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On Instrumental Education

India is a nation of deep diversity and as a nation has achieved many things in due course of India. For example, after 1947 this country has faced many upheaval tasks to accomplish; like poverty, malnutrition, education, health, sanitation, gender justice, law and order, rule of law, and just governance. In many fronts one can perceive some modest developments, in some areas, like education and poverty eradication, we have progressed slightly better than expected. But, the long road to success is still awaiting. This is not the time for complacency, but introspection and revision to carry forward the engine of growth. However, there are various troubling indications regarding the health of education are apparent. Indian youths are traped in a catch 22 situation. Their crucial energies are wasting in the prepration for the government jobs which are decreasing day by day if one relies on data. Professionals across the discipline put enough time and energies to get selected for some government job, particularly where they would be able enjoy some power and recognition.

I think that the creative education is missing from the curriculum of schools, colleges, and universities. Be it the primary education, secondary education, or the higher education, focus of education is limited towards the instrumental use of education. Education is being considered as a commodity to be harnessed, to be cultivated and sold in the market. The instrumental jurisprudence has harmed the psyche of our collective consciousness. Education is not being treated as liberatory rather a source of laboratory by which "productive forces" are prepared, in order to be useful, like a cog in the machine. I am amazed the way ignorance is perpetually cultivated. Perhaps, we have inherited our legacy from the colonial past which is still working here in our limited imagination. Britishers have very enriching legacy of their past, in the development of science, technology, medicine, law and legal systems, Industrial growth, etc. and they are still moving into the right direction of growth. But, India is not able to revamp its archaic systems of governance. Intelligencia across the spectrum are too busy in iconoclasm and lebeling politics. That is the reason why we have reduced our meaning of education into the status of  "utility" and a symbol of "power", beyond that no search of meaning and truth is a viable alternative. Philosophy is treated with contempt, as if, it is an impractical discipline. But the reality is; each one of us is living the way someone thought and experimented with at some stage of humans' progress. Isn't a fact that the humans are more than a mechanical object? We are the agent of progress for myriad lives on this planet. And that agency will die one day when the men of ideas are abhorred with impunity.

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