I
have not learned to do physical labour
to earn my livelihood; I am educated. When I was a child people educated their
children so that they get a government job according to their education. The
government had been the biggest employer then. From a peon to a district
magistrate, the jobs ensured regular monthly salary with no interruption till
retirement. There were a few who earned addition income through bribes.
Gradually things changed. Those who did not take bribe were difficult to find.
Thus, government jobs became a highly attractive way of earning one’s
livelihood. Before independence people served ‘His Majesty’ or ‘Her Majesty’;
after independence they served the Government of India. No doubt, there were
farmers, skilled craftsmen, traders and unskilled manual workers, etc. But they
were hardly considered educated. People, in general, received education to
secure a job. Not everybody after receiving education could get employment. The
government and the society began to think as to how to create employment.
According to the Divine laws, all living beings were free to work to earn their
livelihood. However, there is no such man-made law.
People,
in general, received education to secure a job. Not everybody after receiving
education could get employment. The government and the society began to think
as to how to create employment. According to the Divine laws, all living beings
were free to work to earn their livelihood. However, there is no such man-made
law.
The
conditions of today have changed in many ways. I find that the first thing a
child learns with learning to identify and write the alphabet ‘A’ that he has to study to make money, otherwise he
would be forced to do a menial job; and that would be very insulting to him. The
most among them also desire to leave India because, according to them, India is
not a place with many opportunities. The government and the society continue to
worry about creating employment opportunities for the rest of the educated lot.
The irony of the situation is that the government and the society, both shower
much praise on the ‘meritorious’ students (those who succeed in such competitive
examinations that provide a virtual license to the successful candidates for
ten to twenty times more income than that of an average Indian, and make them
eligible to export themselves to some land with many opportunities) without
uttering a single word about the millions of educated persons being added every
year to India’s young population who have to go, at least, underemployed. These
high earning educated people become servants of big business houses and the
super rich establishments or counties just as the educated people of the past
served the governments.
The governments that were run by the educated
of the past failed to create a system that helped every citizen to work for making
a reasonable living for himself. The educated of today are also not being
considered to be of any use for rectifying the situation.
In
this article I have not fixed my vision at infinity; I only talked about my
observations of my immediate surroundings of my childhood and that of the
present. I find that the modern education has done virtually nothing to mould
the educated youth in the modern democratic systems so that they realize their
duties and responsibilities and work for the benefit of the mankind and infuse
such elements in modern democracy which ensure formation of just and
egalitarian societies that uphold the golden principles of maximum good for the
maximum people. The modern education systems have worked to convert the raw
youth into tools and puppets of selfish and greedy elements of the modern
society having violent minds so that they (the modern youth) could not think anything
beyond serving such selfish and shamelessly greedy elements to help them amass
ever increasing wealth and acquire more power to take narrow and personal advantage
of the modern products of human intellect viz. science, technology, scientific temperament
and the thought of individual freedom of
the man.
The
modern education system is nothing but an offshoot of the feudal concept of the
supremacy of a few, and the duties of the many to serve those few. The right
education system keeps its focus on universal consciousness of dutiful creative
freedom and selfless conduct with self restraint for universal benefit. Human
intellect is subservient to ‘universal consciousness’, that is no different
from ‘the Divine Consciousness’; its job is to deal with the external world
according to the commands of ‘universal consciousness’, never otherwise.
PROMOD KUMAR SHARMA
[The writer of this blog is also the author of “Mahatma A
Scientist of the Intuitively Obvious” and “In Search of Our Wonderful Words”.]
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