The Town Called Pressure

Today's post is thanks to my friend Srinath Varadarajan.

The world's progress today has brought with it extreme oddities. Among the myriad oddities is the feeling of work pressure. Many (ambitious) young men and women find themselves fighting the desire to sleep, play, socialize, enjoy...because they have an all important project to complete. Myself and Srinath are no different. We can vouch for work pressure any day. In the context of modernism, I ask : Is such work pressure to be respected ? Is it something to be fought ? Or should we attach zero importance to it and consider it to be not there at all in the first place ?

As a personal take on pressures at the workplace, I say that they have to be accepted as part of modernization. You cannot have the cake and eat it two, right ? Then you cannot say that I want the world to move ahead at the speed of light, but I am not willing to work for it. So, if there is work pressure today, It is only intangible evidence that modernism is alive and kicking. Remember a simple truth : You are not struggling in vain. There is a movement, and that is in the direction of progress and progress alone.

Having said that, I must also say that work pressures and self torture are NOT synonymous. Work pressure is an indicator of modernism, not a side-effect. Real success is possible when that all important "balance" of work and life is achieved. Some of us are able to achieve it successfully, some of us are not. What I feel is such an attainment is not really important as long as you are doing your work. If you are able to achieve it, fine. If not, relish the fact that you are a crusader - and the fact is visible to the entire world.

Modernism is struggle. Struggle is modernism.

What is education ? What is it ???

It's been a while since I wrote here. But now that I am writing...I would like to touch upon an issue that is core to modern thinking any day....education. For all you know, education is not such a freakin' easy word to understand. It may mean literacy to some, but for others it is more complicated than rocket science. I want to write about education and understand what it means to me as an individual. More importantly, does education go hand in hand with modernism ? Or as the epithet goes, is education "useful excess baggage" ?

A debate on modernism will not be complete unless you talk about education. Education is something that we find everywhere, yet crave for it, and quote numbers (read literacy rate, school dropout ratio, underemployment ratios, etc etc...) to substantiate our claim that education is lacking in the country.

Now the fact remains that India is home to a large majority of the world's uneducated populace. I personally do not believe that numbers are important, so I am not quoting statistics. The fact is that I don't need to either. You can FEEL the pangs of hunger of the uneducated, you can SEE the helplessness in their knowledge-deprived eyes, you can HEAR it in their pleas for liberation.

Who really needs the numbers ?

What I'm really trying to say is....all these programs, plans, packages, YOJANAS (as they are known in India) are confined to social science textbooks that students desperately try to read FOR PASSING an exam. I can only sigh...and feel a subtle helplessness overcoming me...

Over these years of liberation, we have not been able to educate our people.

Am I talking about India's literacy rate ? I think that's around 65%. It was 65% when I checked 3 years ago, and it is almost the same (or so I think) even now. How does it matter ? Because the ground reality is not stagnant like the number 65%. Let me assure you, the dynamism of helplessness is grounding India's underprivileged like never before.

Edcuation, in my view, cannot confine itself to the alphabet and our stand on literacy must be debated once again. In a modern context, education implies empowerment. Education MUST COMPULSORILY CALL for a sense of power, liberation and freedom of thought. Reading or writing a simple sentence in any language - may be literacy...but NOT education. I don't think I need to stress the divorcement of literacy and education here.

So where does the problem lie today... ???

Does it lie with the Government ?
Does it lie with the victims themselves ?
Does it lie with God ?
Does it lie with us (supposedly, privileged individuals (remember..I am blogging...not even writing)) ?

I cannot, unfortunately, pen an answer to that one. I consider it to be a matter of opinion. Modernism revels in necessity, not altruism.

Modernism is education. Education is modernism.