There’s a persisting notion that development means fancy things you can touch and feel. The identity of an average Indian today rests on a post-colonial social fabric, while balancing itself on a post-liberalisation economy that still has no jobs for its youth (!!!). While we desperately convert our small towns into Shanghais, and distribute mobile services to every rural resident, what happens to the development of the mind? Are we any more open as a people than we were a few decades ago? Have we made any significant progress in ensuring everyone has equal opportunity?
Maybe not, but we do have women’s colleges.
I had always known that I would attend a women’s college when my time came. The reason for this was that I was lucky to have grown up surrounded by women who are trailblazers. Many of them credited their independence and drive to the fact that they attended women’s colleges. I was convinced my college life would free me, from a problem of plenty. Plenty of an unbiased, and a relatively liberal, upbringing.
My higher education took place in an institution that has been ranked number one for the second time in a row. Interestingly, I happened to be the third generation in my family to have attended the institution. So in my view, Miranda House has always been number one.
Even so, being a tiny part of a larger process of equalisation was liberating, to say the least. I emerged wiser, happier, funnier, and more in control of who I wanted to be. And, of course, my discipline challenged me and forced me to look beyond resources that were immediately available.
I cannot speak of Miranda House without mentioning how empowered the women are in that campus. I knew the kind of legacy I was going to be a part of – this is the place where Urvashi Butalia did away with Miss Miranda before establishing a feminist publishing house. If anything, the alumni of the institution have the tag of a “oh, feminist ho!” attached to them wherever they go, and for good reason.
The freedom on the campus has to be experienced to be believed. There is, of course, the stereotype that students in women’s colleges spend a majority of their time engaging in petty fights with each other, but that was never the case with me. Everyone I knew, friends and acquaintances, entered and left Miranda House as two different people.
When the NIRF rankings came to college, I was close to wrapping up a blissful three-year journey. I also happened to be at a meeting that was held with the then-principal, Pratibha Jolly. Representatives from each discipline were asked to attend and categorically told to “avoid wearing shorts,” “not lie down on the floor in the canteen area,” and “be dressed properly.” This was preceded by an exercise where each of us was asked what our goals are, but many students were dismissed for having “unrealistic goals that are not achievable.”
I must be honest, at this point, I left the room. I didn’t make a scene, I just slipped out. It was a hot afternoon, and my friends were waiting for me at the canteen. We had plans to lie down on the floor and drink juice in our shorts.
However, that got us thinking. How did what we wear impact the quality of what we studied, the kind of students we were, or how the infrastructure of the college was?
A sexist statement like that directly from the principal was no less than a big thwack on all the woke-ness I had participated in the last two years. What was even more saddening was that it was for the sake of a ranking that a perpetually ideologically defunct body was producing.
In an institute where diversity of thought is encouraged, I was surprised to see my principal say something so absurd, with utter conviction. That remains the one and only time I have been in the same room as her.
Funny thing is, she also attended Miranda House in her youth. We are both products of the same system and the same institution. Yet, we are separated by a system of rankings.
But, I guess that’s just it. That’s why it’s so important to question. It’s easy to ‘other’ the problem, but it’s hard when the fingers have to be pointed at people sitting at the same table as you. In the end, development can be as tangible as a building with a number one attached to it, but what are you going to do about the development of the mind?