NUEPA's role in the light of its Memorandum of Association and UNESCO resolutions

The NUEPA should review its role in the light of its charter, and open up the unexplored dimensions of its Memorandum.

I have listed below, in brief, some of the areas in which the NUEPA's potential remains to be explored properly.

Conceived as an Asian Regional Institute as early as 1962, the NUEPA may expand its ANTRIEP network of 20 institutions from 10 member countries to cover South East Asia (beyond Indonesia), Central and West Asia, and Eurasia (beyond France) through on and off campus courses and programs (Clause e,h,m,r).

Apart from expanding its physical network. The NUEPA may promote 'innovations' to deepen the 'interdisciplinary' and 'comparative' content of its programs and courses, for 'integral development of personality', 'national integration' and 'international understanding', in the background of 'globalization' (Clause 3 b,d,q). It may help the educational system cope with the growing convergence of distinct disciplines, technologies and businesses in a fast changing global cognitive environment. It may promote inter and intra university confluence of social and natural sciences for attaining this end.

The NUEPA may also work for a convergence of the seven functions, discharged through its ten departments. It may not only give statistical information, but act as a standard setter and a clearing house (Clause 3 c,e,k) of best practices and innovative ideas. As a capacity builder, it may focus on extramural studies, extension programs and field outreach activities (Clause 3p) in education for concrete action on critical issues like clean and sustainable development, social justice, equitable growth, moral economy, democratic polity, bio cultural safety and survival. It may not confine itself to technical aspects of equity, access and transition within the educational structure, but harness the structure itself to the task of creating an equitable society. It may design and deliver courses of study and research for defining foundations of education, educational policy for inclusive education, and, for giving effect and meaning to the right to education.

The NUEPA may promote these objectives through public private, l.l.T, industry, university partnership, fellowship and visiting professorships, campuses in India and abroad and other collaborative arrangements for research and advisory services (Clauses 3 I, 4x-xiii).

The NUEPA may, in undertaking the above activities, work in close collaboration with various departments of the Central and State Governments (Clause 3 b,g,h), to help achieve a synergy between human and natural resources, and, to harvest human capital for generating material capital for the country.

The NUEPA should be converted from a deemed into a full fledged university. The NUEPA should plumb its untapped possibilities and evolve a 2020 vision.

Proposal for the Establishment of the Mahatma Gandhi Institute for Peace Education and Sustainable Development (MGIPE & SD): a Category 1 Institute of the UNESCO at Delhi.

Background-

The UNESCO Draft Resolutions 2010-11 ( 35 C/5 vols 1 & 11) have discussed the need to invest out of the severe financial, economic and social crisis, specially, the ongoing climate change, food and energy crisis, w/ith which the world is fa’ced today. The resolutions have emphasized the need for developing inclusive policies, and programmes, (a) to build a knowledge society for addressing this crisis, with foresight and anticipation; (b) to provide education for sustainable development, conflict mitigation and post conflict reconciliation, disaster prevention, post disaster reconstruction, and ; (c) to improve national research systems, for implementation of Internationally Agreed, Millennium Development and EFA goals, and of the Medium Term Strategy 2008-13 (34c/24). The Resolutions address objectives of the UN Decades of Education for Sustainable Development (2003- 14), and, a Culture of Peace and Nonviolence for the Children of the World 2001- 10). The resolutions have stressed promotion of ecological and earth sciences for sustainable management of natural resources , adaptation and mitigation response to climate change, and development of policy based research in social and human sciences for combating racism, discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance. Finally, the resolutions have spoken about cost effective mechanisms for developing Category I Institutes for coordinating regional and international effort in education from early childhood to adult stages. It is in the background of these resolutions that discussions have been held by the Govt of India with the UNESCO, indicating its readiness to host a Category I Institute for Peace Education and Sustainable Development at the National Capital of India in Delhi.

The crises, spelt out in the UNESCO Draft Resolutions, emerge out of the problems of growth without equity, described by Prof. Mahbub ul Haq, the harbinger of Human Development Reports. He described the growth as jobless minus new employment, ruthless, sharpening income disparities, voiceless, without political freedom, rootless, with erosion of cultural, socio economic identity, powerless, with squandering of resources, required by future generations.

Mahatma Gandhi appears to have anticipated Dr Haq when he listed the seven deadly malaises contributing to the unsustainable nature of contemporary civilization as follows: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, science without humanity, knowledge without character, politics without principle, commerce without morality, and worship without sacrifice.

Both Mahatma Gandhi and Dr Haq have pointed out the unsustainable nature of development, which has culminated in the crises, conflicts and disasters, for which the UNESCO

Draft Resolutions seek a remedy, inter alia, in education. Gandhi's life, work and teachings focused on striking at the roots of the systematic violence, which breed discrimination, deprivation, conflict and environmental crisis. One quarter of the human population consumes today fourth fifths of the world’s resources, two fifths of its food resources, 40% of its annual net photo synthesis. More than 1 billion people are denied right to safe water; 2.6 billion to adequate sanitation.1.8 million children die every year from diarrhea and other diseases.

Almost a billion people are illiterate; one in five children aged six to eleven is out of school; one in four drops out before completing basic education. More than a billion people survive on less than a dollar a day. 10% of the military spending, diverted yearly, can end poverty and achieve the much needed EFA. About 10 million US dollars per year, equivalent to 8 days of the world s military expenditure, can provide for safe water and sanitation. Scarce resources are being squandered for war and preparation for war, bred by pervasive social injustice and inequality. The only way to deal with this malady is to transform world views from conflict orientation to peace orientation and, from domination of, to reconciliation with nature.

Apart from a mismatch between human requirements and commitments, there is the clear and present danger of climate change. The more developed or educated a country is today, the higher its human development index, the more unsustainable its style of production and consumption, the higher its carbon footprint, far higher than the average per capita entitlement. Unless the polluters pay the carbon debt, and adapt a sustainable life style, the current trend of thinning of ozone layer and global warming will result in an ecological disaster by 2050, with polar ice melt, sea rise, coastal inundation, droughts and floods The planet earth has been in existence for 4.54 billion years, without facing the imminent ecological disaster, brought about now by its youngest inhabitant, the human being. Depletion of water tables, falling aquifers, thinning soils, shrinking forests, collapsing fisheries are visible consequences of the relentless developments, undertaken by the human being in oblivion of their ecological sustainability. If the human being would like to survive, it is vital for him to embrace an education for making peace between nature and culture, and, for evolving a sustainable materials economy, to make the most of materials, rather than use most materials.

The current rate of extinction of species has accelerated to 40 thousand times higher than the back ground rate of extinction as a result of the explosion of human population at the cost of non human population of flora and fauna, and jn consequence of the substitution of commodity diversity for biological diversity, reduction of sacred, psychic and ecological categories to economic and production categories, homogenization and destruction of habitats, mono culture of seeds, organisms and the mind. As the earth planet loses its bio cultural diversity as a result of predatory human action, the human being is going to become the first agent of nature, responsible for his own destruction. The only answer lies in education to help him reconcile his need and greed, so eloquently advocated by Mahatma Gandhi.

The unsustainable and unequal development, climate change and extinction of species have been accompanied by an unequal exchange between developed and developing countries, by an unprotected and one sided flow of knowledge and resources from gene and culture rich countries to capital rich countries, from south to north, from rural to urban regions. False postulates have gained ground that mind is in the north, matter is in the south; that production takes place only in laboratories, only reproduction and consumption among communities living with nature. A gulf has widened, along the Infobahn, in a borderless world, between the connected rich and the unconnected poor. Fixed, expressed knowledge is protected, unfixed ideas and expressions are not. Falling incomes, rising unemployment, mass starvation, migration, discontent, insurgency and riots have engulfed the world. Such deceleration to disaster can be arrested only by a holistic education, for restoring companionate and homologic values over power centric and hegemonic values, through an integration of intellectual, physical, natural and spiritual elements, a convergence of neurophysical, biomedical and psychological knowledge, collaboration between natural and social sciences.

Concept

The Category 1 Institute proposed is to be named after Mahatma Gandhi because his life and war provide this holistic model of education. He provided, through his evangelical life, his writings compiled in 90 volumes, and his death for the cause of a pedagogic renewal of the world, the theory and practice for combating the crises discussed in the UN Draft Resolutions. In a letter to Nehru in 1945, he compared the world to the proverbial moth, which may burn itself out eventually in the flame, around which it dances more and more fiercely. He declared it as his bounden duty to his last breath to try to protect India, and through India, the entire world, from such a doom.

Gandhiji proposed a self sufficient moral economy, as against an exploitative economy, to care for rather than exploit the earth, to satisfy needs of all rather than the greed of a few, for subsistence rather than affluence. Such an economy would be managed with the cooperation of 'bread labor' attracting capital through non violent combination, and of capitalists acting as trustees for their surplus capital. It would be based on self contained but interdependent village republics, controlling the means of mass production, producing for themselves, minus boom and bust interventions and soul destroying competition of unregulated markets. It would use intermediate rather than mega technology, for use, not profit, for resource recycling and rural reconstruction rather than consumerist luxuries.

Gandhiji proposed an inclusive polity to supplement the moral economy in Hind Swaraj. He conceived it as a square completed by political and economic freedom, moral and social elevation, It would be out of shape if any of its angles was untrue. He proposed observance of the law of the family in international affairs. A nation had to live not in isolated independence, but in cooperative interdependence with other nations. A country had to be free in order that it might die, if necessary, for the benefit of the world. Political independence was to be attained not by exchanging colonial majority rule, 'king log for king stork', but by educating masses to regulate and control authority. The true democrat would defend his liberty, his country, and that of the entire mankind by non violent means,

Gandhiji clarified that he wanted to arrive, not at an artificially forced unity, but at a synthesis of cultures based on past traditions, enriched by later experience. He advocated a religion of man, common to all persuasions, intrinsic to nature and shared by humanity. He explained God as a force, rather than as a person, whose forms were many, though the informing spirit was one.

Gandhiji saw nonviolence as soul force, the outcome of inner unity and freedom, the attribute of the very brave, the law of the human species, natural to women, the foundation for a moral economy, democracy, political freedom and global unity. Nonviolence was to kill not only the will to kill, but also the fear of death. He preached passive resistance, non-cooperation, civil disobedience, against arms race, tyranny, intolerance, economic inequality, environmental degradation, and criminalization. He taught this as not only a policy but also as a creed, as a means of converting the adversary to truth by accepting suffering and sacrifice, non possession and self reliance. In 1942, when going to the prison, he told his followers 'Don't look at the world with blood shot eyes, though the eyes of the world be red'. He added, 'The world is weary of hate... Let it be the privilege of India to turn a new leaf and set a lesson to the world'.

Mahatma Gandhi was the great educator, the apostle of peace, who ceaselessly tried to wean humanity away from suicidal nonviolence in economy, polity and environment. He proposed drawing out the best in child, man and woman, body, mind and spirit. Literacy was not the end, not even the beginning of education, for him. He offered basic education, rooted in craft and labor, and described academic grasp without practice as an embalmed corpse. He wanted to inspire homo humanus out of homo sapiens. The aim of civilization, to him, was no mere survival, numerical increase, increased complexity of organization, greater control over environment, but fuller realization of individual and collective human possibilities. He suggested that the state should provide education for the services it needs. For all other branches of learning, it should encourage private effort.

Gandhiji claimed to teach nothing new. There have been, within India, emperors like Ashok and Akbar, propagators of philosophical and religious formulations of Vedanta, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism, and, outside India, prophets and thinkers like Christ, Confucius, Rumi, Ibn al Arabi, Tolstoy, Thoreau and Russell, who have advocated relativism in viewpoints, concord with faiths, love as a solvent of hatred; comprehension of all phenomena as an interconnected web of relationships; a non extractive covenant w/ith nature; and supremacy of intrinsic, ultimate and transcendental values over instrumental, proximate, existential values. But, it was Gandhiji, who encompassed these heuristic traditions in his life and work, honed their applications in the teeth of an engulfing tide of worldwide technification, militarization, environmental degradation, and left an indelible imprint on the theory and practice of subsequent peace warriors like Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela or environmental activists like Wangari Mathai. He provided a counter argument, in advance, to Huntington's thesis of clash of civilizations. He perceived the diverse differences and plural identities, co-existing in human beings, and refused to permit their miniaturization and reduction to belligerent religious or civilizational identities. Thanks to Gandhiji, India survives today as an inclusive democracy.

Strategy

The proposed Category 1 Centre is to launch educational innovations, for peace and sustainable development, under the banner of Gandhiji's lifelong mission for education in peace and sustainable development. Along with Gandhian thought and experiments, it will reread and retell the thinking and applications of other exponents and strategists of peace and sustainable development in the Asia Pacific region. Its objective would be to move beyond passive promotion of international understanding, to active mapping, anticipating and defusing flash points of conflicts through education, and to promote education that may bring about sustainable development of natural and human resources in the Asia Pacific region.

It would assess and facilitate the task of recovery and reconstruction of educational structures in the post conflict, post disaster situation, and mitigation of conflicts and crises, brought about by biotic and abiotic pressures, through education. It would build bridges between institutes of the Asia Pacific region and the world for sharing corollary experiences and strategies. It would try to catalyze, through education, a process, whereby the developing countries of the Asia Pacific region may make a peaceful transition to a sustainable and developed status without negotiating the stage of unsustainable life styles of developed countries, and without going through the conflicts that have afflicted them.

In this task, the center would collaborate with Institutions like the International Bureau of Education (IBE ), International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP ), International Council for Philosophical and Humanistic Studies (ICPHS ), Global Ethics Observatory ( GEOBS ), International Organization for Migration (lOM ), the Bureau of Field Coordination in post conflict, post disaster (PCPD ) situations, and the Alliance of Civilizations.

The nonrecurring expenditure on infrastructure, support services, maintenance and operation would be funded by the Govt of India, while the recurring expenditure on regular and permanent staff would be funded by the UNESCO. The programme expenditure would be borne by the GO! for an initial period of ten years; the UNESCO and the GOI would make joint efforts to mobilize extra budgetary resources from contributions of member states, donor agencies, NGOs and the private sector. The institute would be autonomous and the Director would be an Indian National.

Charged by its charter of objectives, the NUEPA has been functioning for several decades in the Asia Pacific region for research and training in education. It has developed into an international clearing house of ideas, comparative studies and innovations for building an equitable, inclusive, participatory knowledge society; it has promoted south-south cooperation in normative and capacity building activities, and developed a culture of partnership with civil society. It has fulfilled EFA goals through decentralized management, pluralistic info structures and international coordination, and acted as a laboratory of ideas, standard setter and capacity builder. Even though the Category I Institute would be an autonomous institution, the NUEPA would collaborate with it in promoting the shared objectives. Engaged, on an international platform, in gauging the economic and social impact of higher education, problems of access, transition and equity in education in an age of globalization, especially for women, children, minorities and marginalized communities, the NUEPA will be an appropriate partner for a Category 1 Institute.

Objectives

The objectives of the centre are outlined as follows:

1.      To engage in a bio-cultural cartography of human and natural resources, an analysis of the gap between their potential and utilization, and generation of an educational strategy to bridge the gap, in conflict prone areas of developing countries in the Asia Pacific region.

2.      To document and revitalize strategies of dispute resolution and reconciliation among hinterland communities of conflict zones

3.      To study, recapitulate, publish and celebrate shared oral traditions, family, community and local histories of neighboring ethnic groups in conflict ridden areas of the region.

4.       To recognize and rejuvenate , through education, consumptive as well and non consumptive values of natural resources, customary laws and knowledge systems of communities, for sustainable harvesting of such resources, and, for dealing with natural calamities, in ecologically fragile habitats like coasts, mountains and deserts.

5.      To disseminate information about the non conflictual coexistence of a multiplicity of commitments and identities in individuals or groups, like gender, race, language, politics, sports, music, food habits, literary preference, transcending religious or racial divides, through educational kits.

6.      To integrate as well as diversify the educational environment, teaching and learning materials, to cope with multiage, multilingual, multi cultural, multi grade classrooms.

7.      To build and disseminate educational material on the custodial role of women in preserving genetic diversity, food security, health, and environmental care.

8.      To build training modules for pedagogy in shared citizenship, political participation, federalism, legal pluralism, affirmative legislation, against discrimination, exclusion or forcible assimilation, and, for equitable sharing and distribution of natural resources.

9.      To create a multilingual digital library, and a programme for cross cultural translation, coproduction and distribution of the best and finest vernacular and international literature on education for conflict reduction, peace and sustainable development.

10.  To provide education in sui generis national as well as global IPR regimes, and on protection and compensation for local, community and traditional knowledge systems, available in different languages, local and international.

11.  To create a shared understanding and commitment between immigrant and host populations on nonnegotiable values of rule of law, gender equality, human rights, tolerance and diversity.

12.  To help provide education in disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of insurgent groups, to transform mutually adversarial positions to mutual understanding, in post conflict situations.

13.  To educate in information sharing, warning system, disaster preparation, damage minimization and generate vernacular pedagogic materials, drawing on local cultural specifies, for reduction of vulnerability to disaster.

14.  To provide basic education in legislation for clean development mechanisms, emission reduction, and, in local measures, to be adopted for combating climate change, leading to a low carbon, no waste society.

15.  To provide education in social and civil reconstruction in post conflict, post disaster settings.

16.  To create a corpus of innovations and success stories in dealing with threats to critical ecosystem services, species and gene pools, and, in resolving radical conflicts among communities and threats to peaceful coexistence of communities.

17.  To generate educational modules on cross border cooperation on conservation of indivisible natural resources, which know no national or regional boundaries.

18.  To provide education in sustainable urbanization, with thermal efficiency, cardiovascular circulation and respiration.

19.  To work with international, regional, sub original groups and individuals, act as a clearing house for information, skill, knowledge and resources for training and deputing educators for peace and sustainable development.