LETTERS: Educational reforms

Apropos of the main article “Unleashing opportunity” (THT, January 17, Page 8), rather than talking generics, Nepali experts must come up with specific point by point suggestions on the desired reforms.

We know our parents who studied in Durbar High School, Tri Chandra College and Punjab University had the academic resources and minds to engage and compete with the best in the world. What was good in our parents days are still good now. We definitely need some adjustments or changes to take into account the time lapse and technological transformation.

Other than that what else can we reform? Even in technical subjects the bases are the same. We still apply Newton’s theory of gravitation and Einstein theory of relativity. We cannot say western education is good and Nepali education bad or mediocre. If it was so, our civil servants, doctors, engineers, hotel staffers, drivers should all have been educated in developed countries. Surprisingly, people study medicine in Nepal and migrate to America, England and Canada. So how is our education not up to the standard? I would like to share a few anecdotes as to why western education does not fit into local settings. In 1979, an industrialist’s son returned with an MBA in Canada to work in a travel agency as a kitchen inventory supervisor. He was of no use in his father’s match industry. A friend studied engineering in West Germany and worked as a German interpreter at a small travel agency. A Sherpa started a trekking company after acquiring a degree from an American university only to find out that the trekkers liked his porters better. Soon he got rid of tie and suits and dumped his English language.

When young people spend four years of their prime time in America they become as afraid and alienated as a sheep from a pack of wolves.

Manohar Shrestha, Kathmandu

Justice system

The recent spat among the top senior judges in India from the platform of the Supreme Court, their open press conference and the manner in which the Chief Justice of India has been criticised in public by them is both good and bad news for Indian democracy.

The good news is that it strengthens the democratic framework of India on the public domain where the two pillars of democracy, the press and the justice system, strengthen each other by appealing to the ordinary citizens and expressing their helplessness. The bad news is that the chaos that is generating from India’s highest law body is not a good sign for the justice system of the world’s largest democracy. Irrespective of what the senior Supreme Court judges mentioned in the press conference; numerous cases across the nation has established the fact that there are two sets of justice system available in the country; one for the poorest of the poor and those without any socio-economic and/or political influence and the other for the rich, super rich and political elites.

Saikat Kumar Basu, Canada