Touchstones: Gets bizarre by the day

This is a truly bizarre time: the world over, it is a period of tumultuous change and uncertainty. Ever since Donald Trump has taken over as the US President, every country seems to be on tenterhooks. Before the world can process the consequences of his latest farman, he comes out with another or reverses the earlier one. Sitting in India, we have no idea of how this is affecting the vulnerable in the US. Many parents, who have spent a fortune on the education of their children there, are biting their nails after an Indian student had her student visa summarily cancelled because she had taken part in a pro-Palestine demonstration on her campus.

Those with Green Cards are also not sure whether they can continue to stay on and whether their children will be automatically accepted as lawful US citizens in future simply because they were born there. The waiting time for an American visa is close to two years, I’m told. All this discourages aged parents from visiting their children and their children from visiting them. US aid has been abruptly cut and many agencies that were doing genuinely meaningful work in areas such as public health, nutrition and education have been severely affected. However, it must also be conceded that many dodgy operators and NGOs had been fattening themselves on these grants without much to show for their expenses.

Then, there is the huge impact Trump’s trade and tariffs policy will have on the economies that cannot sustain their commercial activities without the generous tilt in their favour. Europe has also been pretty much left to guard itself and walk the talk on Ukraine. It is a frightening scenario and so far, Trump seems to hold all the cards. Come now to our own silly politicians. The affront that a minister from Maharashtra took after a stand-up comedian mocked him had disastrous consequences. He was forced to disappear from public view and the studio he had used was vandalised by goons who probably hadn’t even seen the episode. There was a similar hoo-ha when another YouTuber made some salacious comments a few weeks ago and the matter went up to the Supreme Court! Every news channel held long noisy debates on the topic and shrill panelists and biased anchors had a field day.

All this is happening even as serious matters of policy and budget-related debates were conveniently avoided and Bills were passed by Parliament because our worthy parliamentarians would rather hold press conferences or give sound bytes outside the Lok Sabha to eager journalists, who then added breathless commentaries of their own. Have we all lost it?

Let me now talk about a more serious and sadder episode. Two professors of Allahabad University (my alma mater) came to blows during a scuffle and ended up with injuries that necessitated their being taken to hospital. What is worse, they were professors from the English Department where I did my post-graduation. I bowed my head in shame when I realised that this is what a glorious institution has been reduced to. Where once Harivansh Rai Bachchan, Firaq Gorakhpuri and other distinguished professors had their students enthralled, we now have Munna Bhai-style goons spreading their brand of taporidom. A few years back, when I went to Allahabad, I made a special trip to visit my university. What I saw broke my heart: the classes were empty, the staff room (which we dared not enter) was wide open and a few young and bored teachers were sipping chai, while the head of the department evoked no special feeling of respect when I went to wish him. The library was barricaded, the splendid stained-glass windows of the Senate House were covered with protective iron grills so that they could withstand the stones chucked during recurring student demonstrations, and bands of bored-looking students were eating peanuts as they roamed idly, ogling the girls.

Why is it that our great educational institutions cannot keep up their standards beyond a few decades? Look at the great institutions we venerated: Delhi University, JNU, Calcutta’s Presidency College, to say nothing of the grand Santiniketan — all of them are shadows of what they once were. As most good teachers and students have moved to universities abroad or to the new private universities that have come up in the past few years, we have emptied our old campuses of the best and brightest. Reservations that have great social support across parties (not only to provide equal opportunity but to build future vote-banks) have also made it difficult for meritorious students to enter these institutions. The result is for all to see: we have presided over the decline of standards everywhere and what this will mean for future generations makes me deeply anxious.

The media and civil society are more involved in proving that a Mughal emperor who lived centuries ago destroyed our holy sites, rather than reviving those institutions that are dying before their eyes. No Mughal badshah is doing that: it is the people and the illiterate goons-for-hire that are breaking down these temples of learning brick by brick. I blame no individual political party but the entire ecosystem of unconcern and passionate devotion to an imagined past that has turned a great civilisation into a land of barbarians.

God save this country from its people.

— The writer is a social commentator