Over the past 50 years, Indian institutes like the IITs and IIScs have been able to establish undergraduate programs of considerable repute and the programs have won worldwide acclaim for churning out the best students with excellent skills and top ability. However, when it comes to the quality of post graduate education, the fact remains that most Indian Institutions are not at par with their western counterparts. Why is this the case? What steps can be taken to rectify it and how can we encourage more Indian students to pursue their studies from India?

Needless to say, such a trend is detrimental to the prospects of Indian science as a whole. If the brightest students continue to leave Indian shores, and pursue their research and higher studies abroad, it creates an acute shortage of talented graduate students in India, resulting in second rate post graduate programs. Also, many Indian students who pursue their studies abroad continue their academic careers in foreign universities, where they settle down.  Thus, India loses out on precious talent and is unable to retain the best and the brightest to carry out their work in India.

The caliber of a university is largely judged by the quality of research work that is carried out there, and since most Indian universities do not attract the highest caliber students in their post graduate programs, the research output is also not at par, when compared with the best Universities of the world. Hence it is essential to identify the key problems that ail the post graduate programs in India, and make efforts to create incentives for students to carry out their higher studies from the top Indian Universities.

Creating better programs for higher education is, however not an easy job, because there are large number of factors that go in creating top rate programs and retaining best talent, and it takes considerable time and effort to incrementally improve the quality of a program. So, any policy change towards this end has to be gradual and incremental.

First and foremost, the programs need to be made attractive in terms of funding and financial support. Although the financial support for Phd students has been considerably improved recently, it is still insufficient and the students find it more attractive to go to foreign Universities where they get much better financial support. Funding opportunities can be improved by attracting industry sponsors to partially support top students. Internships in top research labs can also help improve the funding scenario. Along with improved funding, another way of retaining good talent is to create and maintain state of the art infrastructure and provide excellent resources to students. This includes better computing facilities, libraries and high quality equipment to carry out experimental work. Creating such an environment can encourage more students to stay back and carry out their work in India.

The strength of the programs also needs to be improved in terms of size, diversity and fields of study. Once their is a critical mass of students working in different fields, it creates increased incentives, whereby students can engage in better inter disciplinary work, easily work across diverse fields and bring forth greater flexibility to their studies.

Fortunately, many Indian Institutions have already started the process of modernization and are putting in greater emphasis on higher education. The Indian Institutions already have some of the best undergraduate programs in the world. There is no reason, why by making appropriate changes at the policy level, we cannot create the best higher education institutions in India over the next 20 years.

On to the fourth part, now!

In this part, I will focus on the question: How relevant is Gandhi today? Hero worship, role modeling and lip service is all fine, expected for a person of Gandhi’s stature and reasonable while we (especially me!) are on it. However, the critical and more important question that needs to be examined is: How important and relevant are Gandhi’s ideas in today’s world. What are the ones that we need to retain, and what are the ones that we need to politely (and with due humility) do away with, because it is over 60 years, since Gandhi has passed away and both India and the world has undergone unprecedented transformation and significant changes.

For a civilization to survive, prosper and continue to yield, it is important to adapt to the existing framework of thinking, and while retaining the heritage of the great men of the past, it is equally important that the present generation critically examines the underlying principles thoroughly, extracts the ones that it deems fit for today’s society and does away with the others which may no longer be applicable or required, because the existing world is operating on a different set of principles and taking an entirely different trajectory from what people in Gandhi’s era may have seen, expected or imagined.

I will identify three crucial differences between Gandhi’s time and ours to build my case

(1) Free nation: India is now a free nation governed by the people of India, which implies that the massive political capital that Gandhi needed to build in his struggle against colonialism is no longer necessary. In essence, this means that civil disobedience may not be the right form of political protest any longer and there may be something beyond.

(2) Materially capable: India has now vastly improved material capability that lets it exert its muscle (quite literally!) into places where it could not do anything before. Today, it can collaborate and build partnerships with other materially capable nations and play a central role in the sphere of international politics. This means that instead of shunning the outside as immoral and regarding it as a ‘threat’, there may be increasing incentives to actually do away with the thinking that worked to undermine the imperialistic polity of  the oppressor/oppressed and instead seek cooperation and strategic partnership to further the interests of the nation.

(3) Militarily Strong: Probably the most contentious, and arguably the issue that leads to most heated debates, given that one of the most foundational planks of Gandhian thinking was non-violence and Gandhi’s moral vision of a united world where violence is shunned and abhorred and regarded as an immoral, vicious force to be avoided at  all costs. As history, real politics and the events of the past 60 years have unfolded (and are unfolding), it has come to pass, that Gandhi’s ideals though honorable, noble in intent, and full of spiritual and moral power, are unfortunately both inadequate and unlikely to help the cause of a nation that is constantly under threat from factors and forces that are beyond its control. Therefore, a case can be made for enhancing the military capability to protect the critical infrastructure and core interests of the country, needless to say which is in sharp contrast to Gandhi’s fundamental principle.

Given these three important overreaching changes that have taken place since Gandhi’s time, we can arrive at a more accurate assessment of Gandhi’s principles and have a through debate as to what direction the nation needs to take and what is the new founding platform that is most suitable for India to operate and continue to prosper and secure its rightful interests in the post colonial, materially richer but heavily conflict ridden world.

To this end, I think we can bid a warm farewell to civil disobedience, which is no longer necessary, since adequate institutional frameworks and parliamentary mechanisms now exist for people to voice their concerns in a democratic setup. This means that instead of encouraging protests, we should focus on more concrete (and literate ?) forms of readdressing the needs of the people, like RTI, judiciary, legal frameworks and democratic participation and representation.

We can also probably argue that the era of fasts, shunning foreign goods (non-cooperation) and perceiving threat of an invading civilization are over. In the modern context it actually makes more sense to cooperate and prosper where incentives for mutually beneficial participation exists  and get an objective appraisal of the achievements of the ‘other civilization’ , thus increasing technological and scientific capability, borrowing ideas and building self created goods and participating in exchange of materials, goods and products wherever reasonable.

And what about non-violence, then? As history stands witness, Nehruvian philosophy of non-alignment took a drubbing in 1962 war against China. In an increasingly multipolar world, India is increasingly threatened both by its immediate neighbors and by the resonances of violence taking place in other parts of the globe. The facts that nuclear arsenals and the weapons of destruction continue to grow needs to be acknowledged,  new international laws need to be formed, and Indian diplomats need to learn the fine art of exercising diplomatic pressure wherever possible. Given this state of affairs, it would be unwise and imprudent for a nation to keep sticking to a philosophy that was useful, morally upright and successful while it lasted, but that cannot be used as the only guiding philosophy in a conflict ridden world, where military capabilities need to be built to protect capabilities and live and operate safely. Not that I am arguing for violence first, but making non-violence a moral absolute is bound to create a society that ignores the factual realities of a world where powerful forces of violence abound and can only be ‘put to task’, so as to speak by a capable military force.

That should be it I guess.

So as we end celebrating the 62nd anniversary of the founding father, perhaps, we should also spare a moment and re-access what is relevant today and while acknowledging Gandhi’s immense contributions to the creation of India, probably, it is time we need to say a deserving goodbye to many of his principles. While according highest respect to our forefather, we also need to make sure that we are not tied down by the ideas that are no longer sound enough to help us find direction as the 21st century unfolds in all its spectacle, glory and misery in front of mankind.

In the previous post, I examined the counter-intuitiveness of Gandhi’s ideas and argued how only a truly remarkable person could accomplish the difficult tasks of being the leader of a troubled, beaten and bickering nation, and give it direction and a road map that would enable it attain independence. Importantly, the goal of Gandhi’s struggle as a leader was not merely to give India independence from the British, but to also free the people from their own narrow shackles, orthodox boundaries and lack of conviction and give enough mileage so that the people could learn to govern themselves on their own without needing an outside agency to make the most important decisions.

Nehru gives the tribute to Gandhi in his autobiography with glowing reverence according him the highest respect:

“Of course these movements exercised tremendous pressure on the British Government and shook the government machinery. But the real importance, to my mind, lay in the effect they had on our own people, and especially the village masses. Non-cooperation dragged them out of the mire and gave them self-respect and self-reliance. They acted courageously and did not submit so easily to unjust oppression; their outlook widened and they began to think a little in terms of India as a whole. It was a remarkable transformation and the Congress, under Gandhi’s leadership, must have the credit for it”

This widening of outlook, creation of awareness, showing the oppressed masses new possibilities, arousing the conscience of the people to work together, acquire a collective identity and give themselves self respect and opportunities for better future, were the key achievements of Gandhi’s great struggle, for which he made countless sacrifices, created uniquely brilliant tools for protest, and held his faith even in the most difficult and troubling times, when the very fabric of his vision was under threat from forces beyond his control.

In examining the strength of his faith, let me take two historical examples here, which indicate the length he was willing to go to to hold on to his convictions and beliefs.

(1) The first example is from 1922. The Non Cooperation movement was in full momentum, going from strength to strength and for the first time in many decades, the people of India had a feeling of revival and vigor. At the helm of affairs, Gandhi was doing the task of framing important policies, giving direction to the movement and determining the direction of the nation.

Then Chauri Chaura incident happened in Feb, 1922, and all of a sudden without any warning, without any possible rational justification, Gandhi called off the entire movement. Most political leaders of the nation derided him for a strategic blunder, the pundits declared that this was possibly the worst decision, to call off an entire movement based on a single stray incident of violence occurring in a remote district in Uttar Pradesh. Even many ardent supporters failed to see the rationale behind Gandhi’s sudden decision, when the movement could have achieved greater success and led the Congress to demand great concessions from the British, possibly hastening the process of Swaraj or total independence. However, Gandhi would have none of it. He stood his ground and sternly refused to lead any movement that went against his fundamental tenet of non-violence.

This single incident goes onto show the inner strength of the man, and his ability to go against the interests of the very people for whom he stood. For Gandhi, faith in non-violence was of far greater importance, and a free India, that used violence to attain the goals of its freedom, was not an India that Gandhi had in his mind. It was of paramount importance, that the foundation of the free nation be built on principles rather than expedience and Gandhi’s moral vision was uncompromising. A nation that used violence against others to advance its goals was fundamentally a nation that lacked the core moral values, in Gandhi’s opinion, and had no place in the direction that he had envisaged.

(2) The second incident concerns Gandhi’s vision of a united nation, built on the principle of secularism, where every religious faith was respected.

Needless to say, as history went on to show, Gandhi’s dream was eventually shattered by the turn of events which saw a brutal civil war that would divide India into two landmasses, on a religious basis, the very thing that Gandhi had tried to prevent in 30 years of his struggle.

However, we should not undermine Gandhi’s efforts as futile. Let us understand the turn of events in Bengal in 1947. As the nation was celebrating the newly found freedom, with most major leaders in the ceremonial halls of New Delhi, Gandhi stood alone, unperturbed and silently fasting in Calcutta. Independence at the cost of religious harmony meant nothing to him, and he wanted to accomplish as much unity as he could that his failing body at 77 would allow him to in the last chapter of his life, in which he had tragically seen most of his life work on religious unity come to nought by historical forces that he could not quell.

Deeply troubled, fallen, ignored by his own people and feeling hurt and isolated, Gandhi undertook long fasts in Calcutta to salvage as much as he could on his own. As the events in Calcutta were unfolding and there was large scale violence all around, Hindus killing Muslims, Muslims going for Hindu blood and the British armies hopelessly tried to contain the relentless stream of violence by beating people with clubs and sticks, Gandhi carried out his fast in Calcutta, that would greatly help contain the violence.

One British soldier stationed in Calcutta remarked “One single man would accomplish the impossible task of containing massive violence, which thousands of armed and equipped soldiers were failing to do”.

These two incidents go on to show the strength of Gandhi’s faith, and can perhaps help us form better understanding of the man and the nation that he led to the horizon of freedom, at the end faltering in his idealistic vision, but still never leaving his principles even as intense disasters raged and tumultuously shook his country.

A quick recap of the important points in the first post. I identified four broad pillars of education in India, need for a structural reform to ensure the following basic requirements.

a) Meritocracy to ensure that the brightest minds get incentives to work harder b) Special attention to ensure that majority students are able to cross a minimum threshold c) The most difficult part of how to include the ones that have been severely undereducated and under performing for decades into the system.

Indian education is characterized by a deep and vast chasm between the best and the neglected, that it can leave even the best analysts wondering of how to even approach the question of fairness in such a society and what approach can bridge this ‘great divide’. Needless, to say such a huge divide in accessibility creates very serious social tensions in the whole society, and if not adequately addressed, it leads to strong resentment from the neglected sections, chronic underdevelopment, illiteracy, and the vicious cycle of decay and dilapidation resulting in a fractured bickering social fabric, that is susceptible to repeated destabilization.

A lot of cliches have been used to characterize this social fabric. Some common one, that find parlance in journalistic hyperbole are: a) At one end India is producing the best software engineers building the software systems for the developed world, at other end, in the slums of Dharvi, people are struggling to get basic access!  b) As one part of India is blazing at the speed of light into the echelons of development, that other part languishes and watches in restrained silence, as a new generation of elite English masters have replaced the previous generation of the colonizers! etc. etc.

Although, such hyperbole is good for journalistic purposes and generates quick soundbites, easily gobbled by both media and its audience, all the important questions are essentially relegated to the background, resulting in a discussion that largely seeks to feed its own prejudices, instead of doing the harder task of finding an intellectually clear path, that can help us arrive at some beginning comprehension of the magnitude of the problem and the amount of intellectual resource needed to start arriving at a solution, and the difficult barriers imposed by decades of negligence, poor polity, and a brutal history of continual caste and gender oppression that continues unabated to this day.

I will try to characterize the magnitude of the problem in this post. The later posts will focus on how both extremely poor policy making has largely contributed to the existing state of affairs, and how rampant caste based violence, repeated degradation and humiliation of certain sections, and history of tribal and communal warfare makes the task of reform a highly difficult, almost intractable problem.

Let us quickly arrive at some base understanding of the magnitude of the problem. I will not do a figure based analysis here, but instead focus on rough approximate analysis, that adequately models the problem and gives us a sufficient basis of thinking through the most important factors, without losing the forest for the trees.

Let me take the state of Uttar Pradesh, where I worked for an year in the field of education. Of the 20 schools we worked with, almost all of them in different parts, a) Almost no school children till class fifth had basic reading and writing skills. Most students failed to spell even their own names. b) Most teachers are so unqualified and poorly trained, that one is left wondering about the efficacy of the examinations that help them getting appointed to such positions in the first place c) Many teachers are made to do extremely pointless tasks like survey collection, working for the government etc. that leaves them with inadequate time for their teaching, the incompetence notwithstanding d) There exist strong teacher unions, that have a lot of district and in some cases state level political support, and there is strong orthodoxy and objection that creates a strong barrier towards any task of policy reform.

All these factors combined mean that most students who pass ‘high school’ have almost zero skill set and hence unemployable by even basic industries that require some base skills for employment. This makes them unfit to enroll in professional colleges across the country, making the career prospects bleak and dim. In the modern ‘information age’, when most industries require some familiarity with basic tools of computer systems, such students have almost zero familiarity with such tools, thus severely limiting their prospects. Economic and political factors combined mean that there is very little interest either among the functioning institutions or the frameworks that support them to do the extremely difficult task of reform. Also, any ‘outside’ effort made to change the existing state of affairs, can only achieve very limited success because of rigid and orthodox political structures (eg. unions) that underlie the current institutions.

Thus, not only is the current crop of students lacking in capabilities and severely undereducated, the combined factors mean that it is very unlikely that there is a sea change sometime soon, and only a very strong and integrated effort at socio-political level, and introduction of new methodologies of effective teaching and learning that can be scaled up by private investment or a coordinated public enterprise can hope to alter the existing state of affairs.

In this post, I have tried to highlight the magnitude of the problem that India faces in educating the majority of it’s ‘rural’ young. In the future sections, I would further highlight, how other factors (mainly caste and gender oppression) further complicate these issues and the necessity of designing education systems that can be both vigilant to these social ills, and combat them effectively at the same time.

I am going to write a sharp diatribe criticizing this inane and ignorant journalistic view point, mindlessly endorsed in popular culture and media, which unfortunately is 180 degrees from truth.

True, worldwide Indian IT industry has attained success, it supplies products and services to large businesses and has succeeded in expanding into overseas businesses as well.

But wait a second! If anyone is even remotely suggesting that Indian IT industry is an engineering triumph, he is way way off the mark. Indian IT industry is success of a good business model, led by some formidable captains, who have fought hard to change the existing norms against fledgling start ups and as a result achieved success. But that is it!

In terms of size, scope and depth, Indian IT industry is not even one – tenth (more like one-twentieth actually) of its American counterpart! Let me take some rough figures.

The total revenue of Indian IT products currently is about $50 billion, expected to rise to about $200 billion by 2015.

Let us compare it with the size of chip industry in the world today. The total industry size of semiconductor chips is about 2.3 trillion dollars! And this is only and only semiconductors! ( I am ignoring other major industries in technology as of now, which also make a very very substantial chunk). The big share in this pie is by US chip manufacturers and Japanese chip companies, both of which have striven very hard to create a business empire built on exceptional innovation in fabrication principles and some brilliant technology innovation in microprocessor design, accompanied by highly acclaimed business models. Indian companies have ZERO share in this massive market.

The observation is true not only for Indian companies, but also for the graduating students from best Indian institutes (like IITs) [many of whom are employed in the US] who still do the task of software engineering, rather than chip design or operating system architecture.

Being a graduate from IIT itself, I can clearly identify that a major curriculum reform (by encouraging more engineering projects) or technical experimentation needs to be made a central feature of our education and internshis if we expect Indian engineers to do the more difficult and harder tasks of engineering systems design and implementation, and work on mission critical systems in important organizations like ISRO, geo – spatial systems or scientific computing for modeling behavior.

Needless to say, we strictly need to be cautious about the hoopla that surrounds our elite institutions, adopt a critical approach to train students in best methods and build capabilities that can help India built systems (both in industry and in research centers) that are robust, neatly designed and robustly architectured and thought through.

Otherwise, like the previous generations we will keep writing software and students from other nations trained in more advanced and specialized techniques and methods will keep doing the more intellectually demanding, satisfying and also economically significant (i.e  more revenue and profit generating activity) of building hardware.

In this post, I will focus specifically on the idea of civil disobedience as the major tool that Gandhi used for political protest against the British empire, and try to argue how it was a unique creation and as time and history has proven, it would stand as one of the most formidable, resilient, effective, efficient and above all humane tool for political opposition in almost all human history.

For creation of such a uniquely brilliant and remarkable tool of protest, Gandhi stands as one of the greatest political thinkers of all time.

It is interesting to note, that although civil disobedience has been used successfully both in Martin Luther King’s race struggle in United States and Nelson Mandela’s fight against apartheid in South Africa, both of which stand as two pioneering movements of the 20th century in their own right, in no other nation has the tool been used to such unprecedented degree and won such widespread acclaim and usage, other than India.

This fact itself is a centrally important fact, and as I would argue in some later posts, the fact that Gandhi was able to use civil disobedience to such an extreme degree of success reflects as much about the people of India, as it does about the man, and the very humanity and uniqueness of the idea of a non violent civil protest can help us in discerning important aspects of the Indian society, most of which continue to hold even today, after more than 60 years of independence.

In retrospect, civil disobedience was primarily a combination of Ahimsa, respect for civil society, and the moral counterweight of a non violent protest against a violent opposition. All these three tenets are important and distinct from each other, so an accurate understanding of how as a combination they result in a potent and lethal political tool is a crucial to understand the great power of the tool of disobedience.

Firstly, anyone who doubts the power of civil disobedience should read some history. I am not going to spend time here repeating how civil disobedience gave vigor, strength and character to the nationalistic movement and was the most major political tool that was widely respected across the spectrum of Indian politics in the early and late independence, and led the British Empire to reconsider their policies and offer much more liberties (in terms of electorates/ legal apparatus) to the Indian colony, that played a major role in strengthening the cause of independence. Whether India would have got independent in 1947, irrespective of Gandhi are not significant observations, in my opinion, because the critical point is  that only a strong nationalistic movement first gave the idea of India to the large number of ethnically, religiously, politically and culturally divided group that lived in the landmass on the east of Indus river and west of China. So the major fundamental  role that the nationalistic movement played in arriving at the very notion of ‘India‘ should not be ignored or downplayed, and only a person of Gandhi’s strength, character, ability and moral courage could have led such a movement, and faced the immense barriers that could have derailed this process, considering ‘India’ was such a materially and politically minor political entity on the world stage, when Gandhi started his struggle.

Coming back to the three components that form the basis of civil disobedience. First is of course, Ahimsa, a concept that was pioneered by Buddha and features prominently in all Dharmic religions. The second and third combined (and so difficult and subtle in my opinion, that it can only take an incredible leap of faith to pull it off) are protest without disrupting the tenets of a civil society by using violent methods. Most crucially the protest has to be so silent and subtle that even if your opponent commits violence, you have to tolerate it and not leave your faith in non-violence. Needless to say, such immense faith takes a lot of courage, and its immense moral counterweight against a violent oppression is hard to undermine. However, importantly, the moral counterweight collapses, as soon as you commit violence, thus straightaway devaluing the whole concept! Therefore, to maintain the strength of this moral counterweight, it is essential and binding that there has to be no violence in the opposition, whatsoever!

Like most simple but profound ideas, this idea is itself extremely counter-intuitive. One can imagine a whole bunch of oppositions straight away. But how can this work? If your opponent keeps hitting and violently beating you, won’t you be ultimately weakened to a point that you actually lose your struggle? How can you not commit violence when being faced by brutal and hefty violence staring in your face? How can such a mass struggle ever succeed, without taking a violent form at some point and losing the moral strength which is the very basis of it?

All these are difficult and important questions. I will discuss and delineate aspects of this in my future posts.

Any discussion on any topic on contemporary India is incomplete without getting at least some thorough understanding of the role that Gandhi, probably the most creative, brilliant and pioneering Indian of the 20th Century played in the history of the nation.

Honored as the father of the nation and revered for the depth of his insights into the fundamental problems of the nation during the most difficult and tumultuous times when the very idea of India was still being debated, Gandhi rightly deserves his status as the founding father, because of the sheer depth of his accomplishments, range of his achievements and the qualities of great ardor, impeccable courage and unflinching convictions that would lend shape to the idea of India, as the people were emerging from a traumatic colonial history, that had rendered them toothless, disillusioned, vanquished and set in a cycle of defeat, rejection and a sense of loss at all levels.

In such a depressing, harrowing and difficult time, Gandhi would return to India to lead the nation to full independence. During his journey that roughly lasted forty years, he would lead three of the greatest movements of Indian Independence

(1) The Non-Cooperation Movement in the 1920s   (2) The Salt Satyagraha in the 1930s and (3) The Quit India movement in the 1940s.

Along the way he created his pioneering ideas of civil disobedience, non-violent protest and socio-economic reform from large scale participation, that has cemented his legacy as one of the greatest political thinkers of all time.

The testimony to the great originality and force of his ideas is provided by the fact, that they were used in two other movements in the globe in the later part of the century (1) South African Struggle against Apartheid (2) The American Civil Right Movements in the 1960s led by the formidable Martin Luther King. Apart from that, countless other smaller movements both in India and elsewhere have built upon his political philosophies to enable other struggles for human freedom, liberty and expansion of fundamental human rights.

It is ironic, that history has relegated Gandhi to the status of a saint, and in India, he is revered not as a great thinker, reformer and a leader, but as a ‘spiritual being’ or a ‘saint’ or a Mahatma, going completely against his radical and revolutionary political ideas that were the cornerstone of his thinking! Gandhi was neither a saint, nor a messiah, but a very hard working political thinker who brought revolutionary changes into the fabric of the Indian society, single handedly transformed a tottering geography of a broken, divided and bickering ethnic communities into a united nation fighting for the cause of independence, and lead programs of economic expansion, emancipation of women and uplift of the weaker sections of the society. To do this, he had to fight orthodox relgious leaders and political leaders of his own country on one hand, and the overbearing oppressive British empire on the other.

What were his essential ideas? How did he come to conceive them? How did they shape his own philosophy and the future and destiny of the entire nation. These are very important historical questions, and an accurate understanding of these can help modern Indians draw more understanding of the basis of their society as they move into their respective paths and shape the future in their own unique ways. We also need to understand how India has changed in the past 50 years, and how the ideas of Gandhi need to be integrated into the fabric of the contemporary society, and what new methodologies we need to evoke to interpret them in contemporary socio-political, economic and political contexts.

The later part of the series will cover these topics in some detail.

India is obviously a huge nation, so no single article/policy or framework can adequately capture all the aspects of education. However, in the subsequent paragraphs, I will try to systematically synthesize a coherent framework that can help us to make some important distinctions, understand some key underlying concepts and give a broad overview of its success/failures. In the later articles on this subject, I will try and elucidate some of the finer points, and seek to fill in the details.

The following structural factors characterize the education in India to a large extent. We can divide the whole population of India between age groups 5-17 into four broad categories.

a) Large uneducated /illiterate or severely undereducated rural community that enrolls in rural government schools.

b) An elite / well established English speaking urban populace, which is a minority, that enrolls in elite English speaking schools.

c) A significant upwardly mobile English speaking urban population, that enrolls in mid level private schools in urban areas OR some well functioning government institutions (like KVs)

d) An even more significant and largely ignored urban  urban population, that enrolls in the ill functioning government schools or community run / NGO run private schools.

Apart from these, we can argue that at any time, a lot of people are ‘in transition’, and since education is a very precious resource, closely linked with both social economic prosperity and social status, at any time, there is a large community which is moving from one of these categories to another.

An accurate education system that is (a) just and fair (b) meritorious towards the performers (c) is able to improve the abilities of the under performers (d) Addresses how to include the non-performers (or the highly under performing communities) into the system is needless to say very difficult and complex to both design and implement and will take an integrated structural reforms at the socio-political and economic systems of the nation.

Some of this task will be economic and market driven. Eg. we do not need to attempt to design or implement the system, which is part b). The schools run in this category are largely driven by demand and supply. However the schools that come under category c) are driven both by demand and supply and by other factors such as the existing economic parameters in the society. Schools under category a) and category d) to a large extent are government or community run, and suffer from rampant corruption, ill-funds, poor thinking etc. needing a very strong socio-political and economic framework to instantiate the process of any reform or change.

Thus before attempting to have a debate or discussion on reform, we need to lay down a structural basis, that can be an approximate model of the full system. Needless to say, such a model can never be perfect, and can only ‘approximate’ the issues that we are trying to discuss. However, as long as the model is a ‘good fit’ or a fairly representative approximation, it gives us enough basis to move on the tasks of reforms, discussions, debates and analysis.

This can also help us streamline our discussions to be more productive and conducive. Eg. any discussion of the effect of political instability on the schools under category b) is largely irrelevant, since these schools are economically driven by a fairly well off section of the society and therefore immune to political factors. Similarly, a discussion that does not include any economic point but only focuses on the political situation for schools in category c) is again faulty, because the schools here are effected both by economic power of the section that ‘powers’ them as well as the political situation and so on…

I have clearly identified four broad pillars of this structures above. The representation, I believe is mostly based on my individual experiences. Modification of this structure should be done with care, because since the future focus would be based on this ‘underlying’ foundation, if proven, that this structural model is weak or faulty, that undermines our attempts of further reforms and analysis making the results either trivial or insignificant.

Next, we move on to the equally important, but rather difficult task of capturing transitions. Any structural model needs to include the important fact of transitions in some form, because needless to say the society or these structures are not static. Infact, as I am writing this, the structure is changing dynamically (say a student from rural areas just enrolled in an upper middle class urban school, thus changing the statistical model). Economic progress in different parts etc. is also changing this structure dynamically, sometimes more rapidly than we may think.

Eg. a very strong economic progress can push a large section from part d) to part c) in another two decades, thus making the task of policy reform for schools in part (d) again pointless, because the economy is itself creating the transformation that policy makers would essentially be wasting their time trying to do.

Although, this change appears to be slow, over a period of time, it is precisely these changes that we need to capture neatly, because of make any policy or propose any  business/economic argument that is durable, our underlying model needs to include the change in the model itself. This is highly complex, because we are trying to capture the change, and effect of the change in a single model, which is very hard.

In the future posts, I will build on the underlying basis and suggest appropriate topics that we can then adequate propose and discuss since the base has now been laid down(Example of such a topic is say: Science Education in Rural cities and emerging urban and semi rural areas).