"It would be a great disappointment for me," writes Ashok (name changed), a hearing-impaired applicant to St. Stephen's, "not making it to St. Stephen's and that too because of a very marginal differential." (Email received soon after the cut-offs were announced).
"Tell us how much more should my son do to get into St. Stephen's?" wrote an anguished parent on my Facebook page almost at the same time.
Tales of woes, narratives of frustration, grumblings of incipient anger could stretch out to the crack of doom.
It is such an infelicitous expression - this 'cut-off'. Sounds gratuitously callous. Akin, perhaps, to the butcher's art. What, who are we cutting off, for God's sake?
Our children, some of the brightest, earnest, keenest.
We can, perhaps, afford to be a little more humane in our terminology. Shall we cut out 'cut-off' in favour of an Americanism - "bottom-line"- overlooking, for mercy's sake, its bumptious banality?
I was groping for an image for this infamous and ever-ascending 'cut-off' (herein after termed 'bottom-lines'). Especially because each year many sound surprised that 'bottom-lines' continue to rise. Well, it could be like this. It is in the nature of water to flow from a higher to a lower level. But water ascends uphill if pumped. We overlook the pumping process (that remains hidden) and target the strange, unnatural behavior of water in going uphill. We look surprised. Even indignant.
Now to the bare facts.
Yes, 'bottom-lines' have risen in St. Stephens this year. Consider a comparison with the levels in 2014.
In economics, the increase is marginal as compared to the levels in 2014. There is only a .5 per cent increase vis-a-vis the commerce stream. All other norms remain the same.
English, I know, is in the news, though the extent of increase is exaggerated. There is a .5 per cent increase for the science stream, one per cent increase for the commerce stream and no increase for humanities.
In History there is a 1 per cent increase each for all three streams. Philosophy has registered the highest increase. There is a 1.25 per cent increase in the Science stream and 1.75 per cent in the humanities stream, whereas the bar has come down by .25 per cent for the Commerce stream. The shifts in Mathematics, Physics and Chemistry are marginal.
It is obvious that while the bar has nearly kissed the ceiling, the extent of increase is both marginal and inevitable, under the circumstances.
St. Stephen's is a comparatively small institution. The best from around the country aspire to study in the College. As years go by, this craze seems only to increase. So, our "bottom-lines" may not necessarily be typical. But they still highlight certain issues.
1. The issue of demand-and-supply. For all the pious professions made from time to time by those who matter, this country still lacks the political will and sincerity of purpose to meet the exponentially growing educational aspirations of our youth. The fact that the enrolment ratio is still less than nine per cent should be deemed a national embarrassment. When you have room only for nine per cent of those who finish Class 12, you subject students from their early years in school to the anxiety of having to outperform in order to find a foothold in the rarified sphere of higher education. As a result, thanks also to the manner of assessment by school boards, they produce unearthly marks; making marks, in the process, virtually meaningless. So 'bottom-lines' will keep going up. Soon we will have to invent something higher than 100 per cent and win a Nobel in the process.
One wonders what is happening to the thousands of crores the Government has collected as education cess. If we do not have enough colleges for a population of 1.25 billion, it is surely not because we do not have resources. I understand that the problem the Human Resource Development Ministry is facing is to decide what to do with the huge amounts at its disposal, especially under the head of education cess.
2. The problem of quality. The agony that I am condemned to witness, year after year, of those who cannot make it to St. Stephen's - several applicants break down and weep inconsolably - is as much because of quality as of quantity. I have no hesitation in saying that the domain of higher education (here I refer largely to under-graduate education) is in a lamentable mess. Mediocrity stifles the promise of India in our class rooms. Worse than mediocrity is teacher truancy. Far worse, is the mendacity of managements. The environment that prevails, as a result, in educational institutions around the country is hardly conducive to learning. It is this, for example, that makes St. Stephen's weep at the time of admissions, for candidates from all over the country who pitch their hopes on this tiny institution.
3. The problem of aptitude. What, if any, is the correlation between the aptitude of a candidate and the marks scored by him/her is a matter of some puzzlement. Fortunately, the Supreme Court granted St. Stephen's the right to have its own admission procedure. So, we conduct interviews and do this part of our work with utmost earnestness. Interviews invariably highlight the scandalous discrepancies between Boards and even between candidates from the same Board. We denounce learning by rote, but design assessment formats only to encourage and reward the same. It is a rare student who, in the course of the interview, can even attempt to apply an idea to a context and say a word of two about it. The thinking ability is so under-developed! General awareness is at an all-time low. The "pump" that sends the water of "bottom-line" uphill is our school system, driven by a latent intent to 'filter out' students through schooling so that higher education becomes a Darwinian jungle for the survival of the luckiest.
It is pointless, hence, to look at the so-called 'bottom-lines' in isolation from the larger context. It is hypocritical to keep lamenting year after year, like some sort of secular ritual, the malicious propensity of these apparently animistic bottom-lines to keep rising as though they have some atavistic scores to settle with the innocent school graduates. For God's sake, open colleges in adequate numbers. For our children's sake make them good enough to study in. Let us reduce the burden on our little children in schools. Let them have something that, in later times, they may be able to recall as their 'childhood'.
Bottom-lines are not the issue. A vision for the nation is the issue. Love for our children is the issue. Justice for our youth is the issue. A little more of honesty for ourselves is the issue. Jai Hind.
(The author is Principal St. Stephen's who is, de facto, the foremost victim of the so-called "cut-offs".)Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.