Education in India: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow

It is often said that India has had a very rich tradition of an 'education system' and in the ancient era, it was a fountainhead of knowledge to the world. Most education philosophers, starting from Vivekananda to Tagore and Gandhi, while discussing the purpose of education have stressed on three important aspects of education - happiness in life, developing an independent responsible thinking mind and providing necessary skills to survive in life.?There is also a uniformly accepted view that education is probably the only non-violent medium for social change.

While there is no consensus about the effectiveness of the current model in practice, it is undeniable that we have over the years with what has been practiced have produced some of the finest minds?some of which are renowned Indian origin CEOs and top honchos heading and leading the world's biggest multinationals and organisations.

However, the design of existing educational system followed in a majority of our schools is more than a few hundred years old. The context in which the system was evolved has become obsolete long long ago.?It is primarily based on archaic notions such as 'child is an empty vessel and needs to be filled with knowledge', 'education happens only in the school', 'some children are clever and some are not', some children want to learn and some do not’, ’all children have to learn the same topic/subject within a fixed period of time' etc.?Whereas learning experiments and neurological research has established radically different realities such as 'all children have similar potential to learn', 'children learn at varying pace', 'children have varying preferences on what they want to learn more', 'children are able to significantly contribute to their learning' etc.To add to this challenge, is the severe lack of synergy in the educational objectives amongst various stakeholders which is a very serious problem - that of teachers, parents, education functionaries, children themselves and the society in general - that has some fairly conflicting views on the purpose, process and the mode of delivery of education. While this is the case, as we embark on the 75th Year of Independent India - having a structured National Education Policy (NEP 2020) and a structured National Curriculum Frameworks (NCF) which is expected soon, we indeed will leap frog to #ReimagineEducation and enable technology where possible to empower the India of tomorrow.

To enable this, we need to plan for the India of 2047 and 2072 , roughly a quarter century from now (and there after a half century from now), about the kind of education that are we likely to need, keeping in mind that by then we will be, by far, the most populous country in the world, our citizens will be all literate, Indians will have a much better life expectancy. Our economy will be amongst the top 3 or 4 in the world and we thus need to plan to ensure our education system is equipped to both produce citizens for India and for the world.?

Let us look back the last 75 years.?

On the one hand nothing much has changed around India.?

• The trains still take almost the same time that it took a few decades ago.
• The school buildings still look the same.
• Teachers recruitment and the method for budget allocations are the same.

But if we look at our modes of communication, the way we consume entertainment through OTT, cheaper air travel, use of IoT, the way we use digital payments and how we order for food and especially the appetite for better living conditions, a lot has really changed.?

While we still visit the same places of worship as we did 75 years ago, we also have the opportunity of doing a virtual e-darshan. The way we offer dakshina has changed to e-hundi’s. The teaching we do today is very different from what we did some decades ago.?

In fact, schooling itself has moved from being school centric towards blended learning, that can happen from literally anywhere and anytime.

However, to really bring about the much needed change and catapult us to where we would like to be - the nation has to have a long-term (at least fifty years - broken into five, ten, fifteen, twenty five year phases) vision that is politically understood and backed. Such vision and agenda has to transcend beyond petty politics and has to be pursued. All efforts to achieve quality in education would come to crashing down if we fail to create institutions that continually develop top class education professionals and practitioners of adequate numbers.

Irrespective of the political party in power or bureaucrat leading the administration, political will has to manifest in several ways that could include radical reforms in policies, providing necessary budgets and resources, ruthless (and yet sensitive) execution of policies through effective involvement of stakeholders and the will to make decisions that will be the blueprint for the future of India.

A nation that would be of close to 1.7 billion people - contributing to ~18% of world’s population by 2047 - India has to lead the way for the rest of the world in every possible way.?

With initiatives such as Atmanirbhar Bharat and having demonstrated to the world, how we responded to the pandemic, even making our own vaccines - we have classic example of how B’harat’ has to be regarded by the world as a ‘Vishwa Guru’?and as 'Knowledge Creator' and not remain just as a 'Knowledge Receiver’ anymore.

The power to do so would be derived from the kind of values (of equity, democracy, justice, sustenance) our society accepts and promotes.?My personal belief is that this kind of education would create a strong foundation for our society and for the world. With her human resources, knowledge power and by being the largest and lasting democratic nation in the world, the only hope we have for such an India in 2047 - is our education system. Jai Hind!?