ALTHOUGH NEWLY-ELECTED prime minister Narendra Modi has blindspots and several deep prejudices which could abort his ambitious plans to develop laggard India into an economic super-power, there’s no denying he’s got his priorities right. Hard on the heels of his maiden Independence Day (August 15) speech emphasising the importance of clean and useable toilets, particularly for girl children, on October 2 (Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary) he launched a national Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (clean India campaign), picking up the broom himself and symbolically sweeping the neglected alleys of a slum colony in Delhi.
Yet it will take more than mere resolve of the prime minister and photo-op symbolism to clean up the accumulated mess of the past 67 years since the country imprudently adopted the Soviet-style centrally planned socio-economic development model which has patently failed. Mounds of garbage, filth, plastic waste, and untreated sewage poisoning the country’s rivers and groundwater is being generated on a daily basis by a population which has tripled in six decades — because of foolish neglect of primary education and healthcare.
Certainly if the clean India movement is driven by the superficial causes of filth, dirt and inevitable diseases which threaten to overwhelm the nation, cleaning up the country is likely to prove a Sisyphean endeavour. But it can succeed if first, there’s candid acknowledgement that the vast majority of citizenry is ignorant of the importance of aesthetics, hygiene, and health, because the country’s prescribed syllabuses in primary, secondary, and higher education are faulty. Seven decades after independence, it’s painfully clear these values were not — and are not — integrated into the bloodstream of the education system. Therefore, there’s urgent need to ensure that genuine educationists rather than political cronies, debate and develop school and collegiate syllabuses transparently.
Another initiative which requires serious attention to halt accumulative growth of the muck glacier which is slowly suffocating the citizenry, is implementation of the 73rd and 74th amendments to the Constitution which moot wide administrative powers in elected village panchayats (councils) and municipal governments down to the ward level. These 1993 constitutional amendments are a dead letter because of the obstinate refusal of state governments to respect their decentralisation objectives.
Self-evidently, the proper authorities for supervising waste disposal and maintenance of hygiene in municipal wards are locally elected committees of householders with a stake in property value appreciation. Moreover, a major share of property taxes should be determined and collected in each ward by locally elected committees and shared with state governments as is normative in most OECD countries.
In short, if it’s not to dissipate into mere symbolism, the Swachh Bharat campaign needs deeper analysis and commitment to curricular reform and decentralised governance.
Nobel prize and indictment
THE ANNOUNCEMENT MADE on October 10 by the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee conferring the Nobel Peace Prize 2014 jointly upon Pakistan-born Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi of India “for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education”, is specially welcome in EducationWorld. That these awards have been conferred on the eve of the 15th anniversary of this newsmagazine — promoted in November 1999 with the mission to “build the pressure of public opinion to make education the #1 item on the national agenda” — is confirmation that our advocacy for a better deal for the world’s largest population of children and youth scratching out half lives in the Indian subcontinent, is on the right track.
Fifteen years after the Millennium Declaration of the United Nations was signed in New York with great resolve and purpose, the condition of the vast majority of India’s children has changed, if at all, only marginally for the better. Almost half of children under five suffer severe malnutrition and consequential threat of stunting and brain damage; only 10 million of 158 million receive professionally administered early childhood education; over 8 million have never attended school; of the 230 million who sign up for primary school, only 51 million enter secondary education. Moreover the quality of education dispensed in 1.20 million decrepit government schools defined by multigrade classrooms, mass teacher truancy and severe shortages of drinking water, toilets, and electricity, is continuously declining.
Therefore while celebrating the award conferred upon Malala and Satyarthi, it’s important to bear in mind that they are being feted for protesting brazen violation of laws enacted in Pakistan and India to protect children. Malala was shot in the head for exercising her fundamental right to attend school, access to which is being denied by religious fundamentalist groups tolerated by the Pakistan establishment. And Satyarthi has been waging a long and lonely struggle to free children illegally sold or kidnapped into slavery and bonded labour — criminal activity which is insufficiently prosecuted by the Central and state governments in India and tacitly tolerated by the establishment and educated middle class. As such, the awards are an indictment of the governments and ruling establishments of the two neighbouring countries for failing to protect children and enforce their fundamental rights.
While undoubtedly a cause for celebration and pride, the Nobel Peace Prize 2014 jointly awarded to Malala and Satyarthi is a reminder that maintenance of law and order is the non-negotiable precondition of education for all. It’s shameful that brave individuals have to risk their lives to ensure children can enjoy elementary education, a normative and taken-for-granted right even in minimally developed countries around the world.