'Corruption in education is nothing but extortion'

By Justice N Santosh Hegde

Power is vested with officers so they can serve people. But those with power in their hands are killing the benefits they ought to deliver. And such misuse can be compared only with extortion. It is nothing but extortion when officers in the education department demand bribes to provide textbooks or facilitate admissions.

It is unfortunate how the greed has gone to such levels penetrating even areas of service like education. The Constitution makes it clear that it is the responsibility of the State to educate people.The State has failed, deliberately or otherwise, giving rise to the private sector.

There is no infrastructure and there are no teachers. Even those who cannot afford are forced to look elsewhere.

My father studied in a government school.

Back in those days, they were known as board schools as each district had an education board. He went up to the Supreme Court.Similar is the state in healthcare. My father, when he was a High Court judge, would go to the Bowring and Lady Curzon and Victoria hospitals. Today , someone who begs, borrows and steals will not go there.

As it turns out, there is money in education. A lot of people are getting into it as they can make as much for themselves as possible. The government failing in its duty as an educator, I think, was deliberate. It allows people with money to take advantage of the government's inability to do anything.

There is so much greed in society and society only respects wealth and power. Our elected representatives and bureaucrats are what they are because we, as a society , are losing values like contentment and humanism.Consequences of these losses are more so in the governance sector.

In the 1950s, there was a jeep scam of about Rs 52 lakh. In the 1980s, there was the Bofors scam worth Rs 64 crore. In 2010, we had the Commonwealth Games (Rs 70,000 crore) and the 2G (Rs 1.76 lakh crore) scams. The latest was coalgate pegged at Rs 1.86 lakh crore. What will happen to the economy of this country? Every government department is corrupt and the education department is no exception to this rule. Some drastic thinking is needed. We need a society that will boycott the corrupt. The courts have come to be of no use.There is something in the root of the system.

Ultimately , I only want educational institutions to instill values of contentment and humanism, which I am trying to spread among youngsters.