The students protest that went wrong because of a young journalist who knew how to do his job left me disturbed on multiple issues:
Youth must participate on political issues and take a stand. The best US Universities are standing up for Palestinian people. JNU does it. Most revolutions started from university campuses. Youth must speak up that threatens their future. They have a greater stake in every decision we are taking.
But this protest is the exact opposite of taking a stand. The university treated the students as sheep, herded them into a protest that they knew little about, promised them things that is akin to a bribe and exposed them to real world that is heartless. These impoverished students were made to protest against ‘inheritance tax’ and ‘wealth tax’ that actually benefits them. The students are now left with scars that will go beyond and continue for many placement seasons…Btw, the university is rated A+ by NAAC.
Take a step back. The students who could not read ‘vultures’ and read ‘Naxal’ as ‘Maxell’ have cleared their class XII from some school in India and secured at least 60% marks. We would be having millions of such students passing through our schooling system with much less learning outcomes than these ones who got exposed.
Since 2009, India stopped participating in the PISA program that evaluates education systems worldwide by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students in participating countries/economies. India was ranked 72 of the 73 participating countries. These protesting students confirmed why we are ranked so low.
While we talk of literacy rates and gross enrolment ratios, it is time we start scrutinising our systems and measure the learning outcomes. India is under internal threat through our demographics. A young population uninformed, unaware, behaving like sheep, corruptible, lacks scientific temper is the biggest threat to India.
Time to speak up..For our children. For our country.
