The 16th anniversary of EducationWorld, launched in 1999 with the mission statement “to build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda”, is a good time to do some honest stocktaking. Although we somewhat naively expected a national consensus on the subject, there’s a long road ahead before this mission is realised.
An analysis of why this objective — so self-evidently in the national interest — is nowhere in sight points to lack of enthusiasm within the country’s influential middle class which dominates Parliament, the judiciary, the academy, industry and media, for greater investment in public education, as the root cause. It’s regrettable but true, that over four decades of Nehruvian socialism that engineered an economy of chronic shortages, only partially ameliorated by the liberalisation and deregulation initiative of 1991 introduced by the late unsung prime minister Narasimha Rao (see book review), created a selfish and insular middle class preoccupied with primitive capital accumulation.
Therefore, the middle class — which itself has had to suffer a poorly designed and managed education system, including a conspicuous lack of public libraries — lacked the spirit of enlightened self-interest which reformed and universalised public education in the Western world. On the contrary, post-independence India’s middle class wholly seceded from the country’s public K-12 education system in favour of 200,000 private schools which currently educate over 40 percent of school-going children. Curiously, middle class India – the intelligentsia included – seems unable to grasp the elementary proposition that clean air, water, crime-free cities and high industry and agriculture productivity are impossible without good quality public early childhood and primary-secondary education.
Foolishly, the middle class left it to politicians to reform and improve the country’s collapsed government school and higher education systems. But this delegation of responsibility has proved to be a disaster because India’s self-serving political class, which has successfully gamed the electoral system, has a vested interest in the status quo. It knows fully well that a well-educated electorate will never elect the low-calibre politicians who bestride the stage in national and state level politics. Against this dismal backdrop, in our bumper 16th Anniversary issue — in a once-more-unto-the-breach spirit — we present 10 quickly doable solutions to get the country’s derailed education system across the board, back on track. But please note, there won’t be much traction without your active support by way of debate, advocacy and dissemination of these solutions.
Contemporary India has to generate 12 million jobs per year and educate and train youth to fill them. On our 16th anniversary, we reaffirm our intent to do all we can to attain these objectives in the short term. Make common cause with us in the national — and your own — interest.
