Letter from the Editor

Letter from the Editor

One of the beneficial fallouts of the intense additional reservations-for-OBCs debate which has convulsed the nation is that it has focused the most active and intelligent minds countrywide upon the numerous problems and infirmities — which were hitherto swept under a now very-bulging carpet — of India’s moribund education system. While as yet there is no closure of the debate on whether seats reservation in institutions of higher education for OBCs (other backward castes) is in the overall national interest, a consensus has emerged that there’s much that’s wrong with the education system at all levels — pre-school, primary, secondary and tertiary. There’s also general acknowledgement that reform and restructuring of the education system as a whole has been shamefully neglected and is overdue.

Readers of this publication which for the past six years has been ploughing a lonely furrow, are presumably well aware of the stand that we have taken on the reservations-for-OBCs issue in our cover story last month. For those who missed it, in a nutshell it is that the additional 27 percent (i.e to the 22.5 percent capacity reservation already extant for scheduled castes and scheduled tribes) isn’t in the national interest, because it poses the danger of diluting academic standards in higher education institutions. Yet after continuous reading of the deluge of informed comment on this issue in the media, the bottom line is that beyond a point caste-based quotas in any walk of life should be resisted, because spotlighting the caste identities of citizens is regressive, socially divisive and well, plain evil. In a society which prides itself on its intelligence, there are surely other ways to practise positive discrimination.

Fortunately even as politicians compound the original sin of consistently inadequate investment in education which has created capacity shortages which in turn has necessitated quotas, the nation is blessed with a large and growing number of leaders and achievers in all walks of life who have discerned the linkage between universalisation of education and national development and well-being. In our billion-strong subcontinent-sized nation, there are undoubtedly thousands of liberals beyond the reach of indifferent media, who are working to improve and upgrade education to empower the poor and deprived. From this vast army of education missionaries and after wide informal consultation, EducationWorld profiles — for the first time ever in Indian history — 50 leaders in all walks of life, who are engaged in the process of revitalising and re-shaping Indian education.

Admittedly there is more than a little element of arbitrariness in the choice of individuals profiled in this month’s path-breaking cover story. To those working for the noble cause of a just and egalitarian education system who may feel they have been unfairly omitted from this list, my apologies in advance. Please write in and add to our knowledge base in EducationWorld.

Dilip Thakore