The common refrain in India these days is that the millennials have lost connect with their sanskars, the Indian value system. Well, it may be about the conventional generation gap where each generation wears a holier than thou attitude. But, that apart, there is a bigger question. It is about the kids of today, the generation in the making. The children, who are exposed to a maddening competitive streak by their parents, pushed in a race much ahead of their times. They have access to mindboggling information and rocket speed technology with astronomical aspirations thrust upon them. It may be argued that there were problems related to the value system owing to generational conflict in the past and the same set of attitudes were encountered by all generations during different stages of their aging. But what we find today for the would-be generation, the primary and middle school going children, is that things are going different, given the way they are being brought up. If in the case of millennials of today, the questions raised about their disconnect with the sanskars left some room for doubt, for the children of today, it appears a certainty if what they are exposed to is any indication. let us look at the different hues and colours of the environment in which most of the children are being raised. There is the single child with double income parents that has become the norm. The first casualty of such a state of affairs is the emotional bonding that a family provided. The commuting travails of heavily crowded cities demand that there is hardly any time left for the parents to connect with the child emotionally. Beginning with play school at two-and-a-half years, the toddler has only interacted with aunties and Ma’ams. And all he has learned is to put “heads down”. With playing fields vanishing rapidly in the jungle of concrete, the virtual world of gadgets and toys replaces the real world for these children. Obviously because parents hardly have time to bequeath the sanskars that are passed through generations, though with a gradual dilution over ages. With the time a child spends in the family getting reduced, the only option left for making the children learn the sanskars is the school, the one premises where he spends considerable time with the same set of people. But the problem is that schools, too, are bitten by the competition bug and have little time to talk about sanskars in this fast-paced technology-driven age. The excessive focus on everything English, from culture to language, to value system, there is little time left to talk about sanskars. But it was a pleasant surprise when my grandson asked me to attend his school to witness a Hindi Diwas Assembly recently. What a pleasure it was to watch the six-year-olds of Class 2 of this elite school perform skits and recite poems reflecting the cultural milieu of our country. And, that too, with a pride hardly visible today in anything vernacular. The messages of those skits and poetries were related to our valued sanskars, like respecting the parents and being grateful to them. More surprising was the message of the Assistant Vice-Principal emphasising the importance of our language and culture. And the biggest surprise was that the school was not in India but in a distant land, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman. The name of the school, of course, is Indian School Muscat.
The writer is a professor of management and public
speaker. He can be reached at ppathak.ism@gmail.com