Transforming India

If culture and rich traditions are not interpreted imaginatively, they could become liabilities

Indian society is becoming modern. Yet in a nation where about 60% of the population lives in rural areas, traditional value system still prevails in most of the social practices. India has become a nation of many contradictions, a nation that sends satellites into space, a nation where electronic voting machines are carried by bullock carts in remote areas at the time of general elections. It is still a nation in which experience is valued more than knowledge in rural areas. Will this conundrum help India sail through the economic challenges it will face in the future?

Until Independence, the nation’s economy was typically agricultural, an economy that did not demand university education. Nor could the country afford it as it was being ruthlessly exploited by British imperialists. If the country had planned for 100% literacy through school education in all villages and towns from 1947, close to 290 million people would not be illiterate today. And there would not be any need in rural areas to equate common sense gained through decades of experience in life with knowledge.

While India is legitimately proud of possessing some of the finest educational institutions in the world such as Jawaharlal Nehru University, the Indian Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Management, can India hold its head high when a foreigner points a finger at the rate of illiteracy in India? Even if the years 1947 to 1991 are kept aside for the sake of argument that they were the years when private enterprise was not allowed to penetrate all the sectors of the economy, including education, what has been happening since 1991 is the question that torments the nation now. Since a whole new generation was raised, illiteracy could have been wiped out. There would be no need to justify illiteracy saying experience in life is more valuable than knowledge.