Revisiting Primary Education and Corruption.

Sometime back primary education in India became a fundamental right. Correspondingly, proving education to a child up to 14 years of age became a fundamental duty of every parent. Today, education is seen in our society as a means by which any one can change his or her status in a very short span of time. In fact, in one generation itself a child with education can take his family from rags to riches, from no one to someone special. For example, P. C. Alexander became a union power secretary during the regime of Indira Gandhi, he actually spent his child hood in a village without power, our all time favorite ex-president of India A. P. J. Abdul Kalam used to sell newspapers in his school days. One can easily come across the news that a son of a vegetable seller, after clearing the civil services examination reaches to the corridors of power. These may be the specific examples, but, in general also we can easily prove that education of a child can completely transform the destination of his or her family.

However, there is a hidden monster in this. This monster lies in the fact of increasing commercialization of our education. By ‘Commercialization of Education’ I do not mean only the profit motive of private schools. These days, people measure ones education in terms of the perks one get. Salary of a graduate from IIM become news and often printed in bold and large font size. What should be a secret affair between the recruiter and the recruit actually becomes an advertisement for both. I am not against ones expectation of economical upliftment from education. But, too much obsession with this economical aspect creates distortions in society. Corruption, which is increasingly becoming a white collar crime is one such distortion.

Recent cases of corruption and misappropriation of money like in management of games, allocation of spectrum, frauds in a private multinational bank involves higher officials of the organizations. Being at higher level of organizational hierarchy, they know and understand rules and regulations very well that it is just a cake walk for them to manipulate them. These are the people who are already blessed with enough financial resources and living a life, which a common man can’t even imagine. What could be the reason behind there deviance? I can find only one reason and that is obsession for more and more money or in a single word ‘GREED’.

But, again a question comes in our mind, what could be the cause of this greed. After thinking a lot about the probable cause behind it I can figure out only one reason and that is absence of values and ethics in ones conduct in the professional affairs. Their goal of having more and more become too important that they do not care about the means they pursue to achieve them. And, I think this happens because from the childhood itself they were not given those values and ethics. They involve themselves in a rat race and even destroy their family bonds.

I believe, the problem of today's institutionalized corruption cannot be overcome without the strengthening of values and ethics from the childhood itself. By stressing on this aspect in primary education a change can be expected from within. It’s a process of developing ones persona, not just personality. And responsibility for this lies equally on schools, media and more importantly on parents. This seems to me an only solution to overcome the challenge of present day institutionalized corruption especially, in the environment of consumerism, where people live life on credit cards!

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