The existing changes breathe when they are noticed by the contemporary population.If half of the population goes ignorant about what the other half is doing, the system of civilization as a whole paralysis.
Last night, a thought came, a thought about what has changed since I took birth, not in my life but the lives around me.
Before elaborating on it, let me tell you what my life is!
I work in the development sector, just a fresher.The 30 days of a month for me is continuous collaboration and disintegration of the 3 of the spaces, rural, urban and rurban.Now they are so frequently visited by me, one after the other that they have become a single space just like different rooms within a house. The differences within them can be visualized so vividly that one day I see a woman carrying large heaps of husk on her head and passing a smile and the next day I can see another woman carrying a bag full of papers entangled in her own thoughts.I somehow feel both are satisfied with their own labor and effort.I don’t want to bring gender, equity and equality discussions over here because I somehow feel that it is not a fairground to discuss the differences about how equal the rural and urban women are in terms of empowerment(oops! a big word).
Now, that’s what my life is, big words encompassing so-called development, simple life of the rural India and a busy big population in the urban cities.
My point is not to discuss much on what my lifestyle comprises of or my struggle of finding a common coinciding point between the spaces I visit.Because of a few days back, I found it all useless,24 years of my contemplating on the humans around me just so superficial when a simple inhuman factor cannot be noticed by me.
That day a man, just an ordinary man who has not gone through these big development words in the textbooks but yes, of course in his mind told me the only difference that these spaces possess.
“Everybody is same, thoughts are same, everyone is struggling to earn and everyone wants to survive. That is about being philosophical and now let’s move on to the who can help them to survive.No! I won’t call it help because the country’s population, every single one of them is relying on the other for survival.But madam ji, few of them earn well while the other few of them see them earning well and yearn for the kind of lifestyle they possess.But madam ji, they never knew that they can and they have the opportunity to live good-satisfactory life.But they are ignorant.Half of us in the rural spaces do not know that the schools, they are for us.Half of them teaching inside do not carry a sense of belongingness with the students they are teaching”
So, his point came down to the matter of education.He is worried about the fact that a private school student and the government school in rural spaces of the country won’t be able to compete, he is worried about the fact that the differences in these spaces will soar high if the situation is not controlled. School education in villages should be brought on the same level otherwise all other means of development will not be of any use if the faculties of minds, the young minds are not given the same opportunity.
Yes, everything is changing but what remains the same is the kind of school I saw in villages when I visited my nani’s village at the age of 5 and what I see now.Was it too egalitarian in the mind of that man to think that children in the village can have the same education to that of the private schools in big cities?or was it a distant dream to imagine that not a single drop-out should happen in the villages?
Development as a word is seemed so hollow when his words echo in my mind.