Valson Thampu

For the families of 5000 Kerala students trapped in the war zone, Kharkiv is closer home than Kollam or Kolancherry. Proximity is not always geographical. It is also affective. But for the emerging human tragedy of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Keralites would not have known that so many of our young educational aspirants are in Ukraine.
It is better known, perhaps, that the KMDB-6D engines that power the main battle tanks of Pakistan are manufactured in a factory in Kharkiv. And I won’t be surprised if there are many who justify the war entirely on that ground. Such is the breadth of our universal brotherhood, especially when we are over-zealous patriots.
Why do so many of our medical students go to medical schools in Ukraine? Ask their critics, they’ll tell you it is because these spoilt kids are flush with funds, and that they disdain to study in Kerala. But ask the Ukraine-returnees in the wake of the outbreak of the war. They’ll tell you that it is far easier to get into a medical school in Ukraine. It costs only a third of what they’d have to pay to self-financing medical colleges in Kerala. Cost of living is comparable and quality of education superior. Why can’t Kerala government set up a few more medical colleges? If we can rake up resources for the K-rail, why not find a tenth of that amount to set up a few more good medical colleges? More particularly, why can’t we attain and maintain quality in professional and higher education? If five thousand students from Kerala are stuck in Ukraine, the responsibility for this rests not only on Putin, but also on the successive governments in Kerala that betrayed the state in respect of education.
Three years have passed since Pinarayi Vijayan announced his intention to ‘turn Kerala into a hub of quality higher education’. Not a single step has been taken in this direction. The annual outflow of money from India due to students going overseas for education is in excess of Rs. 45000 crores. As far as Kerala is concerned, the annual loss is proportionately even higher, given that a large number of our students go to other states and UTs for higher education. A. K. Antony sought to stem this exodus by sanctioning self-financing medical colleges, which has turned out to be a blessing mainly to the peddlers and profiteers in medical education. This lesson seems to be lost on Modi. He now expresses his sympathy for the 18000 Indian students stuck in Ukraine by urging the corporates to set up medical colleges. We have limitless resources for erecting heaven-kissing statues and acquiring extravagant executive planes. Rs. 3000 crores was spent on the Sardar Patel statue. With that money, at least 10 good medical colleges could have been established, all commemorating the iron man of India. If, instead of buying two Boeing 777s, for the PM and the President, one had been bought to be shared between them –after all, the President and the PM never leave the country at the same time- another 10 medical colleges could have been set up with the Rs. 3500 crores thus saved. We have money for everything else; but not for education. No one asks: what about the tens and thousands of crores collected from the citizens by way of education cess? How much of it has been used for educational purposes?
Let us return to Kerala. Why is it that politicians are indifferent, and the public sceptical, to attaining excellence in education in the state? There are at least two reasons for this. First, our politicians are scared of higher education. They fear that educating young men and women, without being able to provide employment to them, will increase social unrest, which could be politically costly. Why invite such a headache? Isn’t it wiser to cut off the head in order to cure the headache? Little wonder, Kerala remains educationally a headless chicken.
This prejudice overlooks the fact that the ‘money-order-economy’ of Kerala is a by-product entirely of education. Kerala would have been a poor state, for example, but for the lowly nursing education, which is the single largest foreign exchange generator. It is not necessary to index higher and professional-technical education to employment prospects in the state itself.
Why is it that we have grown so sceptical of attaining excellence in higher education? The answer lies in the fact that Kerala lacks a general culture of pursuing excellence. If mediocrity is the acclimatised norm in all other aspects of life, how can excellence be an attribute of education alone? Sure enough, Keralites covet excellence. But they’d rather buy excellence than embrace it as a way of life. There is no parent in Kerala who doesn’t want his/her child to have excellent education, which parents are willing to buy for their children at any cost. Yet, I wonder how many parents would care to turn right to quality education into a political issue. Why not? Well, because each parent wants to secure the best for one’s own child; and, maybe, secretly feels relieved that the same is beyond the reach of most others. One’s child is empowered through the disempowerment of the rest of the children. This socially-normalised selfishness sustains our educational bankruptcy.
The second major reason is the dominance of the acquisitive spirit, which turns education into a commodity. I don’t feel deprived or indignant when my neighbour zips around in a jazzy car, because it is a commodity he buys. But I will feel angry, if he has purer air and cleaner water. (If he is buying both, it is another matter. In that case they are commodities.) Excellence is alien to the acquisitive spirit. Only purchasing power is relevant to it. Excellence is akin to creativity. Excellence is spiritual. So, it makes better sense to substitute ‘quality education’ with ‘excellence in education’ as our shared goal. One can buy quality education, but one cannot buy excellence in education. There is no guarantee that your son will attain excellence for being admitted to a ‘quality’ institution. He may attain the label of quality.
The acquisitive spirit is the seed of corruption. Consider how corruption pollutes the garden of education today. No further evidence will be needed to realize that we cannot create a culture of excellence in education without exorcising the educational enterprise of the demon of acquisitiveness. This demon can be exercised only with the Holy Spirit of creativity, which shifts the emphasis from quantity to style, the sort of style that A. N. Whitehead said, ‘constitutes the ultimate achievement of the educated mind.’