For the Indian polity and economy, these are the worst times. Industrial and agriculture growth percentages are rock bottom; inflation is relentless with food, fuel and transport prices 15-20 percent higher than a year ago; the Sensex is below the plimsoll line of 16,000; the rupee which was 45 to the US dollar months ago is currently quoted at 56.50 and the nation’s trade and fiscal deficits are spinning out of control. And even as the economy is reeling under a thousand shocks and the people — particularly the poor wracked by unremitting inflation — are driven to despair, for the amoral neta-babu kleptocracy in Delhi, state capitals and countrywide, it’s business as usual. Every day of the week lurid newspaper headlines and television news proclaim scams and swindles which the country’s decrepit and justice systems cannot competently investigate and/or successfully prosecute. The centre seems unable to hold and right across the national landscape things seem to be falling apart.
Yet as a wise philosopher once remarked, whatever informed observers say about India is true, but paradoxically, the opposite is also true. The truth is that even as public despondency seems to be at its nadir, far from newspaper headlines and beyond the ken of hysterical television news anchors, citizens with commitment and purpose are labouring beyond the line of duty and inching the nation along the path of progress and development. This is specially true of post-independence India’s inexplicably and cruelly neglected education sector. Despite the population of the country having tripled since independence, education — particularly primary education — has been a low-priority item on the agenda of the Central and state governments.
Consequently, high-potential independent India in which only 65 percent of the population is literate, has become the most illiterate nation state of the contemporary world. And the auguries are not good. According to a NASSCOM-McKinsey World Institute study (2005), 75 percent of graduates of India’s engineering colleges and 85 percent of arts, science and commerce graduates are unfit for employment in self-respecting companies, particularly multinationals.
Fortunately, there is a growing minority of bona fide educationists and educators, who despite official discouragement and hostility, are making unsung but determined efforts to set and raise standards in primary, secondary and higher education in a nation which seems to have got its development priorities horribly wrong. In this start-of-the-academic year issue, we present thumbnail biographies of 50 education leaders who are intelligently attempting — with most of them succeeding — to invest reality and meaning into Indian education.
Please note this list of 50 change-makers in Indian education is illustrative, not exhaustive. I am sure there are many other innovative educators working in their own quiet way to improve and upgrade school and collegiate syllabuses and curriculums. I invite them to interact with us in EducationWorld. Meanwhile I commend this month’s cover story to our readers with the hope that some will be inspired to step forward and help speed up the much-too-slow renaissance of Indian education.