Four Wheels for All: The case for the rapid automobilisation of Indi

Four Wheels for All: The case for the rapid automobilisation of India by Sauvik Chakraverti

India has been gradually liberalising the automobile industry and opening it up to international competition. Today, the streets are awash with foreign brands, made in India. Yet, the launch of the Tata Nano has evoked horror from many environmentalists and town planners. They abhor the idea of universal car ownership inIndia.

In this important contribution to the debate, noted liberal scholar and author Sauvik Chakraverti challenges the readers to think of the wider impact of greater automobility, arguing for policies that will make cars affordable to all, lowering taxes and tariffs, including import of duty-free used cars.

Chakraverti looks at the issue from many angles. He places his reader between two options: as a successful individual owner of his own car, driving where he likes to go – which is self-directedness or autonomy – or being "moved in masses" at the whim of the "transport planner". And so it emerges that the car is part of the solution – the escape button every Indian needs. But the roads must be built on a war footing. And greater automobile ownership will create a political constituency in support of better roads. With greater connectivity, choices and markets will enlarge, the economy will get a boost, and freedom will reign.

This paper is firmly on the side of progress – enhanced personal mobility will greatly empower the aam admi, the euphemistic common man.

http://www.indefenceofliberty.org/story.aspx?id=1914&pubid=1705

Shut down HRD ministry!

Shut down HRD ministry! By Sauvik Chakraverti

SAUVIK CHAKRAVERTI is an alumnus of the London School of Economics and former senior assistant editor of The Economic Times. Currently Chakraverti is the convenor of the Liberal Study Group, Mangalore.

Shut down the union hrd (human resource destruction) ministry. The ministry is manned by propagandists of a failed experiment in state socialism. It has ensured there are no genuine knowledge workers in the entire education system, except bureaucrats. Its supervision of schools, colleges and universities should be revoked.

Dismantle all licensing requirements for education institutions. The education sector urgently needs to be set free. This will facilitate entry of competing private firms offering short courses that equip young people for vocations or professions, be it plumbing or baking into the education sector. The three R’s can also be easily taught, especially using computers.

Free the student community. In schools, colleges, universities and B-schools across the country students receive state-sponsored ‘education’. Such education churns out limited types of economic actors: bureaucrats, managers, accountants, lawyers, doctors, engineers. In the emerging free market economy, young people will find profitable niches as DJs, VJs, even tattoo artists. The burden of formal education — especially state-sponsored education — is inimical to creativity and intellectual freedom. 

Revoke higher education subsidies. Higher education is a privilege, not a right. Those who actually produce knowledge should be free to work, teach and sustain their respective schools of thought. Every such school should sustain itself on its own resources as it would be fatal to academic freedom to expect or receive subsidies from the state.

Moreover some Indian edupreneurs are venturing overseas. The Manipal Education & Medical Group has promoted state-of-the-art medical schools in Nepal and Malaysia, and the S.P. Jain Institute, a campus in Dubai. And most spectacularly, India-born Sunny Varkey who runs a dozen secondary schools in Dubai and the UAE, has acquired 13 independent schools in Britain and could well be the world’s premier edupreneur.

 

This urgent flurry of activity within the hitherto somnolent education sector has ensured that the vital importance of qualitative education has permeated down to the lowest income groups across the subcontinent — a development accentuated by the promotion of the country’s 517 urban benchmarked Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya residential schools in rural India (see EW cover story August). Simultaneously it has focussed public attention upon hitherto arcane subjects such as syllabus design and curriculum development and shifted national attention from ritual to real education. Suddenly paper degrees and qualifications are not as important as professional and life skills which school leavers and college graduates must acquire within their institutions of learning.

Therefore the newly emergent consensus that reform of India’s Macaulayan system of education based on rote learning and memorisation rather than development of problem-solving and conflict-resolution skills requires urgent attention. And even as several specialist committees constituted by the Union ministry of human resource development are currently engaged in the process, the public interest demands a wider ambit for the national debate on syllabus and curriculum reform. To this end, to meaningfully celebrate the 5th anniversary of EducationWorld, we deemed it incumbent upon ourselves to ask several educationists and industry leaders with proven commitment to improving the education system to write prescriptions for a renaissance of Indian education.

Inevitably, prescriptions for the reform of India’s patently languishing, if not terminally ill education system by dedicated educationists in diverse professions and vocations differ widely. However on some points there is a broad consensus. The reforms implicitly or explicitly endorsed by all the seven eminent respondents are:

Liberalise and deregulate the education system to encourage promotion of new schools, colleges, vocational and other institutions of higher education.

To a greater or lesser degree all the respondents are in favour of addressing the supply side of education to eliminate capacity shortages which are the root cause of the overwhelming majority of the hundreds, if not thousands, of rackets which plague post-independence India’s education system. The learned justices of the Supreme Court agree. In its historic 2002 judgement in the TMA Pai Foundation Case (8 SCC 481), a full bench of the court expanded the right of minorities to "establish and administer educational institutions of their choice" as mandated by Article 30 of the Constitution of India, to all citizens.

This development prescription is strongly endorsed by liberal economist and writer Sauvik Chakraverti. "The education sector urgently needs to be set free. This will facilitate entry of private firms offering short courses that equip young people for vocations and professions — be it plumbing, or baking — into the education sector. The three R’s can also be easily taught by them using computers," says Chakraverti (see box p.39).

http://educationworldonline.net/index.php/page-article-choice-more-id-239

Need to de-school society

Need to de-school society by Sauvik Chakraverti

Dr. Parth Shah, president of the Delhi-based Centre for Civil Society in his entertaining critique of Amartya Sen’s stand on government and State as educator of the masses, wrote that a government which cannot be trusted to produce food (by cultivating fields) surely can’t be trusted to produce education, which entails cultivation of minds. That’s why nobody is willing to pay bribes for admission into government schools. Some private schools extract donations and bribes because the licence-permit raj has blocked supply. Unshackle the enterprise of educationists, and there will be enough private education for all.

Socialists like Sen, who plead for a major role for the State or government in education, do so on two grounds: equity and standards. Both pleas are based on false premises. A state that spends hugely on higher education, leaving little for primary schooling, cannot be said to be serving equity. As predicted by public choice theory (which is still not taught at the ‘elite’ Delhi School of Economics), the education budget is hogged by the middle class and the rich, who consume higher education. The poor, whose children need just a little primary education to get going, get naught. So, the equity argument isn’t valid in the current Indian context.

Next we need to address the standardisation argument. Can you imagine anything worse for the minds of children than bureaucrats approving conditions for the promotion of schools and colleges and even univer-sities, mandating courses and syllabuses, listing ‘approved’ textbooks, fixing tuition fees and doing all the other things standardisers advocate? Will this not lead to the politicisation of knowledge? Will we not create an Orwellian ministry of truth? Like ISO certification, the private sector is quite capable of setting standards, as the privately promoted computer education firm NIIT has proved. But NIIT is still not ‘recognised’ by the Central or state governments.

Contrary to official dogma, education is one area in which there should be experimentation. Young people learn music, sports, dance, art, cooking, driving and computers (outside school) from private entrepreneurs. Thus, there is widespread variety and choice and acceptable standards over which both students and parents have control. Therefore there is negligible teacher absenteeism in such courses.

This is the pointer to the future. If, as Rabindranath Tagore had dreamed, India becomes a country "where knowledge is free", education would be a competitive enterprise over whose products consumers would exercise complete sovereignty. If poor parents want their children to learn English, as in fact most do, competitive entrepreneurs would sell them short courses, as many are already doing. If they seek other kinds of knowledge, the market economy will step in to provide it, either by studentship or apprenticeships. In such a market economy, a child from a poor family can choose a ‘calling’ and obtain knowledge relevant to that vocation. Specialised in this manner — as a beautician or tattoo artist, electrician, mason, plumber, motor mechanic, receptionist, chef or cartoonist — all poor children can seek honest survival in the urban market economy. They can be ‘rationally ignorant’ about everything else.

To understand ‘rational ignorance’, take for example, a musician. If he is adept at playing his chosen musical instrument, he has no need to learn anything else. If he wants a car, engineers build it for him, a chauffeur drives him around, and mechanics keep it in good repair. If he wants a grand house, architects design it for him, masons build it, and interior designers furnish it aesthetically. If he wants gourmet food, he hires a chef. And so on. As far as the musician is concerned, all he knows is how to play one musical instrument well. About everything else, he is rationally ignorant.

The notion of ‘rational ignorance’, which is the key to understanding how free markets use specialised knowledge, implies that children don’t need to spend long and boring years in school that mete out generalised knowledge. Armed with a pocket calculator and only two R’s, children from every household can begin to chase big dreams. We need to de-school society if we truly have the interests of poor children at heart. Instead, we have submitted, without even a murmur of protest, to the education cess: the state as the ‘cultivator of minds’.

A noted philosopher once remarked: "Whoever is the master of education is the master of mankind." Our socialist state wants to be the master of education as a means to a much more sinister end — control of our minds.

The situation is critical. It demands that parents wake up to their own responsibilities. A video recording of Pink Floyd’s The Wall about how education is ‘thought control’, should be compulsory viewing. As for compulsory reading, I strongly recommend Prof. James Tooley’s The Enterprise of Education, a 38-page booklet from Liberty Institute, New Delhi, which analyses the Indian experience of state controlled education.

(Sauvik Chakraverti is a journalist and author of Antidote: Essays Against the Socialist Indian State, and its sequel, Antidote 2: For Liberal Governance, both published by Macmillan)

http://educationworldonline.net/index.php/page-article-choice-more-id-698

Education provision by a failed State

Education provision by a failed State by Sauvik Chakraverti

Every activist in indian education suffers from a ‘delusion of knowledge’ — the notion that the socialist State, i.e. government, is in possession of knowledge that the poor need to succeed in life.

In reality, the State is itself based on failed knowledge. Economic liberalisation was resorted to in 1991 after half a century of socialism, precisely because of knowledge failure. And it is only because of ‘liberty’ that Indian society can now access various fragments of knowledge that were previously unavailable. Now we have modern automobiles, mobile phones, plasma TVs and the like because we allowed knowledge developed abroad to flow into the country. The State-promoted IITs have been operational since the early 1960s but this knowledge wasn’t available in India. The State-owned IIMs are of similar vintage — but there were hardly any business enterprises to manage then.

On the other hand, the poor have traditionally been in possession of various fragments of knowledge — but are denied entry into markets by repressive legislation. Poor girls can sing and dance, but the socialist State has outlawed nightlife. Tribals in the jungles of central India distill stimulating mahua liquor from an eponymous flower, but they cannot sell it. Tapping toddy and fermenting it is specialised knowledge. Last year Karna-taka reported a bumper toddy season — but nowhere on Bangalore’s swanky Brigade Road will you get a glass of toddy. The north-east is poor and underdeveloped; but boast great music bands there. But these bands cannot perform in heartland states because of State-imposed restrictions.

These are all examples of real, hard knowledge going waste. And ironically the State, which is responsible for this waste, wants to teach. If establishment educationists shout in concert, an education tax is immediately imposed. But the ‘planned’ flow of knowledge from State to the poor never happens, and it never will. The minister in charge of education is a Nehru family “loyalist”. As such he will teach Nehruvian socialist propaganda. And his loyal educrats will dictate what private institutes will teach and meddle with what they want to teach.

Thus, for the immediate benefit of the poor, and for the immediate spread of real knowledge, liberty is essential. Just as the public has benefited from foreign car companies entering India, so we will benefit from foreign universities setting up shop here. And just as the poor benefit from freedom, so will the national knowledge pool if anyone with a fragment of knowledge can set up shop and teach to whoever is willing to pay for it. The problem which requires resolution is that of transmission of knowledge from one who has it to another individual who wants to acquire it. The market alone can solve this problem. The State has no ‘collective pool of knowledge’. Indeed, the socialist Indian State is a naked propagandist, and all its attempts to secure ‘uniform standards’ in education have only resulted in the uniform teaching of untruths.

Therefore, the Union ministry of human resource development — actually ministry of human resource destruction — should be shut down. Every educrat should be fired, and all schools and colleges freed from government control and supervision over curriculum as well as certification. Private edupreneurs can then compete for testing scholastic competence and issuing certification — as with SAT, IB or the ISC.
What about poor kids in such a scenario? If they learn how to use a calculator, to read, write and speak English, to type on a keyboard and use a computer, to operate a mobile phone and send SMS, and how to drive a car, they will have all the basic knowledge required for success in the contemporary world. I am positive that private for-profit as well as non-profit efforts can easily transmit these fragments of knowledge to them in a manner that is efficient in terms of money as well as time.

Poor kids need to enter the workforce early. for them, 12 years of school is a massive waste of time. The basic knowledge they need, as outlined above, can be transmitted to them by private edupreneurs, cheap and quick. Thus, there is no role for the State in education either for the rich or the poor, in primary, secondary or higher education.

I conclude with what the great French economist Frederic Bastiat (1801-1850) who was also in active politics, wrote in his election manifesto over 150 years ago: “Education is also bound up with the same fundamental question that precedes all others in politics: Is it part of the State’s duties? Or does it belong to the sphere of private activity? I believe that government is not set up in order to bring our minds into subjection, or to absorb the rights of the family... If you want to have theories, systems, methods, principles, textbooks and teachers forced on you by the government, that is up to you; but do not expect me to sign, in your name, such a shameful abdication of your rights.”
Indeed, as Bastiat stressed academic monopoly of the State can only work if the State is infallible. In a nation of widespread State failure, the very idea of government infallibility lies in tatters. 

(Sauvik Chakraverti is an author and journalist, closely involved with India’s liberal movement) 

http://educationworldonline.net/index.php/page-article-choice-more-id-1228

Heavy burden of government schooling

Heavy burden of government schooling by Sauvik Chakraverti

The children of rich people don’t need government education. The role of government in education is advocated by champions of the poor. “Educate poor children,” they tell the government.

But what do poor parents want their children to learn? Today, the overwhelming response is English. Poor parents have witnessed that good command of the English language enables success. They themselves were denied English learning by chauvinistic politicians who promoted Hindi and other regional languages for 60 years. They don’t want the same fate to befall their children. This demand of poor parents has been translated into political action in West Bengal, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh. However, there have been problems in providing English language — particularly English medium education — and there are important lessons to learn from this experience.

In both West Bengal as well as Maharashtra, the major problem confronting state governments is a grave shortage of teachers. There are precious few who know English well enough to teach — and such people shun government employment. How then can this popular demand be met? One answer has emerged from India’s most populous Hindi heartland state of Uttar Pradesh, currently ruled by woman Dalit chief minister Mayawati.

Shortly after she assumed office in May 2007, Mayawati made the grand announce-ment that English would be introduced in all government primary schools from class I; that too, from July 1. But almost as soon as the chief minister had passed this order, her educrats ran into the problem of an acute shortage of trained and competent English teachers. They apprised the chief minister of this problem — and a new solution has emerged.

From August 1, thousands of primary and middle schools across Uttar Pradesh will tune into regular radio lessons in English. Teachers as well as students are expected to use this opportunity to the fullest. The English lessons scheduled to be broadcast statewide, have been produced by specialised English language teaching institutes. With the reach of radio, only one fully qualified teacher can teach English to an entire populace. In such a scenario why do we need government primary schools at all? Can’t an � la carte educational menu be placed before all poor parents and poor children by edupreneurs and educharities? Private initiatives will deliver far better services than government educrats who lack knowledge as well as incentive, and whose only role so far has been in maintaining licence-permit raj in the education sector. And apart from that, educrats have been administering a miserable government educational ‘system’ — actually a vast propaganda machine dispensing suspect socialist economics and knowledge.

Since we are talking specifically about the educational needs of poor children, we must note at the outset, that poor children need to enter the workforce fast. As economist Sudha Shenoy once famously said, “When life ends early, it must begin early.” The children of the poor have lower life expectancy than the rest of the population. Therefore for them, 12 years of school is a waste of time and effort. They need to learn basic skills, including language skills (like English). They don’t need ‘higher education’ of the type high schools are mandated to deliver.

If English can be taught through radio broadcasts, much can also be taught through television and the internet. Music, dance, cookery, and much else can be taught — and learned — through these media. If some poor household cannot afford the televisions and computers required, educharities could step in, and also monitor the quantum and quality of education actually transmitted. If we proceed along these lines, there is abundant hope that very soon the government school system will be closed down. And after their closure, there would be hope of useful knowledge actually reaching children of the poor. They could learn how to operate a calculator (instead of learning math); how to use a mobile phone and send and receive SMS; how to work a computer and send and receive e-mail; the rules of traffic safety and other things that all need to know.

A market economy is based on the social contract of ‘fragmentation of knowledge’. The taxi driver, the receptionist, the bhelpuri wallah, gardener, cook — all operate with distinct fragments of knowledge. Children of the poor, once they have acquired the basic skills outlined above quickly, can then choose what particular fragment of knowledge they wish to learn. They can learn from apprenticeship in for-profit training schools or through educharities. If we examine issues from this perspective, we see that there is no ‘knowledge problem’ as everyone doesn’t need to know everything. The ‘general education’ of the government schools system is irrelevant and counter-productive. It is also pertinent to note that government is not in possession of ‘knowledge’ that poor people need.

The government school system is a burden. It is a colossal waste of time, money and effort and weighs heavily on the shoulders of poor children. They need a short cut to the market, not the long road to a high school diploma.

(Sauvik Chakraverti is a writer involved with India’s liberal movement. www.sauvik-antidote.blogspot.com)

http://educationworldonline.net/index.php/page-article-choice-more-id-1327

Liberate Education from the State

Liberate Education from the State by Sauvik Chakraverti

Our socialist State is actually a miserable failure. It started off wanting to make steel – and failed at even this simple task. We are lucky that it was not given the task of cultivating fields and our farms were not collectivized. What is therefore unthinkable is that this failed State should be given the task of cultivating minds, and that all our minds should be collectivized. If we are to save our minds, and the minds of our youth, we must champion a free education system, writes Sauvik Chakraverti

Today, almost all Indians agree that placing the State at the "commanding heights of the economy" was a colossal mistake. Yet, these very same people believe that it is alright if the State occupies the commanding heights of education. It is because every mainstream newspaper editor echoed such views that we Indians are now saddled with the "education tax."

One argument repeatedly totted out in favour of a role for the State in education is that of "maintaining standards". There are people who believe that, without a commanding role for the State, rubbish will be taught. There will ensue "academic anarchy" with each teacher and professor teaching what he deems fit. Under these circumstances, the State must have a role. The Ministry of Education must play the role of Ministry of Truth.

Note that India's vibrant press – the "fourth estate" – works perfectly fine without a "ministry of truth." Each paper publishes its own version of stories, and its own opinions – which may be wrong. However, because of keen competition amongst them, errors are quickly found out. Further, each newspaper acquires its own reputation – one is deemed "free market," another is deemed "socialist," and a third is deemed "pro-BJP." Why should a free educational system not be established along the same lines, with professors, departments, colleges and universities acquiring and maintaining their own reputations, including the reputation of their biases?

There is, of course, a Ministry of Information & Broadcasting. It is rightly considered a propaganda arm of the government. And if it attempts to "muzzle" the free press, every journalist worth his salt stridently opposes it. Why do these same journalists not see that education must be run along the same lines? And that the ministry of education is just another propaganda arm.

Some years ago, Barun Mitra of Liberty Institute and I went to the National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie to deliver some lectures on population (as an asset) and urbanization (as a goal). This is the academy that trains our elite corps of Indian Administrative Service officers (IAS). We were later taken to meet the academy's professor of Economics. All the shelves of his office were filled with communist literature. And Karl Marx's Das Kapital lay open on his desk. And India had been "liberalizing" for more than a decade!

Now, IAS recruits come from a variety of backgrounds. There are engineers, botanists, zoologists and even veterinary doctors who make it to the service. They need to understand basic theories about man, society, economy and state before they are entrusted with the administration of our common affairs. As I liberal, I would insist that liberal theories must be taught. This would give these recruits an idea of how markets work and why they should be left free. A liberal administrator would have a view of man, society, economy and state that would envision a small role for the State in a largely free society. However, what is actually taught is Marxist propaganda. The State is guilty of peddling propaganda to its own elite personnel! What will they peddle if they are allowed to teach the whole of society? Obviously, more of the same.

Academic anarchy can also be looked upon as academic freedom. And this is a freedom that is vital for any educational system. For example: take this year's Nobel prize in Economics, awarded to Paul Krugman, whom I consider to be a dangerous Keynesian. And there are others like me. If we did not have the freedom to criticize this award, if the Nobel prize was awarded by a "ministry of truth," all dissenting voices would be stifled. Public understanding of crucial events would be very poor indeed if academics with differing views were disallowed from publicly airing their misgivings. In a free educational system, there would be many differing "schools of thought." And the brightest minds would gravitate towards those schools which were widely perceived to be teaching the right stuff. Even universities and academics would possess "brand equity."

As the great classical liberal, Thomas Paine, put it in the opening paragraph of his little pamphlet of 1776, Common Sense:

Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices…. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.

This was "common sense" 250 years ago. We need to regain this same common sense today. Our precise problem is that we have "so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them." The role of government is to punish the wicked. It is the role of society to teach. We as a society have handed over our most important privilege to the socialist State. As my experience at the IAS Academy proves, it is the socialist State that is in need of education; it cannot impart it.

Our socialist State is actually a miserable failure. It started off wanting to make steel – and failed at even this simple task. We are lucky that it was not given the task of cultivating fields and our farms were not collectivized. What is therefore unthinkable is that this failed State should be given the task of cultivating minds, and that all our minds should be collectivized. This is the precise direction that our mainstream press, egged on by that arch-socialist Amartya Sen and his protégé Manmohan Singh, have embarked us upon. If we are to save our minds, and the minds of our youth, we must champion a free education system.

A version of this article was published in the Education World magazine, in October 2008. It can viewed here.

This article was published in the Liberty Institute on Sunday, November 09, 2008.

Author : Mr Chakraverti is the author of "Antidote: Essays Against the Socialist Indian State" and its sequel, "Antidote 2: For Liberal Governance". He blogs at www.sauvik-antidote.blogspot.com.

http://www.indefenceofliberty.org/story.aspx?id=2093&pubid=1886

Case for liberated education system

Case for liberated education system by Sauvik Chakraverti

A version of this article was published in the Education World magazine, in October 2008. It can viewed 

Today, almost all indians agree that positioning the State (i.e. government) at “commanding heights of the economy” was a colossal mistake. Yet, these very same people believe that it’s alright if the State occupies the commanding heights of education. It is because every mainstream newspaper editor subscribes to such views that Indians are now saddled with an education cess.

One argument repeatedly advanced in favour of a role for the State in education is that of “maintaining standards”. Even today there are people who believe that without a commanding role for the State, nonsense will be taught in the nation’s classrooms. This will result in academic anarchy with each teacher and professor teaching what he deems fit. Therefore, the State must have a role. The ministry of education must play the role of ministry of truth.

The champions of State domination of education should note that India’s vibrant press — the ‘fourth estate’ — works perfectly fine without a ‘ministry of truth’. Each newspaper/magazine publi-shes its own version of political, economic and social news and events and its own opinions — some of which may be ‘wrong’. However, because of intense compet-ition within the fourth estate, errors are quickly found out. Further, every newspaper acquires its own reputation — one is deemed free market, another socialist, and another pro-BJP and so on. Why shouldn’t a free educational system be established along the same lines, with professors, departments, colleges and universities acquiring and maintaining their own reputations, including their ideological and other biases?

Some years ago, Barun Mitra of the Liberty Institute and I visited the National Academy of Administration in Mussoorie to deliver lectures on population (as an asset) and urbanisation (as a goal). This is the academy where our elite corps of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) receive their training. We were taken to meet the academy’s professor of economics. All the shelves of his office were filled with communist literature. And Karl Marx’s Das Kapital lay open on his desk. And at that time India had been ‘liberalising’ its economy for more than a decade!

It’s pertinent to note that IAS recruits come from a variety of backgrounds. Engineers, botanists, zoologists and even veterinary doctors are inducted into the IAS. They need to be familiar with basic theories about man, society, the economy and State before they are entrusted with the task of administering the country. Therefore, it’s important they are taught liberal politics and economics as well. This would give IAS recruits an idea of how markets work and why they should be left free. A liberal administrator would have a view of man, society, economy and State, that would envision a small role for the State in a largely free society. However, what is actually taught is Marxist propaganda. The State is guilty of peddling propaganda to its own elite personnel! What will they peddle if they are allowed to teach the whole of society? Obviously, more of the same.

Therefore it’s in the public interest that differing views are freely allowed and academics can express their misgivings. In a free education system, there should be many differing schools of thought. And the brightest minds would gravitate towards the schools which are widely perceived to be teaching the right stuff. In such a free environment, even universities and academics would acquire ‘brand equity’.

As the great classical liberal, thomas paine, put it in the opening paragraph of Common Sense, a pamphlet written in 1776: “Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness positively by uniting our affections, the latter negatively by restraining our vices. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.”

This was ‘common sense’ 250 years ago. We need to regain such balanced common sense today. Well into the 21st century, India’s problem is that we have “so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them”. The role of government is to punish the wicked, the role of society is to teach. Unfortunately as a society we have handed over the important privilege to teach to the socialist State. As my experience at the IAS Academy indicates the socialist State is in dire need of education; it cannot impart it.

Actually India’s socialist experiment has been a miserable failure. The State started off wanting to make steel and failed at this simple task. We are lucky that it was not given the task of cultivating fields and that farms were not collectivised. Therefore it’s unthinkable that this failed State should be given the task of cultivating minds, and that the nation’s minds should be collectivised. Regretably this is the direction in which mainstream media, egged on by arch-socialist Amartya Sen and his protege Manmohan Singh, is leading us. If we are to save our minds, and the minds of our youth, right thinking people must champion a free education system.

(Sauvik Chakraverti is a columnist and author of Antidote: Essays Against the Socialist Indian State)

 http://educationworldonline.net/index.php/page-article-choice-more-id-1465