At St Stephen’s, asking questions was not good: Rahul Gandhi

Seeking to differentiate between the education system in India and that in the United States and England, where he studied, the Amethi MP said, “We don’t ask people (students) to ask questions. When I was studying at St Stephen’s College, asking a question was not (perceived to be) good in our class.

“You were looked down upon if you asked too many questions.”

As another illustration of the state of education in the country, Rahul said his staff had recently opposed his plan to visit Kanpur because certain institutions he was supposed to visit were found to be “not good enough”. People, the MP said, did not want him to see how bad they were.

Faced with a volley of questions from agitated students opposing OBC quota in central educational institutions in both Kumaon and Garhwal regions in the past two days, Rahul Gandhi said he was “open” to this issue. But he maintained that he believes in increasing the number of institutions and improving the quality of education to solve this contentious subject.

In the past two days, during separate interactions with students at Ramnagar on Monday and at HN Bahuguna Garhwal University here on Tuesday, Rahul faced persistent queries about the rationale of HRD Minister Arjun Singh’s decision to introduce OBC quota in educational institutions. While he maintained that his solution to the vexing issue of reservation was increasing the number of seats and educational institutions, as also the quality of education, he had to take a stance on this issue on Tuesday as several students engaged him into a debate on the merits and demerits of education.

“I am open to that (the issue reservation),” Rahul said. “I am open to both sides but we should focus on solving the problem. Let’s not worry about how the seats are divided. Problem is there are not many seats and that is why this is an issue.

“If the number of seats in India becomes unlimited, would reservation be relevant? So let’s not start dividing people.”

Supporting the entry of foreign universities in the country, Rahul said 30 years ago there was not enough money to increase the number of institutions to the desirable level. “But today we have enough money for that. Stanford, Oxford and other international institutions want to come here, but they are stopped.”