Treating Education Like a Law and Order or Tech Problem Won't Fix Anything

Union education minister Dharmendra Pradhan was forced to resign under sustained public pressure, but BJP leaders continue to celebrate his tenure rather than grapple with the serious concerns raised during the youth movement. The Wire's Jahnavi Sen was joined by Saroj Giri, Associate Professor of Political Science at Delhi University, and Surajit Mazumdar, Professor of Economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, to talk about what really ails the education system, what should be done, and why students' voices can't be suppressed.

Read the full transcript of the conversation below.

Jahnavi Sen: Hello and welcome to this week's episode of The Wire Wrap. I'm Jahnavi Sen. In the weeks since former Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigned after sustained pressure and a youth movement across the country, the concerns raised have refused to die down. Particularly questions have been raised around the role of law enforcement during the protests and especially the use of pellet guns. The opposition has said that Union Home Minister Amit Shah must come to parliament and answer these questions as they fall directly under his jurisdiction. Meanwhile, the government's seriousness about a promise made to leaders of the Cockroach Janata Party that no legal action would be taken against those involved in the student movement appears to be also under question. While state governments have said that they will not be acting on these FIRs they have filed. Student movements say that people continue to be summoned to police stations and one young woman in Noida is facing an FIR because of words she used about the prime minister.

Meanwhile, in both houses of parliament, the BJP has pushed through a bill around paper leaks. This was not a bill that the protesters had asked for, but the Narendra Modi regime has said that this enhanced punishment will ensure that paper leaks do not take place in the future. One of the things we have noticed after Pradhan's resignation was the way BJP leaders have loaded him and his tenure as Education minister, particularly around the implementation of the National Education Policy. This is a policy that has been critiqued for the way it increases the centralization of education in India.

With me today, I have two people who have been deeply associated with India's public education system before and during this movement. Saroj Giri, who's associate professor at Delhi University, teaches political science and Surajit Mazumdar, who's a professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Thank you both so much for being here today.

Surajit Mazumdar: Thank you. Thank you.

Jahnavi Sen: Now the immediate trigger for this movement was the paper leak in the NEET medical entrance exam and this is an exam that's conducted by the National Testing Agency, an agency set up just in 2017 precisely for this purpose. conducting this kind of centralised large-scale examination which the government said the CBSC was no longer able to do properly, and this kind of centralisation is something that is further pushed by the NEP. I want to talk to both of you a little bit moving further back from these protests. What has been happening around education with this push for centralisation? What are the effects it has?

Surajit Mazumdar: Well, I think, one thing is clear that if you look at the nature of participation in the protest and the scale and width of that participation, it's quite clear that the NEET leakage issue was only a trigger and there's a larger concern with the state of affairs in particular with relation to education. So I think the crisis as far as education is concerned has three main dimensions to it. One is that you had in the last two decades a very massive expansion of participation of young people in the education process from school to higher education and particularly with regard to higher education. There’s been a significant increase in the enrolment and the proportion of young people who are going, however proportionate to that, there has not been an expansion of public investment in education. In fact, public investment in education has struggled to retain the 4% level it had achieved by 19 in the early '90s. So, there's been a significant amount of privatisation of education which includes private educational institutions increase in cost of public education as well as a whole large private tuition industry that has also grown which has raised the cost of education for people and which of course is a new way in which inequality and access to education is being constructed.

On the other side, the aspirations that are driving this large increase in enrolment is that people see education as the only possible route to any kind of a reasonable career because the other options that are available are jobs not available or of course at extremely low wages which are a pittance. But the system’s capacity to satisfy those aspirations is shrinking. So, the increasing gap between the scale of people who are entering particularly higher education and seeking careers which are commensurate with that education and the actual availability of those. This is the second dimension of the crisis and the consequences of this contradiction are being felt in the entire process in between.

So, the process of education itself in different ways is coming under these two processes. On one hand increasing pressure on students. So, you are not any longer educating yourself to develop your abilities to find the best way in which you can contribute to society. you are basically trying to seek the few opportunities and you're in a constant process of competition to achieve success in those limited opportunities that are available. So, there's this increasing pressure on students yet you don't have those aspirations being satisfied and the way of trying to control this contradiction has involved this increasing centralisation. NEP was only in a sense accelerating a process that was already underway. It accelerated that process of privatization and accelerated that process of centralisation because somehow the government had to try and control the consequences of this contradiction and this movement which and the large participation in it was in a sense a reflection of the fact as to what can happen if this contradiction goes on developing. It is dangerous for the order which is trying to keep this state of affairs going. And therefore, in a sense education is being destroyed, also to emancipate it of any potential of playing a positive role in the transformations that are necessary if these aspirations are to be satisfied.

So, I think the crisis is quite widespread and people feel it in different ways and this movement has suddenly given expression to what people have seen from their own experience without necessarily having a systematic critique of it. From their own experience they can see what kind of conditions it is creating for them and that's what has found expression in this movement.

Jahnavi Sen: Is there anything you'd like to add to that? The roots of this movement?

Saroj Giri: Well, not specifically, not exactly the roots of this movement I would say, but just one comment on the education- public education system is, it is so true as he rightly pointed out that there is so much of people entering the institutions you know, and definitely the volume of people as well as I don't know the rate at which they are entering.

If you have some metrics, I'm sure you can see that enormous numbers of people are coming into institutions and the institutions are of course not able to cater because of lack of spending and all of that. But I think related to that or I should say a more qualitative kind of problem there which is going on is I think regardless of the inability of the infrastructure to cater to the students to give them even basic facilities or even run the exams properly, I think somewhere those who actually join the institutions they realise is in so many ways. you know, they realise that the system or the state or the institutions whatever you want to call it is not really investing anything qualitative in them and here it looks like to me that – take for example the exit policy which is there in the BA the four-year programme and all of that – the fact that there's so much of focus on exit. Which means that you are treating the education system, the institutions, as a kind of a conveyor belt to rush them into joining the contractualised workforce, the precariat. The institutions are just a kind of an alibi, just a kind of a lame excuse to actually quickly throw them into the precariat working force, and somewhere these youth, the students are realising this, that that they are not being given anything.

And there is the number of exams that they have increased in the NEP. Earlier, you had an end semester exam and then internal assessment. Now there's continuous assessment. If you want to do continuous assessment, the very term 'continuous' shows that means you should have the requisite faculty-student ratio, you should have the infrastructure. So many exams are there now in that one semester, and there's a lot of pressure on teachers. Students are also realising that these exams are just nothing, they are just some metrics. These are like biometrics only, the exam has become like biometrics. So students last year, when the NEP first syllabus kicked in, students are opposing that we have too many exams and these exams are like nothing. These are like just empty things, you know. So, I think that discontent is also coming not because they have been actually denied the infrastructure in some material sense, but also they are realising that it is a kind of a systemic abuse. You are not in investing anything called education. You are not imparting knowledge. You are not really inculcating anything. So, in that sense you are treating them as just ready to join the precariat workforce. And I think that anger is there within them.

Jahnavi Sen: Taking off from what you said about basically just throwing them into this labour force where, what are the kinds of jobs you're getting? They are extremely precarious. It's extremely gigified, the entire economy. You have fears around AI or if they're not fears, then your job is to train AI. In this situation, do you think is it possible or useful to try and draw straight lines between this movement that we've seen and quite large-scale protests over the last several months across the country from workers and different labour groups. There were of course the ones right outside Delhi that got a lot of attention around Noida, but we've seen such movements across the country over the last several months in different pockets. So do you think in some ways the issues that you are raising, even if perhaps not what we saw in the slogans and things like that, very much would align in those ways?

Saroj Giri: Well, I think once the education system and the institutions lose the respect of the students themselves, then students will act the way they did. So all these profanities that everybody's talking about. They feel cheated and manipulated by the system because on paper say okay you get an admission, but after you are given admission what are the classes like? Maybe not so much in JNU, but at least in so many other colleges in DU, when we actually go and attend the classes, what are we getting even when I'm sitting through the lecture, what am I getting? This is a very subtle thing that students are realising, and they are able to connect the thread that this entire thing is rotten.

You see the earlier thing was like okay we want admissions, we want empowerment and all of that. I think we are looking at a kind of thing where after empowerment, they are realising that the rot is so deep, and they realise only after they enter. So those who have not got a chance to enter, they are still fighting in order to enter. But I think those who have already entered are seeing that there is nothing called education going on here, and the students are smarter, you know, in fact than the faculty. In Delhi University, I can say that no matter what kind of faculties these guys are pushing, the students still have a sense.

As far as this movement is concerned, what happened in Jantar Mantar and everything, I would definitely say that there was a tremendous discontent and anger among the lower classes, among the disempowered, the among youths who wanted to join the army. But even the army is giving them casualised jobs so that you become a martyr, and still you don't get a pension. So I think I would say right since Agniveer protests, the Agniveer protests were massive you know, before that, I go back to even 2018 April you know the huge Dalit all-India strike that was a very, very intense strike all over the country. I mean we all say that in India because of the size it's very difficult to have movements all over the country simultaneously, but the 2018 Dalit strike against the dilution of the provisions of the SC/ST atrocities act [did that]. You had internet shutdowns in all of Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, lot of towns were in curfew. Maharashtra, half of Maharashtra was affected by the Dalit strike. It was huge. And I'm not even counting the farmers' protest and the anti-CAA movement, those were really big , but apart from those two there are others that do not fall along the lines of the usual kind of communal politics of BJP.

I think there were so many of these movements going on which never came to fruition and were suppressed or not allowed. I think this movement allowed that space. It opened the space particularly after the 20th of July for all these pent-up angers that was there. So, I think after the 20th that Jantar Mantar became more than Jantar Mantar, right? We all know, that it became more than CJP became more than original NEET paper leak issue. So from Nisarga Adhikari who was the CBSE guy and I'm a big fan of this guy, and I remember he was giving this interview to the media and just like a –

Jahnavi Sen: Just to remind our viewers in case they don't remember, he was one of the class 12 students who hacked into the CBSE OSM system, and showed just how easy it was to do.

Saroj Giri: Yes. So in a way this movement is also great because yes, the working class – I call it the feral underclass because of the kind of fighting spirit that they showed, and the police wants to suppress them but they have already neutralised police violence in a way But the fact that it started from really normal, innocent plus-two students sitting at home, from there to all the way to the Noida workers to everyone... and the Cockroach moment, we all remember when the Cockroach thing happened and the 22 million followers and all of that. So here was a movement which I would say the impetus was still after the 20th and 21st given by what I want to call the feral underclass. So the original arena of protest at Jantar Mantar became like an inner sanctum, but the real action was so much outside and that is what really Modi feared. There was not a moment after the 20th and the 21st first where the people were not putting the pressure on the administration; not just giving political demands to the government that makes sure Dharmendra Pradhan resigns but also constantly because the BJP government understands only that kind of language, that you had these people actually saying that no you can't push us back, because the police repression was so terrible. So I would say that right from Nisarga Adhikari to the NEET leak to everything, it touched so many different sections of society, including the working classes. So there was a broad kind of alliance which was formed including middle classes, different castes, different sections of society, university, schoolchildren everyone, but I think the final crescendo was still provided by the feral underclass, I would say.

Surajit Mazumdar: Well, I think yes, it's true that if you look at the movement, this movement itself, it had participation across various classes and social groups, but of course largely young people within certain age. This movement as well as others – workers farmers etc. – of course are all symptoms of a common underlying reality in which economic opportunities are so limited in number, and whatever there are are putting people in such desperate conditions. So that's the common underlying reality which expresses itself in different ways, and different sections will express it.
So there are those who are already stuck in that scenario, the workers in Noida who protested. They're already in that situation. And there are young people who are desperately trying to avoid ending up in that kind of a situation. They are also protesting.
So these are all I think symptoms of a common underlying phenomena and the good part, the really positive part when we look at it from the point of view of education as far as this movement is concerned, is the following. Precisely because the regime and these conditions see such movements as a danger. And in this process itself they see a danger, which is that if such a large number of young people are going to enter into education, are going to enter into higher education from diverse backgrounds and they have certain aspirations behind that, if you are not able to satisfy that, then that very same education – it doesn't get them a job or a career, but it gives them a capacity to understand and think about why this situation is, what it is. And therefore, they start questioning the government, start questioning that particular reality.
So the attempt of preventing that is also part of what constitutes education policy today, which is the destruction of the capacity of the education system to develop the critical faculties of young people.

Saroj Giri: I mean what are they doing with the Indian knowledge system, as they call it?

Surajit Mazumdar: That is the part of process, that you disempower them rather than empower them.

Saroj Giri: Yes.

Surajit Mazumdar: And the assumption was that if you do that, even if their numbers increase, doesn't matter. It doesn't pose a political threat.

Saroj Giri: Yeah.

Surajit Mazumdar: This movement has shown that students still get educated. From experience, if not in the classroom, they still get educated and they will be eventually expressions, political expressions of this, that have to be dealt with. You cannot just wish them away. You cannot suppress them. You cannot malign them and get rid of them. The issues fundamentally have to be addressed.

Jahnavi Sen: I think both of you have talked about how it is very clear that whatever the immediate trigger may have been – NEET and the paper leak – there was no single issue. It was not a single ideology. It was not a single group of people who came out over here. And perhaps that is what worked in the favour of movement, also because a lot of the people who were out on the streets a lot of the people who got attacked by the police on the 20th of July come from perhaps traditionally BJP-supporting communities or families. Their anger perhaps means more to the government than if it had been people we've seen traditionally protesting on these streets.
I don't want to ask what next, because I don't think we can predict this but for a movement on education that has managed to build this very mass base perhaps because it did not have single issue, single ideology, what does that mean going forward in terms of what to demand next? I know the demand for Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignation, which was a big yield for the government in which no minister has resigned under such kind of public pressure before was a big deal, but a lot of the public anger was after a while very clearly not directed at him, who was not a very significant figure until this movement came to be anyway. It was directed at the prime minister. So do you think this lack of single issue continues to be a strength?

Saroj Giri: When you asking me this, I'm just reminded of the big name, Nandan Nilekani, that Modi has thrown in.

Jahnavi Sen: Yes, this is the high-powered committee that has been set up ,

Saroj Giri: Yes, right. And I was like wow, you know, is this Modi's again yet another master stroke? that you now go and catch a person who has a kind of a broader legitimacy. Nandan Nilekani’s image in public life is more like – okay, a big billionaire capitalist and all that – but very close to the Congress also because he was put up as the chairman of the Aadhaar-making, and generally a very cultured, literate man who has written big books and all. So I thought he's going to say no, I can't, that he will refuse this offer by Modi. So I was hoping that. So I think they are trying to find these kind of ways out –
Jahnavi Sen: Yes, with committee and this bill...
Saroj Giri: Yeah. Then of course Priyanka Gandhi went to parliament and she said 'gaumutra visheshagya', and you know everything went haywire. So I think they are going to look for this kind of clever tactics, to find a way to say that look we are serious. You know I just heard today that again Raghav Chadha was giving a speech and he was saying 'we are putting them behind bars', trying to show that how serious they are in punishing the 'mafia', the word that they use. But I think you know if you see higher education in this country, it's been destroyed.
But I want to add one more rider to that. When we say it's destroyed, it feels very generic and a very ideologically motivated statement on my part, just to defame the government. But more analytically if you see, what I see is that places like Delhi University, JNU, I don't know maybe even Hyderabad Central University, other universities that are good education places, which really used to invest in the student, not just in terms of how much per capita and all but qualitatively you are giving proper education, and there was a kind of a pedagogical empowerment. So there was some hope from the system because of that. But I think now what I'm seeing is that all these universities are completely just like coaching institutes. The NEP – look at the not just the syllabus but what kind of readings they are putting in. For example 'Indian knowledge system' and that kind of thing. I mean I have nothing against Indian knowledge system, but this is neither Indian nor knowledge; there is only the name of system there is bureaucracy. This is just the worst kind of bureaucracy they are bringing.
But if you look at the exam structure as I was telling you, like how many exams and all of that and how many papers teacher has to correct, then there no good education can be imparted in that. But on the other hand, what is happening is I think there will be good education for the elite, is I think increasingly being outsourced towards private universities, which becomes the good kind of education, liberal education, liberal arts and all of that. So this division that is emerging, this new division, this new segregation let's say, that is going on where the rank and file will go to JNU, DU which will become like sarkari universities like any other random regional small town sarkari university, and the private universities will be the places of excellence. Somehow the government doesn't seem to really mind what is going on in the private universities. There are a lot of people within the BJP higher ranks who have connections with these private universities. I think this is the new educational appetite you know that is emerging here. I'm in Delhi University teaching, I mean there's pressure on me to leave Delhi University and go to a private university and start teaching, because well you are offering courses on psychoanalysis, oh wow that's cutting edge you know you should go there. So this cutting edge thing, you know this avant garde kind of a thing, I mean in a way it part of democratisation that you are doing away with the avant-gardism in JNU and DU, I don't mind actually it is good there is democratisation. There are people who could not become faculty members from particular backgrounds and they are becoming faculty members under the BJP regime. Maybe that's democratisation and I'm open to that also, but I think new lines are being drawn of social division in higher education as a whole. So both where they are doing something to foist their people and both where they are not doing that, both omission and commission of the BJP, there is a kind of some cunning of reason going on there.
So I think all this is really getting reflected in these movements, and not just in Delhi what we saw with the Jantar Mantar and all, but look at Bihar. Bihar was so intense. So I think this is going to go on, this crisis. I think so this is a more political kind of a battle that students are fighting, not just for resources but for the way they are treated. That even after joining they are not being treated as students and the teachers don't look like teachers any more, so there is a deeper crisis going on here.

Surajit Mazumdar: I think that if one, what this movement would have done, is that it has pushed a lot of people to cross a certain threshold. So if they have started now questioning fundamentally what is being dished out to them, that process is not going to stop because a minister has resigned. That questioning will continue. So this is going to accelerate that process of questioning. Their confidence level would increase that they have a practical demonstration of the fact that when they come together and fight for something, you can achieve something. That will be different after the movement. Their fear of repression and all of that, in some sense they have many of them have overcome that also. So these are qualitative changes which are not going to get reversed so easily so I think this is not the end of a movement; this is the beginning, and after this they'll craft their own critique their own.

Saroj Giri: Also, this movement ended at a high. People were still looking forward to Saturday and Sunday and everybody was like FOMO, you know I wanted to be there.

Surajit Mazumdar: Yes, so I think this will give energy to such movements, and so the struggle for more fundamental reform will continue. Because of what this movement has done. Whatever the reasons that it managed to bring so many people together, there is a lot of common ground that across diverse perspectives ideologies etc. there is a lot of common ground today on which people can come together. Because sometimes the differences are not so important at this particular juncture, they may be settled at a different point of time. At the moment many of those differences are not that important.
So I think in the long run this will have a positive impact and it's particularly heartening because it is a younger generation. So that means that generational change is part of... as the things change, the political climate of the country will also change as a result of young people having been drawn in. So, I'm very hopeful that this will have a very positive impact.
Of course, it doesn't mean that everybody can just sit back and things will happen on their own. But I think they will demonstrate that they're not willing to just sit back. I mean, this struggle itself or this movement itself was proof of the fact that they're no longer willing to just sit back and take it. So, once they've crossed that line, it's not going to end because one minister has resigned. I think it'll be something that will go on. So that's the positive part of it. At some stage government will have to realise that the fundamental questions have to be addressed. It is not that you can just get away with one step here, one step there.
So what if you put people in jail? I mean you have laws of for putting people in jail for so many things. It doesn't happen. It doesn't address the problem. So that is only [saying that] it's only a law and order problem, there's no other structural roots to this problem. And there are so many people who are connected to the government who are invested in that whole process. After all the leakage, paper leak, comes from what? On the one hand, you have these large exams that are to be the basis for deciding a make-or-break situation. You create a make-or-break situation there that people some people will make it, the rest are finished, they're going to be out. You create that condition. So then you create a condition where so many private coaching institutes are involved in that particular process. Then you create a structure to conduct all these exams which has no institutional experience, no history, 20 regular people, staff you put it. Okay. And they have to enlist a whole set of private parties to conduct that particular exam. So inbuilt you've created a structure in which both there's an incentive and the possibility of these, leaks.

Saroj Giri: And the private parties, the companies that they give the tender to, that's what Nisarga and all these people found out, that there was corruption there.

Surajit Mazumdar: And there's no such big contract to be given if you don't structure your entrance exams in this way, which creates that condition. So you created a structure where there is a very strong incentive, and you have not created an institutional mechanism to actually follow through. And what is the answer today, you think that the answer is some technological solution, some technology will take care of the whole thing. That's not the fundamental issue.

Saroj Giri: Also I think why this whole Coempt thing happened – the company that got the contract for the CBSE marking – I think BJP is trying to become almost continuous with the government. Where the government ends and BJP begins, we don't know. The BJP has its own kickback contractor class, so the government gives tender to only their own BJP people, within their own networks. So if you don't have a distinction between the party and the government, then this kind of a corruption network is what is going on. So any kind of criteria of which company is really good in running this – that is gone. That is not in the picture. So all kinds of kickbacks, I mean the money which has changed hands in giving the contract to this company, we still don't know about. Those facts have not even come to the public domain. The actual money that people have made, or maybe the BJP has earned as donations, you know, we need another electoral bond [revelation].

Surajit Mazumdar: The centralisation of all – I mean so the NTA is conducting so many different exams which used to be conducted by different agencies earlier or institutions earlier – so this centralisation and the excessive reliance on digital, apart from the fact that the academic content of a lot of the examinations themselves are destroyed because for example you only have MCQ [multiple choice questions] in the CUET and for PhD admissions, so that apart, what it is doing is that from experience the skills and abilities that existed in your system of how to conduct these exams in a way that is proper. You are destroying them.

Saroj Giri: It's also the MCQfication of all education, including a PhD. How can you have a PhD entrance which is MCQ? That defies all logic. So MCQ and metrics, everything has to be reduced to metrics, and I have seen that even in school education now, the government and maybe this is something all over the country now happening, that say the ability of a class 4 student there will be some metric about some emotional quotient or something or ability to make friends. So you have to give from one to five, two or three, in the schools. School teachers are also now having to update about the students on their apps which is the central government app or some central education board or something. So reducing everything to metrics, this digitisation of every aspect of life, Modi was supposed to be the guy of the digital age and BJP knew how to use the digital mode in order to keep winning elections, and now they are introducing to everyone, every aspect of life including in education. So the qualitative aspect of education is completely gone. Once you digitise everything, reduce it to metrics then what happens? Of course they are doing it then in the name of efficiency. So the exam happens and the results should come out very fast. Now in Delhi University, the exam branch asks for names of those who have not already corrected the scripts and sent the marks. So there is this kind of thing with too much emphasis on speed and circulation.

It's the same way that exit policy logic, that people should circulate more and more in the market. So again no jobs for anyone, no secure jobs, and the working classes also should become mobile and no security. Complete precaritisation of even education, even the readings that you do. So if you are reading on Plato or something, or some economist, then just whatever AI gives you is enough. Why go beyond that. So this is entire kind of a culture like this – so no wonder you will get a AI conference that they did here right with that robot, the Chinese robot, that's what happens if you do this. Then you can't make anything. So I think this is a dangerous path on which the entire education system is based.

Surajit Mazumdar: This digitisation I think is also about this kind of reducing the pressures of public investment in education. Part of the process then is that you basically use these, and reconstruct the system in such a way that you pretend that there is a process of education happening, and that different ways of doing things are the same. It's online.

You can do a course online or you can do a course going to an institution for three years. It's the same. It's no difference. So the degree is the same. Okay, you can't afford to pay for three years in an institution. Do it online. Doesn't matter. You can also get a degree. You cannot pay the fees for three years continuously. Doesn't matter. You do one in 2020, one year in 2025, one year in 2030. You add them up. It is the same thing as doing a three-year undergraduate course at one time. And to ensure this then you reduce every programme to this modular structure that you have different things. You add them up, you get a degree. No sense of any coherence where you do things in a certain sequence and there's a coherent whole through which you get to learn and be educated. All that is dispensable. It is just a sum of different things. You add them up. It is an educational degree.

So the use of digitisation is not really about improving learning. If you had to use digitisation for that then you would invest in giving your institutions and teachers these resources. How can you use these resources to improve the educational experience of your students that improve their learning? That you don't do. So you go to a university, they don't have that facility. If you want to replace a classroom with an online class, you can use digital infrastructure for that. But for the class of students that you have, if you want infrastructure to improve their learning, that's not available.

Saroj Giri: You know one good example of how our exam systems and all that are gone complete haywire is, I just yesterday heard that in IIT Kanpur they were taking admission of students for some course in cybersecurity. So one student could not get through – I mean many students didn't get through but one among them – he hacked the IIT Kanpur system and then they learned that, wow this guy is so good in like cyber security. They couldn't give him admission apparently in that course but they still absorbed him in something. That means your examination system is so bad that you are not able to screen and take in the good people. So who are they taking? We don't know.

Connected to this AI conference, the sorry state of affairs during that – this Modi holding Sam Altman’s hand and you know making him hold another person's hand which apparently Sam Altman does not want to hold – but then soon after what do we hear? AI data centres are being set up in this country. It really felt like the old colonial relation you know, in which India is again going back. That you will just have these you know enormous tracts of land and water and forest will be cleared for these data centres which American community people are themselves opposing, and they have been dumped here after an AI conference. So the AI conference was just for that. So obviously you know this government is completely going in the wrong direction.

Thankfully now we have got this thing opened that we can protest, and because the protest ended on a high note, people were willing to go all the way further. I think that's why Abhijeet Dipke is again and again saying we will again call a another march to parliament, because he knows what is going on in the base.

What I'm surprised is, what if the cockroach thing had not happened. Imagine – a counter intuitive question – what if say this guy hadn't floated that and the online thing hadn't taken off, then we would have still thought that oh you know the same thing what is happening between opposition parties and Modi, the usual kind of thing would continue. But thankfully this happened and now we know that there's this huge magma of anger among people, and people are willing to speak out. So you didn't need the SIR now. You didn't need the entire thing about how they are doing away with the integrity of the electoral process. And yet you could bring Modi on his knees, and somehow the opposition could not understand this. I remember attending so many activist meetings in Delhi saying that no on SIR we have to do this, on delimitation we have to do this, and all those were the topics that the opposition is really engrossed in and rightfully so. But then there was this completely some other kind of mode of protest for issues that we did not think about, the opposition parties never thought about. So it has hit Modi in like unexpected ways. They just didn't see it coming. Nor did the opposition see it coming.

Surajit Mazumdar: I think it is the responsibility now also of the opposition parties to realise that there are many fundamental issues related to education, that are important. They are important to people in society. And the importance to people in society there is a metric which indicates that despite the increasing cost of education, they want to send their children, want their children to get an education. So that push you see in society. So you have to recognise that and it's their responsibility to craft a systematic critique of what is happening and to raise those issues.

Saroj Giri: Yes. But also something about the coaching institutes I want to say because I'm quite impressed by the positive role coaching institutes played, because I personally used to think of them as just like taking money from students, from poor students making lots of money which is the case. Films like Kota Factory and. It was adding to the woes of lot of people who couldn't afford you know other kinds of education. Cut the coaching institutes played kind of a positive role I think in this entire thing, since this cockroach thing came up –

Jahnavi Sen: Yeah, in Uttar Pradesh we even saw the police going after certain coaching institutes.

Surajit Mazumdar: Yes, because I think that has become also so large, that of course not everyone is involved in leaking. But if paper leaks happen, it undermines that whole thing. Your coaching doesn't matter also. Education doesn't matter, coaching doesn’t matter.

Saroj Giri: And maybe there also there are some coaching institutes, maybe not all are positive towards the movement. Maybe some are like doing something else, maybe trying to concoct something with the government. But I saw that in fact some I saw one physics teacher of a coaching institute. He put it on Facebook that the physics class was when during this movement there were tear gas shells and students were holding it and throwing it back or something. So the physics teacher gives a class teaching the students how to hold a shell that was the physics class of a teacher and he's doing it from the system of the coaching institute. I was like ‘wow’ and I don't know Khan sir and all... so there are lot of inner determinations of this movement you know till we come to the 21st and 22nd and the education minister's resignation all kinds of things have happened. The kind of people watching Khan sir, all in Hindi, which means that lot of the guys who are coming from very basic classes, from very humble backgrounds, they were also mobilised through Khan sir and all this coaching institutes also came in very unexpected ways. Otherwise we just think DU, JNU, these kind of students they are the kind of ones who lead. So this movement has lot of meat there for us to really get into.

Jahnavi Sen: Absolutely and I think you're both are right and saying that these are questions that are going to continue to come up even if the prime minister and BJP leaders think some midnight reels or some Gen Z language in parliament might be enough to move on from it. But that's all the time we have for today. Thank you both so much for being here, and thank you all for watching.

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