AMBEDKARISM - EDUCATION IS MEDICINE FOR ALL SOCIAL EVILS

AMBEDKARISM - EDUCATION IS MEDICINE FOR ALL SOCIAL EVILS 

Dr B R AMBEDKAR – CHIEF ARCHITECT OF INDIAN CONSTITUTION

Dr Ambedkar is a great soul born in India with exemplary knowledge and skills and always finds place on far with ever remembering freedom fighters and great leaders of the nation. Born as a Dalit, fighting socioeconomic conditions prevailing in those days and reaching to such a position, purely based on skill sets and fighting the system rather than sub serving it, is not an easy task and Mother India is always proud of this great soul.

Despite Dr. Ambedkar’s ideological differences with Gandhi Ji on issues related to religion, caste, political reservations, untouchability etc, he was entrusted with the task of heading the group to prepare “Indian constitution”. It shows the maturity of socio-political leadership exhibited by our older generation leaders and I beg the present generation leaders to follow the path laid down and encourage talent rather than political affiliations, at least when it comes to  security and sovereignty of the Nation.

Dr Ambedkar is a strong believer of democracy and always fought for Dalit rights within the framework of democracy. He was always interested in long term sustainable solutions to the problems of dalits, rather than surviving on mercy. Though he can easily get elected to assembly or parliament with congress support, he always fought based on principles, not with the aim to be in power always. He believed that the path and means are more important in reaching the goals than reaching them with compromise.

AMBEDKARISM

Dr Ambedkar clearly understood that “FOOD-CLOTH – SHELTER” is not the sustainable solution to the problem of lower classes and expressed that only through higher education the inner feelings in them shall be addressed with logical conclusions.

The real believers of “AMBEDKARISM” shall internalize the philosophy behind the vision of great soul and implement it in letter and spirit, rather than making it as vote bank politics.

Erecting large size statues, increased political and other reservations, division among dalits, promoting caste based leadership will not address the real needs of dalits and such programs are against the vision of Dr. Ambedkar. 

EDUCATION IS MEDICINE FOR ALL SOCIAL EVILS:

The famous quote of Ambedkar is as follows:

“It is a misconception that the emancipation of the lower class is an economic problem. The emancipation of the downtrodden does not mean that they should be given enough food, clothes and shelter and be left to serve the higher classes. The real issue is to make them aware of the importance of their existence for the progress of the nation, to make them aware about the reasons for their backwardness, their inferiority complex. This problem can be solved only by higher education to deprived classes and education is medicine for all our social evils”

PRESENT EDUCATION SYSTEM:

With the experience of 70 years of independence, we are highly successful in killing or putting in cold storage of our “affordable education system”. I feel ashamed to state that a strong feeling of only the useless and unaffordable will join government schools is created. All our intellectual brains are used and no stone is unturned in making education as a highly expensive tradable commodity from a noble service. 

Year after year, Governments are increasing education budgets, recruiting teachers, increasing salaries to retain them or satisfying their unions (for mutual benefit), creating infrastructure, but severely failing in retaining or increasing the student base. In a way the government budget spending for education is getting into drains, purely due to lack of vision and focus from Government.

To make the readers familiarize with village education systems, I will give a quick run through of my village “KOLLIPARA” in Guntur dist, AP.  Our village has a high school which was established in 1937 and a junior college established in 1981, other than handful of government primary schools and few private schools mostly likes of “GURUKULS”.

I was student of high school in mid 70s and those days our school strength was over 1200 with 100 plus strength in 10^th standard. Our school consistently used to have over 90% pass in 10^th standard with handful of first classes. From such a glorious position, the school strength dropped to less than 300 and major drop in quality of students due to teaching staff negligence and also due to low peer group presence, reducing the competitive spirit. Similarly the junior college which was running to its full strength with six streams attracting students from other districts also came down to the stage of hiring out the facilities to private schools to pay salaries.

 

I visited Tenali the nearby town only during 10^th standard to get a photo of mine for board examinations, as against the present situation of 40 to 50 buses flying from our village to nearby towns Tenali and Guntur for LKG to 10^th standard education. In addition to this, there are families moved to towns for children education and few joined them in boarding schools.

I am sure this may be the situation across the nation, only the intensity may slightly vary depending on the local factors, It is observed that this culture is spreading very fast and soon all states will be infected severely with this  education pest.  With systematic branding followed by huge spending on advertising, the preference for branded health and education is fast catching up. The immediate affected classes are lower middle income and low income groups, with major amount are being spent on children education, family health and getting into debt traps.

With these prevailing situations, the dream of Ambedkar “Affordable education for downtrodden” is taken a severe beating and successive Governments miserably failed in addressing this menace. It’s unfortunate to see leaders talking about memorials of Ambedkar rather than making attempts to realize his vision.

WE SHALL OVERCOME:

• To begin with, bring in a policy stating that the students studied in Govt/aided schools are only eligible to get Government jobs.

• Bring in special reservations in admissions to higher education institutions for students studied in govt/aided schools.  

• Government schools has good infrastructure, share the same with private entrepreneurs, and workout modules of free education to certain sections, then slab systems of charging. Very detailed workings can be done based on some pilot projects and I am sure we can bring out decent and good workable models in mutual interest.

• Implement one family one reservation concept to ensure that the benefits of reservations do not recycle among the economically empowered lot among downtrodden. Detailed models with certain inclusions shall be worked to make it a reality.

• Limit reservations only to certain positions, rather than making it a general rule. For example a space scientist shall not be recruited based on reservations, here the skill sets are more important.

• Promotions based on reservations shall be put to an end to realize the dream of Dr Ambedkar of addressing the inferiority complex among downtrodden.

• The fortunate ones among the downtrodden, who got the benefits of reservations, shall act as brand ambassadors of under privileged and help them in fighting the inequalities and see that they are given the opportunities to claim the ladder.

MAKE AMBEDKARISM A WAY OF LIVING - TEACH HOW TO FISH, BUT NOT GIVE FISH TO EAT

B Guruva Reddy – 9866889246

grbonthu@gmail.com