A powerful weapon!

This one question started to bother me day in and day out. What is education in real? I mean, lot of people question themselves through their courses. Some fight it out, some drop out, some do enjoy, but my question today is how many of us can really derive a leverage from it. Yes, people do get jobs passing out of a university, but that’s not the leverage I am talking about here. It is becoming more evident these days to me that it is those learning that cannot be quantified in a grade sheet that will matter the most. Not because I decided to spend my time inside a forest with people instead of getting a Master’s degree. The civic issues around are only increasing. I am not being cynical here. I am in awe of all those people who are onto the job in real to tackle them to the roots. They are an amazing set of people with intent and a direction. I know some of them very personally. However the following discourse is not about them. It is about those set of people with intent and who have no direction. It is about to create that intent and give a direction to empower a whole new generation of citizens into problem solvers.

Well, there has already been a lot of talk on the government being open to its people in its policy formulation. Public policy is a field of research. The universities today are helping create practitioners and also scholars in public policy and management. We have highly motivated bureaucrats, at least a handful of them. There are a lot of voluntary organizations working in that space. There is however one sector that is not empowered enough to tackle civic issues. Them, citizens! Us! So where should we really start on this. Going through a few notes of mine I come to realize how ill-informed I was before. And one thing became clear that Public policy is not meant to be understood by the practitioners only.

After having said that, my life really starts becoming tough. You see, it takes just language to talk about an issue. It is only when we get down trying to solve a problem will the void start to show up; which is precisely why I started to speak about education upfront. Off late I am hitting a few books trying to understand certain things. I am amazed at the fact that there is a theory or more for anything you can think of in this world today, which means to say, the people before us have not sat quietly. And so the onus is clearly on us to take this forward. Of course not theorize further, but use them to provide ourselves a starting point to our work. Although it seems very boring to sit for hours and study all the theories on public administration, I feel it is extremely important. It gives you such a brilliant perspective about the society you are living in.

The social studies we have studied in school helped us get good grades in History, Geography and Political and Economic Sciences. Well, to share a personal experience with you, I have had an excellent teacher in higher primary and middle school who explained to us so beautifully about the kingdoms and increased the excitement in drawing and reading maps. The best was reading a physical map but for me now, and my work the political maps seem more relevant. However it was great fun understanding them. I loved understanding civics as a subject as much as I hated history remembering the tenure of various kings. But now I am not able to rule that out. Most of our social issues today have a lot of strings attached still to all those things we studied in a history class. I love the forests, which means I greatly respect the soil. Geography teaches the science behind them and a lot of nature’s behavior. Ideally it should help us connect more to nature, but we are somehow evidently pushing away from it. Learnt properly, social studies gives you the most relevant information passing out of school.

Especially in our country (I can at least be sure of my place, Bangalore) that social studies is treated as just a subject that shows up in a grade sheet and that it passes by without notice. Think about it, it is the only opportunity we get to learn in a structured way about our possible engagements in this world living inside the society we have all created for ourselves. All that we have created were not existent. All that is created therefore is not established but is evolving and so it does. And there lies an opportunity to work towards a more prosperous evolution. In my case and most of my friends we are still lost in understanding our ecosystem properly; forget working towards its betterment. There is a clear disconnect somewhere. It is not evident as we are not concerned about the gaps. It doesn’t really affect you upfront even if you remain ignorant about the gaps. You can still have a life.

The question however is, can that life be good? I am telling, this gap can be bridged. The evolution into a prosperous society is possible. At least I am sure of the first step towards it. What can possibly stop today to work on their interests in life? Our country has come through a lot of difficult times to be able to help its people develop economic safety nets to their capacities and under 70 years from independence it is able to help at least a few people follow their passion. You come to Bangalore and you will understand what I am talking here. The startup sector in India today is worth everything you have. I mean an investment of over 1.43 billion dollars in 2015 alone and we still have 5 more days to be done with this year. Speaking of which it is time we start believing that we can have executable solutions to the most complex social problems. It is time to get educated for real. As Nelson Mandela says, "Education is the most powerful weapon which can be used to change the world". It is time to get back to work.