When India achieved Independence from the British in 1947, only 12% of Indians were literate. The aim of the British, as far as educating Indians was concerned was articulated by the architect of Colonial Britain's Educational Policy in India, Thomas Macaulay, in 1835 when he said, "We must do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern, a class of persons Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, words and intellect."
Since Independence, the Government of India has reaffirmed it's commitment to education several times. However, literacy rates in India are extremely low, and unfortunately, they are even lower for women than they are for men. According to the census, literacy rates go up by approximately 10% every ten years with the 1991 census showing that there was then 52% of the population that had become literate.
The spread of literacy in India is not uniform though: urban areas, men and the upper classes all have higher literacy rates. In 1991, although the overall literacy rate was 52%, only 40% of women were literate. The gap between the percentage of men and women who are literate varies widely from state to state. In Kerela, for example, which has one of the highest literacy rates, the gap is only about 7% but in states like Bihar it is a whopping 30% or so.
The country has seen a huge increase in the number of educational institutions: the number of universities has gone up from 19 in 1947 to 219 in 1997. The government also often provides free education at the primary level, but even so, less then 3% of India's population has academic education. Very often state governments simply do not have adequate funds to accommodate all the children of the school-going age. There are, however, organizations, both national and international which support education in India. The World Bank's support of education in India, for example, focuses on not only primary education but also vocational and technical education and training.
But even so, few Indians get the opportunity to go to educational institutions at all. And among those who do get the chance to do so, there are always a number of questions about just what is being taught at these institutes. The are several problems: outdated syllabi, exam systems that put incredible amounts of pressure on to students and textbooks that often give students rather warped views of the world around them.
This includes not only doing such things as presenting students with texts that have strong gender biases, showing men as leading characters who are strong and women primarily as victims of abuse as Narendra Nath Kalia pointed out in 1988 itself in 'Women and Sexism: Language of Indian School Textbooks' in Rehana Ghadialli, 'Women in Indian Society' New Delhi; but also apparently rewriting textbooks to give them a strong Hindutva slant. This 'saffronisation' of textbooks, as it is called, is one of the more recent scandals to have hit the Indian education system.
All that being said, India is also one of the few countries who have highly educated, articulate professionals in a number of fields. India has nuclear capabilities, and is one of the countries in the forefront of the software industry. Many of these professionals are educated within the country itself. Some have to pay several hundreds of thousands as donations to get admissions into good universities but others secure their seats by scoring exceptionally high marks (around the 95% + range). And so, good education is available in India, but only to a select few. The focus needs to be on widening the reach and quality of education in India.
?Copyright 2003 By Nandita Saikia
E-mail: nandita_saikia@rediffmail.com or nanditasaikia@indiatimes.com
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