The Government could say that FUTA (Federation of University
Teachers’ Associations) inflated the numbers.
They could say that NGO money frilled it. They could say that lecturers and others were
pawns or were complicit in a sinister political game.
Analysts could say that the demands are unjust or else
indicative of infantile analytical ability which itself subverts the agitation
and robs it of moral authority. Few, it
could be said, would have understood what the ‘6%’ slogan signified, even if a
cogent argument around that figure could be made.
Some might say, on the lines of that old adage, ‘no taxation
without representation’, that ‘rights without responsibility’ and ‘free
education without moral obligation to return the favor to society’ just do not
make sense.
A lot more indeed has been said about the long march
organized by FUTA from Galle to Colombo last week. For example, that just as it was about ‘state
education’ and ‘saving’ of the same, it was also an avenue to express
frustration, anger, fear and such regarding what the Government has been and
has not being doing over the past several years.
Times have changed since this country went through ‘1971’
and ‘1988-89’ and what those years signify.
A few decades ago an undergraduate who owned a push bicycle might have
been called ‘privileged’. Later, there
were scooters and motorcycles. Today some come to campus by car. Many have laptops. They have sophisticated cameras too. The FUTA campaign is all over Facebook. Blogs dedicated to the struggle or else which
have adopted it as something that warrants daily comment have mushroomed.
Does all this mean that the general population has somehow
been yanked out or has upped itself out of endemic poverty? Does it mean that those who benefit from free
education must always look poor? No. The
truth is that although things don’t trickle down the way some economics would
like us to believe they would, things have got better at the bottom. This does not mean that the ‘top’ has
idled. The truth is that gaps have
widened. Costs have soared. Just because an undergraduate rides a
motorcycle or wields a camcorder or hammers out status updates about an
agitation campaign on Facebook, this does not mean that higher education costs
have come down or that they have become affordable to the vast majority of the
population somehow.
It’s there in the faces of those who braved the weather and
the real possibility of having their heads bashed in by thugs deployed by
ruling party politicians or even by the Police.
It is there somewhere in the enthusiasm and festivity that somehow layer
themselves over protests. Just because
protests have a ‘fun’ element, this does not mean that they are not serious. It
does not mean that those who marched are dumb.
It does not mean that the fuel that made them place one foot in front of
another, mile after mile, hour after hour, was not made of both fear and
hope.
While it is easy to dismiss FUTA and easier still to scoff
at or refute slogan and statement, there can be no doubt at all that the
Government does not have vision, strategy or even a set of skeletal slogans
that can pass off for coherent procedure when it comes to education. While overall allocation for education has
gone up, this hasn’t been accompanied by or derived from a comprehensive policy
on human resource development that is linked to overall economic policy. Indeed, what passes for ‘development policy’
is unabashed gleanings from IMF policy directives, laced of course with a lot
of nationalist rhetoric. Those
directives are patently anti-poor or at best designed to toss out just enough
tidbits to keep insurrection at bay.
Now it is hard to argue that increasing allocations will
automatically translate into pushing education in the right direction unless
the entire system is overhauled and infused with some kind of rationality with
social justice framing the exercise.
However, it is the very absence of reason in policy formulation that
buttresses the argument that more money is better than less (and less and
less).
This country’s human resource crisis can be traced back to
the 150,000 to 200,000 young persons who died during the two insurrections
mentioned above and the three decades long conflict. That ‘loss’ manifests itself everywhere, but
perhaps nowhere as naked as it is shown in the kinds of people who make it to
Parliament. If FUTA looks weak, that too
is a part product of the above decimation.
Consistent refusal to address this fundamental issue in any meaningful
manner by successive governments only tends to create conditions for other such
showdowns and an exacerbation of the problem on account of the inevitable
losses.
People are falling out.
That’s obvious. And politicians
really don’t give a damn, not those in power and not those who aspire to hold
office. After all, what goes as
‘education’ policy today is the blue version of the green ‘White Paper’ on the
subject that Ranil Wickremesinghe came up with thirty years ago. It is slanted in favor of the
privileged. True, some from the villages
will (as they always have) swing things their way, but that’s what’s called
exception.
State education needs to be reformed. Education needs to be reformed. Neither should be done in a way that people
get left behind. The sad truth is that
people have always got left behind and the current thinking of the regime
doesn’t have a clue about getting them on board and worse doesn’t seem to care
either!
There is fear. It is
written in the faces of many who marched or came for the march-end rally. This is because education still is the only
(outside) chance of climbing out of poverty, dispossession and
humiliation. Perhaps those who benefit
have not appreciated and have not paid their debts in full or part, but that
does not mean that it should be scrapped or downsized.
Speaking strictly for myself, I can say without hesitation
that I owe free education a debt that I can only strive to repay. I am acutely conscious of the fact that
whatever I do there will not come a point when I can tell myself ‘I’ve paid in
full’ and be able to sleep well.
The Government might say that it does not intend to touch
‘free education’. The signs however are
ominous, even if one brushes off FUTA numbers as being incorrect and inflated
for protest-efficacy. Schools being
closed are just one indication. Dropout rates increasing must say
something. There’s insanity in
priority. Hope is running out. Fear is taking over.
Let me repeat. Knowledge
is The Doorway that opens out to the avenue that takes a people out of
poverty. That was Lalith
Aluthmudali. It is being shut. For many.
There is a moral obligation on the part of every individual who
benefitted from state education to take a stand. For this you need not stand with FUTA. You need to stand on the conscious
acknowledgment of what made you and who made you what you are. If money was not invested with
circumspection, that’s a different matter.
The answer is not to withdraw the funds or systematically cut the
allocation in terms of percentage distribution.
Let me repeat. If
this country came from nowhere to somewhere, free education had a lot to do
with it. IF this country is to go from
here to a more robust and wholesome ‘there’, then education is key. It cannot be turned into a luxury in any
way. Not by denying access to better
institutions and not be restricting popular courses to a privileged few. Tidbits will help tide over crisis, but they
won’t stop insurrection.
There were feet that made that march. They were not soft. The faces were lined with the hard lessons of
a harsh struggle to get by. They have a
point. They have a grievance. They have
fear. They are the sons and daughters of
our soil. They gave their all to making
this country what it is. It is their
villages that are dotted with the graves of those who gave their lives to
eradicate terrorism, for example. They
have already paid for the education their children are not receiving and may
not receive. That’s humiliation and
ingratitude. Of the entire nation and
especially the privileged.
Stand with FUTA if you must, stand along if you will. Stand.
I believe it is a moral obligation.
DISCLAIMER: The photographs are by Kalpa Rajapaksha, who, while agreeing with some of the points in the article, does not necessarily agree with everything I've written. Kalpa, very kindly allowed me to use the photographs
0 comments:
Post a Comment