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A firm believer in the power of education to transform lives, the decline in the quality of education, the quality of teachers, and the privatisation of education in India are issues that have bothered me over the years. As a member of Generation X, and a beneficiary of subsidised, government-aided, quality education, I have been angry with the Boomer and Gen X generations for pushing privatisation and justifying profiteering in a core sector such as education.
I hated the fact that most of Gen X was totally self-absorbed and unconcerned about the future of India’s children. Worse, instead of appreciating the role these government-funded education played in their own growth and success, they chose to dismiss it and turn their achievements into a story of personal meritocracy.
Forget the billionaire class. I am sure at least 75% of the 8.7 lakh-odd millionaires in India with a net worth of over Rs 8 crore are beneficiaries of elite government-funded higher education institutions. And yet they want to deny the majority of Indians access to quality government funded education.
Just how galling is that? Their sheer ingratitude is frightening.
I am happy that the student protest movement has become a pan India affair, with children from all walks of life participating. Education is a fundamental right and must be accessible to all. It is the responsibility of the government to provide quality education to everyone, and private schools and colleges must not be given a free pass to charge whatever they want with zero accountability for outcomes. They must be brought under some form of regulatory scrutiny.
What makes me happiest about these protests is that this generation of children are breaking all the moulds. As I stand at Freedom Park in Bengaluru in solidarity with these children, I am filled with both admiration and awe. Vocabulary was used as a tool not only to distinguish class and gender, but also as a means to discriminate. All those distinctions blur in the placards and sloganeering, vociferous and explicit at the same time.
Who would have imagined that the most exalted position in the country, that of the Prime Minister, would invite such scathing sloganeering, and that too in Hindi, in Namma Bengaluru? Neem ka patta kadwa hain, Modi s***a b****a hain. The irony of it all. When children finally take to speaking in Hindi, it is to abuse the Prime Minister of India. Everything became fodder for content. Nothing and no one was sacrosanct. You mess up, and before you know it, you are a meme.
Clearly, for this generation, none of the previously laid guardrails exist. A generation that grew up alongside unprecedented wealth creation in India and an explosion of technologies, unbeknownst to all of us, was already breaking barriers in its imagination. It was but a matter of time before that started to show up in real life. We should have seen it coming. Instead, we dismissed them.
Technology platforms allowed them to see the hypocrisy around them, the artificial barriers, and the bigotry within and outside. They could see beyond the calibrated world of family and form their own worldviews. They could also see what was possible and what they could become.
The honesty in their expression is the most admirable part – it is exactly how they see and feel. And the best part is that none of it is untrue. Everything resonates and strikes a chord. And if it is unpalatable for some, so be it. They are unperturbed. No wonder my daughter, who is abroad, is having major FOMO. I am sure she would have been at Jantar Mantar.
For sure, the old language of hierarchical hegemony is over. A new language based on mutual respect is taking its place. Power is no longer a free pass from accountability. The multitude of posters and banners at these protests can be used by future researchers to understand these times far better than tomes of academic writing.
Boomers and GenX have outlived their usefulness. GenZ has clearly jettisoned the launcher.
What a Zen moment to live through.
Latha Kuttappan is a living example of how quality education can change the course and direction of life of a first generation college goer.
Views expressed are the author’s own.