Many times one feels sad and disheartened while going through a newspaper or watching a TV news channel. Recently one read with horror the mockery being made of examinations and watched with greater horror the visuals on the same later in the day. All right-thinking people, I am sure, were shocked to see groups of shameless and remorseless people - comprising parents, relatives and ‘friends’ -putting up a vulgar display of immoral and dishonest behaviour. They were unhesitatingly handing over chits and sheets of paper containing hints, points or answers to the questions in the examination papers, to their examinee children. They were blatantly, fearlessly violating the rules of fair play, to help their irresponsible brats in passing the examination or scoring high - by hook or by crook. This must have specially hurt those parents whose children had been burning the midnight oil, persevering to ensure that they would do well in the academic race.
But all such wrongdoings do not seem to matter to our ‘netas’. The Chief Minister or MLA of the concerned State will appear on all the news channels to announce, nonchalantly, ‘A probe in the matter has been ordered. Guilty will be punished’. To ‘placate’ the janta, a person or two may even be suspended. That’s it. They feel no need to take any preventive steps, to ensure that the issue does not recur. To make matters worse, the netas even convert such issues into political one-upmanship games. The spokespersons of the ruling and opposition parties make it a point to come on all channnels and convert the ‘debate’ into a mudslinging match; they have no intention of discussing the issue earnestly. The ruling Party spokesperson will state forcefully, ’It is nothing new. This was rampant in your regime. Why didn’t you stop it then?’ And the previous government’s spokesperson will retort even more forcefully, ’Of course it is nothing new. The same happened when your Party was in power in such and such year.’ And to prove his point he will, with great flourish, display some old newspaper clipping referring to some such incident. To sound more authentic he will rattle off some related statistics also. And in this din the voices of other panelists, who intended to debate the issue seriously, get stifled. The whole debate gets coloured in political hues and becomes a matter of tit for tat. The main issue gets sidetracked.
The debate should perhaps have been on the core issue of how the relentless and excessive focus on ‘success in examinations’ is impacting our youth and the future of our country. There is need for some soul searching here. When some sections of society ‘manage’ to get their less worthy offsprings to score high by adopting unfair means, what message do such brats get? That fair play has no place in society, rules are not meant to be obeyed, and virtues like honesty are outdated and redundant? Can this be the ‘men-making education’ that we espouse, or should it be re-labelled as ‘mafia-making education’? It is a pity that many are working to create a ‘value void’ in our youngsters’ lives and emboldening them to take an unethical route to life. The youngsters are thus being groomed for entry into a league of greedy self-seekers who flourish by usurping what does not rightfully belong to them. They grab what they want, using all sorts of illegal means. For them, might is right. Like leaches they are sucking the moral fibre out of the nation, making its foundation as hollow as their own inner core, which is devoid of humanity and spirituality. The worst is when this malaise enters politics - when some out of this league of people become political leaders. Such ‘netas’ acquire power to help preserve and perpetuate the rottenness in the system. These mafia groups and mafia supporting netas don’t blink or even bat an eyelid when the janta is crying its heart out over the crucifixion of those who dare to stand up against wrongdoings. We feel betrayed by this kind of political class. The ruling party came into power by promising ‘achhe din’ to the janta. Everyone’s hopes had jumped up a few notches. But now the hope seems to be crumbling. We are realising that it is not an X or Y Party that can bring ‘achhe din’. We can hope for better times only when a different breed of people - people who do not have a ‘value void’ in their lives, who have been educated in ‘men- making’ institutions, who have burnt the midnight oil to acquire knowledge and have used fair means to pass their exams - decide to enter politics. We can trust the nation in their hands. We hope that this happens in our lifetimes and the system is cleansed of the malaise of mafia type netas. The soul of the nation is at stake; we all need to help arrest the decay….we’ve jointly got to stop the rot.
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