Sunday, April 2, 2023

Irrelevant controversy about the Degree of Prime Minister


Is it not amazing that a Chief Minister has got himself embroiled in the controversy over the educational qualifications of Prime Minister Narendra Modi? How does it matter if he does not possess a university degree? After all, the people of India have not elected him based on his educational qualifications. He enjoys the confidence of the people and his party for the leadership qualities that he has. The country has made giant strides in many fields due to his innovative ideas and the unique capabilities of getting them implemented at the ground level. Thousands of crores of Rs are sent every four months to lakhs of farmers in the country without an iota of corruption, which is unknown and unheard of in our country. The money goes directly to the accounts of farmers without a loss of a single penny. What is the use of a highly qualified Prime minister if he/she cannot get delivered to the targeted people without getting drowned in the cesspool of rampant corruption?
Some thirty years ago the then General Secretary of the Congress Party Shri VN Gadgil had made a ridiculous statement that Sharad Pawar could never become the Prime Minister of India because he was not proficient in the English language. His hostility towards Sharad Pawar was well known. So, journalists rushed to Sharad Pawar and talked about the opinion of Shri Gadgil, then he replied that if English was the criterion to become the Prime Minister, the Professors of English in the universities would be better than most of the politicians. But can they become Ministers or Prime Minister? The myth of English has been broken by the present Prime Minister. The country will remain indebted to him for the pride of place that he has given to Hindi. Now in the twenty-first century, it can be safely said that knowledge of Hindi is essential to become the Prime Minister of India.
However, if no less than a Chief Minister is raising the meaningless controversy about the educational qualification of the Prime Minister, then one can only laugh at his shallowness and imbecility. There are certain areas and professions where educational qualifications do not matter. For example, a good lawyer may not have good academic records but those having brilliant academic qualifications may be very dullard and unworthy of properly defending their clients. A doctor having mediocre qualifications may be a good one in comparison to a person having shined educational qualifications. The same is true, more or less, for other professions like journalism.
This is not the first time such controversies have been raked. Questions have been asked about the academic degrees of Mamata Banerji, Smriti Irani and many others but any Chief Minister has not got mired him/herself in such inanities. There was one Jitender Singh Tomar, a minister in the previous Kejriwal government, who was jailed for fake degrees, but it was not because of his politics but because he attempted to get himself enrolled as an Advocate based on his fake LL. B. degree from a university, that he never even once visited.