Development with a Human Face

@ vijji

Thanks a lot friend for your fb and I am indeed very sorry for not having acknowledged it sooner. Time has turned into my worst enemey recently and I do not wish to speak too much about it. It sounds like self-advertisement. If I were a big person, people would know anyway. I wouldn't have to announce myself from the roof tops.

I think you understood the spirit of what I tried to write quite clearly. To tell you frankly, as I grow older, I am sinking into deeper and deeper levels of cynicism. Will this country ever belong to the majority that lives here, or will it remain a fiefdom for the minority?

I have lost faith in the government, independent of colours. The only hope lies in the previleged few sharing what they don't need with those who have been cheated for generations.

I doubt that this will ever happen.

oj

 

@ feduptocore

Where on earth did you pick up the "kaku" thing. Very cute. Sure, address me that way if you wish to.

I couldn't agree more with you on this. How do you expect competent teachers to go to remote villages to teach little kids if they do not have the minimum comforts of life? They too have families and kids. No one, absolutely no one is interested in this country in bringing up the deprived. And so long as it remains this way, we will never develop. The 9 per cent rate of growth will remain the world's biggest and cruelest joke!!

Growth for whom?

I am quite sure that all our policy makers are rotten to the core.

oj-kaku

 

@ kamal

You are so correct about education and population growth. Only today, I read about the age profile of our population across the states. The southern states, which are definitely more educated that the states elsewhere, have a population that is older relative to the population in the north. In other words, there have been fewer babies in southern states over the years, thereby making composition of population tilt in favour of the old.

The same thing has happened in the developed countries like US, Japan and Europe.

Of course, this is not necessarily a good sign, since we need lots and lots of young people too. But educated young people, not people who will be a burden on society. We need people who are assets.

But when will all this happen? I doubt that you or I will live to see such changes.

oj

 

@ mindi

Of course, you are right. When I speak about education, I don't consider it to be an isolated commodity. It's a vector, consisting of food, living condition, drinking water and a whole lot of other things. But they must come simultaneously rather than sequentially. Not one after the other, but together. Think of the way it came to our children. We must find a way of treating the vast army of underprevileged children as though they were our own kids. That is the only way out. Forget about politicians. Each one of us can teach a few kids from the slums and provide little bit of other things with it.

Nothing will happen if we wait for politicians to turn honest.

oj

 

@ susri

No, I don't think you are asking silly or irrelevant questions. It is very important to know how Kerala did it when others couldn't. My answer to the question is that Kerala has a culture that assigns a great deal of weight on education. There may be other socities which thrives on politics alone!

I do not know how it can be achieved, but I do know that unless we achieve universal education, we have no hope in the long run. How long? The shorter the long is the better. But, if you ask me, I don't see much hope in the next 30 years at least.

I feel sometimes that it has been a policy of governments in this country to keep people illiterate. It is easier to rule such people, cheat them and exploit them.

It's all very sad.

oj

 

@ tl

Yes, of course, every point you have made is correct in my opinion. It's not just a question of education. It's also a question of the kind of education. Also, one must build in people a sense of self-respect, quite independent of his profession, so long as he /she is able to fend for himself and keep his family happy.

I don't know how all this will happen. But I do know that depending on the government alone will not help. There should be a growing awareness of the problem amongst the educated few. But what do they do? Build roads to make villages accessible? Can they do this? I really feel very confused about this, the more I think over the matter.

My primary question is how could we land ourselves in this situation 60 years after independence. We started out with the so-called socialistic pattern of society. Did we really mean what we said?

I doubt.

oj-da

 

@ padmini

The data you have quoted is very relevant. But tell me, has it ever been the case that our government budgets were not a fanfare aimed at the so-called poor? What were we doing for 60 years following independence?

We built IIT's. IIM's, IISc and so on and so forth. We flooded the US with our highly educated children.

But, for the vast majority of people in this country, after so many years of planning and now market institutions, a healthy meal a day remains wishing for the moon! Is this why sent a machine to the moon? To bring it to our infinitely deprived population?

I often wonder what I have done for the country that has given me so much. I taught all my life. But what did I teach? Abstract, analytical ideas which were at best a form of luxury in our society. Perhaps, for my own intellectual ambitions, this was OK. But couldn't I have spent at least a day or two each month to educate the forgotten children in a far away village? I didn't do this and that was a crime.

oj-da