In my view we have a genuine scarcity of quality teachers. In any high school, having say 20 teachers, we can count on our fingers individuals who are actually good teachers. As we move up to IITs, NITs, AIIMSes, Civil Servants Training Institutions. The situation remains the same. Only a few teachers are able to really become an asset of the institution. Rest are actually burden on the institution.

Actually, the rest is not a homogenous group. At the bottom of the rest, lies the poorest category of teachers who is simply incompetent. In between these two extremes, others can be placed. Some of them are good and are consistently trying to improve themselves.

However the purpose here is not to criticize and point out loopholes.

At primary school level, In case of government school, blame partly lies on the teacher training institutions. In case of Pvt. Institutions poor talent base and no training have role to play. Irrespective of reasons, the fact remains that we have a genuine scarcity of quality teachers.

In midst all this, the victim is the student. He is deprived from learning from the best in the field.

Whenever this problem is posed, the answers put up range from raising the public expenditure on education; improving pay scale; improving teacher training and their emphasis; reviewing  the teacher performance etc.

In short, it is all in the hand of government.

As a break there have been initiatives like Teach for India, khan’s academy etc and many others. But there is certainly a room for more breakthroughs.

Our education system should be able to

1. Create a youth who is capable of earning his living.

1. Create citizen who is close to the utopian individual.

It is in this context that I put up my idea of “meg (h)a  schools==cloud school” which will be a pool of knowledge from the best of teachers at every level of education. While creating a pool at all levels in a decentralised manner will be the first step. Achieving synergy of effort with the existing teaching community across all barriers will be the next step.

P S the problems in the sector can be said to be poor quality of teaching and high drop out with higher level. With better quality of education perhaps they can be remedied.

A successful change

Many times we desire some change. If I start to list some of the changes-small and big- the list may look like

1.       My neighbours should thrown garbage in dustbin only. The dustbins should be cleaned regularly.
2.      People should not pee on side drains and side walls. There should be proper toilet built every 500 m and they should be maintained as any airport lavatory.
3.       People should not be forced to live in and around roads, bridges and slums. There should be proper accommodation-on emergency basis for a fixed time -available for people at an appropriate price.
4.  There should be a provision so that any guilty and lax government servant could be punished –with tangible and credible cut from their salary-without any delay so that a credible deterrence and accountability is created.
5.  The political funding should be made transparent and the current limit of 20000 should be done away with.
6.  A donation to any cause-swachh bharat, education-etc should not just be tax exempt. If a person contributes “X” amount then “kX” k=2-3 or so, should be exempted so as to move and incentivise people to donate.

These and there are many other changes we desire. We might not agree at this point on the solution but we all realise that we wish something to happen in that direction.

But as we somehow already –consciously or unconsciously-know that to any change there will be some gainers and some who will lose. Those while benefiters will support with strong logic, others will strongly oppose. The opposition is generally more dedicated than the supporters and they outnumber the latter too.

For example- take the issue of garbage collection, there is hardly any doubt that the society and its residents will gain –aesthetically as well as health wise-but the municipal people and our “unapproachable” representatives (at local level) may have to put some extra effort. Dustbins of adequate size have to procured and place. The numbers of tractor have to be increased. The number of employees recruited has to go high. (But more people will be willing to go to that job(garbage collection) only when we stop treating them as inhuman and lowly people).

So over all environments might be like this:

Mahesh ji, the localite, “we must have this change. But these lazy municipality does not build dustbins and does not clean them regularly.”

Babban Yadav, the leader,“we have limited funds and still we already are creating more dustbins. But the people themselves are such they don’t want to throw their garbage properly.you can see garbage little everywhere around the dustbin and dustbin is empty. In fact last year half the dustbins were stolen.ab aap hi bataiye hum kya karein”

Chandan, the sweeper, “ you don’t know sir. Our salary is Rs. 3000 and we are on contract .but we get only Rs. 1000.the rest is kept by “A B enterprises” and he does not want to recruit more people. ab aap hi bataiye hum akele kitna saaf kar lenge.”

Verma ji, a public servant, “dekhiye, I have living in this place for last 30  yrs.yahan kuch nahin ho sakta. People here don’t want to change”, meanwhile throwing his cigarette stub on the road.

Mr. A K Shukla, IAS (sub divisional magistrate), “I am really looking into this.But of the record,I have come here  just last month.”(and he will go after few months)

PA to SDM, “SDM sir has so many tasks. How can he focus, solely, on this issue? These are tasks of local officers.”(We always have a perception, DM(or EQV) can make a change. But we must not fool ourselves into believing that every change needs “only one hero” like Bollywood films and we need all players to act and in that we also somewhere come as an equal player.)

“?”-the know-it-all, “See, everything has a time. This problem will also be solved by next 30 yrs, when society is more literate and civilised. You are unnecessarily breaking your head over it.”

At the same time there are many others who don’t want to get into this as they have their own challenges-educating the child, marriage of daughter, job etc- . They can think of world when their personal battles are won.

So there are very few in current environment who are willing to take some time to fight for this issue(garbage) while those who oppose it are most willing to blame it back on people.And there is a large pool of the indifferent and the fence-sitters who see the activity of two groups cynically and as politically motivated.

The first stage to bring the change is to overcome this battle of difference and bringing to a common ground that yes!! we need this change and it can happen if we follow this pathway.This stage is essential as only such a environment can overcome the vocal opposition of "no-sayers" and the lethargy of "indifferent".

 Everyone has to start believing that the issue cannot wait any longer. The wave in realm of thought has to be so strong that even the hitherto indifferent are voicing the cause. Only when such a wave is created then people will be forced to act as per wish of the mass and in public interest.

Every change-in our society -requires some sacrifice and discipline just line our personal achievements. And as it is necessary to achieve and progress in life personally, similarly a society can't afford to remain stagnant.we will have to play some role at some point of time.

We all have some personal responsibilities, some official responsibility. It is up to us what role we envisage for ourselves as far our social and political responsibilities are concerned.-an idea creator, an idea propagator, an active participant and an inactive participant, an sceptic, a cynic, or fence-sitter. The ball is our court once again.

This blog aims to create a platform-in my capacity as a participant- for first creating a ideological platform for India of the future and at the same time evolve into an active machinery of synergic actions.

To begin with, a page India 35 by 2035 has been created which will act as a platform for coming together of people before we evolve into a group.We have to come up with vision for the nation,society,type of growth we seek etc.

In this direction,i am putting my views on how an future indian-utopian individual- might be like.This holds good for a person irrespective of nationality.

Utopian individual

My model of utopian society fundamentally depends on the conception of the ideal individual. It is for a critical insight I put this “utopian person” before you.

The person should display following two traits. First is knowledge and second is character. It is the expanded meaning of these two that the secret lies.Knowledge  can be broadly put into two categories- specific knowledge and general knowledge

Specific knowledge

Every person on this planet has to carry out a task in order to earn a living. It is very essential that not only he knows the basis minimum but he must also continuously strive to achieve excellence in his field of pursuit.

This is quite logical. Every person spends at least a third of his day doing his job. It is only by striving to be best and continuously improving himself he can strive to gain self satisfaction. As per my understanding, it is only by doing what you want to do, one can remain happy.

General knowledge 

Now lets come to general knowledge. This has been expanded by me to mean everything else. It does include basic literacy and science. But it includes an understanding of basic sociology, psychology, philosophy, history, polity, economics, geography.A person having general knowledge has wisdom, empathy and is tolerant and compassionate. It is responsibility of education system to give this. Only such individuals can form a harmonious society and peaceful world.

Perhaps it would be fruitful to go a little deeper into this part. This is not a bookish knowledge crammed and reproduced for exams. It is rather knowledge one has assimilated. Only such a person can make a decision about his own good and for his society.

Character

The last but very important thing is character. Character is result of an accumulation of habits which helps in ensuring that the individual makes good decision by instinct. Many times we do not have time to think deeply before taking a decision. Like our reaction to a standing lady, our reaction to an abusing person, our reaction to beggars. In such cases it is our character that determines how we behave toward them. Basically we may broadly split character/virtues into wisdom, beneficence, courage, justice, hope and empathy. Here it may be prudent to look slightly deeply into a virtue of integrity.

Also, integrity is the ability to stand for what one believes. It is coherence between our belief system and our action. This is so essential for development of trust in society .basically whether a person will enact what he believes in is determined by integrity itself. Clearly the development of a sound character is self correcting long winding process.

This completes the requirements of utopian individual.

The utopian society

But we know all might not be perfect. Each must strive toward the end. At the same time, if people  have empathy and are tolerant  then despite this imperfect world we will have a harmonious situation.

In any system around 10 % may be absolutely honest and around 10% may be incorrigibly corrupt. Rest 80% behave dependent on environment.So, while we may strive to create utopian individual yet we must create institutions and environment which makes it easier to do good and hard to do wrong. Then will we achieve the utopian society.

The breakthrough

Lets suppose each and every individual on this planet has attained all this qualities. Will that ensure equality? No. we will still have a scenario in which some people will be better than other and some will be worse. In short situation will be similar to now. So it is clear inequality is unavoidable.

What is sought to be avoided is that despite this inequality we have a harmonious society. We must accept each and every individual is giving his level best to improve and achieve his goal. Some might be misguided-as in pursuing divergent goals and hence are less productive, others might be lacking resources. Reasons are infinite for explaining this differential and inequality.  But these reasons do not negate the fact that each individual is trying his level best; and this should build an air of empathy and respect for each other. But these traits are indeed developed only by character and knowledge. Such is a society-ideal society.

The pathway

People say positive thinking helps a lot. It is secret of all success.  If there is a field where it is needed the most it is in conception of human nature.  We ought to shun the belief that man is an animal eating each other. Nation cannot become powerful by ruining others. We ought to start believing that we can compete yet form a harmonious society with individual who strive toward perfection.