No kudos is enough for Mr.Santosh Gautam for the article titled “Redefine education” (THT, Jan. 26, Page 8). It is high time society tried to appreciate the real significance of education. Mere earning of degrees does not necessarily make a person educated. And one can also become truly educated without completing school education, attending college or pursuing higher education. There are innumerable “educated” persons in society who are racists, communal and intolerant to the utmost, engaged in “honour” killings, regarding the fairer sex as “inferior” to the men-folk or superstitious. The think-tank of all terrorist organizations throughout the world consists of “educated” persons possessing respectable degrees from prestigious institutions. Less said about the philistine mentality of ragging the juniors among the “jewels” of the student community the better! On the other hand many “uneducated” and illiterate are learned enough to regard the human race as one by rising over narrow boundaries of language, race, religion, nationality or colour; avoid communalism or pledge to donate their bodies after death for a medical cause. That person is truly educated who values human rights, remains humble and courteous, knows the difference between right and wrong and also practically practice it in daily life. This is the very reason why many degree-holders seek the advice of certain degree-less persons and follow their philosophical paths. So the Who’s Who of the education sphere should necessarily provide stress to value-based learning in schools immediately so that education attains its real significance.

Kajal Chatterjee, Kolkata

Big lies

Hitler’s propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels used to say “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it then people will eventually believe it”. In the contemporary Nepal’s political pyramid, I see four big lies fitting within. Those who call themselves apotheoses of the Madhes cause and their ascendancy of impotency during their government is a mere point in a case that they are throwing the nation into a cauldron of political impasse. I can barely see any lines blurring between King Mahendra’s and Gyanandra’s coup to the act of Madhesi leaders trying to hold the entire nation in their sway. Their augmentation of “end justifies the means” policy is a national crisis. It is the biggest lie that pinnacles the pyramid. On the next trophic level is the aphorism of’ the government’. I am deeply apocalyptic about this idea in the domain of our political sphere. Following it the ‘eradication of load-shedding within a year’ falls in another trophic level of the pyramid. This rhetoric seems to be another major lie. Finally the decade-long armed ‘People’s War’ whose outcome is a 10% blessing and a 90% curse, as mooted by Kul C. Gautam in “Lost Transition”, says that the wage of another armed revolution could be the solution of the abysmal problems of our nation.

Jay Bahadur Shah, Jajarkot