99 And Seven Decimal Points

'Does 99 percent guarantee character and capacity for an independent awareness of life or does it make you -- barring exceptions -- a compliant careerist beholden to governments and corporations?'
'What kind of political and social choices would such minds make?' asks Shyam G Menon.

99.9999999.

I don't know in whose lexicon that figure is a 'fail.'

But then, I don't think 99.9999999 is about common sense or common people.

It is about a whole industry resident in chasing down the missing 0.0000001.

Mid-February 2025. For the last couple of days, the front-page of leading Malayalam newspapers had been a study of academic brilliance in decimal points.

The papers sported a massive advertisement issued by a leading coaching centre, showcasing the marks scored by top ranking students in an entrance exam.

The top half of the full-page ad was reserved for the best of the best (as decided by marks); their photos printed in big dimension.

The lower half had several other students, their photos in small size. The inside page was also crammed with photos.

Overall, from front to inside page, the marks on show ranged from 99.9 per cent to 99 per cent.

There was a small box on those scoring 100 per cent for select subjects and finally a picture showing award of a scholarship of one crore rupees to a medical entrance topper.

Nothing extraordinary here. We have been seeing this for years nationwide.

For instance, there are hoardings in Mumbai, which feature photos packed like sardines, all of the faces therein, claimants to high marks in some exam or the other.

In Kerala, where media penetration is high and regional and community news have always been important, even top scorers in the state's tenth standard exams are the stuff of front-page news.

What amused me in the advertisement I saw in February was that all the people on the front and inside pages had scored 99 per cent and above.

Bolt and the also-rans

During my days in school and college in the state, the drift towards brilliance of the 100 per cent sort had only begun.

The club of 90 per cent plus was yet small.

My parents' generation used to joke about what it could lead to.

How exactly is 99.5 different from 99.6 as a measure of human brilliance?

Is it even brilliance that we see there or is it something else?

The subject was treated light heartedly. Those days, students could laugh. Needless to say, I laughed at my own insignificance -- call it progressive vanishing -- upon seeing the ad from February, 2025.

As I age, I am convinced that beyond a point, life eats one and one's so-called achievements, alive.

The top scores of my time in school and college would be average also-rans now. The process leaves us food for thought.

In this flow of existence, do we really need to preen about anything?

My eyes were on the marks scored, displayed below each photo in the ad. It had marks expanded to seven decimal places.

I couldn't think of applications in normal human circumstances, which require so many digits written down after a point.

Even those medical tests, our lives bank on for survival in old age, are usually happy with one or two decimal points. Doctors appear comfortable deciding treatment based on such data.

Few things match medical treatment in criticality to us. But then I suppose, decimal places by the dozen become necessary when ranking a ton of students, all scoring 99 per cent and above.

Is that reflective of the importance of the exercise or a sign of game losing its meaning? I wonder.

A bit intimidated by the collective focus on studies and exams in that 99 per cent club, I figured a wandering, meandering sort like me, who blundered through life, would be generally irrelevant to them.

Academic excellence remains an ideal consistently celebrated by Indian parents as long as I can remember. Reason is simple -- excellent marks promise an excellent career.

And generally speaking, once a person is on that ship and sailing forth securely, then that highly coveted destination in Indian existence -- a well settled life - may emerge a guaranteed shore.

One may not want that shore straightaway but it will be there for one's claiming.

Which parent wouldn't want that ship for his / her child?

So, life from a very young age onward, becomes a case of being progressively shown whether one's compass for navigation, measures up to the 99 per cent type or not.

Nowadays, a number much bigger than in my schooldays, get their 99 per cent-compass correct along with passport to well settled life.

Nobody bothers about the rest and their discovery of life. Including, what there is to learn in what they discover and how they discover.

As one friend put it -- there's Ussain Bolt, who everyone knows; then there are the nearly 190 other male athletes who ran below 10 seconds from 1968 onward but from whose ranks, we recollect only a few. Then, there's the rest of us.

How helpful is this model to make all of us love running?

How helpful is deifying 99 per cent to make us love education?

Ranks and jobs as education

Many years after school and college and well into my life rich in failures (am happy about it all), I found myself replying to questions about how I was faring, with a "getting along" for answer.

Now I know why. It's my compass, my ship, my navigation skills, my sense of ocean; all of it together called -- my nature, summing up existence as honestly as it can.

Possessing very low market value, getting along is however a tough category in India. Especially, if the getting along sort possesses brilliance of other kinds (types outside the mainstream). Getting along is a lonely private refuge.

In India, the flotilla of the 99 per cent is where a rising number of folks already are and it is where most of the remaining, wish to be.

At the very least, get parking space in its proximity. It isn't surprising -- academic performance and therein 99 per cent, is still the surest path to gainful employment for an Indian.

In fact, the long shadow of the race to be 99 per cent, is felt far in an Indian life. Just how far the shadow reaches became apparent to me only as I neared retirement age.

My getting along-life set to rhythms and priorities that rarely synchronised with the 99 per cent-scoring, well settled lot, meant I missed nearly all alumni get togethers save the occasional, delightful reunion with good friends from college.

Very evident herein, was a divide between school and college.

The latter comes at an interesting stage in one's physical growth and evolution of personality. Memories from then (at the personal level, it's usually a comedy of errors), linger.

Aside from keeping in touch with a really small number of friends from school, I realized that I had generally chosen to avoid that chapter of alumni existence. It took me a while to understand why.

Although alumni, one's school alumni still reminded of how Indian schools teach the young to tackle life. They don't teach students to know themselves, accept themselves or compete with oneself and improve oneself - do they?

The emphasis is on competing with others and discovering the existence of ranking systems.

It's one's first taste of a world with others better than oneself and the self, disappearing, if one didn't do something about maintaining or improving one's position.

But how does one improve? For that, there is nothing offered as solution, save tuitions and coaching centers endorsing the same old worship of 99 per cent and pursuit of it.

Simply put -- 99 per cent is non-negotiable direction. And like all things beyond question, it leaves a mental stamp.

I associate my school with competition and ranking by academic performance. Does this install ranking and recognition by it as central to Indian imagination?

In my head is a report card. It stalks me, asking: what is your total score in life so far? I wish it wasn't there.

College in comparison, was less harsh and for the likes of me fleeing mathematics and science, a relief.

Something else intrigued. In Kerala this February, the substance in what a person said, did not appear as significant as how well-known or successful the person is.

Some people are truly a delight to listen to when they speak. Some others, we listen to because they are very relevant or their questions are thought provoking.

But when a general expectation gets established of anyone on the dais being significant and relevant, subversion may happen. After all, anything that is formulaic can be reverse-engineered.

At a literature festival, I found myself fleeing from three sessions on higher education, after five minutes of suffering narrative focused on career (at each venue) as opposed to genuine higher education.

On stage, at one location, were young smooth-talking market-worshippers, whose idea of education was to second it to market compulsions, basically employment opportunities here and overseas.

Elsewhere, an entrepreneur held forth on similar lines. Corporate recruitment is usually about matching recruit to requirement; finding square pegs for square holes.

The third location featured professors from private universities, who essentially did sales talk for their employers. Mercifully, there was none of the myth and heritage-pushing lot.

And while discussions around a book on science and rationalism criticized the insertion of traditional beliefs lacking empirical evidence and external study into academic curriculum under India's current government, nothing of that sort was discussed at the sessions on higher education, while I was there. Maybe, the sessions were engaging after I left.

I find the increasing focus on employment in university education, encouraging an edited understanding of life with poor regard for what gets edited out.

It troubles me that post education, many well qualified folks have shown no difficulty in endorsing regressive politics and regressive perspectives of life.

Perhaps I should also add this -- off and on in my years as freelancer, I have attempted joining organisations as regular employee to make ends meet.

At interviews, I found human resource managers struggling to fit my life and resume lacking focus, into industry grids.

One of the best books on modern China that I read in college was written by a writer covering arts and culture for a leading British daily; he (and not one of their political or financial correspondents) was posted to Beijing as China correspondent by the paper.

Who would make such an unorthodox choice to report on a rising economic powerhouse and future superpower? His book was a fantastic read.

The thing is, in times gone by, we had the skill to read people; understand them. That's a dead art.

Now the onus is on the candidate to make himself/herself easily understood to an industrial grid. Whose incapacity does it illustrate?

Had anyone on dais at that literature festival said we have a crisis of not being able to comprehend talent, groom talent, engage talent and retain talent -- I would have sat through whole sessions.

For me, education is at once a service industry and not. If its sole purpose is to right-size for employment, then we will have a sea of people with no sense of or value for freedom.

Real university education should make a mind passing through its portals, difficult for companies to recruit; it should challenge right-sizing.

Corporate talent is simply not the benchmark for human awareness, leave alone human brilliance. And given industry and corporate structures are merely avenues to make money, which we accept, corporate requirements alone cannot be what higher education stands for.

What does 99 per cent promise?

It brings me to my real worry about 99 per cent. Right below the apartment I am writing from, is a study centre for civil service aspirants.

Like in many fields focused on cracking exams, the aspirants are caught young.

As those eventually meant to serve the people via the civil service, just how much of an awareness of life would an aspirant bring to the table if all that the given person has known yet is -- the competition-ridden circuit linking college, studies and coaching centre with 99 per cent for compass?

Does 99 percent guarantee character and capacity for an independent awareness of life or does it make you -- barring exceptions -- a compliant careerist beholden to governments and corporations?

What kind of political and social choices would such minds make? For sure it is individual choice.

I just wish someone informed 99 per cent of the importance of a holistic view.

A friend from the outdoors once told me during a long, multi-day, self-supported trek in the Himalaya, " you must look up and notice your surroundings more. You walk with tunnel vision."

I was in my forties and already a seasoned outdoorsperson, when spoken to so. But he was right. And I corrected myself.

These thoughts passed through my mind as I beheld those pages plastered with photos of the 99 per cent-brigade. It was meant to showcase and inspire.

To my eyes, it was a reaffirmation of mainstream imagination. Is the world going to be a better, more interesting place with these minds joining the human flow or is existence going to become even more narrowcast and materialistic?

And if they do make a difference, will it be their eventual experience in life and their understanding of it, or their high marks from school and college years, which effect it?

How exactly does the 99 per cent club enrich human existence? I don't know.

Let me simply say -- I wish everyone in that ad the very best and extend the same, to the many more who didn't make it to 99 per cent.

When they are close to retirement, I hope they remember this ad, laugh at it and count their success and wealth by the people they met in life, the experiences they had and the friends they made.

And I hope, they remember to keep life humane and bearable for others. I hope they leave life so, when they finally waltz off the face of the planet.

Shyam G Menon is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai.

Feature Presentation: Ashish Narsale/Rediff.com