17/10/06

education can wait

universal education, for many, is a chicken-and-egg question.the parents are poor, so the children need to work. the children, being children, can't earn much..so they grow up to be poor. and illiterate. and they have children who can't go to school because their parents are poor. so which comes first - poverty or illiteracy?

if you did a little survey of how indians, or more accurately those indians who have spared any thought on the subject, perceive the issue, you'd find that there are two, broadly, schools of thinking..

one, those who think poverty is the key element in the issue.

two, those who think poverty & regulation are the key elements.

the resounding message from both schools is : education can wait. meanwhile, around sixty million kids in india are not in school. and there'd be many more by the time india becomes a 'superpower'. or a scandinavian 'welfare' paradise. and i'm quite sure we'd be discussing farmers' suicides in 2016, 2026...2106.

7 comments:

Madhat said...

I think by 2026, the discussion would be like "farmers? what are they?"

gaddeswarup said...

Kuffir,
I probably wo'nt be here in 2026. Can you be a bit more explicit? For somebody like me outside, it is not so easy to connect the dots. Are you following up the post in blogbharati?

gaddeswarup said...

Kuffir,
I came across this article. Is this the sort of thing that you have in mind?
Swarup

Anil Kumar said...

Education can wait? so make poor rich..n they live happily everafter..great!

kuffir said...

all,

i apologize for responding so very late to your comments.

madhat,

i don't think farmers would disappear by the year 2026...look at it this way : my post was primarily about education..but you've responded to the reference to farmers at the bottom. why? there are many factors/forces that'd keep famers' issues alive...including the farmers themselves. and the govt would respond to these forces by..various measures - support prices, subsidies, credit extension and loan waiver..or rehabilitation packages. and this'd continue..keeping the farmers in a trishanku world for ever..
but who'd raise and promote the issue of education ..which is so closely tied up with childhood rights? it's so very easy to miss the children - they don't vote for one. but illiteracy in the countryside is one of the major causes behind the suicides and ..educating children now, would prevent suicides in the future.

kuffir said...

swarup garu,

yes, in a way..but i'm following up the comments in otherindia and various other places..
my point is it's so very easy to keep the decibel tempo up on farmers' suicides..but much harder to look at the long-term causes behind them..like education for instance. if we continue to ignore them- how can we prevent any suicides in the future?

kuffir said...

anil kumar,

that's precisely what i am arguing against - we can't let education wait.

 
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