Even as the shameful pictures of mass copying at the Vidhya Niketan School in the Bihar Board School Exams are still fresh in the minds of the people, Bihar is in the news for all the wrong reasons yet again! This time around for the dramatic eyewash of summons and arrest of the propped up topper Ruby Rai, in the humanities stream in the Bihar intermediate examinations who did not know what political science is!
But the larger question is, will the arrest of one Ruby Rai arrest the consistent corrupt practices once for all? It is a structural problem embedded deep into the system with fewer institutes and limited scope of streams and opportunities to choose from that has led to desperation to seek higher marks to comply with the false social status that has become the norm in the society.
It is no secret that the administrative system and the authorities in the education sector is at its lowest in the state of Bihar, the rotting effects of which have been relegated to the society where parents and teachers are equally guilty of belittling the very shrine of education by resorting to illegal and unscrupulous practices.
Will this much-hyped arrest suffice the cleaning up of a rotten state of affairs in a state which has a deplorable rate of social awareness and literacy levels amongst its masses that too in a scenario where no volition for welfare of people or moral precincts prevail upon the very administration itself?
This was evident in the aftermath of the Vidhyaniketan embarrassment in 2015, when the education minister Mr.Prashant Kumar Shahi pleaded his inability to contain the malpractices and lamely advocated adoption of moralities amongst people to refrain from cheating.
The home guards who were deployed at the exam centers to correct the system actually connived with the authorities whose cognizance led to abetment of further adultery instead of admonishing the inept.
Bihar, a predominantly agrarian economy with the majority population of humble farmers who have been organically duped and deprived of development for decades at the hands of power hungry politicians all along are today once again at the mercy of the incompetent or indifferent or perhaps both, who in the quest for satisfying their battered egos and personal ambitions have leased out their political senility at the altar of scam stricken reigning realms that has kept Bihar away from quality education, industrialization, infrastructural development or even a sustainable agricultural development model.
The fertile and arable land that led to an exploding population is today unable to sustain in its crumbled infrastructure and people are left with no trading opportunities or access to modern facilities or service sectors within.
Hence the aspiring and the needy are forced to look out for greener pastures elsewhere in other states or countries for employment or even to become employable, leaving Bihar with a residue population of gullible and ill-informed inmates who readily succumb to the multi layered corrupt practices and have lost their ability to question.
The illiteracy and ignorance that is sowed in a sustainable method by way of enforced lawlessness, electing goons, rampant corruption and widespread fraudulent practices have made the people come to terms with it as a survival skill and today see education or employment or employability itself for that matter as just a prerequisite for some quick money/power making tool.
It is a stark irony that Magadh Desh(Bihar) that was once the epicenter of learning, culture, economics and a bustling town of knowledge in ancient India is today rendered into a dilapidated state where education is reduced to just a commodity that fetches a price tag in the matrimonial markets or power houses of polity and knowledge has become synonymous with peddled marks and usurped degrees.
It is in this context that the arrest of Ruby Rai makes no sense as the filth is much deeper and the decision of the authorities hiding under the clean-up shield of Ruby Rai’s arrest is like plucking a leaf out of a deceased tree whose stem is moth-eaten and the roots struck in a venomous slush.
There is a dire need for a modern day Kautilyan strategy to awaken the Biharis that can set the doom of the dirty dynasty and all its ignorance building politics, lest pawns like Ruby Rai will continue to be held out as victory shields against corruption even as the nefarious nexus of corrupt principals, professors, parents and political prophets go unhindered and unquestioned if not unpunished!
In a country where murderers and rapists get pardoned and sent to rehab homes and a state which adopts terrorists as its ‘Betis’ and where scam tainted ministers get a second chance at the political steering, the crass arrest of Ruby Rai comes out as a mockery as it puts the future of a misguided young life at stake that was only part of a thriving system
Will the authorities of Bihar ever summon or question the secure medical degrees in the kingmakers’ family?
http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2016/06/27/bihr-exam-scam-rby-rai_n_10693280.html