught to children. What is taught and what is tested. There are endless morons who demand that like Japan, France, China or Korea India must teach only in the mother-tongue of the state. This demand is now redundant as parents themselves seek English medium and pushing for a change that is neither going to happen nor is feasible is wasting one’s energy for all the wrong purposes. A few days back, with nothing to do during the Covid Lockdown, PM Modi and some of his Cabinet members got together to discuss “education” once again:

I had to laugh at the tweet and the image. I wonder what these people discuss discuss discuss without having made any change in the last six years. I can understand time-pass. But the foundation of a country rests in its schools and education system. India burdens its school children very heavily while its higher education system is rotten to say the least. We have a PM who has never attempted a competitive academic test in his life yet lectures kids with “Exam warriors” and “Pariksha pe charcha”. Of course, his idiotic slaves will jump to say he passed many electoral tests. Well then, take your kids out of school and let them practice passing election tests too if that is the equivalent of academic achievements. But it is not. Schools are meant for mass production of educated citizens some of whom, we hope, will become great innovators, inventors and scientists. Unfortunately, what India produces is nothing but mediocrity in mass-abundance. Education is FREEDOM. But it becomes great only when the good ones exit India.

Education is the freedom to acquire knowledge and add a lot of independent thinking and value to it. But Hindus lament that the brains of their kids are being filled with nonsense of Akbar, Aurangzeb or Shahjehan being the only historical figures or filth in the name of social studies or abusing Hindus:

The above is just a sample. I am sure if you browse the SM and Twitter you will find lots of images of absolute garbage that fills our school history and social studies books. People were hoping that the so-called Hindu Narendra Modi will form a govt that addresses these assaults on Hindu culture and change it. NO! Evidence suggests Modi is more interested in pleasing his Islamic masters and getting some cheap awards to polish his stained image. In fact, the BJP and its parent RSS have been bowing to Islamic diktats for quite some time now. So, Hindus should forget this particular govt will attend to any Hindu issues like school books, RTE, Temple-freedom or any such matter. To teach your children Hindu culture, history or Vedas is now up to you. Schools are not the place for such education and never will be. Our higher education is now even more systematically streamlined to produce mediocrity:

 

So, for PM Modi to claim that India should become a “knowledge superpower” is as empty as his “Make in India”, 5 Trillion economy, “Vishwa Guru”. Modi likes to use such bombastic words and phrases in his speeches – Like his 56inch-chest claim. People understand this is empty rhetoric but it doesn’t do India any good. The only real ones who aspire to be a “knowledge superpower” for the purpose of putting that knowledge to good, productive use in India are Hindus. But the Hindus are the ones most deprived of the opportunities. This mental blockade for Modi doesn’t come out of his poor education alone. It also comes from his political pursuit much of which is now Islamic appeasement and winning Islamic hearts and awards:

Repeatedly, ModiSarkar lights up Mughal monuments in Delhi. Earlier last year was just a decorative exercise. Following the Covid lockdowns, the first pic above celebrates some 21 days of Covid lockdown by lighting up these Mughal monuments. It doesn’t stop there. They once again light up a Mughal tomb on the 41^st day. All this, when Islamists and Mughals are not known for lighting candles or diyas at all. They don’t have a culture of worshipping light and therefore they don’t light any lamps or diyas. Someone in ModiSarkar is being stupid – very, very stupid and your guess is as good as mine on why this stupidity is being undertaken.

In terms of arguments, India does possess the capability to match or beat China in mass production and quality but it will NEVER happen. The simple reason is that the State in India is the biggest discriminator and stymies talent and skills. An earlier report and pic above show only 4% will make it to some medical course in the open category. The rest will be less on merits. In an article, Tim Cook, CEO of Apple explains why he prefers China as the producer of their products:

“China has moved into very advanced manufacturing, so you find in China the intersection of craftsman kind of skill, and sophisticated robotics and the computer science world. That intersection, which is very rare to find anywhere, that kind of skill, is very important to our business because of the precision and quality level that we like… I visited ICT--they manufacture, among other things, the AirPods for us. When you think about AirPods as a user, you might think it couldn't be that hard because it's really small. The AirPods have several hundred components in them, and the level of precision embedded into the audio quality--without getting into really nerdy engineering--it's really hard… There's a confusion about China. The popular conception is that companies come to China because of low labor cost. I'm not sure what part of China they go to, but the truth is China stopped being the low-labor-cost country many years ago. And that is not the reason to come to China from a supply point of view. The reason is because of the skill, and the quantity of skill in one location and the type of skill it is”.

You can read the full article. Cook’s comments are very interesting because his choice of China is not merely about low cost and production capabilities. It is about the high skill and engineering quality also that makes a difference. India will shamefully lag behind as the present ModiSarkar as the others in the past are still struggling with rebuilding school curriculum. Half the subjects taught in schools are GARBAGE that shouldn’t be taught at all. What we produce from schools hardly makes for a great country that is going to see a boom in innovation and scientific thinking. Modi counts Samosawalas as a great employment sector too. Maybe it is but don’t brag about being Vishwa Guru or Aatmanirbhar if your basic school education is in shambles. They do hold out a promise though:

 

After 15 years schools to get new curriculum says the report above. Obviously, there won’t be change in subjects like Math or Science but even this new curriculum is only a “proposed” one. If you read the full report, you will learn that a committee will be formed by April 2021 which will then process the new curriculum which may be implemented by April 2023. It is to the credit of PM Modi that he is a school and college pass compared to the Class-5 qualification of SoniaG. But effectively, Indian govts have consistently killed school education, killed merit and killed the future of this country. I don’t see any stupid Aatmanirbhar blabber solving any great problem. You need dramatic change in education and the process of admissions to higher education. Until that happens India will produce only mediocrity.

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