PURPOSELESS INDIA

It seems India has got in its own entangled story. What we believe is what we presume to be happening. The gap between the professed and the done has kept on increasing over the years. The requirement of the ecosystem / sector is not being mapped and life is moving at the presumptive level. Exactitude is the name of the game in today’s world and we want to be the farthest from it. Is it a sheer non-understanding of the path to be taken to reach our professed goals, being enunciated for decades, or meandering to unravel never spelt out purpose? We find democracy and governance having lost its track quite some time back, notwithstanding the parties in power. Getting into education or health, the core areas we are in a battle to reach the unknown, or pass time to prove its worth, when it is not there. Are we in a purposeless state?

Yes, we are in a purposeless state and we don’t realize that landing there is the sad part of our running story. A purposeless state is in nobody’s interest; the ever-changing rulers, the ruled and certainly not for the coming generation. We can start with the first core activity of democracy; the elections and the operational element of it, that is electioneering. Has the purpose of electioneering ever been decided? High flown lofty words cannot run an operational system. Laws, policies, rules and SOPs have to be put in place, wherein, it cannot be flouted. The recent pitch of electioneering clearly shows we are in pre-feudal days. The roadshows, flowers, petals, language, content, the way leaders carry themselves and whole paraphernalia that has been surreptitiously created. The purpose is undecided; what has to be conveyed to the masses; facts, figures, achievements, failures, and hard coded promises. Creating objective and empirical campaigning.

Only the exam date is known; create your own curriculum, content, reading material, teaching pedagogy and take the exam. The electorate will go their own way. Whosoever wins, the purpose of the democratic exercise gets defeated, election after election. Next, the media. The fourth estate, high sounding words. These words only mean something till the time, it has purpose and also a method to achieve that purpose. The media is having a complete free for all; from advertisements, content, people who manage the content, fair play, transparency, objectivity to investigation. The anchors seem to be fighting their own battle. You can have a 24/7 Russia Ukraine War plastered across all channels or you can have assembly elections covered endlessly? Can the govt. or a regulatory agency mandate why they exist? Purpose is a positive and a proactive game. It can elevate you to a different level.

Education the less said the better. India is churning out engineers beating all competition globally, by sheer numbers. But when it comes to quality, utility and catering to the requirements on the ground, we would be the worst performers. Is engineering graduates glut our purpose? Or meeting our requirements? Or providing cheap engineers to the world? Or even worse, to provide ample money minting opportunities to moneyed and influential investing in this nature of education? The purpose has to be decided, requirements can then be aligned and things would be made to fall in place. On the other hand, universalization of education is the goal, and statistics as reeled out by every government, but what is the purpose, remains unknown; functional literacy or quality with a specific target goal, specific skills and orientation towards what? All remain unknown after decades of this exercise. Time to find the rudder, in a nation’s rudderless journey.

Sanjay Sahay