BE THE CHANGE..

Friends, I am now into my final year, final semester of the engineering course and let me tell you frankly I am enjoying it like anything. Only three papers this semester plus a project work. Thank God, gone are the days when I used to struggle with my core subjects only a few days before the examinations. The big engineering bibles would seem to me as the worst punishment that a man on this earth could ever get. The case is same with most of the students belonging to any stream today. The teacher taught saying “unity in diversity” applies well here, universally. “Why such an attitude?” is the question I would like to pose myself. And on thinking (which I unusually did this time!!) I came up with a few answers rather a few points to defend my stand.

First, I would point my finger at our education system. The present day Indian education system is praised world over but I find it too mechanical and rigid. We have been trained right from our kindergarten that exams are the knowledge measuring scale and high marks as the deciding parameters. The system has failed to transform the minds from ordinary to ultimate completeness. Does the purpose of education is only to train our minds to get a well paid, decent job? It is what nowadays the educational institutions try to accomplish. Education should bring about integration of thoughts and therefore intelligence. The purpose of life is defeated without such integration. As Jiddu Krishnamurthy says “Education should awaken the capacity to be self-aware and not merely indulge in gratifying self expression.”

The National knowledge Commission has recommended setting up of many more IITs, IIMs, NITs and central universities. World class institutions are not strengthened only by the kind of infrastructure or buildings they offer. Their strong foundations are laid by the quality of the faculty and support staff and it is what we lack today, which I found as my second reason. They are in a way a bridge between knowledge acquisition and its further development.

Finally students are too resistive (me included) to accept the fact that, for changes to occur in the future, it must me them who need to take the plough for sowing the seeds of change. In spite of breaking down due to what the external “incubating” environment offers, there must be a revolution within, to cast away the shell of ignorance and flap our “broken” wings to fly in the skies of acquired freedom and success.

Let’s be the change, we wish to be.