One fine morning my brother bothered me from my sleep to rush together with him. Before I could realize that I am awake, I was on the pillion seat of our 350cc monster gazing through the streets. My brother was yet to slip out of his bedsheet. My hands lazily reached out to my hand phone only to make my eyes wide open. It took some minutes for the message to be transferred through my visual input to reach my brain and then analyze the numbers. It was 03:30 AM.
Even before I could come out of this shock, I realized that I slipped into this bedsheet that my brother had been carrying all along and to my surprise I could see more than a couple of men almost in a row close to the compound wall trying to make their beds with a mat and a similar bedsheet that I have with me. Am I being abandoned by my family because I am still a job seeker after 2 years of my graduation? My brother finally opens his mouth and informs that I will sleep here for 2 hours while he goes home gets ready for his job and relieve me from this place. Whoa whoa whoa… Now I am awake, finally.
This place where I just made my bed is a school compound and people around me are fathers or someone like me who are with this great intention of getting their kids with a school admission. We have reached here so early to make sure that we buy the application forms. Guess what!! I found out notices stuck to the compound instructing parents not to come in and queue up as the application forms are issued only after 10:00 AM and there are enough application forms.
I heard one of them murmuring to themselves that they finally give limited application forms. To cut the long story short, I slept there for about 2 hours to wake up at around 06:00 AM to see some cops sleeping next to us. I could only guess that they had come for security reasons. 07:00 AM there were about 1000 people trying to make a queue on the same road at the school compound obviously creating lot of traffic nuisance. I felt accomplished as I was in the 5th position amongst these people. Then came my brother to relieve me and finally he got an application form. What an achievement!!
My brother’s son did not get through that admission which is not the point here. I happened to meet a family friend during the same season who managed to get through the admissions from the same school for his daughter. To my surprise, had fixed this admission even before the applications opened up and that is a routine in many of these schools. Now this admission that I am discussing here is about a kinder garten admission for a private school.
This is not just this school, almost all the schools will have to go through similar situations willingly or unwillingly. There are schools which call parents for an interview for their kid’s admissions and the only question that they will want to ask them is on the donations that they are willing to pay.
Strangely in India, Government schools are not being preferred by parents. Facilities, teachers and the exposure that a child could get are not great in comparison to private schools. But after schooling everyone wants to join a government college for the prospects that they would get like a good job, educational scholarships etc.
For a country to be prosperous the basics should be set right. Medicine and Education are basics and it should be government controlled, free and compulsory with a motivation factor linked to it. If not, at some level there is a big chance that the basics get to be weaker which will in turn affect an economy in the long run. All developed nations control their economy quite well to the extent possible because the basics are set to be a service than a money making business.
