One of my friends recently asked me “Is there any one solution to the entire problem India is facing?”
I retorted “EDUCATION”, he was shocked as he never expected me to reply so instantaneously, defying my own nature of pondering before speaking anything.
He replied “I believe education is not a solution but a tool to attain the solution”.
I asked him back “so what is the solution?”
He gave me an abstract answer. I was not convinced and I felt he too was unconvinced.
Later, I did ponder over his question. Is there any one solution to all the problem India is facing? In the sense, one idea to which every program/scheme of our various ministries can converge so that we can synergize all our efforts for better growth and more importantly sustainable social development.
After a long session of deep thinking, my answer remained same “EDUCATION”.
Quality Education can eradicate poverty. Education can provide awareness, to tackle problem of mal nutrition, can fight different kinds of mortality, and other diseases.
More importantly education can give ‘the feeble’ a voice of new age to place his ‘say’ in a better position to be heard.
Education can fight corruption as “If people willing to give perishes, people willing to take perishes”.
Education could enlighten people of their powers that constitution has conferred upon them.
Education could improve status of women, can mitigate gender inequality.
Education could open up new vistas of opportunities to the under-privileged, whence could improve their standard of living & family health.
Research oriented education can lead to innovation and other society-betterment findings, which can take India to the world.
Therefore, as India becomes land of new innovation and technology, production industry in India would prosper.
This can lead to capacity building in all sectors- importantly military, agriculture, power, electronics, infrastructure, steel etc.
Thereby we can export more complete competitive products & mitigate export- import trade imbalance.
And at home, Education leads to sustainable development.
Consequently, Education is one & only solution to the entire problem.
But then my alter ego confronted “it’s impossible to provide education to all the people, he he he, he laughed.”
I retorted “It is possible”
“Freaking! Quality education is expensive and majority of people are still poor” he said tauntingly.
I told him “they are all poor to afford quality education, but until they are educated, they will always remain poor”.
And, “Right to education is the silver lining”
He replied “Right to education is yet another right to corruption”.
I said ‘things would change, and this time people would not fail our constitution & education”.
He asked me “what change are you referring to? The government one after the other is playing the dirty game of cheap politics with their tainted cards.”
I kept quiet, did not reply, as I had nothing to say, for as he spoke the reality.
But then I told him” Education is the panacea for all problems”.
It has a ripple effect, you educate a man, and he would educate many. You educate a girl; you educate her & the entire generation to follow.
And, it’s true; this plant of education should have been planted 50 years before in our country, the second best time is now.
So, let’s understand the importance of education as the one & only solution.
And act prominently in this second best time, i.e. now.
This how my friend sreekanth commented, and he had a point.
ReplyDeletehehe..dey.. i have pondered over this too :) ..of corz we all have.we may have even talked about this . I agree partly ..its education.But its not just education.The main factor is population.There is no way that we can reduce population.But, improving the economic standards of the country and optimal land use might help us in tackling it better.Its going to take some time.We are not ready yet as a nation to tackle such a huge population.
Think about it.
My friend had gone to this place called Timisoara in Romania.Nice place . Nice people.They all get minimal wages i think.( atleast people in US do for sure) . the Roads are feebly populated.There is enough revenue there to support all of them esp since the density of the population there is not so high..I had similar conversations with people staying in US, CANADA and what not.
We are a BIG poor country.In fact we are one of the largest countries in the world in terms of population,ignoring china....China somehow did it.They are still poor in a lot of things and there are people who die from hunger there too..again thatnks to the population....
I guess, an attitude to work / a good govt/ good education / population , all these things matter a lot.
and ofcorz sadly, we cant do anything about population....
@ sreekanth
ReplyDeleteIts true, we can control better and satisfy more/reach out to more by reducing population or if we have less population.
But, I think otherwise, empowerment, to make population our strength, a India with over 100 crore educated people.
India has resources, but will of people who govern creates the illusion of a "BIG poor " incapable country.
Task is laborious, would take some time, but not impossible.
May be we should import one more thing from America what Barack Obama said a million times "YES WE CAN".