The fourth among the 17 sustainable development goals prescribed by the United Nations for the period 2015- 2030 is Quality Education. It states “Eliminate all discrimination in education” by 2030, “eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training for the vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous peoples and children in vulnerable situations.”

What have we done in our beloved country? Increasingly instead of universalizing education and making quality education available to everyone irrespective of caste, class, religion and gender, we seem to have foregrounded precisely these negative factors that consolidate selective, discriminatory education. We have not been able to address the sustainable development targets outlined by the United Nations, to any significant degree. Yet, our newly re-constituted National Education Policy 2019, has set itself commendable goals, mission and vision.

It states, “The National Education Policy 2019 provides a framework for the transformation and reinvigoration of the education system in order to respond to the requirements of fastchanging, knowledge-based societies while taking into account the diversity of the Indian people, their traditions, cultures, and languages. It seeks to ensure that human capital, the most vital form of capital that would fuel the necessary transformation, is secured and strengthened. Highest priority is accorded to the task of ensuring universal access to an education of high quality and breadth that would support India’s continued ascent, progress, and leadership on the global stage…” This is 2024.

We have six more years to go, that is till 2030, in which we can set up targets to achieve the UN SDGs, which underscore that we ensure equitable quality education for everyone willing to learn, that is provide lifelong opportunities for those eager to learn. Yet the alarming rate at which the education sector of our country, at both the state and national levels, have recently been demeaned through unprecedented scams must be addressed with urgency and determination, so that structural changes can be introduced and corruption in the domain of competitive examinations can be weeded out completely. This of course engages the tricky question, who will bell the cat. Fact-finding committees seem to drag their feet banking on the reliable fact that public memory is short.

We have also noticed that top leaders of the country often promote skill development and start-ups, ironically urging the youth not to look for jobs but become job creators. We seem to be multiplying in millions, facing the tragic plight of Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure, the young man who was denied quality education in an elite educational institution because he was poor and belonged to the working class. That was in 1895 England. We can surely do better than that in 21st century post-colonial India. Pursuit of knowledge is ignored as a primitive concept; information seems to be the preferred search obsession. So NET, NEET, and all other competitive examinations have generated the emergence of a marketplace for leaking questions, buying questions and purchasing jobs. Qualifications, merit and performance are redundant.

It is a world of brokers and fixers who seem to be dominating our education sector. If you have the money, you can buy any degree that you fancy and join any profession of your choice. This complete lack of ethics and respect for quality education has shocked the aspirational educated youth of our country leading to stress and trauma as well as the desperation to quit one’s own country and prefer to become illegal immigrants.

Students from the working class and lower middle-class homes, many first-generation learners, mostly having studied in vernacular-medium schools, find that they are trapped in an inescapable maze created by vested interests. On the other hand, the privileged youth are being seduced to study and settle abroad by parents, teachers and international agents who routinely visit private schools waxing eloquent about the facilities that universities in the first world provide.

Parents and their wards are invited to visit the campuses and are even offered free accommodation, as during summer break the hostels lie vacant. This results in humungous education loans offered by banks and other agencies, in some cases selling of land and gold for the golden opportunity to learn and earn in star-studded locations. The super rich are in a different league, for them it is about global education, international internships and transnational identities. But those who fall within the parameters of the new National Education Policy need immediate recognition, support and empathy.

The entire education system in our beloved country is crying out for an immediate and thorough revamp irrespective of profit and loss, whatever might be the target dollar economy we may be aspiring towards.

(The writer, a distinguished academician, is former Dean of Arts, Calcutta University.)