Zara Haatke Zara Banchke Yeh Hai CBCS Meri Jaan

Kaleidoscope happens to teach in an heavily understaffed college in Kolkata. It is so understaffed that even with their best efforts, a considerable percentage of possible classes are not allotted. Yes, this happens even after they exceed more than about 20% of their supposedly working hours as per the University Grants Commission (UGC) rules. Well as he knows UGC has become a temporary matter with something 'revolutionary' to install by the centre, curriculum has undergone drastic revision as well.

Now its no longer the 1+1+1 system, this is much awaited, hyped the CBCS system with a name that everyone happens to talk about the Choice Based Credit System. Kaleidoscope is not going to discuss the system and its flaws, because that will entail a research paper and Kaleidoscope hardly has the time for it. Let him just place his case in the broad spectrum of revolution that Higher Education system awaits.

Kaleidoscope teaches in a department with two faculties. To attain the CBCS demand of total 140 credits and 20 credit for the first semester (click here) Kaleidoscope had to set a routine in which which the first semester took away about 75% of their total possible classes. Think about the unfortunate second and third year (fortunately Kaleidoscope does not have a third year yet) students. They are left with no choices than to enjoy the underdeveloped campus. Yes, they can do whatever they want to. They can supervise the construction work, see the vertical extension or go to the shopping mall near and see how people enjoy the airconditioned built in neo-liberal economic spectacles. They will not have classes, nor they have a proper library which is yet to develop in this college.

The broad spectrum:

Kaleidoscope would invite you all to look at least at four recent phenomenon:

a. The move to replace 62-year old UGC by Higher Education Commission of India (HECI) based on no solid ground but a mere argument that "the existing regulatory structure as reflected by the mandate given to the University Grants Commission required redefinition given the changing priorities of higher education" (HECI 2018).

b. "uniform standard and quality... maintenance through systematic monitoring" happens to the second most important aspect HECI, hence a designed syllabus from which only a small percentage universities can change.

c. declaration of Jio Institute (which is still in imagination) as one of India's six Institutes of Eminence.

d. an increasing push on revenue earning through the institutions themselves -  a push towards privatisation.

Kaleidoscope's case - not unique:

Kaleidoscope's case is by no means unique. Understaffed colleges and universities are understaffed for both teaching and non teaching positions and now there is a centralisation of curriculum. This is expected to result in a large-scale failure of the entire system of the public higher education institutions throughout the country. 

Meanwhile, those of institutions of repute will seek an increase in the revenue earning as there is a push from the system itself. 

It is not very far that a parent will find both the public institutions and private institutions charging more or less the same amount of fees and that the private institutions having autonomy have developed better infrastructure including the number of faculties required to meet the CBCS like curriculum. 

The resultant factor definitely will be conscious beings making choices, yes Jio institute or the like will flourish by then.

Impact on society:

On a personal note, Kaleidoscope was once told by his father "if there was no Nehru with his socialist policies, I could not have afford to give you education even in the local school you have studied, let alone college and university." Yes, Kaleidoscope like millions of his fellow country men could not have studied if they were not given near free tuition fees, free books and wonderful teachers and no teaching uncles. 

With a push for unification and privatisation and eventual failure of the public institutions, people will seek private sector educational institutions. Now it is of no surprise to find that in All India Higher Education Survey (AISHE) the grtoss enrolment ratio has increased from less than 5% to 25% if one compares it with 1990s and 2016 - 2017. There is a notable increase in the enrollment of Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST) and Other Backward Classes (OBC) students which is about 50% in public institutions. What is the scenario in private institutions? Yes, as expected this is less than 27% of the total enrollment. Similar case is that of women which is about 33% in private institutions and 45% in the public institutions and this trend will increase. 

Hence, Kaleidoscope should not be seen as cynical if he finds a dark wall in front of him as he prepares for his classes. There will be campuses with biases, rising incidents of suicides by the underprivileged students as exemplified by Rohit Vemula. There will be rise in the fees to such an extent that families like Kaleidoscope had will not be able to afford, and there will be private institutions where only wealthy can educate themselves. There will be funding available for only departments like Centre for Rural Development and Technology at IIT Delhi, spearheading the national programme on panchagavya (cow science). Textbooks will be rewritten to suit a particular political agenda and so on.

Resurgence of religious sentiments

Resurgence of religious sentiments in recent time is formidable. Kaleidoscope experiences the recent transformation in his every day discourses across different sections of his society. He wishes to make a few thematic foundations based on his earlier readings in phenomenology and qualitative research.

Depending on the context and extent of acquaintance he wishes divide these discourses into these broad divisions.

A. Formal sphere with close friends
B. Informal sphere with close friends often after a few shots of alcohol

C. Spheres with acquaintances

D. With complete strangers in public places

A. Formal sphere with close friends

i. Increasing terrorism and Islam association: often referring to the 9/11 incident and numerous other cases.

ii. Lack of religious reform among the Muslims

iii. Issues of internal threat and its association with the Muslim population.

iv. Politics with Muslim voters: mostly referring to congress at the centre and trinamool congress at state thereby justifying BJP - RSS alliance and polarised politics. Therefore, all other issues of bad governance, international relations, fatwa on cultural expressions are legitimised.

CORE FINDING: policy, politics, religious orthodoxy admixture in arguments is noted.

B. Informal sphere with close friends often after a few shots of alcohol

Here often a complete transformation in arguments is noted. It usually begins with much like the formal sphere discussions, eventually the nature of discourse becomes more personal filled with hatred on the Muslims.

i. Personal attack: from traitor to religious enemy are the labellings attached once kaleidoscope tries to place the arguments against the discrimination based on religion.

ii. Good and bad Muslim: usually these people had or has Muslim friends who are 'strangely' good and therefore are exceptions, all the others on the other hand are exceptionally bad in nature.

iii. Partition and riot: are all caused by Muslims and not by Hindus.

iv. Lack of birth control and minority majority issue: there is a fear psychosis growing. They believe that because of allegedly lack of birth control measures among the Muslims soon they will overtake the number of Hindus. Even when presented with statistics from census the argument remains the same - a strong sense of denial prevails.

v. Filthy and unclean living: muslim food habit, dress code and their smell is bad. Completely disgusting. (But of course this discussion over glasses of whisky and kebab continues).

CORE FINDING: us/them division, cultural disgust, fear psychosis.

C. Spheres with acquaintances :

i. Educational issues: since Kaleidoscope is associated with educational industry, he often encounters with views which states the needs to remove Madrasa institutions completely. Some would say it is not the question of Madrasa education system or syllabus but it is more about the way they teach and inject communal hatread among their students. Although the people do not present any concrete evidence not even from their personal experience.

ii. Muslim country and no country for Hindus: there are countries for Muslims but India as a superpower needs to be a Hindu country! To protect their race.

iii. Food habit and cultural sentiments: the difference of food habit and the the like is so prominent that there is no way these two can co-habit peacefully!

CORE FINDINGS: Policy, space and cultural incompatibilities.

D. With complete strangers in public places

i. Sheer number of their children (meaning large family size).
ii. Uncontrolled behaviour and public display of beard face, hijab is disgusting.
iii. There are so many things for them (alia university, minority empowerment centres, OBC status reservation and the like) and nothing for HINDus.
iv. How can they be allowed to have special muslim law?
v. Why should they be allowed to keep more than one wives?
vi. They are uneducated and uncontrolled.
vii. All of them support Pakistan.

CORE FINDINGS:
Cultural difference and intolerance, anti-national sentiments.

Nature of the problem:

Kaleidoscope thinks and thinks for quite some time now, that there has been a recent resurgence of religion based discrimination in the active thought pattern of the people with whom he interacts or listens to when they interact with each other. In his last few months of pseudo bachelorhood he has encountered an increase in frequency of such issues at the informal and intoxicated space. After a careful but quick review of the nature of discourses it is clear that while in formal discussions the underlying disgust which is primarily an outcome of the cultural incompatibility is masked with issues of partition, population problems, policy issues and the like, in informal sphere it is more personal and revealing that people are taking out their primordial hatread and religious sentiments.

Interestingly people with whom Kaleidoscope has a chance of interacting with formally and informally, all belong to educated often upwardly mobile middle class of West Bengal. Whose polished ways of presenting their underlying disgust is shattered with alcohol-in-action in private space. The nature of hatread and disgust is dreadfully same with the passing comments that kaleidoscope encounters in bazaar, public vehicles and other places where every other person is a perfect stranger.

It is quite early and immature to conclude anything based purely on random expressions being noted by a qualitative mind, but the essential nature of discourse that clearly indicates some sort of parallel of thought between the so called educated middle class mind and those of the not so educated mass minds at time of increasing polarisation is a matter of concern!

Studied, played and got buried: mid-day meal poisoning in Bihar and beyond

One of Kaleidoscope's maternal uncle is a school teacher. He teaches in a primary school where mostly first generation learners come. He is a brilliant multitasker.
He is an
accountant
cook
census worker
disaster manager
and finally a teacher.

After the Bihar incident where 23 children died after consuming a midday meal that was found to have been laced with a deadly organophosphorus insecticide, Kaleidoscope calls him up and he reluctantly but sadly says that this is something quite obvious. There is no infrastructure for teaching as there is no infrastructure for cooking and feeding the children. Kaleidoscope finds that first, it was policy makers' eagerness to decrease the dropout rates without looking at the quality of education service being offered, and now, the policy runs itself into more complicated situations in which a teacher becomes cook, students see schools as a community dining place, local political elites find another seep in the long pipe of India's so called pro poor policy now injected by more than 13,000 Crore and guardians find a place where they can keep their child safely (?) and do their regular works. 

The case of Bihar - the case of India:

Kaleidoscope finds a repetition of the earlier customs of food offering. Earlier kings had tasters who used to taste & test the food bring offered to the king. Bihar government with severe criticism suspends the headmistress, and directs teachers to taste the cooked food before serving them to children. These superficial measures indicate the lack of seriousness and political will to take a corrective measure so that incidents like these can be avoided. The particular school in that day was run by the headmistress only as the only other teacher was on leave, which means on that particular day students were waiting for their meal and not for any lesson. Perhaps this is the picture of our primary education system. In severely understaffed schools, teachers are expected to maintain accounts for the midday meal schemes, procure and store the raw materials for cooking, help in cooking, work in the Census, perform election duty, prepare electoral list, take part in disaster-relief (legitimised by RTE Act, section 27) and finally teach and create good human resources for our country. People who cook midday meal works for Rs. 1000/- per month that too for 10 months with a hope that someday their welfare state will make them permanent and they will be paid in pay-scale. There is barely any clean and shaded kitchen a separate place for dining or quality meal for the students as there is no job security and fair wage for the workers and even these schools do not have first aid kit available.

... and beyond: 

Kaleidoscope in many of his fieldworks found midday meal schemes running in schools popularly known as "khichuri school" (khichuri or khichri means the meal being offered there). In one particular incident the school was adjascent to a Panchayat office in Purba Medinipur. That day the children were very happy as in addition to the rice and dal of their regular meal cauliflower curry was prepared that too because we (on behalf of  GoWB) were supposed to visit the Panchayat office. 

Children at the Purba Medinipur in 2009

Moments of joy before joining for the midday meal at Purba Medinipur 2009

There is hardly any nutritious meals being offered. There are often instances of lizard, cockroach infested meals being offered. Centralised system of midday meal such as those run by International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON), Nandi foundation and corporates like Vadanta is equally depressing. They offer meals that rot on the way, there is virtually no regulations on what they offer in the meals, and there is reported gap between the amount of raw materials they said to use and number of meals they provide. 

Kaleidoscope like many finds that "participation" or participatory approach is most frequently projected as one win-win solution to all of India's problems. Perhaps, this is trend of all neo-liberal policies. Whatever you (state) cannot handle, hand it over to locals. As a result Panchayats are extremely overburdened. In this particular case of schooling system where governance is now largely handed over the local people, "the school management committee" under RTE act are not performing as it is expected to perform. As other sectors like decentralised irrigation management is failing too.

Sadly, when we look at one case, we often loose to focus on the other related issues as well. Kaleidoscope was mapping Dharmasati Gandaman Primary School's case to answer "why so many children died?" (22 have survived) The quick answer is like this.

1. The school lacked first aid kit

2. Primary health care centre is 7 km away with poor connections

3. Nearest civil hospital is 50 km away

4. Patna medical college is 75 km away.

At this point there is no simple solution to world's largest school feeding programme. There should not be severely underpaid workers, become cook teachers, local players looking for a seepage in the now entitle 13000 crore funds and poisoned foods for the children. No doubt the scheme has played a great role in checking dropouts, and provided valuable aid to daily diet but installation of educational system is still far away, meanwhile the incidents like Bihar indicates increasing lacunae of the scheme in action. We will have wait for the concrete measures as told by our PM.

Lastly in the voice of Kaleidoscope's maternal uncle "earlier we used to get empty classrooms... now at least they are filled. At least we have made their parents understand the importance of preliminary education just like a balanced diet."  

Boy-I, an university examination and letting go

When Kaleidoscope immerses himself in his examination management he gets a call from a room number where a candidate appears to feel sick... Kaleidoscope along with AM, rushes there to find Boy-I crying. He has already broken a couple of pens, torn off his university admit card and registration certificate.

I
Kaleidoscope asks him "what happened?"

Boy - I: I cannot recall anything. (sobs)
K: Do you find the question hard?
B: No, I know everything but cannot recall. (Sobs)
K: Okay, take some time... would you care for some water.
B: No reply...(keeps his head on the hight bench, on the answer-script)

Kaleidoscope thinks for a while to give him some time off... He goes out and then comes back withing 15 mins to find Boy-I being in the same position.

K: (Now that K, knows the name of the Boy-I) Bo- I, come with me, you don't have to write... come with me in another room...

II

Boy-I listens to... and comes with K, and then falls on the floor. Kaleidoscope holds him and almost carries him to the first floor in Kaleidoscope's department... he runs the AC on and starts talking to Boy-I. What Kaleidoscope deciphers is that

A. Boy-I is having this problem of being unable to recall anything once he sees the question paper after his Higher Secondary examination.
B. Despite of being a poor student he has a honours course in Geography because his maternal uncle has some source in some college
C. He belongs to a poverty stricken family, his father is a farmer
D. He has faced similar problem in the last year, in consequence he had to drop out a year
E. He does not want to live anymore.

Kaleidoscope has AP, who can help him with Geography. So, AP arrives and tries to help him recall something... and he writes something.

Now, that Boy-I is ready to submit his answerscript Kaleidoscope takes his answerscript and asks for a phone number so that Boy-I can be given to a safe hand.

After giving the number Boy-I throws off his quite costly mobile phone (gifted by some elder brother), tears off pages of his geography notes and starts to take out more notes from the bag until Kaleidoscope stops him.

His maternal uncle and his father comes and Kaleidoscope narrates the story and suggests them to take Boy-I to a psychiatrist, or a counselor.

III

Yes, Boy I's father is a farmer, maternal uncle works as a wage earner. Boy-I reads, writes and attends college regularly but somehow, fails to recall in moments of pressure. Kaleidoscope perhaps will never know what happens after Boy-I leaves the college...

Developments, Displacements and "fevicol se"

Kaleidoscope is not willing to comment development discourse here. He will not discuss or debate development induced displacement. He wishes to reflect on his displacement because of much awaited development in his workplace.

The case:

Today morning a group of workers (Kaleidoscope knows the college building is getting repaired moments before fatal accidents) came and asked Kaleidoscope if he could give them kind permission to start repairing work in the department. Kaleidoscope gave it a thought, although there were hardly anything to think about, and agreed.

They started the operation and by afternoon transformed two out of three classrooms into archaeological sites. Kaleidoscope could not do anything but to take classes in the small and cozy teachers' room. His entire day had been spent on shouting to the students, who are quite reluctant to listen to what teachers speak, in a small room just to go beyond the sound of development process.

Just outside of the college building within the campus, annual sports are organised, which is more of a miking ceremony than sports per se. Therefore, when Kaleidoscope kept talking about narrative analysis, pupil kept attending "Fevicol se"

What we could and what we have:

The college authority could complete the repair work in the 40-day-long Puja vacation but they did not as PWD could not arrange it on time

The college could suspend classes for the annual sports for two to three days and could pressurise students union to complete the major events by then. It is impossible to complete such a mega event in three days time.

Hence,

Kaleidoscope is a refugee, students are refugees as well who listen to "Mere photo ko... mere photo ko seene se yaar... Chipka le saiyan Fevicol se...."

My Play Time, Our Play Time and Vanishing Spaces

A still from Ideocracy... are heading towards this?

Kaleidoscope doesn't have competitive biceps, triceps or quadriceps, yet Kaleidoscope played throughout his childhood to his early adulthood. Frequency of attending the playground had fallen sharply with age and with changes in his career status. He completely stopped playing when he finished first two years in graduation. This was quite early retirement for many of his playmates and invitation to the ground continued till his playmates got their jobs mostly in IT companies. Kaleidoscope till date often meets his playmates and discuss good old days in the playground, fights, subscription collection for purchase of play items and never ending matches.

Playtime at Urban alleyways:

While making frequent visits at the queen's native place, Kaleidoscope finds children produce the roads and alleyways as their playgrounds.

Gully cricket tournament

Cricket, badminton and even football matches are organised in the alleyways.  Kaleidoscope smiles and his hypocritical self gets a peculiar satisfaction in making judgmental comments "this is urban hangover... children have no space to play." Kaleidoscope is completely unaware about what is happening in a large part of the rural frontiers.

Playtime at not-so-rural places:

Recently, Kaleidoscope makes visits at some of the not-so-rural places in West Bengal, mostly in Bardhaman district. In the afternoon he takes his camera and makes plan to take some shots of the children at play. While he keeps searching for such moments and local heroes, he finds empty lands and only a few places cricket matches are going on. The players are not children, they are about the age of Kaleidoscope himself. Curious enough Kaleidoscope asks a few of his known villagers to get reply "children are at private (tuition) classes." Local school teachers arrange for a couple of batches in the evening session where children of the first batch has to miss the play time. The children of the second batch has to study in the play time as after the coaching class gets over they hardly have energy to continue reading for the next day.

A photograph taken in Bandoan, Purulia. What should be the road-map for these children? Western Education? or should we recommend a coupling of western education and games - their mode of understanding of nature and livelihoods?

Rahul - Kaleidoscope's maternal cousin studying in class - IX like many others of his school has lost any attraction at afternoon play sessions. Rahul and his peers say that a) television cartoons are more attractive than outdoor games, b) computer centers offer attractive video games at cheaper rate, and c) coaching classes make it difficult to play regularly, hence, there is no network among players, and they do not turn up in the afternoon.

The larger picture:

While Kaleidoscope misses the opportunity of taking photos of the playgrounds and players, he is cynical about a few more issues, first, children at not-so-rural places are becoming more alienated from the nature and natural surroundings, second, they are lacking vital lessons like their urban counterparts, like team work, leadership, co-operation, cognitive understanding of speed and distance, etc., third, they are increasingly lacking physical fitness (pardon my generalisation). While the urban jungle makes play space vanish, educational burden is making more play spaces disappear even in places where plenty of open ground awaits.