The following was published to vent my objection against the Honourable Minister of HRD,GOVERNMENT OF INDIA:
The Editor
The Statesman
Kolkata
Dear Sir
Reading your Editorial,Portals of IITs,dated 21 October,I cannot help avowing, that it has been a very teasing experience for me.How could you nod to HRD minister Mr Kapil Sibal’s proposal of “80% as IIT qualifier”?You should have gauged that his was a ditransitive proposal,not two objects of course, but two objectives.Mr Sibal’s first objective cannot be,as you suggested”The tightening at the entry level can only be the first step.”Mr Sibal’s first concern is tactical disapproval of”teaching shops”.I would remind the Honourable Minister that such”shops”had there been in the past and both too long and not much long ago, of course not so nation-wide and not so multi-partnered as they are now.How much did Aristotle charge to privately tutor King Alexander?Four hundred talents,equal in modern purchasing power to about $7,000,000.Shelley spent pounds to learn Latin under a Welsh clergyman.Did the Sanskrit Pundit of Madras(now Chennai)teach our Epic Poet Madhusudan Dutta gratis?Raja Rammohan spent how much we do not know in taking lessons in Subhankari and Mahanirvantantra from Hariharananda Vamachari.Even Mahatma Gandhi was privately tutored in spoken English by one Dr Mehta in England.For two years,from 1872 to 1874,on withdrawal from Chakraberia Children’s School,Sir Ashutosh sat under a private tutor.Private tuitions were all our,the doyen of modern Bengali literature,Buddhadev Bose could sustain by till he got a lecturer’s job at Ripon(now Surendranath)College.The Exchange(!) principle has been the same all over in in distance of time and geography:Give them notes who give you notes.
Our Honourable HRD minister demands to be reminded of a very close accompanying issue in this regard.To effect a far wider coaching abroad,Pan Revision Aids,Coles Notes,Methuen Study-Aid Series,York Notes,not to attempt a complete list,have been system-authorized carry-home Edu-packs for long in many a country,particularly in England.Not avoiding this “road not taken” our Harinath De, the linguist-cum- polyglot,the first Indian to succeed Mr Macfarlane in the chair of Director,Imperial(now National)Library and the first to translate our National Anthem Bande Mataram(“Hail Holy Mother” etc.) in as early as in 1905,brought out a note on Golden Treasury.Dr S C Sengupta,a scholar and teacher extraordinary in every branch of literature,should not have”questions with hints for answers”as part of his banner for Shakespeare editions,published by A Mukherjee & co.What about John Broadbent’s Paradise Lost,Books 1 and 2!There is this “risk”report:”In the face of the syllabus-heavy for many subjects-`adventures of ideas’in wider fields,and the time-consuming operations of developing independence of thought…will be undertaken at`risk’”.Macmillan Casebook Series claims to”make available to undergraduate and graduate students distinguished work which otherwise tends to be lost in the over-stocked book lists”.What about the great Berdoe’s The Browning Cyclopaedia”I have not written for the`learned’,but for the people at large?”
Our HRD minister speaks volumes about the intellect expected of IIT aspirants.But it was he who had,not much long ago,wanted to abolish the pass-out examinations for our plus twelve students.This time he expects the latter to have to their credit minimum 80-85 per cent as just IIT-application-filling qualification.What a self contradiction!What a mess!With all my native humility I would only ask him:What’s wrong if one takes the fly-over, instead of pursuing the jammed roads to timely reach one’s destination?After all time is money,patience is money. My last two words.Judges ought to cast a severe eye upon the crime,but a merciful eye upon the person.And,where the wine-press is hard-wrought,it yields a harsh wine,that tastes of the grape-stone.
Thanking you
With warm regards
Yours sincerely
Adhip Ghosh
BL 124 Sector 2
Salt Lake
Kolkata
- March 3, 2010 10:21 pm
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