Dear Irani, say you are self-taught and move on

Pity poor Smriti.

Ms Irani, the Union minister for HRD does have an issue deciding on what she’s done before in life.

First there was the issue of her degree certificate. What was that row all about anyways? Now it’s about the nomenclature to be applied to her credentials from a certain university in the USA. Apparently the lady did a six day course on leadership at Yale in New Haven, something scores of other MPs have done. On that basis, she claims to have got a degree from there.

The chattering classes are all over her again for this “gaffe”. The Twitterati have a couple of items on this. One collage has an angry Amitabh delivering that little chestnut from Deewaar about him having the dhun daulat zameen, followed by that famous rhetorical question, this time addressed to Ms. Irani, “Aur tumhare paas kya hai?” To which Ms Irani, looking prim and proper in her bharatiya nari role replies, “Mere paas Yale degree hai”! How corny is that !!

Actually it is something of a gaffe on Ms Irani’s part. That’s because she made the claim herself. If it was in a press release she could have always put it down to a clueless and overenthusiastic PR officer, who could, in turn, show ample precedent for scores of people who do exactly the same thing - and get away with it. But surely the minister for education should know the right nomenclature to give an educational credential.

There is a larger issue at play here. At work in all this, both in Ms Irani’s behaviour, and those of her tormentors, is a disease called credentialitis.

This is a very credential obsessed country. The Orient has a bigger fetish for credentials than the Occident. The one exception to this rule is Austria, where its common to address someone as “Herr Doktor Doktor Professuer”, indicating that the addressee has two PhDs! Additionally in India, perhaps it’s the Brahmanical mindset at work. Ironically the higher people rise, the more obsessed they become with credentials. The political and bureaucratic class is particularly susceptible to the disease. Symptoms of credentialitis are more apparent in the south of the country than elsewhere. The redoubtable MG Ramachandran actually gave himself a doctorate. Now that’s the top of the greasy pole.

The business community also exhibits symptoms. There’s always the manager or industrialist looking for a little mid career burnishing of credentials. What better way to do it than in one or two weeks with a program at a certain sort of place. This obsession with credentials leads to a genteel little racket that big universities cater to. Credentialitis is cured with a two week “advanced” management course with the company picking up the heavy tab.

So a two week sojourn and a much lighter wallet later, and said person comes back with a certificate that says he’s completed the “advanced management program” from “X university”. He is therefore “X educated”. As to what can be learnt in two weeks. Well, that’s highly debatable. In fact, it’s not much at all. The university thus lends its name and prestige as a cure to the disease of credentialitis. All for a fee, of course. In fact a very hefty fee. The fees are so high that “executive education” as it’s called, is big business. Wonderful.

The media play to this in full measure. Subsequent media profiles and PR releases breathlessly mention that the returned person is “X educated” from this school, neglecting to mention that it was a two week program, and not a regular degree. The media trumpet that said person is an “X alumnus”, little realizing that said persons don’t figure in the jealously guarded alumni data bases of the big universities. Nowadays such trumpeting gets picked up by the Internet, and by a gradual process of osmosis and repetition, said person who spent ten days at “X university” becomes “X educated”.

As further evidence of credentialitis consider the media fawning that takes place over the young scions of business families. The fawning almost never fails to mention the universities they went to, usually in the USA. Though the young uns tend to be the ones who’ve actually earned the degrees, so they don’t have to bother so much about credentialitis. . Credentialitis is particularly important in some areas of punditry. Macroeconomics for example, – particularly in India – is something of a shady protoscience, on which everybody has an opinion that is always correct. In such a situation, the more credentialed the person, the more the credibility.

Of course, and as always, the best indicator of socioeconomic trends in India are the matrimonial columns. Consider the new site iitiimshaadi.com. It’s all in the address and the web site name! Nowadays even the MBA chaap won’t do. It has to be from a “reputed” institute.

A reverse trend is also at work. A tiny handful of very credentialed people don’t go about trumpeting their credentials at all. Perhaps it’s the latent fear of the mob and the insecurity the credentials present in them. The peculiar combination of insecurity and professional jealously that pops up when highly credentialed people disclose their backgrounds is quite interesting to behold, and perhaps the reasons they choose not to disclose it. To such people, in today’s India, only a heart may be worn on a sleeve. Learning has to be worn like a pocket watch, discreetly tucked away.

Education is what remains after you’ve forgotten all that’s there in the text books. Some of the most educated people this columnist has met never went to university. And some of the biggest ghadas this columnist has met have been from what some would call “prestigious” centers of learning.

This is not a country that produces self taught leaders or intellectuals with the mental toughness and self confidence to say they are self educated. That needs judgment on what to read and what to leave out. It also requires the discipline of life long learning. More’s the pity because with the Internet it’s all the easier to participate in the democratization of knowledge, if one just has the discipline. This is especially true of the social sciences and the humanities, fields necessary for an education in government. It gets trickier for the hard, or the natural sciences.

So if the lady in question harbours some lurking insecurity about her credentials, why doesn’t she admit it and move on. She can say she’s self taught, proceed to teach herself, and turn it into an advantage. She would be in some pretty illustrious company. Lincoln, Churchill, and Mao come to mind. Kamaraj was another. In business – and in our age - Gates and the previous Tata are all names that pop up.

Smritheeee, the truth will set you freeee.

So Ms Irani, admittedly you’re not a daughter of Eli, but it doesn’t matter. Just do what you have to do, and don’t let the bastards get you down.

Adil Rustomjee is an investment adviser in Mumbai. Comments are welcome at a_rustomjee@hotmail.com.