Vidvan sarvatra pujyate

Any aspiring youth, at some point of their journey, asks this question to himself / herself or sometime to his/her friend, philosopher and guide, Why education? When, all around the world we commonly observe you can get every thing with money. Why to spend so much time effort even money to earn education, in spite of putting effort and resource to earn money itself?

While talking about this, one of my growing up days incident popped up in my memory. This incident put me in a deep dilemma in that time and also that memory has been carried forward and always influenced  my decision making in similar situation. I had a good friend name Sukanta in our school, Kanailal Vidyamandir. And we used to go to same coaching-classes together in our Higher Secondary days. He was a good student in general. One fine day, he told, he has been qualified in Indian Air force admission exam and has been selected for a technical position over there. At that time getting a job was a life changing event for us, job market was very very bad in our world ( more precisely in West Bengal ) and we all have seen many of our seniors from our locality were struggling for years to find a job after successfully completing their education. In those days recruitments in private sectors were almost vanished in Calcutta and suburb. Only ray of hope was in government sectors, but there also openings were very limited and competition was cut throat. And to make thing worse the personal and political influences, didn’t leave it as a fair competition. In addition to this the ambience was not conductive to groom an youngster to compete in professional fields neither at national level nor in the corporate world. So we always carry this anxiety in our mind, even after our hard work in study and be successful in the board exams, we may have to end up being with the job less youths group for long. That time our Mokhsa was getting a job, study was just the mean to achieve this. So Sukanta was in a major dilemma whether to do take the job or continue with the Higher Secondary study, and finally decided to join.

But that put me in a dilemma too, the pressure of the study was tremendous in higher secondary level, but even after grabbing a good score in the board exam earning a job won’t be garneted. In spite of that, why not full heartedly try to search for a job like Sukanta. Any way, I tried to answer this question to myself in my own way that time and many times after that. But answer to this question, remained pretty much same over the year, even after so many different life experiences:  

There are three primary reasons,

1st in this world of so called profession, certificate sells, once you can earn a certificate, from that time onwards, it becomes a part of your identity which positions you better in the job market for lifelong. Though as my NITIE professor, Dr. Mohanti, used to say, knowledge comes with an expiration date unless you rejuvenate it, but fortunately or unfortunately certificate doesn’t. Anyway there is a parallel train of accumulating certificates with out having much rational and objective, that in fact doesn’t help much.

2nd, there is always a legal and extra legal economy working parallelly in the history of humanity, the term extra legal is coined by economist Hernando de Soto. The greater section of humanity moves by this extralegal economy. But the legal domain enjoys all the benefits, glamour, élite status, aristocracy. Naturally return is much more for the same amount of effort in legal economy, if one can reach to the market which operates in legal economy. But without having resource, contact and that elite appearance, it is not open to every single human creature. It may not sounds very modern or democratic, but this is the hard reality of every society around the globe. Education is the only available key to open up this door for them who are challenged by the resource and contact. In addition, it may also help you to groom yourself, to be presentable to this elite economy world.

3rd, which, I’ve grown up always hearing from my parents:

svagrihe pujyate murkha svagraame pujyate prabhuh |

svadeshe pujyate raja vidvan sarvatra pujyate ||

A fool is worshipped only in his house and a village headman in his village. A king is worshipped only in his kingdom but a man / woman with wisdom is worshipped everywhere.

This is an universal truth

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