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UGC Fee Hikes

For instance, if you never had to withdraw admission from your favourite college because you could not afford to pay the fees for the course you enrolled in. Drenched in tears, if you never went back home and remained numb for years to come. You will hardly understand why Punjab University students were agitating against the insane fee hike. You will never understand why Sumit from JNU cried after getting know that he no longer can take admission into Ph.D. because of UGC's absurd rules.
Yesterday while scrolling through comments and posts on education, I was shocked how these privileged who have attended expensive private schools, went to the best colleges and the universities and had the backing of the rich parents are supporting government's move. Maybe because for them it was just a privilege which they never acknowledged.
Over the years I have seen people agitating over various divine things and rights but never for basics. I don't know, whether to get angry or to laugh when the country that still struggles to provide basics to its people, dreams of becoming the superpower with digitalized economy and with bullet trains running over the corpses of hungry and naked.
To quote George Bernard Shaw, "Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience. If we could learn from mere experience, the stones of London would be wiser than its wisest men". Today, people have become extremely indifferent to massive injustice around them. They don't even feel there is something wrong with the way the world is today.
Those who are making these decisions never had to suffer penury and plight, that's why they cannot feel the plight of people who cannot afford dignified life. They cannot feel Sumit who picked plates at the weddings, gave tokens to patients at the hospital in Hisar to get through JNU and several others like him.
Education is still the privilege for many in the country. If you ask the poorest of poor, his highest aspiration would be to get his children education. Of course status of your upbringing decides what your future will be. But the ceiling can be broken when we get our basics back.
Education is the equalizer. But this government is afraid of equality because existing hierarchies give them pleasure.It is very well known if the quality education gets in and everyone develops critical thinking to question the system, they will be in danger. They know ignorance is the blessing and they want to thrive on it so that they can rule the way they want.

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