Skip to main content

Dalit Upliftment. Unanswered Questions.

He wore a confused look. His eyes were constantly scanning around. He was looking for something but appeared as if he was not sure what he was looking for.
I met him on a medical college campus in Pune. Among the students lounging around the cafeteria, he was the only one without a white apron. However, he had a clean pair of clothes and a small backpack.
Watching him for a while, I walked towards him to find out what he is looking for. He told me that he is looking used textbooks. He is a first-year medical student at a different college. However, he doesn't have money to buy new books; so he is asking around among the second year students if they would like to part with their old books. But he hasn't yet met anyone willing to do that.
He told me his story. He is a Dalit from Nanded district in Maharashtra. He got 280 points out of 720 for the national medical entrance exam. Though that is only 38 percent he still managed to get a seat, being a Dalit. According to him those who got 28% also have secured admission in the Scheduled Caste quota. This is the reality here in India but those who got much higher score are left out since they are born in higher castes!
I wanted to help him. However, I wanted to verify the facts. I found many holes in his story. He told me that he has no place to stay. So, he has kept his clothes and little belongings in his friends room in the hostel. He sleeps in the hospital veranda at night. I verified his ID card, it says he was a first-year student in 2016.
So, I tried to put the pieces together to make a coherant account. He got admission in 2016, that means he should be in the second year now. He might have failed in the first year and duly thrown out of college. Being a Dalit he had a free accommodation in the hostel. He probably lost that privilege also. Now, he has no access to the library and no money to buy books. That may be why he is looking for used books.
I asked him questions in English, but he chose to answer in Hindi. Sometimes, I had to resort to my broken Hindi to clarify myself.
This is where our education system has gone wrong. Here is a student who is not eligible for admission on merit. But the government gives him admission just because of his birth in an underprivileged class. Though medical education is in English, no one cared to equip him for that. Lecture after lecture, he stared at the teacher who was speaking in a foreign language! The books in English did not make any sense to him. He has to write exams in English, but he can't. He doesn't seem to make it.
Here are a few questions that demand answers. Is this the way to uplift the less privileged classes? Does anyone know the drop out rate of Dalits in schools and colleges? Uplifting the Dalits has to begin much early in the life of every Dalit boy and girl. Giving them opportunities without capacity building is of no use.

Popular posts from this blog

The Days of Antipas

"The days of Antipas" means not only a period of persecution but a period of perseverance as well. It signifies the days of believers who withstood the pressures from outside to surrender. In the church in the city of Pergamum, there were some people who remained faithful to Jesus in the days of severe persecution. Apostle John calls these days of persecution "the day of Antipas" (Rev. 2:13).  The Antipas mentioned here should not be confused with Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great. Herod Antipas was a wicked ruler whom Jesus called "fox". He is the one who offered the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter to his daughter. He might have tried to kill Jesus and presided over Jesus' trial. However, the Antipas mentioned in Revelation 2 was the bishop of Pergamum, a pagan city in the first century AD. The name means "against all." There is a great con trast in the names -- Herod was against all that was good, however, Antipas th...
Read more

The Lonely Jungle Babbler

Every day it comes, and pecks at the glass panel of the window of my study. It is a Jungle Babbler, a very common bird in the Indian subcontinent. It dances flying up and down and fluttering its wings. Sometimes, three or four times a day it repeats this ritual. I thought it is trying to get  into  my room or fly through as it can see the other side. But why does it keep coming, can't it make out after three or four attempts that it can't fly through?   I told my Neighbor, whom I consider an expert on birds, about this winged visitor. She explained that the babbler is pecking at its own reflection, thinking that it is another bird. I thought of verifying her suggestion. The following day I kept the window half open, drawing one panel fully open. The babbler came as usual. Perched on the window,  looked into  my room through the open panel but did not enter the room or peck. But it moved to the side of the window where there is glass and started pecking on the gl...
Read more

The Conquering Grace

  Grace of God is hard to define. When I was making baby steps in Christian faith, mentors told me that ‘grace is unmerited favor.’ I found that helpful. But as I continued to experience God’s grace as I grew, I found that this definition is inadequate to express all that God does in my life. Now, I have come to realize that grace of God is such a thing that eludes any definition. Grace, as I understand now is what God alone and no human can do in our lives. It comes in various colors, shapes and sizes! John, the gospel writer seems to have understood the multifarious nature of grace that he talks about the ‘fullness of grace’ and ‘grace upon grace’ (John 1:17). Or the New Living Translation puts it: ‘From his abundance we have all received one gracious blessing after another.’ These expressions mean that grace is not just one-sided reality but a multi-faceted reality. Its fullness is beyond our comprehension just as God evades our understanding. One of the rare but ...
Read more