says an ancient Sanskrit text.

It means, mother, father and the teacher are equal to God. They are unparalleled in the way in which they can influence the nurturing of the humanity. They are said to be Divine embodiments. So far, so good.

Things change. Times change. And truth changes as things and time change. Thus, what was true some 1000 years ago, may not be true today. Well, do we really see God in our teachers? (I believe we still see God in our parents!) Are teachers really fit for an assessment by us, this way?

We do not need any empirical field research to get an answer to this question. We only need to look into our own schools and colleges and our own lives to get the perfect solution. Do we, get up in the morning with an anxious excitement, looking forward desperately to attend classes, to learn new concepts and to analyse and evaluate new things in a better way?

Do we really look forward to attend all the lectures being thrashed into us, as if we were some data storage hard disks, ever ready to take in whatever quality and quantity of information is being marketed out there? Well, is the education really marketable these days?!

What is education? Is it only listening and listening and listening? Are our brains so primitive, as to follow this simplistic linear model of boring learning? Can the present system of learning even be called so? Don't we crave for vivid, colorful descriptions of events and concepts? Don't we as learners, crave for pedagogical creativity? Don't we yearn for an interactive, engaging and interesting class room?

Why then, do we really need rooms with closed walls to be our places of study? Wouldn't we like to go out in the warm sunshine, spread wide open the resplendent wings of our wild imagination, and get set going on them, exploring our own worlds, so full of knowledge, bubbling with wisdom for us to pick and choose, and assimilate and digest!?

Why are we still into the factory model of gaining education?! Take a look at this:

We are produced in batches - Batch 2009, Batch 2010, etc., on the assembly line of our respective law schools. Any deviation from the standard mould is frowned at. Such 'defective pieces' are thrashed into waste bins and tagged as misfits! Rules are the ultimate truths, even if they tend to stifle our very life blood.

How many of the law schools in India look beyond the curriculum? (Well, it is even doubtful how many of them look INTO the curriculum even once ) How many of the Indian law schools have a learner-centric pedagogical system, instead of the topical teacher-centric model? Education is for whom? For the management to make money? Or, for the students to gain wisdom? If the former be our objective in setting up scores of law schools, we better merrily continue with the existing polluting factories. But, if we seriously, in the heart of our hearts, believe the latter to be the ultimate objective of humankind, we better mend our ways.

We need greener education. Our present day education is polluting us. It is killing us from inside. We are getting converted into standardised robots, who will be bought for hefty prices by MNCs with deep pockets (and even deeper and darker under-bellies!)!

We are humans, dude! We are meant to be humans! We cannot afford to lose our USPs in the name of modernization or development or whatever you fancy calling it. It's a mirage. A dangerous mirage, which is sucking into it, a vast pool of vibrantly creative youth.

We need to stop the catastrophe. We need to save ourselves from being doomed! We need ourselves to lead ourselves!

We ought to do it! We shall do it! We will do it!

Amen!