Publisher’s write-up:
‘Education achieves
many things- it pulls people out of poverty, enables socio-economic mobility
and promises a route to dignity. But what does education mean to different
people, what does it do and whose needs are being met by education?
Even as
globalization and format education have established themselves as unquestionable
truths, only a privileged few have cornered the benefits. In this process,
education is being reconceived and its promises are being rewritten. Today,
there clearly is more to education than going to school, getting credentials
and securing a job.
This book is
an attempt to capture what this ‘more’ is, by exploring education’s connections
to caste, class and gender and understanding how they affect the promise of education.
Among other stories, it covers the fractured realities of children in Manipur
who want guns for Christmas, describes how a ban on toddy-tapping is affecting
educational choices in Tamil Nadu and explains why a grandmother chose to get
her fifteen-year-old granddaughter married to a seventeen-year-old truck driver
in rural Rajasthan. The book deftly paints a portrait of the political and
cultural processes that impact education in modern India.’
The Smart and
the Dumb is a book on how society and politics impact education and policies
around it in India, by the Cambridge and Harvard educated sociologist, Vishal
Vasanthakumar. The book is centred around the author’s travelling across India –
particularly the states of Rajasthan in the north-west of India (borders
Pakistan), Manipur in the north-east (borders Myanmar), and the author’s own
home state in Southern India, Tamil Nadu. It not only features the new insights
gained by the author in interacting with people in different places, but also the
author’s own personal experiences in going through an elite private education
in Chennai, Tamil Nadu – and the impact of privilege that he himself has had –
be it the author being English-speaking or caste hierarchies.
The book is
split into seven chapters – the first is about a community in Kotdi village in
Rajasthan that follows a tradition of marrying girls in their family at a young
age (below 18, which on paper, is illegal in India) in order to ‘protect them’
and getting girls educated is seen as being less important than their marriage.
The author shows both – the ones who resigned to the system and those who tried
to fight against it. It then moves to Manipur – in the midst of ethnic tensions
and constant conflict between the dominant Meitei community (mainly Hindu) in
the valley and the Kuki and Naga community in the hills (predominantly Christian).
The author touched on how active conflict – between insurgent groups and the
Indian group affected the civilian population, including children’s education
and teachers, and the choice of gifts the children wanted for a festival.
The book then
talks of the private coaching that happens in India outside of the school
system – to prepare 16 and 17 year olds for competitive entrance exams to
engineering schools; particularly in the town of Kota, Rajasthan – where the
local economy is entirely based on students coming there to study and the
challenges that they face.
The angle the
book introduced on privilege and the perceptions of the dominant group was
interesting; on the government of Tamil Nadu’s ban on toddy – a palm based
liquor native to Tamil Nadu, which severely affected income levels of palmyra
tree climbers, including affecting educational choices of their children.
Interestingly, Tamil Nadu is not a state under prohibition, but toddy is not
perceived well by the policy makers but those brewed in distilleries were very
much permitted.
The chapter the
author had on a ‘culture olympics’ between elite private schools in the south-eastern
Indian city of Chennai was highly relatable for me personally. The author
touches upon privilege, caste hierarchies and what is considered as art worthy
of recognition. It largely serves children of similar backgrounds – upper caste,
English speaking and the events too, largely favour arts appreciated in these
communities – for instance, a hip-hop Tamil performance or a very humorous
speech in Tamil would not be accepted by the schools or the judges. Having studied
in such a school in Chennai, and having been to these ‘culture olympics’ as one
of the ‘delegates’ for my school, I totally understand the privileged circles I
was in, right now, in hindsight, but I was completely oblivious to it back then
and did not hesitate to make a snide remark on someone’s fluency in English
without knowing the circumstances that enable a teenager to be fluent in India.
Much as this chapter focused on Chennai, I have studied in six other similar
private schools across India and the author is right to suggest that these
events are often a symbol of retaining the privilege than trying to use
education to distribute the benefits of education to the wider population.
While that
chapter was personally very relatable to me, I feel that this event is perhaps
particular to the city of Chennai, whereas, it is not a phenomenon in other
cities. That said, maybe the publisher did not choose the best of captions for
the book – while the author has travelled in the east, north and south of
India, this book certainly is about politics of education in some parts of
India, but could have had more impact if there were more inputs from certain
other parts of the country (as situation varies widely from state to state in
India).
I feel this book
is important given the current political climate in India, with the overreach
of the current Indian government led by a prime minister with far-right
leanings; often with the support of the privileged elite of the country, such
as the extended families of the author and even that of myself. The last
chapter written by the author demonstrated it very well, where a school
principal did not appreciate the mention of Jawaharlal Nehru and Manmohan Singh
by the author, both former Indian prime ministers from the Indian National
Congress – the current opposition party against the Hindu nationalist politics
of the present government.
This book –
given it is written in English, should at least be read by those in India who come
from such privileged English speaking backgrounds, many of whom are oblivious
to the privilege that they have had (I myself was ignorant of it till I was 19
and travelled around the country). I personally enjoyed reading the book and
also appreciated the conclusions derived by the author – based on all the research
and travelling that the author has done for this book. The author does discuss
the exploitation of the term ‘middle class’, everyone, including those within
the top 2% of the country when it
comes to income levels, identify themselves under this class and this book
could help them get out of that bubble.
On that note, I award
the book a rating of eight on ten.
Rating – 8/10
Have a nice day,
Andy
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