Degrees of Separation: Greater Transparency Expected, Mr PM

The public do not really care about what degrees their elected representatives possess. The highest office is not barred to people without a doctoral degree in, say, quantum mechanics. Let us rewind.

Jawaharlal Nehru did not have academic qualifications to be flaunted. Manmohan Singh had a doctoral degree. But no sane person would argue that Nehru was the worse prime minister. Nehru connected. Nehru had a vision that was, sadly, unfulfilled. But the idea that we could think became central to our public lives. Notwithstanding the calumny recently heaped on him by Perry Anderson.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s claimed academic qualifications pose a different order of problem.

There is first the problem of transparency. The documents put out in the public domain are far from convincing. Why, we may legitimately ask, have the original documents not been presented? The authenticity of the documents and the claims they seek to bolster seem to be given to the public on trust. Journalists and citizens are being asked to accept what they are being ordered to.

Where’s the Balanced View?

There is a further important point. Let us assume that the campaign against the Prime Minister’s qualifications is purely political. In other words, that it is motivated. If that were the case, procedure would suggest that the Prime Minister take a balanced view, given the status of his office. Had he so reacted, he would have left it to the universities concerned to issue the necessary clarifications. At best, the Prime Minister’s Office could have offered an explanation.

So why did it fall upon BJP President Amit Shah and Finance Minister Arun Jaitley to call a press conference? Even given that Jaitley was a functionary of the Delhi University Students’ Union, it surely does not devolve upon him to take on this additional responsibility. As for Shah, his defence of the dodgy documents needs no waste of space.

MA Degree Not Important

But the important question is not about Modi’s degrees. We know fairly well that higher education is acquired by rote. To have a master’s degree is not significant in and of itself. The quality of education in India – Mother India – is recognised to be abysmal, especially for those who cannot afford the expense of private schooling.

Even more important is the fact that expensive education does not confer values. You do not need a degree to run a country – in fact, it often gets in the way of empathy. Maharashtra’s chief minister was billed as a forward-looking, educated man. When the drought ran in, he had neither ideas nor empathy.

Modi’s problem is not dissimilar. First, we were told he was a man of the masses. He made his way up from running a tea kiosk – or whatever – and then made it to 7 Race Course Road. Then, we get another story: Modi as a man of letters. He could well be that without the authentication of questionable degrees, had it not been for his innumerable schoolboy errors both in public meetings and in cyberspace. There is, of course, in addition, his penchant for packing his cabinet with people who do not pass muster.

Education vs Empathy

Finally, the Big Point. Let us presume that Modi has all the right academic degrees. What avails of those? Failing to prevent a communal conflagration is normally not taught in political science courses – at least when I was last in university. Encouragement to ministers engaging in patently unconstitutional rhetoric against minorities – ditto. We were taught that fundamental rights and the rule of law were sacrosanct, whether you had a degree or not.

Perhaps some of us have been told that your education is what will make you. Not all of us got there. Here are some thoughts for Prime Minister Narendra Modi: make sure that education is not just a right, it is an entitlement for everyone, which the ‘Gujarat model of development’ has failed to deliver.

Ensuring Students’ Freedom

It will continue to fail if the education minister is incapable of understanding how institutions of higher education function. And if the minister has no experience of higher education, the prospect of a basic level of freedom for students thinking their way through society and life are as good as sunk.

A political appointee as governor who makes completely unacceptable statements is not the best advertisement for education. As we understand it, education is a process that opens minds, in the words of the Ministry of External Affairs, to diversity, plurality and the rights guaranteed by the Constitution. Which we are supposed to swear by.

(The writer is a Kolkata-based freelance journalist and historian)