Don’t let complacency ruin opportunities

TRIBHUVAN RANA (MANGAR)

Summer vacations have just got over all over the country. It’s a delight to see children come home after working hard in the residential schools through the year. But what was even more delightful to see was a bunch of students from the state come home from some of the best schools in the country. These children come from very humble backgrounds. They are the ones who have held their ambitions in deep recesses of their hearts but no means to fulfil them until they were selected for the Special Merit Scholarship Scheme of the Chief Minister on the basis of state-level tests conducted to shortlist meritorious children at the Class V level.
It was the vision of the Chief Minister, Pawan Chamling that led to the inception of the Special Merit Scholarship Scheme of the Chief Minister to help such students to walk alongside their friends from better financial backgrounds. The Scheme was launched in 2010 and it may be noted that Sikkim is the first State in India to launch such an innovative Scheme.
This unique Scheme has come as a boon to those deserving students of Sikkim who cannot afford quality education. The Scheme was launched with the prime objective to make education accessible to the deserving but underprivileged students. As a result, more than 350 students are studying in coveted schools like Scindia School, Gwalior and Pinegrove School, Himachal Pradesh to name a few.
All of us who have come up the hard way know the pangs of not being able to afford good education despite the desire to excel. Our parents at the most could afford to send us to the humble and ubiquitous government schools. It was up to us whether we wanted to study or while away our time and grow up to be a liability.
Education’s always been taken for granted. We have a myopic view towards education. Education for us has always meant the infallible means to earn bread and butter. But things changed with the advent of the Sikkim Democratic Front. Education became a priority sector and great emphasis was laid on quality education. The Chief Minister, Pawan Chamling as an individual has always been a crusader for quality education.
I am truly happy that now students in Sikkim will not be deprived of quality education just because it is beyond their reach. In this regard, it would be wonderful to see 20% of the budget being allocated to education.
If we are to compare the statistics in the education sector in a typical before and after format, we clearly see the rapid progress that has been made in education. For instance, the number of students enrolled in schools in 1975-76 was 20,959 which increased to a whopping 1,61,737 in 2009-2010. Number of educational institutes has increased from 261 in 1980-1988 to 777 in 2009-2010. Literacy rate in 1994 was 56% while it reached 82.2% in 2011.
Some of the other milestones achieved by the State Government in the education sector have helped promote holistic development both in the context of socio-cultural advancement and also in the expansion of educational facilities. For example, through introduction of Sherpa, Gurung, Newar, Tamang, Mangar, Rai and Mukhia languages as part of school curriculum, we have promoted the cultural heritage of Sikkim. Limboo, Bhutia and Lepcha languages are being taught till graduate level to facilitate larger access to our indigenous languages. One of the most important decisions has been the establishment of a Sanskrit Vidyalaya and Sanskrit Mahavidyalaya in Sikkim to promote classical language and popularize usages in the everyday use.
The Government has reached out to the students like never before for the holistic development. The facilities that have been provided for students and teachers by the State Government are phenomenal! Teachers in Sikkim are the highest paid in the country! There was an increase of over 89% in the salary of teachers in 2011.  No wonder when I recently asked a teacher friend of mine if she intends to sit for any competitive exam, she replied “I am very happy being a teacher. I find teaching very fulfilling.” Such is the zeal for teaching.  But in the same breath, the quality of teaching needs some serious improvement. We must remember that quality is more important than quantity. If you go to see, a fly lays more eggs than a hen!
Teachers have to constantly update and upgrade themselves. They have to remember that teaching is a profession that creates all others. They cannot afford to be complacent.  Nothing should be more rewarding for a teacher to see his/ her student grow up into a successful citizen! I dreaded Maths while in school! I could not even understand the basics! But I somehow managed to scrape through in Maths in my Class X Board exam. After that I have never touched anything (to do with numbers)   except a calculator.  But in retrospect, I feel that had my Maths teachers given me some individual attention and assured me that Maths was not that difficult, maybe I would never have developed this ‘I hate you’ relationship with Maths. This is what constitutes breaking the glass ceiling, the imaginary high point which also restricts our potential to excel beyond the mundane!
Today luckily things have changed for better. The passion to excel is palpable among the students thanks to the advent of so many fun and interesting mediums of learning even if the teachers are not very cooperative. Students today excel both in their academics and extracurricular activities. They have brought laurels to the State in competitive events.
The Special Merit Scholarship Scheme of the Chief Minister has helped to foster a sense of healthy competition among the students. It has also provided exposure for the students who would otherwise stay within the confines of Sikkim. The idea that lies in popularising such Schemes is to underpin and underscore the message of competitiveness in children.
Buoyed by its success, for the year 2012, the State Government has doubled the number of beneficiaries to 200 from 100 in 2011. Out of the 200, 40 students are to be admitted to schools outside the State and the remaining 16 are to be admitted in public schools within the State.
Till date the graph of students has touched the figure of 350 across the State under this Scheme. The target is to provide the Scheme to 1000 students in the future. But this target will be difficult to achieve unless our attitude undergoes some change.  Our teachers should stop taking their jobs for granted. They should constantly grow and adopt new techniques of teaching to keep up with the fast changing world. Teachers have to be sincere towards their job and they should remember that teaching is a job that calls for the highest degree of responsibility as teachers can make or break the future of students.
Our children should learn from the youth of Bihar. Our students must think in broad terms and not limit themselves to Sikkim. In today’s competitive world students have to broaden their horizon and go out there and take the world in their stride. They cannot afford to be complacent and wait for an appointment letter (for a Government job) to fall in their lap!
And we must also do away with our self imposed ideas of protective shelter for our children. We have to accept the fact that it is perfectly ok for children to go out for work or higher studies. Exposure is the need of the hour. We cannot afford to stifle our children on the pretext of being protective parents. Manipur is a case in point. Delhi has a lot of youth from Manipur. A large chunk of Manipuri youth are either studying or working in cities like Delhi and they are doing well in both!
We must take a cue from states like Manipur. 17 candidates from Manipur cleared the IAS and other allied examinations this year. And it isn’t a mean feat! I doubt if this would have been possible if these aspirants had stayed back in Manipur debating day in and day out on the scrapping of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act in Manipur or why North East still remains neglected by the mainstream. But these aspirants dared to rise above petty issues. They turned their weaknesses into strengths and dared to venture out. And for all we know our children might end up as round pegs in square holes when they grow up unless we make them venture beyond safe havens.
We are very fortunate that we truly live in a paradise. The State Government has given us everything that we could possibly need and want. We get subsidies on and for almost every possible thing. But that does not mean that we become freeloaders. We have to get out of this smug contentment zone. Independence sounds better as a verb than an adjective. Common people get your acts together. Enough of this lackadaisical attitude!
National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has done this, done that... It has provided employment and made people self-reliant. So far, so good...  But seems NREGA has brought mixed blessings. Whether it has made us more active or more indolent is a debatable issue. We have simply lost the art of toiling. How many of us actually ‘sweat it out’ whether in the fields or on the treadmill? We have become too lazy too fast! But we forget that the whole game is about the survival of the fittest!
Parents must take genuine interest in the education of their children. Reading habits among students need to be inculcated. Parents also have the duty of instilling moral and ethical values in their children. Inner qualities of the children have to be developed. We must shift our focus from superficiality to profundity.
The other day a friend of mine told me about a friend of his who bought an expensive mobile phone for his school going son. My friend apparently told his friend that he could have bought a laptop for his son with the kind of money he spent on the mobile phone. What do you think?
Education is derived from the Latin word educatus which means to ‘bring up’ or ‘rear.’ Nelson Mandela has rightly said that “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”
Today’s students are tomorrow’s agents of change. And Schemes like the Special Merit Scholarship Scheme of the Chief Minister act as facilitator for the change. Close to 50 percent of our population comprises of citizens between the ages of 1-19 years. With huge potential for human development, we have to work alternately to train our people and also create enough avenues for gainful employment.
Many of our children coming out of schools and colleges lack skills and knowledge and thus unemployable. This we have successfully addressed through establishment of Livelihood Schools and Capacity Building Institutes to train our youths in alternative professions. The youth are being trained for hospitality/ IT and a whole array of vocations that are in vogue with a very good placement record both in India and abroad.
With all these initiatives, I would not be surprised to see these kids making it to one of the world’s top 20 colleges under the Chief Minister’s Free Scholarship Scheme (which is another unique Scheme of the State Government). And I will not be surprised either if this evokes a feeling of regret in some of us. With so many opportunities all around, I only wish I was born a little later. Don’t you?
[The writer is a resident of Borong, East Sikkim. Article received on email]