On Education: Objectives

1.       “Access to knowledge: knowledge is widely available.

2.       Knowledge concept: teaching institutions.

3.       Knowledge creation: by those work in science, humanities

4.       Knowledge application: making knowledge practical and useful.

5.       Knowledge service: e-governance. People, citizens’ interaction with the government. Information and communication technology.

The best brains in the world are busy solving the problems of the rich –who actually don’t have real problem to solve. As a result the problems of the poor don’tget the right kind of attention, or the right talent to help them get through it.

Bringing the poor into the main stream meant making the nation's government inclusive, open and transparent. It meant providing information to everyone. (Sam Petroda)

II

Innovation:

Innovation involves thinking differently, creatively and insightfully to have an impact on social, economic values and development.

Innovation that can offer solution to the existing problems where conventional approaches have failed to deliver results.

Five most important things that matter in innovation:

1)       We need to look at innovation as a platform. Innovation is required in products, process, policies, plans and programmes. Innovation is about changing mind sets, organisations business management models, distribution, delivery and many more.

2)       Secondly inclusivity. Our job was not to create more millionaires, it was to lift millions of people out of poverty. Let us focus on innovation for the bottom of economic pyramid.

3)       Innovations happen in an ecosystem that fosters it.

4)       We want to properly define some of the elements of sustainable, affordable innovations. We want innovation in products that are durable rather than disposable.

5)       We have to consider the possibility of discourse. We need to create nation wide conversation on innovation. WE need to question the status quo and inject that habit of creative thought into the national psyche.”

Sam Pitroda

On Education: Objectives

·           To make young people to base their lives on solid moral principles.

·           Inculcating a vision for life.

·           Inculcating a vision for the society.

·           Individualism versus a collective. Personal aspiration versus collective aspiration. Fulfilling or working for their aspirations versus working for the aspiration of the collective.

·           History of people and the nation: To help them to locate themselves in the context of the history of the nation.Understanding the history of which they a part. They are product and they contribute to the history.

·           Making of the nation called India. Study what has made our nation.  How it has traversed through the history of people’s struggle to emerge as civilized human collective.The people, leaders who sacrificed their lives for creating this nation.

·           Valuing the work of the people for emancipation of people who have been disadvantaged, oppressed and marginalized.  Human collective that recognizes the aspiration of these people for equality, equity and justice.  Aspiration for justice for all is more important than aspiration for personal aggrandisement.

·           To make them understand the idea of India. Creating a nation they want to live in.  Democracy is based on historical reality of India and in interaction with global cultur; evolved value based democracy as an environment for all to learn and grow; environment of equal opportunities for all, equal participation and equal access to resources needed for growth of individuals and of human community.

·           Democracy is based on values of secularism; tolerance for people’s ways of life, thinking, faiths, religious beliefs and practices and culture; even more, sharing with people of other cultures to develop composite nation.  There are people belonging to different faiths, religions and persuasions. Making youth understand and appreciate other religions and faiths we will have lessons on all the religions in India.

·           Promoting dialogue, exchange and cross fertilization of religious ideals, values and ethos.  Study of all religious philosophies.

·           Looking at the nation in the context of the global scenario.

·           Value of democracy, socialism, secularism, tolerance, respecting diversity, living with differences.

·           Art, culture, music, religious heritage, history and philosophy.

·           Emphasis on learning English:  without English the rural youth will lag behind.  It will put them on the path of progress.

·           Study science with temper of philosophy; And study humanity with temper of science.

·           Create economic system that will be free from exploitation and bring about egalitarian society.

·           Study political science and politics that is value based, participatory democracy and governance.

Methodology:

·         Seminar and workshop approach and emphasis on Peer learning.

·         Learning to learn: Developing capacity to learn is more important goal of education than accumulating information and knowledge.

·         Developing the capacity to learn:  Empowering a person, making a person self reliant; to understand, comprehend issues, challenges facing a person, community; to search and find solutions.

·         Searching and researching. Exposure and social involvement.

·         Learning to think and problem solving.

·         Learning from one's experience.

·         Breaking out of moulds, thinking out of box.

·         Exposure to the world outside one's own.

·         Walking back in the history. Reading, writing.

Practical organisation:

o   Position ourselves in one place (village) where the school centre will be located. From there reach out to at least five village schools.

 

MGNREGA and Neo-liberal thinkers

Only the Neo Liberals argue MGNTEGA will not save the poor!

“Do no bet on MGNREGA to save the poor”.  Mr. Swaminathan has given us an eagle’s point of view of MGNREGA, full of big names and overwhelming statistics. But at a closer look he has tried to shoot in the dark by relying on ambiguous information.  I hope he is not deliberately trying to discredit the positive changes brought about by MGNREGA.   

Mr. Swaminathan suggests making tar roads have long term impact, and not mud roads, building embankment or de-silting tanks.  He gives the example of Bihar where double the amount spent on PMGSY.  In Bihar and for that matter in any other place when capital intensive rural spending is done it will definitely double the spending in comparison to spending on MGNREGA.  Under MGNREGA 60% is spent on wages which directly goes into the hands of the wage seeker.  But capital intensive spending will involve much higher spending on equipments and material compared to wages.  Here great proportion of spending will go into the hands of the material and machine owners and less in the hands of the wage seekers. Tar roads improve geography of rural areas but it does not speak of removing poverty of the wage seekers. Building embankments and desilting tanks improves water availability. Will he say that reduction of poverty in Bihar is because there was no MGNREGA?

Rural poverty is of the small, marginal farmers, landless labourers, dalits adivasies and women.  Capital investment goes to the people who have large tracks of land.  It does not benefit the small, marginal farmers and landless labourers. They will continue to remain wage labourers. Capital investment in agriculture (pump sets, tractors, and improved irrigation systems) benefitting the landlords, reduced employment in agriculture to less than 120 days a year.

He claims though Narasimha Rao introduced 100 workdays in 1994 and increased rural employment from 875 million person days to 1232 million and yet Congress was thrashed in the 1996 election. Clearly, voters didn’t think it solved poverty.  But he failed to mention that Congress won in 2009 because of right to work given by NREGA.

To relate the defeat of Congress in 1996 to non recognition of NREGS is trying to deliberately discredit the MGNREGA of 2005.  If congress was defeated it was due to devastating effect on the people of the structural adjustment policy adopted  Liberalization and privatization has led to closing down of innumerable small scale industries. The dismantling of the public sector, HMT, ITI, BEL, has led to innumerable people into unemployment.  Government has offered golden hand shake to force voluntary retirement scheme. NREGS was a safety net to prevent the poor from further falling into poverty and starvation. Growth is not directed to the agriculture sector.  On the contrary land acquisition for mega projects, destruction of forests, and displacement of rural population has very negative impact on the poor.

When NDA government was pushing reforms vigorously it was thrown out of power.  When Manmohan Singh came to power he started speaking about inclusive growth to overcome the scars of vigorous reform which had excluded the rural masses and the poor.

He claims that after 2008 rural wages more than doubled.  But he wants to attribute this to some extraneous factors.  We on the field have seen from a very close distance that when NREGA was paying higher wages and equal wages to women than the landlords who were paying much below minimum wages the NREGA made the rural labourers demand higher wages from the rich farmers.

Food prices rising globally might have raised wages only because under MGNREGA minimum wages were higher than the wages the landlords paid.  MGNREGA strengthened the fight of the agricultural labourers for better wages. Rise in food prices did not result in equal wages for men and women.  It is the NREGA equal wages for men and women made women to demand equal wages.  MGNREGA has given more money in the hands of the rural poor and their health, nutrition, children’s education has improved.

“MGNREGA is only palliative; it will prevent them from starvation”.  But the present growth oriented economy is putting all the propertiless in the urban and rural areas on palliative care.  The difference between the urban wage seekers and the rural wage seekers under MGNREGA is that the rural wage seekers will demand work as a matter of their right to work.  Of course these finer points Swaminathan will not understand.

Further he must also acknowledge that when the poor have rights to work, health care, education, food security, housing that their needs will be attended to.  In a capitalist society the poverty is not solved by the growth in the economy. 

GDP growth has attracted better off of rural population with education rather than unskilled labourers.  The National Sample Survey organization has come out with facts which show that the unemployment rate in the urban area between 2004-2005 and 2011-2012 has come down.  But in the rural areas the unemployment rate has remained the same.

MGNREGA has brought changes in the conditions of the people not in term of owning capital and accumulation of wealth but it has made rural poor get united and fight for their rights.  They now think that they have rights in the society and the government should ensure that they rights are delivered to them. MGNREGA has given more money in the hands of the rural poor. Their nutrition and health has improved. The fact that the children of the rural poor have access to education as their parents need not migrate periodically from one place to another is an important factor that will contribute to the sustainable change.

The capitalist society which spear heads for growth will essentially result in economic and social inequality in the society.  Growth and accumulation will result in concentration of wealth in the hands of the few.  It will create a few multi billionaires leaving the large majority of the population property less having to depend on wage labour.  It is only the struggles for rights that will keep the property less people afloat.  In the capitalist society people cannot fight for a share in the capital of the capitalist.   But they can fight for their rights enshrined in the constitution.  They can demand for right to health, right to food, education, and housing. 

Swaminathan’s last statement speaks for itself.  He holds a view that MGNREGA is palliative and sustainable poverty reduction required capital intensive rural investment. “Today I make bold to claim victory”.  We get an impression that he has already taken a stand against MGNREGA and he goes about searching for arguments to defend his stand.  He calls MGNREGA palliative, but he does not say a word about what he means by capital intensive rural investment.

If Swaminathan had boldly stated that the rural people should be made owners of capital, land, irrigation, access to credit and market which would reduce their poverty then his view would be credible.  But he would argue for growth that would deprive the rural poor of capital and turn them into wage labourers, not in MGNREGA but in the toll plaza, in the urban industries, working under contractors with no right to be organized or fight for better wages. 

 Alex Tuscano, Ganesh Iyer, and N.S.Bedi