Well, we finally made it to fifty years old. That feat offers instant
relief on at least one count. We don't have to see "freedom" associated
with every possible product that needs advertising. As in "freedom to
smile", "freedom to paint", or even Kannada Try's pop-the-cork "freedom
salvo." At least until the next significant anniversary, we have freedom
from this particular sales technique.
I need hardly explain that 50 years of freedom was an irresistible hook for
advertisers. So, until last week, saffron and green bathed many magazine
pages and television screens, the word "freedom" popped up in the most
incongruous places. And we were afloat in a sea of Independence as
commercialism, freedom as money in the bank.
Which, despite my crabby tone, is really fine by me. These are the
rollicking '90s, after all. Anything goes, and freedom certainly must take
on any meaning it may choose. Why should there be one formula, one way, to
celebrate 50 years? Besides, in some ways all the advertising was a good
touchstone for where we are at 50.
Where some of us are, at least.
This article is a plea for the rest of us, also 50 years old. An attempt to
set an agenda for the next half-century.
The times I have been involved in setting agendas, we would look back at
our progress and pick out where we had gone wrong, failed in some respect.
If there were any such -- OK, there always were -- the most urgent of them,
the biggest failures, would top the new agenda. If I apply the same
criterion to the past 50 years, I find myself coming to just one
conclusion. Our greatest failure in this half century, I am sure, is that
half of us remain illiterate. And even that bald fact conceals the real
failure: that nearly two out of every three Indian women cannot read or
write.
Actually, the genuine, 24-carat, diamond-encrusted failure is something
else: that we are not outraged by this.
Illiteracy is a massive headache, because it lies at the root of nearly
every problem the country faces. The increase in our population; widespread
child labour; our inability to expand our economy and thus reduce poverty
like other Asian countries have done; unrest and separatism around the
country; you know I could easily fill the rest of this column with a list
of problems like these.
But solving them?
For that, there is really just one key: educating Indians. Especially
educating women. Even more especially, educating young girls.
There's a lot of evidence to support this statement, but who wants to begin
our second fifty years with masses of statistics? So I will offer you just
one. According to the 1981 Census, the mean age at marriage for illiterate
women was about 16 years and six months. But women who had been through
primary school married, on average, 2 or 3 months after their 17th
birthday. That is, going to primary school adds about nine months to the
age at which the average Indian woman gets married.
Here's how I want you to look at that nine month gap: simply attending
primary school means one less potential baby for a woman in India.
And the longer a woman spends educating herself, getting beyond primary
school, the wider that gap gets. The fewer the potential babies. Indian
women with a college degree marry, on average, at about 21 years and 8
months. That's over five years, almost seven possible pregnancies, later
than their uneducated sisters.
The conclusion is really inescapable. Put girls in school and keep them
there in pursuit of an education. If we do that, we exert an automatic
downward pressure on what many of you would say is India's most urgent
problem: the growth of our population. In fact, this is a faster and more
effective way to check population growth than almost anything else. Yes,
including coercive methods like those used by the northern giant we love to
hate, would love to emulate: China.
As an aside, there is evidence to show that it is not really coercion that
is flattening China's population curve. In fact, the very Indian states of
Tamil Nadu and Kerala have done as well or better than China at controlling
their populations, without using force. How did they do it? Think
education. That story, another time.
The effect on population is just one great boon widespread education will
bring us. There are many more.
So, you may ask, if educating ourselves brings us these nice things,
exactly why have we neglected it -- primary education, particularly -- all
these years? Ah, but that's another tangled tale altogether, involving many
colourful villains, scapegoats and scoundrels. But again, who wants to wade
through endless finger-pointing as we turn 50? So I will confine myself to
just one reason I believe education has been ignored.
Here it is: you and I have been quiet. We have simply allowed governments
to ignore education. We have not held them accountable for what is, really,
a vicious and long-running crime against us; a crime with profound and
far-reaching implications for all of us.
And we have let it happen with not the slightest fuss. With no outrage at
all.
In their book India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity, Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze make this point like this: "Had the government shown
similar apathy and inconsistency in dealing with, say, the demands of the
urban population for basic amenities... or of the military establishment
for modern hardware... it is safe to predict that a major political battle
would have followed." They go on: "[T]he government was able to get away
with so much neglect in the field of primary education... [because of] the
lack of political clout of the illiterate masses... [and because] the
social value of basic education has been neglected not only by government
authorities but also in social and political movements."
With that background, here's my plea to you, you educated, aware, thinking
Indian. I know there are things in this country dear to you, that will
always remain that way. You demand so many different things of India,
ranging from a temple in Ayodhya, to punishing corrupt and criminal
politicians, to more spending on defence. It's your demands that put some
of those things on the national agenda, that make at least a few of them
actually happen. I'm trying to make the case that primary education is now,
if it wasn't earlier, far more vital to the health of India than any of
those. Than anything else too.
In fact, from the 4th floor vantage point where I'm writing this, I am
convinced there is simply no greater priority for India than education.
Above all, more than anyone else, the educated Indian must understand this.
I know you want great things for your country. Who wouldn't? If India is to
achieve them, to survive and prosper as a democracy, as a nation, primary
education must be the only item on the agenda. That's how we will be able
to celebrate a full century of freedom. Even the freedom to smile.
The past half-century tells us that politicians, whether in or out of
government, never allow education into their minds. So it's really up to
you and me to whip them into action.
Begin, won't you, with the outrage.
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