One Dubai morning shower was very enlightening. I completed a statistical calculation in say, 5 minutes, and that too - with conclusions. While I prepared for another day in Dubai with the medium pressure shower sprouting on my head, the thoughts of my Malloo brothers I could not avoid seeing everyday encroached into my head. Right from my apartment attendant, to the car park usher, the cigarette vendor, to my cadd draughtsman, the office boy, the janitor in the mall, everywhere, they were a part of my life. Of Dubai’s 2 million (UAE is 4.5 million), I could easily estimate that around 1 million are Keralians. The thick droplets of water woke me further and I recalled their well respected commie government, elected by some 40 million in India, boasts of a literarcy rate of near hundred percent. I had always thought of Kerala as a model for the whole country - because, almost everybody’s a literate in that state! Strictly classified as guest workers who should leave one year after their work visa expires, with choice of visa renewal thats easy, or no choice, they carry on living here, working here. Now, note that these guests neither spend their incomes in their home land nor are able to send any money back. They seldom earn any extra and indirect taxes are paid indirectly to Sheikhs. So, one has to ask the Kerala government that what’s the use of this figure boasting when it cannot help its own surroundings and its own people end up becoming some neo-postmodern slaves somewhere else. This literacy which is no qualification and mostly parochial, looks like some mechanism through which one gets visas for lowly paid jobs. So, now, keeping whole of the Gulf in mind, please bring down your literacy usefulness figures down to 95% .
With my sleepiness diminishing and senses rising, I could also conclude how it has been statistically ensured that half of the Middle East’s population is technically literate. And ready to do any damn job!! Bharat Sarkar ne muft mein Gulf Ka theka le rakha hai (A zero fee contract taken up by the Indian Goverment for Gulf).
2 comments:
Your five minutes-in-shower thoughts have remained successful in forcing my brain to examine them critically. The outcome of the churning is this. First and foremost, there are errors in your analysis. It starts with the absolute percentage of literates in Kerala and ends with the suggestion for the state government to bring the literacy usefulness figures down to 95%!!!!!!!!!!!
Yes I am surprised. But the immediate feeling was of being someone as useless as a torn out plastic bottle lying at the front gate of a five star hotel!!!! Like those Mallu muscles in Dubai, I have also studied in India, and have moved to the UK, and can also be classified as a guest worker who will be thrown out of her current job the day her visa expires. I am into ‘any-kind’ of job, paying high taxes without getting any benefits and not able to save or send any money back home. And, so in that condition the usefulness of my education is zero!! Nop, that’s certainly not the case with my education.
Usefulness is subjective and therefore, so vague when it is not clearly defined. If we risk measuring the usefulness of education then I am sure we are going to stumble down for it is both perceptive and personal. Why do we ‘waste’ so many years of our lives behind education? Merely to read and write? To gain a certificate called Degree to make ourselves sellable in the market of employers? In that case those who cannot get a job or choose to not work have not received any benefits from their education, and so the government and the society should stop investing their resources in educating this whole lot of failures, because their education is simply not useful!!!!
Education certainly has much more to offer. It cannot be defined merely by the ability to read and write, nor could it be classified only by the number of degrees one holds. In fact, these are the indicators that one has gone through the process of formal education. But its usefulness can certainly not be measured through the job and pay scale. Education has many other and better purposes to serve, isn’t it? I am not trying to justify the current formal education system nor want to get involved in the discussion about the condition of Indians in Middle-East. My argument is only about the way you are defining the usefulness of education. I hope you would give it another thought, this time after coming out of the shower.
I am glad my shower and my figures bring you to speak, and which teaches me to write as perfect as my numbers. I can see what your reply suggests, as beautifully as you have put, another interesting angle to the bigger issue, which should really, be put as a blog of your own! I hope, I am inspiring you to write more. If yes, read further.
Notice, there are still 95% left in the country for optimism, which I earnestly surrender to your point of view. My one point, subtle it is, was that how only a five percent of figure related to literacy and education brings a fifty percent of respite in an another country. I take it that you are not interested in the 5% I am talking about, but I am, and it was how I felt when I saw those in larger in numbers. At constant wreck! Think how the Middle East government simply gets away without offering any opportunities of any future development to the people working there. Think the money they save and the responsibilities they get away with because the Indian government has already prepared the workers for the market! Now this brings me to your own case, which is more of a brain drain issue. As bad as muscle drain, it seems now most of us abroad are now left with only some wisdom and experience which our education’s value system has given us. After all, whole life is a learning process, and don’t you feel too that you should have access to further opportunities when abroad, which helps improve your own skills ? A brain drain issue, as an individual you may be better off, but not all are that fortunate. Therefore, ‘usefulness’, is not a subjective word intended here in all its meanings. I stand by it, because it’s only obvious use as an adjective for ‘literacy’ in this context ceases to exist as soon as literacy itself is left with no role to play.
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