Indian Education: Separating System from Products

Earlier today, I came across this post on the state of education in St. Stephen's College in particular, and India in general. I had first read it nearly three years ago, in the midst of preparing my application for the Rhodes Scholarship. I cannot recollect what emotions it had stirred within me, but do clearly remember my curiosity about who the professor referred to in the article was. I then also read this response by Saattvic, which is what prompted me to message him, and that was the beginning of a valuable friendship. Three years later, having completed an M.Phil. from Oxford, having worked in London for substantial periods of time and having paid taxes (does that entitle me to have an opinion?), I can possibly reflect on my time in India, and how it set me up (or not) for the world out there. I cannot but whole-heartedly agree with Thane's point that the Indian education system is not working. Thane rues the lack of 'inquisitive magnetism' among Indian students, the 'cookie cutter' approach to foreign applications and the 'depressing epiphany' of realising that the Indian student only wants to know what to copy next. I believe there can be little debate about the fact that the Indian education system is not working. However, my point of departure from Thane's argument is that I believe that the education system is not working because it does not know what it is working towards. It is trying to cater to basic educational needs of the masses, while pretending to promote innovation at the same time. Which is what, I believe, leaves the system in the kind of soup that we are in. 

Does that mean I believe that the product coming out of the system is sub-par? Absolutely not. My argument is that this education machine is churning out products - good or bad - but has little role in shaping the nature of the product. I was recently at a discussion with my peers in Rhodes House, and heard the American scholars, in particular, lament about the lack of mentorship in Oxford. I was amazed, and I said it in as many words, because I believed I had access to significantly more mentorship at Oxford than I had ever had (or have needed). The point I am making is this (and Einstein unfortunately beat me to it) - if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid. Similarly, if you judge an Indian student by her ability to write an essay for an Ivy League, you will quite likely be disappointed. But put that Indian student in a situation where she does what she's passionate about, and I'm sure she'll do well. I fail to see how the Indian students' penchant for the professors' dictation (as per Thane) is any different from the Americans' for academic support. There exists an Indian system and an American system, and all the others, and I would be wary of extending the flaws of the system to the products of the system - the students themselves!

In my experience, I have found Indian students particularly enterprising. Many of us adopt a design-to-value approach to academics - for example, when I was forced to study Macroeconomics in the first year of my degree at Oxford (despite having an unambiguous interest in microeconometrics), I simply studied enough to score well. Subsequently, when faced with subjects that I enjoyed in the second year, I did significantly better. Don't get me wrong - I do believe that the Indian student cares greatly about her academic performance. But our endearingly flawed system has taught us to distinguish between learning and academics (sigh) and I believe that it provides an opportunity for us to be less wedded to our academic interests. Some utilise that opportunity, while others don't; and that is a problem that any system - no matter how well designed - will have.

Thane's article offends me slightly because it makes very sweeping statements without much of a fact base. Of course, I understand that he had no option, given that such statistics either do not exist, or are not readily available. I would have preferred a more nuanced approach, but perhaps that makes articles less engaging. I will therefore respond to those generalisations with less-than-rigorous arguments of my own. Firstly, about the substitution of the 'useless Indian liberal arts degrees' with 'real ones' in the west. I was, unfortunately, the only member of my class with an undergraduate degree from India, and I must say I have done reasonably well for myself. Moreover, it seems to me that the percentage is non-lower among Indian Rhodes scholars than Rhodes scholars in general. To me, therefore, the 'best Indian minds' (however defined) are performing equally well academically. This is not a self-congratulatory rant. It is important because, much like Einstein's fish - I was told that I cannot do well in Oxford because I came from an inadequate system. Not true.

Saattvic makes the point about the distinction between the learning cultures in the East and the West. He then lists some challenges with the latter. I would add to it. My experience with students of the Western systems (in the context of the MPhil and Rhodes House) was the expansiveness of their thoughts. I would often talk to them, and wonder why they would choose to use more (and difficult) words to explain concepts that seemed so simple to me. My hypothesis is that they grew up in a system where 'intellectual curiosity' dictated that they engage with the content of their problem very deeply (or simply, that my sample was biased due to the inclusion of Rhodes scholars). The Indian system, I would like to believe, dictates that one addresses the issue and moves on to the next problem. Both have their places. To posit one as intrinsically superior to another can be, in my opinion, reflective of a Euro-centric world view that dismisses something different, rather than engage it to understand its merits.

None of what I wrote here is an endorsement of the Indian educational system. It would be difficult for me to find the (intended) merits of the system. But that doesn't blind me to the merit of the students emerging from this system, or to the cultural intricacies and context of the system. I believe that all of us should mould the system in the ways we feel best. For me, it took two forms. One is my belief in peer-to-peer education as a means to overcome challenges in the educational system (American or India). This lead to my engagement with the fantastic initiative, EurekaWow, and a youtube channel with video lectures on econometrics. Secondly, I was equally concerned by the average Indian students' inability to summarize their life with the skill that those in the west possess. Therefore, I started Absolute Interview to provide a 'cookie clutter' solution (a set of do's and dont's) and one where I invited and reviewed CVs of students from across the country. All of this not because I believe that the 'ability to summarize' is intrinsically valuable, but because I know that the labour market values it, and I would rather that the average Indian student have a 'design-to-value' solution to it than not.

I believe we can do better that critize. We can learn, and then adopt the practices that work best for us. Much will be dictated by the system we grew up in, but a lot will depend on our individual personalities. I found that the Oxford MPhil (with 3-5 exams a year) worked quite well for me (both in terms of learning and lifestyle), but I can easily imagine another person for whom the American system (with lots of supervision) or the Indian one (with lots of examinations, perhaps) works better. All I would guard against is derision - one that is equally applicable to an American judging the Indian system as it is to a St. Stephen's graduate judging one from the Uttar Pradesh hinterland. It is incumbent upon us, the privileged few who are propped up by the existing (labour market) system, to make this system work for those who aren't its natural participants. Let them not be Einstein's fish, please!

Two Years @ Oxford

Last year after my first year exam results, I posted about how the entire year had been an experiment in 'letting go' of the compelling need to perform well academically. The second year was a continuation, and intensification, of the experiment. I engaged with life, and with academics, in a way that I haven't done earlier - travelled a fair bit, started going to the gym, perfected some of my recipes and tried my hand at others (gobi manchurian!). Three days back, my results came out and I seem to have scored significantly better than last year. At the end of this journey at Oxford, it is therefore quite natural to ask what the last two years mean to me?

What I take out of these two years is a better understanding of who I am. I'll give a short example. When I came to St. Stephen's, some of my friends would refer to me as 'DT', an abbreviation for Delhi Topper. For me, it was easy to let the noise of my academic achievements drown out who I am. I believe that would be the case with many other people. We probably see the symptoms, and confuse that with the underlying cause. For the last several years, I was told that I'm a smart guy. Maybe. Maybe not. I saw a steep ascent in my academic performance starting in the late 2000s, but I don't see why I wouldn't see a decline (steep or gentle) later. But there are other things that have remained fairly constant, and I got a better understanding of those things while at Oxford. For example, I now think equanimity is one of my core features. There is an inherent 'mean-reversion' tendency in my emotions. Whether I am sad or happy, I tend to maintain roughly the same demeanour. I don't characterise this as a strength or weakness, just a feature of who I am.

Through these two years, in a context where my past achievements meant very little to my (far more distinguished) peer group, I got to see how people perceived me. A friend pulled me aside on the last evening at Rhodes House, and said to me that he saw many distinguished people in the room, but what he appreciated most about me was my goodness. That's a sentiment many of my closest friends here seem to have shared. In contrast, at St. Stephen's, arrogance was a word that I often heard, and maybe for good reason (the haughtiness of youth!). Of course, 'good' is a very big word and I'm not sure either I or many of them comprehend all its facets, but there are some aspects of goodness that I have noticed in my behaviour. One, for example, is compassion. I believe that violence (physical, mental, verbal or emotional) can only come out of a fundamental imbalance in power. I now increasingly see people as genuine peers - neither superior nor inferior - and that has meant that I am unable to inflict any form of violence on them. Which now dictates my style (or idea) of leadership, one of a genuine partnership and equality. One where leadership is not a privilege, but a moral obligation. I am looking forward to implementing these ideas in the real world soon, and hopefully they will prove to be robust.

Why all of this is important is that once I have a good understanding of who I am, or what my tendencies are, I can build my life around that. For example, I have been often been able to lead a very disciplined life because of this equanimity. There are days when I am working very hard for no apparent reasons, and some days when I am not working hard despite an approaching exam. My emotions in both cases aren't very different, which therefore allows me to front-load a lot of my work. This last term, I front-loaded much of my exam preparation, starting as early as March, and then kept taking breaks as I approached the examinations (including a trip to breath-takingly beautiful Iceland).

The last two years have pushed and pulled me in various ways. I came to Oxford, sailed smoothly for a while, then had a major crisis, emerged from that, then had a prolonged period of bliss, had another crash and finally ended in a bit of a redemption. These challenges intensified an ongoing process of reflection and, by often reducing me to nothingness, helped me see more clearly. The ebb and flow of life will continue forever, and if I wait to live my life 'fully' tomorrow, that tomorrow will never come. So I chose, instead, to live a little bit of my life everyday, and perhaps one day I will look back at these bits and say that it was a life well lived!

Hillary 2016

One fine day in the middle of February, I starting working on my thesis one afternoon. At some point later in the day, I realised I was sitting in a dark room working away on my laptop. I can't recollect being so (voluntarily) consumed by anything in the recent past. Now that I try to think of what the last two months meant to me, I would say it was re-discovering my past, and preparing for the future.

In the last two months, I learnt a lot about risk. The fundamental risk I have been struggling with is the one associated with leaving behind what you're good at, to look for newer pastures. Over the years in school and college, I learnt to be good at a particular thing, and that has been immensely helpful in getting me to Oxford and all the wonderful opportunities. But what worked back then might not work anymore. Perhaps, to take my life and career from here on, in the direction that I want it to go in, will need a new set of skills and priorities. Therein lies the fear. In trying to reach out, in being 'greedy', will I lose out on what I had already earned?

At the Rhodes Retreat at the end of term, I had a eureka moment when asked a question about what we would like to do in a world where I didn't have to worry about money at all. We were then quizzed about what we looked for in a job, and finally about the role of money. I realised how whatever I had done, and whatever I aspired to do, had a number of characteristics in common. What money seemed to be doing in my life plans was to increase my risk appetite! All these years, I have let my intuition guide critical career decisions. I finally got some insight into what that intuition is. Somewhere within me is a person who loves to learn, take risks and create things. What dense layers I have built around that care!

Looking within was another theme emerging out of last term. Unlike much of my time at Oxford, I barely ventured out of my room. I used that solitude to think more about life, happiness and my role in the world. In my relationships, I experimented with my own feelings - and, trust me, that is the hardest thing I have done! Self-awareness, I realised, gives me tremendous strength, not least because a self-aware individual is also an attractive individual. Of course, self - awareness is not a binary, and there are varying degrees - hopefully I have crossed a few.

Racism

Yesterday, I watched a video about the idea of India, partition and the history of Balochistan. It made me think more about something I've been pondering about, i.e. India as a nation versus India as a culture, and how I should deal with the two. However, there was an off-hand comment he made at the end which caught my attention - 'in the two months I have lived in India, I have seen every man who can shout at a poor man exercise his power.' This is something I have encountered repeatedly. The stereotype of Asian hierarchy apart, our society has so many layers - economic, caste, linguistic, racial - that slice and dice our population in different ways. There have been times when I have, in fact, felt castigated by my colleagues due to my refusal (or inability?) to exercise that power to shout at those 'poorer' than me. Not to say that I'm free of this ill - while I probably do not let economic status dictate my behaviour towards another individual, I probably let academic and intellectual  differences (both a function of my parents' economic status) thrive. But the more I think about it, the more it seems to me that these are all excuses to protect status quo. To protect the privileges that we have come to accumulate.

This phenomenon can also be seen when we talk about racism. It is easy for us to say "we're not racist" when we are encountered with people who talk like us, wear clothes like we do, listen to the same music, think similarly about issues - basically they're our reflection in another skin. However, how many of us are willing to embrace the cultural and social differences between countries and races? How many are willing to un-learn what they've been taught so that they can fully understand another culture? How many are willing to display the level of humility required to engage in an honest conversation about things that cultures and races do not agree about?

Racism, to me, is born out of two primitive human needs - the self-preservation I talked about earlier, and ambiguity aversion. We tend to feel more comfortable around things that look and sound like us. Therefore, to an extent it is 'natural' and some may argue even 'justified.' After all, by increasing 'trust' between members of the same community/race, it may help increase economic opportunities within that group that then spill over to another group. However, the flipside is that people outside the group that started out with privileges will almost certainly have access to only a limited set of economic and social opportunities. The question I struggle with is this - do we spend our energy fighting something that is natural (and therefore requires more energy to keep away from this 'natural equilibrium') or do we use our energy to improve what is the second-best outcome in this context?

I tend to lean towards the second, because I view racism in this bigger context of the 'tyranny of the privileged.' Also, economic deprivation resonates more strongly with me than racial discrimination. I wrote my Rhodes application on the idea of 'equality of opportunities', and I still view that as something I need to work towards. Of course, race and other factors are correlated with access to opportunities, but I want to look at the structural problems causing accumulation within one group, rather than ascribing it to simply racism. I end by remembering Gandhi's talisman, which was the target of many jokes when we were in school. However, as one of Gandhi's last notes, it reflects the crystallisation of his thoughts. My actions need to be driven by how they affect the poor, because as the winner of a lottery, I see little reason to make decisions in a vacuum.

Those old friends

"What did you miss most about India?", my friend Alice asked me while I was showing her around Delhi. The question had occupied my mind earlier that day. I had spent almost two weeks in India, and it became increasingly obvious to me what I had missed. Had I been asked the question before the vacation, I would have drawn a blank. Living comfortably in Oxford, making good food and enjoying life with lots of friends, nothing seemed amiss. I didn't realise what I was missing, till I came back to it.

Over the last year, I had become so engrossed in my life in Oxford that I tended to ignore the relations I had formed back here in India. And yet when I came back, I found them intact. The warmth and generosity of my friends astonished me. It seemed like yesterday once again - all of us had a few more battle scars, but we still seem to care for each other like we did earlier. I also rediscovered myself. The layers of caution and politeness I had built around myself - which I tended to call 'maturity' - gave way to what I now feel is the real me, or was the real me. Blithe. Optimistic. Passionate. Perhaps funny.

I am not implying that the life I am living at Oxford, or the relations I am forming there, are not optimal. To the contrary, I cannot remember being as contented as I am at Oxford. Any kind of change is met with resistence. Perhaps this is me resisting the changes I am undergoing. Maybe I am trying to hang on to the memories of a time past. Perhaps this is the order of nature - of continuous change, of resistance, and a cessation of resistance.

However, the past is great because of the lessons it imparts. Hindu culture is said to view time not as a progression over time, but as one of circularity. And in the circles that my life will undergo in future, I will be better off learning from what had happened in the circles past. One of the lessons I want to keep with myself is the warmth I was capable of, and the love my friends showered on me. For long I thought that this love was what motivated me to achieve things professionally; that might not be true anymore. However, the way these relationships have withstood great stress tells me that the relations I form in future should be based on that kind of mutual love, trust and respect. Then, perhaps, I will be able to marry what are the best components from these different phases of life, these different circles.

A New Year

A friend wished me yesterday  - "advance wishes for arbitrary day on roman calendar." The thought had occupied my mind for some time - that we celebrate what is an absolutely arbitrary day of the year. However, extend that thought and any day that is celebrated would seem arbitrary. The point, therefore, would be to celebrate a year gone by. Be it new years', birthdays or religious festivals. It is a time to look back and reflect. Also a time, perhaps, to look forward and plan.

The year gone by has, again, been very eventful. I started the year spending a lot of time in the gym and doing my now notorious '100 surya namaskars each day.'  March was the time of travel - Israel, Turkey, Athens and Budapest. The summer was a glorious one spent in London, with more travel - North Italy, Brussels, Lyon, and Copenhangen. There was love, visits by family and friends, getting back to Oxford and all of that. Through all of this, I have been moving towards a holistic idea of who I am, and what I want to do in life. It has been challenging because I haven't looked back and asked such fundamental questions. I have followed an idea of success - primarily academic success - that took me to the places I went to. Simultaneously, I have been exposed to a certain idea of morality, to a certain notion of right and wrong. The idea, therefore, of finding the 'true self' becomes complicated. Is the 'true self' dependent on my history, and dependent on the ideas society has instilled in me? Or is it more innate - was I born with certain strengths and weaknesses that I can use to live a happy, purposeful life.

I suppose answers will come in due course of time, but I also want to have the process move a little faster. Therefore, I reflected on the two things that reflect what I want to do this coming year. One could call them a type of new year resolution. The two works I came up with are empathy and action. These two works, I hope, will serve as reminders of what I seek to achieve this year. The two also encompass a lot of other traits I thought desirable. For example, empathy includes humility and patience. Action includes discipline and perseverence. I want to move towards my goals this coming year, but always keep the good of other people at heart.

To start things off, I also made a more pragmatic new year resolution - to give a part of my scholarship money to those in need. Today I made another contribution to Milaap, this time for a village electrification program. For long, I thought that giving money was a lazy way to contribute. However, I now view it as a great commitment device that will help shape my non - monetary work, and be shaped by it. It is about putting my money where my mouth is. Plus, the Rhodes Scholarship is far too generous, and one that I received due to my extreme privilege. Like capitalism itself, I need to turn this scholarship and the associated opportunities into a machine to create greater surplus, and then send it back to the country and society I come from. A bit like the conscientous capitalists that Gandhi envisaged.

Michaelmas, 2015

I remember the first time I watched English Vinglish. It was one of the few post - college movies for which we could mobilise almost our entire group of friends, and we went to Connaught Place, watched the movie and then had birthday celebrations on the street. At the end of this fantastic scene from the movie, Sridevi says something that stuck with me since then - that when you don't like yourself, you tend to dislike everything associated with you and new things look attractive. When you learn to love yourself, then the same old life starts looking new, starts feeling nice.

That has been the story of this last term at Oxford. I did precisely the same things that I did last year - met a lot of new people, started living in a new house, took new courses, and partied a lot. And yet, whereas I remember last Michaelmas as very melancholic, this one seems joyous. The world around me has, of course, not changed much. It is the outlook that seems to have changed.

Positivity is a word one hears a lot, but I certainly didn't understand its potency till very recently. I like to believe that I climbed the ladder of success with blood on my hands. This 'blood' refers to feelings of envy, anger and frustration that has characterised my journey from Visakhapatnam to Oxford. I reacted very strongly to negative emotions, and worked very hard to fight with them, and that helped me professionally. I am at a crossroad now, have been for a year. I have come a long way, and I need to reset and start a new journey where laurels of the past willl show diminishing returns very quickly. And therefore I need to choose how to motivate myself.

The summer helped me let go of a lot of emotional baggage that I had been carrying. The feeling of hurt that I had accumulated over the years made me look at the world, and people around me, very cynically. I became sensitive, became afraid. Over this most beautiful summer, so many things and so many burdens from the past have been let go of. And I can finally once again engage in the activity of making myself a better individual. The fear of failure holds back the first step. With that gone, I feel ready for a marathon.

Profesionally, I can engage in things I want to do. I have spent much time this term working on RSSAF's consulting work. It brings back memories of St. Stephen's College and building institutions from the ground. I'm also taking my time looking for jobs, and am being more risk - tolerant in my job search. I also feel more confident about what I want to do, and preparing for the long-drawn task of looking for something suitable. Not much has been gained over the last year to explain this change. Except positivity.

The most important thing has been to treat myself as kindly as I tend to treat others. When my reaction to others who err is to forgive, why be needlessly harsh with myself? When I provide comfort to someone who messed up a relationship, why shouldn't I comfort myself similarly? The same logic should be applied the other way round - to treat others as one would like to be treated. When I expect empathy and kindness, why not give the same to others? I am trying to push the boundaries of my empathy, trying to see things from others' point of view. It's an ongoing journey of discovery. I'm excited.