When education does not bear fruit...

I have been quite disturbed since the Yakub hanging. Not because of empathy to his family or trying to be in the shoes of a man who was hanged in disgrace, but because his qualifications as certified Chartered Account came hitting over and over again. That's not a casual line of expertise. Only a keen mind that's good at observation, mathematics, logic and general thinking abilities can scrape through those tough exams. Yakub had made it and yet he dind't.

He could have been anything he wanted to be. Own a private practice, work for a comfy government office, hold a senior chair in Corporate India, raise his children with pride, and bring his family glory in his time . But he took that education, to complete deviation. Here stands yet another example of  Religion speaking louder than the humble voice of sound Education. The growing scary trend of engineers, doctors, now CA's turing terrorists and mass murders is astounding. It is such a loss to the country, to people, to competitive times when specialization seats are taken by those who have no intention to bring worth and contribution to mankind with that learning.

Somehow my mind wandered to the teachers and professors who met a young Yakub in university hallways and classrooms. Who shared their knowledge, debated with him hoping to sharpen his mind and give him an edge....not knowing someday he will mastermind the Mumbai bombings that will kill 257 people and cripple 1500 or more. Those teachers, whereever they are, would have cursed themselves for being instrumental in giving him the calibre to think, for having fueled a fire that will bring a city down in 1993. When children err - parents weep, when students take to crime - teachers cringe.  It's sad our over spiced up conscience holds us responsibile for what others turn out to be. And then there are those for whom the C of concienc doesn't seem to have crossed within 5 km radius of them. Education changes a man forever and i believe in the power of the system still. Maybe it does not work on those who were sleeping in the moral science classes though.

Each of us has a choice - to use our education to up our lives and those we live with or destroy life in general. In each of us sits a creator and destroyer and its only education influenced logical pragmatism and a healthy attachment to religion that helps sustain that balance. Anything that's too much only can hurt.

India has seat reservations for all kinds of categories imaginable. But in my view apart from enterance tests, interviews , we also need to add another filter - Intent in life. We ought to understand the individual intent, motivation, passion, energizer and confirm if they are deserving of such prized seats. Those over influenced by any other form of concept other than education itself, will only be seat wasters. If only psychometric tool designers could spend some time devising a Tool to check the Orientation and Influence factors that govern the thinking of each applicant, then specialized study seats will go to the most deserving.  Inplace of ridiculous "Reservations "...we could finally have a scientific Apptitude test, that weeds out time wasters and picks only those who will assume seats to give back to the community or at the least live their lives with dignity.

Truth is - that's an Utopian idea. There will be several loop holes that question how rigged it can get forgetting that everything is rigged anyway in its current state. Funny how a new ideas will always be surgically ripped to be postmortemed when current processes bleeds. Its been the way of the world and at best a pen can scribe the pain of such losses .... then stand back and witness some more.