Are we really educated ?

The everlasting debate about the Indian education system never seems to take a backseat. This time the indirect, yet significant error of the Indian education system was evident in the recently concluded elections of Kerela. A state which as always boasted of the highest percentage of "educated" people has shown patterns of very polarized voting. The Hindu centric majority districts voting for one party and the muslim and christian centric voting for another. This pattern obviously raises the big question - "How do we define education in India ?". Is it the possesion of a degree, or is it aquiring vasts quantities of information and data which can be retrieved at any point of time to convince people of your capability to do a job, or is it more philosophically speaking the wisdom to differentiate between what is wrong and what is right. The last possible definition is obviously not the one that is prevalant and also does not seem very practicle. However, not seeming practicle does not attenuate its importance. The other aspects of education i.e earning a degree, learning about your subject is definetly an important tool for sustaining life. But, the basic education or value education is the foundation on which we build our life.
Many of you might say ,"hey its good to hear, but it dosen't really work out that way in the real world". Well, in that sense tell me this, if you tommorow you were promoted to a big position in an organisation without the basic value education, then what is to stop you from taking a bribe at the risk of putting a lot of jobs at stake. Look how much we like Mr. CWG Suresh Kalamandi or Mr 2G Raja. According to our education system they are educated but obviously not value educated. The lack of value education of just two people has costed our country over RS.2000 crores.
Looking not very far back the recently closed case of the Jessica Lal murder is an example that epitomises how important value education is. On one hand you have the guilty who, right from committing the crime to covering it up, showed how dangerous the absence of value education is in the hands of the powerful. While, on the other hand we have people of democracy who refused to accept the injustice to a rather unkown girl and stood up against a seemingly unfallible enemy - the corrupt politician. The clash between the two that was highly publicised and resulted, as quoted by the news papers, in restoration of faith in democracy.
There are many such instances in our history from which we can conclude that for the very sustainance of the people in the democracy of India, value education must be given equal if not more importance than the other forms of "education". Maybe, only then can we say that yes we are a little educated.