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Enlightened Democracy, Education and Empowerment

Article | May 20, 2011 - 9:55am | By A V Satish Chandra

In my personal opinion one of the greatest treatises to be written on education is Emile by the French Philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau. The work was condemned because it stood for revolutionary principles that were inconvenient to the Catholic Church and to European society in general. However over a period of time there has been recognition of this work and any teacher worth his/her salt should have a look at it. In this context of course, the book and its contents have an immediacy which is even more poignant, because in this work of Rousseau that one sees the true meaning of equality and empowerment. I therefore think that it would be in the fitness of things to start with the preface that Rousseau himself wrote to Emile.
“[1:] I began this disorderly and almost endless collection of scattered thoughts and observations in order to gratify a good mother who knows how to think. At first I had planned a memoir of only a few pages, but my subject carried me along in spite of myself, and imperceptibly the memoir became a kind of treatise, too large indeed for what it contained but too small for the matter with which it deals. For a long time I hesitated whether to publish it or not, and I have often felt while working upon it that writing a few brochures does not teach one how to compose a book. After vain attempts to improve it, I believe I must give it over as it is, since it is important to direct public attention to this subject. And whenever my ideas are bad, if I make others come up with good ones I will not have completely wasted my time. A man who from a solitary retreat casts his writings before the public without any one to advertise them, without any party to defend them, without even knowing what is thought and said about them, need not fear that if he is wrong people will accept his errors without examining them.
[2:] I shall say very little about the value of a good education, nor will I stop to prove that the customary method of education is bad. Thousands of others have done this before and I do not wish to fill my book with things that everyone knows. I will merely state that since the beginning of time there has been a continual outcry against the established practice without anyone suggesting how to propose a better one. The literature and science of our century tend to destroy rather than to build up. When we censor others we take on the tone of a pedagogue. But to propose something new we must adopt a different tone, one less gratifying to the philosopher's pride. In spite of all those books whose only aim, so they say, is public utility, the most useful of all arts -- the art of training men -- is still neglected. Even after Locke's book my subject was completely new, and I strongly fear that it will still be so after mine.
[3:] We know nothing of childhood, and with our mistaken notions the further we advance the further we go astray. The wisest writers devote themselves to what a man ought to know without asking what a child is capable of learning. They are always looking for the man in the child without considering what he is before he becomes a man. It is the latter study to which I have applied myself the most; so that if my method is unrealistic and unsound at least one can profit from my observations. I may be greatly mistaken as to what ought to be done, but I think I have clearly perceived the material that is to be worked upon. Begin thus by making a more careful study of your pupils, for it is clear that you know nothing about them. If you read this book with that end in view I think you will find that it is not entirely useless”[1].
Rousseau argued that we are inherently good, but we become corrupted by the evils of society. We are born good - and that is our natural state. In later life he wished to live a simple life, to be close to nature and to enjoy what it gives us - a concern said to have been fostered by his father. Through attending to nature we are more likely to live a life of virtue. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was interested in people being natural. “We are born capable of sensation and from birth are affected in diverse ways by the objects around us. As soon as we become conscious of our sensations we are inclined to seek or to avoid the objects which produce them: at first, because they are agreeable or disagreeable to us, later because we discover that they suit or do not suit us, and ultimately because of the judgements we pass on them by reference to the idea of happiness of perfection we get from reason. These inclinations extend and strengthen with the growth of sensibility and intelligence, but under the pressure of habit they are changed to some extent with our opinions. The inclinations before this change are what I call our nature. In my view everything ought to be in conformity with these original inclinations”[2].
One can say that “From the outset Rousseau had drawn inspiration from his own heart and found philosophical truth in the depth of his own being”[3] . His later writings, especially Reveries of the Solitary Walker, show both his isolation and alienation, and some paths into happiness. “Everything is in constant flux on this earth”[4], he writes.
“But if there is a state where the soul can find a resting-place secure enough to establish itself and concentrate its entire being there, with no need to remember the past or reach into the future, where time is nothing to it, where the present runs on indefinitely but this duration goes unnoticed, with no sign of the passing of time, and no other feeling of deprivation or enjoyment, pleasure or pain, desire or fear than the simple feeling of existence, a feeling that fills our soul entirely, as long as this state lasts, we can call ourselves happy, not with a poor, incomplete and relative happiness such as we find in the pleasures of life, but with a sufficient, complete and perfect happiness which leaves no emptiness to be filled in the soul. Such is the state which I often experienced on the Island Of Saint-Pierre in my solitary reveries, whether I lay in a boat and drifted where the water carried me, or sat by the shores of the stormy lake, or elsewhere, on the banks of a lovely river or a stream murmuring over the stones”[5].
In India there were a few fundamental mistakes committed in providing education to the people of the country post-Independence. On the one hand the first Prime Minister of the country, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru talked about the necessity for a temperament that was based in an understanding of science[6], but permitted the setting up of schools which were to impart education in the vernacular. What was overlooked (those who are more sympathetic to Nehru’s problems are more charitable in describing the scenario as ‘inevitable’ due to the lack of an English educated workforce of teachers) was that there was no translation of the requirements of modern society in knowledge terms in the vernacular languages. Regional media therefore failed in imparting the kind of education that was necessary for the continuance of the spirit of modernity and scientific inquiry. This has led to different gaps in Indian society, vis-a- vis the educated in English and the educated in regional languages.
Regional media for education were introduced in India in tearing hurry and that has led to the destruction of the education system. There can be no argument over the fact that socially, politically and medically relevant knowledge has to treat the world as its constituency. When the world is the constituency for knowledge, the language used for understanding this should have the flexibility and openness to describe and analyze situations and diseases etc. Now local languages are precisely that. Since every language evolves from within a culture its structures and vocabulary pertain to that culture. English too was a local language once. But with colonialism and with the spread of English to most parts of the world and because it was the language of the powerful, English became the language which was better equipped than most to deal with new and emerging forms of knowledge. These developments meant that for a local Indian language to be enriched it needed translations from English. However, the problem with that is that it requires persons who have a good grasp and control over both the languages, English and the other language into which things are being translated. It also means that the translator will have to be knowledgeable of technical terms and the technicalities of the languages concerned. A tall order. For a nation in a hurry to establish itself as the equal of all others such an exercise proved to be time consuming. Instead, of then saying that English would be the language of instruction till such time that bodies of knowledge were adequately translated into Indian languages, to satisfy the jingoistic concerns of some, regional media of instruction were introduced taking education to where it is today. The consequence was inequality among educated people and all those who have been educated in the regional media and are hopeless about their future are a big constituency of lumpen elements whose services can be hired by politicians for whatever purposes they have in their minds. Otherwise how does one explain educational institutions becoming breeding grounds for all activities political, revolutionary or otherwise.
One of the biggest casualties of the regional medium and vernacular education, in India, have been the social sciences. In the Western world one saw the social sciences incepting in an atmosphere that was conducive to free thinking[7]. Free thinking was the desire of the individual to define and organize oneself on rational grounds in a way which would facilitate that individual's realization of the true potential of the self. Into this scenario were born the social sciences which took advantage of the liberality of a society that allowed the individual to do what I have talked about in the preceding sentences. The social sciences then were an extension of the liberal arts and at best a slightly more pompous version of the arts. All things considered pretensions apart the subject matter of the social sciences and the liberal arts is the same. Therefore that which is considered to be "social scientific" knowledge is one that still deals with the question of the individual and his/her place in society. Karl Marx, in his attempt to ground the study of human society in what he called "objective material conditions"[8] created an epistemological break by seeking to eliminate the one variable for whose sake the study was being carried out - the human being. But by and large the agenda that even the Marxists and Marx had was very much consistent with that of the liberal arts.

The state of social science education in India is poor. There are many reasons for this but the most significant of them is the fact that the social sciences have got lost in an ocean of stupidity. After the attaining of independence the spirit was such that people took pride in their own culture and justifiably so. But when this pride in one's own culture is stretched to illogical levels, it only becomes jingoism that is completely devoid of any meaningful content. And that is what happened with the education system in India and especially so the social science education. One may ask why the social sciences especially? If that is your question you will find the answer to that in the following sentences. Most of the time when certain words find circulation in the sphere of public speech they begin to lose their true import and meaning. After a while they remain merely words with no specific content or meaning and therefore they become vacuous. Nevertheless they continue to circulate in the public sphere with people talking at each other than to each other. Education, the term or the word, has sadly met the same fate. People today talk about education without having the faintest idea about what is involved in it. For most education is a degree that one receives, to some it is a sacred cow and if you are in Andhra Pradesh it is a business opportunity. None of these correspond to what education is or should be. Armed with this inability to properly define education we have successfully created stereotypes about what it is and therefore we think that one who has 95% marks is educated or one who has a good job is educated and so forth. The furtherance of these stereotypes has created a mess that is now very difficult to clean up. In all this the very elementary purpose of education - that of enlightenment - has been forgotten. Compounding the situation is the pursuit of money and material happiness.

In this process the social sciences have suffered more and disciplines such as history have been reduced to the documenting of fictitious and puerile things. They have also become weapons in the hands of bigots. So why did this happen. The answer is simple. The social sciences when they were born in the West had a form that was consistent with the content. It has remained more or less like that till date. However, in India it is a different story. We have taken the form and have tried to stuff it with whatever we thought was the appropriate content. This parody of sorts happened because of the desire to study in one's own tongue and when there is no body of knowledge to support that ambition or aspiration, things are bound to go wrong. The true pursuit of social science entails either a translation of all Western content into whichever language that one wished to study in or the creation of an alternative body of knowledge. In India's case neither has happened and as a result people study the same book in their mother tongue, from class eleven to Ph. D. This means that higher qualifications are awarded for studying the same book. What is even better is that in spite of the ten odd years that go into the study of the same book, the students are still at a loss to explain what it contains. Social scientific education is a necessity in any society, for it is the tool that one can use to have an audit of the functions of society, politics and governance. Not only can it audit, it can also provide with good alternatives to bad policies and programmes. It is also a necessity for a good and enlightened democracy[9]. In the case of India, the necessity for proper social sciences is even more heightened for obvious reasons. A society that has become fissiparous and threatens to fall apart needs good social sciences. And that is missing. Are the other sciences any better? The answer will be yes, but only a little. The other sciences are armed with mathematics and numbers which are considered to be lingua pura and therefore they are not bogged down so much by the problems of language. It is therefore completely a categorical imperative[10] in order create a proper social scientific knowledge and once again create the globally competitive Indian.

All problems affecting this country today are those that go back to the lack of a good system of education. Let me draw a parallel here. The old USSR imploded mainly because it tried to something which was not sustainable. To understand what I am saying better, let us look at the structure of what was the USSR. There were sixteen republics and they lynch pin among them was Russia. A feudal colonial power that brought the fifteen other republics under its control through the usual violent means. In the post Second World War days, especially under the rule of Stalin, Russia pursued its imperial intents under the garb of World Communism. The fifteen other republics were already co-opted into the process by being part of the USSR. At this point I would like to state though there was supposed to be the use of the principle of self determination used in the formation of the USSR, it is well known that most became a part of it since they were not allowed any other option. Russia tried to take on the best imperial powers such as the West European nations and the USA in their own back yard. It believed that through military might the rest of the world could be brought down on its knees. So it accelerated the arms race and in the process spent its precious resources on military might while at the same time starving the people of the USSR literally. The collapse of the Soviet economy was that which led to the implosion and every republic went it’s way peacefully, except Georgia and Chechnya.

For those among you who are wondering as to what this bit of Russian history has to do with the present post, I am drawing a parallel between the Indian education system's present plights with that of the economy of the erstwhile USSR. What makes the parallel possible is the underlying cause which is unrealistic ambition and a foolish determination to prove to the world that you are among the best when actually the basic frame work to getting there does not exist. Russia and the USSR tried to become the most powerful without having the economic strength that is necessary to satisfy such an ambition. India too is trying to climb up the ladder to becoming a brain power while in effect; every step that it takes on this ladder is pulling the ladder down. And that is happening because the basics of what should be good education are not in place. Even though this may entail a repetition of some issues that I have written in other posts, I will go ahead and say that the first big mistake was in expanding the education system without considering the hurdles that it would create. The second big mistake was the government's pursuit of socialism and therefore its inability to invest properly in the educational sector. The setting up of all the huge public sector where there were six supervisors for one worker saw a drain on the resources. This meant that the government had no money to nurture an education system which will feed the developmental process for a long time to come. The result was the almost complete abandoning of the primary education sector and concentrating on the higher education sector. The government was building the IIT's and the IIM's and at the same time creating schools that no one went to at the primary level, simply because there was no infrastructure such as buildings, black boards, teachers etc. The primary and secondary education sector went into the hands of the private sector which in order to sustain itself and to grow required to charge a fee, which millions of poor Indians could not afford to pay. Education was accessible only to the affluent and most that belonged to this category came from the upper castes who had built a base for themselves right from the days of British Imperialism.

This led to the creation of educated elite, one that generally abhorred the other Indians who represented for them everything that they did not want to be. A couple of generations which emerged out of this primary education system went on to fulfill the aspirations of the IITs and the IIMs as institutions. They were able to churn out students who could compete globally and on equal terms with the rest of the world. At this juncture two things need to be looked at. This globally competitive Indian did not see his/her future in India. America for them was the new land of milk and honey and therefore they went that way. Products of the elitist education system who paid for their primary and secondary education and also for a very subsidized higher education did not invest their abilities back in India. So there is in effect no growth in the number of properly educated people contributing back to the system that they came from. As generations of good teachers retired from schools and with not many to replace them the primary and secondary sectors of paid and private schools has also started suffering from the lack of good teachers. Therefore contributions from the private primary sector has also started slow down to a trickle and today it only succeeds in putting out disinterested, illiterate nuveau riche elites, who wannabe but cannot be.

The Universities do not seem to attract any talent available and I read with dismay and horror the news that the Central Government in India is not setting up some of the new Central Universities that it proposed to, due to the lack of employable talent. It did not say there were no people holding the required certificates. It only said that the certificate holders (including Ph. Ds) were unemployable[11]. There are two ways of looking at this, horror (for obvious reasons) and relief, because it means that there is a realization that there is no necessity to employ and feed people who will only be a burden on the system. In a democracy where vote banks are of the utmost importance, it is quite necessary to satisfy the will of the people. The huge pool of the lumpen students is readily available for demonstrating the strength of the issue. So we have a situation where education institutions instead of enlightening people are serving the cause of the dark side of politics.

Most students of social sciences don't seem to have an idea as to what the State is and what its responsibilities are. We also seem to treat it as the 'other' that is distinct from the people and that which is responsible for the miseries and misfortunes that we as people suffer. Institutions such as the police which are seen as enemies are not seen as those which are empowered and legitimized by the State which is itself legitimated by the people. Most people are happy to identify democracy with just procedures such as voting and no more. People do not seem to understand the idea that democracy is self governance of the people in substance, with the procedure of voting put in, to simply identify representatives of the people, who will work for the welfare of their constituents. In my previous posts I have been saying that what is missing in Indian democracy is the deliberative component, which is obviously the key requirement. We do not seem to be able to connect institutions such the Parliament and State Legislative Assembly to the notion of deliberation. We don't seem to realize that these institutions are provided with the idea that they will serve as platforms for people's representatives to discuss the problems and prospects of their constituents, and also to find mechanisms of problem resolution. Contributing to this lack of understanding is the behaviour of our politicians who use the Parliament or the Assembly (if and when they go there) to behave boorishly. My question then is where is the substance of democracy in India? Only in procedures? Add another variable to this and it becomes even more confusing. Could we possibly have societies without power relations in them?

Power is one of the crucial variables that we need to understand when looking at the functioning of society. Otherwise why would we require authority? Authority should be seen as the official and legitimate empowerment of offices and officials so that these can deter naked power. The existence of authority is the acquiescence to the existence of power relations. Democracy seeks to overcome naked power and jungle law through a deliberative process and hence deliberation is at the centre of all democratic thinking. But it seems when judging the functioning of institutions and offices it seems as if we see authority abstracted from the context of naked power in which it exists and hence our disbelief in police and the State. Contributing to this are politicians who use the authority vested in them by their constituents as naked power rather than legitimate authority. How else does one explain the distancing of elected representatives from their people?

Politicians have by and large misused the trust of the people to get into manipulations that have very little to do with the interests of their constituents. The interest of the constituents is used as a facade for the pursuance of the politicians own ends, which rely heavily on the politicians ability to extend their naked power. When what should have been legitimate authority begins to act in the manner of naked power, there is a cascading effect that extends to all other institutions as well. We therefore forget that the police and bureaucracy are at one level people common people but those who can go against the disempowered people by serving the interests of various contending paradigms of naked power. Separatists movements and secessionist movements like the onetime Khalistan movement and the present Kashmir movement or extremist movements like Maoism are all conjured by politicians by pitting people against people for the furtherance and fulfillment of their (politicians) own goals of power mongering.

When the UPA was voted into power in the year 2004 and when the Sensex crashed by then unprecedented four hundred points in one day. This crash happened because of the combine of Communist parties had sixty two seats in the Lok Sabha and the fate of the Congress led UPA was felt to be very much in the hands of the Communists. The then Finance Minister, Mr. Chidambaram had to speak to the captains of the industry and allay their fears. Then this piece appeared on one of the websites[12] where the writer claimed that the will of two billion Indians was less significant than the economic activity in a two kilometre radius in Mumbai. The writer of that piece was clear about where his loyalties are. They are with the people, their will and democracy. How I wish the argument was so simple. What constitutes the Will of the People has the potential to fall into the gamut of rhetoric and an empty one at that. To demonstrate proof of what I am saying let me tell you a story here. I once got into an argument with Prof. Gurpreet Mahajan of the Centre for Political Studies, JNU. I had gone to do a refresher course and Prof. Mahajan was speaking about John Rawls, Multiculturalism and Democracy. She concluded that the definition of democracy should be "fairness". She told me then that to always stick with the definition of democracy as will of the people was untenable.

Over the years (there have been almost thirteen of them now) I have time and again pondered over this question without getting anywhere close to an answer. Really democracy in operation does not lend itself to any easy definitions. Prof. Mahajan had pointed out to me that it was not easy or possible to establish what the will of the people was[13]. Is it unchanging and always well deliberated? Is it the majority will and in that case what about those who do not subscribe to that majority will? Difficult questions indeed and that is why I have asked myself if democracy is a problematique (as in a source from which a number of problems emanate). And to me it seems that it is. In India majority opinion is “demonstrated” as being in favour of something or someone when the powerful support or espouse a cause. It can be seen as the demonstration of might. It is for reasons such as this that philosophers such as John Stuart Mill warned of a “tyranny of the majority” [14]when majority opinion becomes the order of the day.

It is very true that might can become right and I think it is for this reason that Rousseau had talked about the untenability of a democracy based in the show of strength of any kind by a majority. I am at this ripe old age beginning to understand the true brilliance of people like him and what he meant when he talked about the General Will and in what seemed an idiosyncratic move proposed the alternative of a single Universal Legislator who could embody and act for the good of 'ALL' when instances where direct democracy is not possible or fails[15]. He shrewdly suggested two alternatives so one could take over when the other failed. But coming to the context of India coalition politics and a general tendency to favour aggressive groups who threaten, blackmail and disrupt society has now firmly come to the forefront and the only solution to that is an enlightened people. But the failure of the education system in the last 63 years has ensured that enlightenment of the people is a distantdream. The only way that one can break out of this particular problem that the country faces is by building a solid system of education that will enlighten its citizens sufficiently enough for them to participate in various deliberations that concern them and their welfare. That would ensure that power mongers, power brokers do not hijack the agenda of democracy or the democratic process away from the general interest of all people to that of only the few. Education therefore is the most critical variable that makes possible the most primary of all forms of empowerment.

[1] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Emile, New York, USA, Basic Books, 1979, p 4

[2] From Boyd, William. The Educational Theory of Jean Jacques Rousseau. London, England Longmans, Green and Co., 1911. P 14

[3] ibid

[4]Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Emile, New York, USA, Basic Books, 1979, p7

[5] ibid

[6] See Nehru, Jawaharlal, “Discovery of the World”, New Delhi, India, Surjit Publications, 1979

[7] See Wood, Gordon S., “Democracy and the American Revolution”, Oxford, England, OUP.

[8] See, Marx, Karl, “The Capital”, Moscow, USSR, Progress Publishers, 1972

[9] Lloyd, G.E.R., Democracy, Philosophy and Science in Ancient Greece, in Dunn, John edited “Democracy – The Unfinished Journey, Oxford, England, Oxford University Press, p. 47

[10] See, Kant, Immanuel, Metaphysical Foundation of Morals, New York, USA, Modern Library Press, p. 46

[11] There is a constant chatter in various newspapers and magazines about how the ‘educated’ are in a situation where they need constant training and how this costs the companies a colossal sum of money apart from wasting their (the companies’) time.

[12] The website was rediff.com and the author did not put his signature on the piece.

[13] Also refer: Mahajan, Gurpreet, “Identities and Rights”, New Delhi, India, Oxford University Press.

[14] Read: Mill, John Stuart, “On Liberty and Other Essays”, Oxford, England, Oxford University Press

[15] Refer to: Shklar, Judith, “Men and Citizens” Cambridge, England, Cambridge University PressIn my personal opinion one of the greatest treatises to be written on education is Emile by the French Philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau. The work was condemned because it stood for revolutionary principles that were inconvenient to the Catholic Church and to European society in general. However over a period of time there has been recognition of this work and any teacher worth his/her salt should have a look at it. In this context of course, the book and its contents have an immediacy which is even more poignant, because in this work of Rousseau that one sees the true meaning of equality and empowerment. I therefore think that it would be in the fitness of things to start with the preface that Rousseau himself wrote to Emile.
“[1:] I began this disorderly and almost endless collection of scattered thoughts and observations in order to gratify a good mother who knows how to think. At first I had planned a memoir of only a few pages, but my subject carried me along in spite of myself, and imperceptibly the memoir became a kind of treatise, too large indeed for what it contained but too small for the matter with which it deals. For a long time I hesitated whether to publish it or not, and I have often felt while working upon it that writing a few brochures does not teach one how to compose a book. After vain attempts to improve it, I believe I must give it over as it is, since it is important to direct public attention to this subject. And whenever my ideas are bad, if I make others come up with good ones I will not have completely wasted my time. A man who from a solitary retreat casts his writings before the public without any one to advertise them, without any party to defend them, without even knowing what is thought and said about them, need not fear that if he is wrong people will accept his errors without examining them.
[2:] I shall say very little about the value of a good education, nor will I stop to prove that the customary method of education is bad. Thousands of others have done this before and I do not wish to fill my book with things that everyone knows. I will merely state that since the beginning of time there has been a continual outcry against the established practice without anyone suggesting how to propose a better one. The literature and science of our century tend to destroy rather than to build up. When we censor others we take on the tone of a pedagogue. But to propose something new we must adopt a different tone, one less gratifying to the philosopher's pride. In spite of all those books whose only aim, so they say, is public utility, the most useful of all arts -- the art of training men -- is still neglected. Even after Locke's book my subject was completely new, and I strongly fear that it will still be so after mine.
[3:] We know nothing of childhood, and with our mistaken notions the further we advance the further we go astray. The wisest writers devote themselves to what a man ought to know without asking what a child is capable of learning. They are always looking for the man in the child without considering what he is before he becomes a man. It is the latter study to which I have applied myself the most; so that if my method is unrealistic and unsound at least one can profit from my observations. I may be greatly mistaken as to what ought to be done, but I think I have clearly perceived the material that is to be worked upon. Begin thus by making a more careful study of your pupils, for it is clear that you know nothing about them. If you read this book with that end in view I think you will find that it is not entirely useless”[1].
Rousseau argued that we are inherently good, but we become corrupted by the evils of society. We are born good - and that is our natural state. In later life he wished to live a simple life, to be close to nature and to enjoy what it gives us - a concern said to have been fostered by his father. Through attending to nature we are more likely to live a life of virtue. Jean-Jacques Rousseau was interested in people being natural. “We are born capable of sensation and from birth are affected in diverse ways by the objects around us. As soon as we become conscious of our sensations we are inclined to seek or to avoid the objects which produce them: at first, because they are agreeable or disagreeable to us, later because we discover that they suit or do not suit us, and ultimately because of the judgements we pass on them by reference to the idea of happiness of perfection we get from reason. These inclinations extend and strengthen with the growth of sensibility and intelligence, but under the pressure of habit they are changed to some extent with our opinions. The inclinations before this change are what I call our nature. In my view everything ought to be in conformity with these original inclinations”[2].
One can say that “From the outset Rousseau had drawn inspiration from his own heart and found philosophical truth in the depth of his own being”[3] . His later writings, especially Reveries of the Solitary Walker, show both his isolation and alienation, and some paths into happiness. “Everything is in constant flux on this earth”[4], he writes.
“But if there is a state where the soul can find a resting-place secure enough to establish itself and concentrate its entire being there, with no need to remember the past or reach into the future, where time is nothing to it, where the present runs on indefinitely but this duration goes unnoticed, with no sign of the passing of time, and no other feeling of deprivation or enjoyment, pleasure or pain, desire or fear than the simple feeling of existence, a feeling that fills our soul entirely, as long as this state lasts, we can call ourselves happy, not with a poor, incomplete and relative happiness such as we find in the pleasures of life, but with a sufficient, complete and perfect happiness which leaves no emptiness to be filled in the soul. Such is the state which I often experienced on the Island Of Saint-Pierre in my solitary reveries, whether I lay in a boat and drifted where the water carried me, or sat by the shores of the stormy lake, or elsewhere, on the banks of a lovely river or a stream murmuring over the stones”[5].
In India there were a few fundamental mistakes committed in providing education to the people of the country post-Independence. On the one hand the first Prime Minister of the country, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru talked about the necessity for a temperament that was based in an understanding of science[6], but permitted the setting up of schools which were to impart education in the vernacular. What was overlooked (those who are more sympathetic to Nehru’s problems are more charitable in describing the scenario as ‘inevitable’ due to the lack of an English educated workforce of teachers) was that there was no translation of the requirements of modern society in knowledge terms in the vernacular languages. Regional media therefore failed in imparting the kind of education that was necessary for the continuance of the spirit of modernity and scientific inquiry. This has led to different gaps in Indian society, vis-a- vis the educated in English and the educated in regional languages.
Regional media for education were introduced in India in tearing hurry and that has led to the destruction of the education system. There can be no argument over the fact that socially, politically and medically relevant knowledge has to treat the world as its constituency. When the world is the constituency for knowledge, the language used for understanding this should have the flexibility and openness to describe and analyze situations and diseases etc. Now local languages are precisely that. Since every language evolves from within a culture its structures and vocabulary pertain to that culture. English too was a local language once. But with colonialism and with the spread of English to most parts of the world and because it was the language of the powerful, English became the language which was better equipped than most to deal with new and emerging forms of knowledge. These developments meant that for a local Indian language to be enriched it needed translations from English. However, the problem with that is that it requires persons who have a good grasp and control over both the languages, English and the other language into which things are being translated. It also means that the translator will have to be knowledgeable of technical terms and the technicalities of the languages concerned. A tall order. For a nation in a hurry to establish itself as the equal of all others such an exercise proved to be time consuming. Instead, of then saying that English would be the language of instruction till such time that bodies of knowledge were adequately translated into Indian languages, to satisfy the jingoistic concerns of some, regional media of instruction were introduced taking education to where it is today. The consequence was inequality among educated people and all those who have been educated in the regional media and are hopeless about their future are a big constituency of lumpen elements whose services can be hired by politicians for whatever purposes they have in their minds. Otherwise how does one explain educational institutions becoming breeding grounds for all activities political, revolutionary or otherwise.
One of the biggest casualties of the regional medium and vernacular education, in India, have been the social sciences. In the Western world one saw the social sciences incepting in an atmosphere that was conducive to free thinking[7]. Free thinking was the desire of the individual to define and organize oneself on rational grounds in a way which would facilitate that individual's realization of the true potential of the self. Into this scenario were born the social sciences which took advantage of the liberality of a society that allowed the individual to do what I have talked about in the preceding sentences. The social sciences then were an extension of the liberal arts and at best a slightly more pompous version of the arts. All things considered pretensions apart the subject matter of the social sciences and the liberal arts is the same. Therefore that which is considered to be "social scientific" knowledge is one that still deals with the question of the individual and his/her place in society. Karl Marx, in his attempt to ground the study of human society in what he called "objective material conditions"[8] created an epistemological break by seeking to eliminate the one variable for whose sake the study was being carried out - the human being. But by and large the agenda that even the Marxists and Marx had was very much consistent with that of the liberal arts.

The state of social science education in India is poor. There are many reasons for this but the most significant of them is the fact that the social sciences have got lost in an ocean of stupidity. After the attaining of independence the spirit was such that people took pride in their own culture and justifiably so. But when this pride in one's own culture is stretched to illogical levels, it only becomes jingoism that is completely devoid of any meaningful content. And that is what happened with the education system in India and especially so the social science education. One may ask why the social sciences especially? If that is your question you will find the answer to that in the following sentences. Most of the time when certain words find circulation in the sphere of public speech they begin to lose their true import and meaning. After a while they remain merely words with no specific content or meaning and therefore they become vacuous. Nevertheless they continue to circulate in the public sphere with people talking at each other than to each other. Education, the term or the word, has sadly met the same fate. People today talk about education without having the faintest idea about what is involved in it. For most education is a degree that one receives, to some it is a sacred cow and if you are in Andhra Pradesh it is a business opportunity. None of these correspond to what education is or should be. Armed with this inability to properly define education we have successfully created stereotypes about what it is and therefore we think that one who has 95% marks is educated or one who has a good job is educated and so forth. The furtherance of these stereotypes has created a mess that is now very difficult to clean up. In all this the very elementary purpose of education - that of enlightenment - has been forgotten. Compounding the situation is the pursuit of money and material happiness.

In this process the social sciences have suffered more and disciplines such as history have been reduced to the documenting of fictitious and puerile things. They have also become weapons in the hands of bigots. So why did this happen. The answer is simple. The social sciences when they were born in the West had a form that was consistent with the content. It has remained more or less like that till date. However, in India it is a different story. We have taken the form and have tried to stuff it with whatever we thought was the appropriate content. This parody of sorts happened because of the desire to study in one's own tongue and when there is no body of knowledge to support that ambition or aspiration, things are bound to go wrong. The true pursuit of social science entails either a translation of all Western content into whichever language that one wished to study in or the creation of an alternative body of knowledge. In India's case neither has happened and as a result people study the same book in their mother tongue, from class eleven to Ph. D. This means that higher qualifications are awarded for studying the same book. What is even better is that in spite of the ten odd years that go into the study of the same book, the students are still at a loss to explain what it contains. Social scientific education is a necessity in any society, for it is the tool that one can use to have an audit of the functions of society, politics and governance. Not only can it audit, it can also provide with good alternatives to bad policies and programmes. It is also a necessity for a good and enlightened democracy[9]. In the case of India, the necessity for proper social sciences is even more heightened for obvious reasons. A society that has become fissiparous and threatens to fall apart needs good social sciences. And that is missing. Are the other sciences any better? The answer will be yes, but only a little. The other sciences are armed with mathematics and numbers which are considered to be lingua pura and therefore they are not bogged down so much by the problems of language. It is therefore completely a categorical imperative[10] in order create a proper social scientific knowledge and once again create the globally competitive Indian.

All problems affecting this country today are those that go back to the lack of a good system of education. Let me draw a parallel here. The old USSR imploded mainly because it tried to something which was not sustainable. To understand what I am saying better, let us look at the structure of what was the USSR. There were sixteen republics and they lynch pin among them was Russia. A feudal colonial power that brought the fifteen other republics under its control through the usual violent means. In the post Second World War days, especially under the rule of Stalin, Russia pursued its imperial intents under the garb of World Communism. The fifteen other republics were already co-opted into the process by being part of the USSR. At this point I would like to state though there was supposed to be the use of the principle of self determination used in the formation of the USSR, it is well known that most became a part of it since they were not allowed any other option. Russia tried to take on the best imperial powers such as the West European nations and the USA in their own back yard. It believed that through military might the rest of the world could be brought down on its knees. So it accelerated the arms race and in the process spent its precious resources on military might while at the same time starving the people of the USSR literally. The collapse of the Soviet economy was that which led to the implosion and every republic went it’s way peacefully, except Georgia and Chechnya.

For those among you who are wondering as to what this bit of Russian history has to do with the present post, I am drawing a parallel between the Indian education system's present plights with that of the economy of the erstwhile USSR. What makes the parallel possible is the underlying cause which is unrealistic ambition and a foolish determination to prove to the world that you are among the best when actually the basic frame work to getting there does not exist. Russia and the USSR tried to become the most powerful without having the economic strength that is necessary to satisfy such an ambition. India too is trying to climb up the ladder to becoming a brain power while in effect; every step that it takes on this ladder is pulling the ladder down. And that is happening because the basics of what should be good education are not in place. Even though this may entail a repetition of some issues that I have written in other posts, I will go ahead and say that the first big mistake was in expanding the education system without considering the hurdles that it would create. The second big mistake was the government's pursuit of socialism and therefore its inability to invest properly in the educational sector. The setting up of all the huge public sector where there were six supervisors for one worker saw a drain on the resources. This meant that the government had no money to nurture an education system which will feed the developmental process for a long time to come. The result was the almost complete abandoning of the primary education sector and concentrating on the higher education sector. The government was building the IIT's and the IIM's and at the same time creating schools that no one went to at the primary level, simply because there was no infrastructure such as buildings, black boards, teachers etc. The primary and secondary education sector went into the hands of the private sector which in order to sustain itself and to grow required to charge a fee, which millions of poor Indians could not afford to pay. Education was accessible only to the affluent and most that belonged to this category came from the upper castes who had built a base for themselves right from the days of British Imperialism.

This led to the creation of educated elite, one that generally abhorred the other Indians who represented for them everything that they did not want to be. A couple of generations which emerged out of this primary education system went on to fulfill the aspirations of the IITs and the IIMs as institutions. They were able to churn out students who could compete globally and on equal terms with the rest of the world. At this juncture two things need to be looked at. This globally competitive Indian did not see his/her future in India. America for them was the new land of milk and honey and therefore they went that way. Products of the elitist education system who paid for their primary and secondary education and also for a very subsidized higher education did not invest their abilities back in India. So there is in effect no growth in the number of properly educated people contributing back to the system that they came from. As generations of good teachers retired from schools and with not many to replace them the primary and secondary sectors of paid and private schools has also started suffering from the lack of good teachers. Therefore contributions from the private primary sector has also started slow down to a trickle and today it only succeeds in putting out disinterested, illiterate nuveau riche elites, who wannabe but cannot be.

The Universities do not seem to attract any talent available and I read with dismay and horror the news that the Central Government in India is not setting up some of the new Central Universities that it proposed to, due to the lack of employable talent. It did not say there were no people holding the required certificates. It only said that the certificate holders (including Ph. Ds) were unemployable[11]. There are two ways of looking at this, horror (for obvious reasons) and relief, because it means that there is a realization that there is no necessity to employ and feed people who will only be a burden on the system. In a democracy where vote banks are of the utmost importance, it is quite necessary to satisfy the will of the people. The huge pool of the lumpen students is readily available for demonstrating the strength of the issue. So we have a situation where education institutions instead of enlightening people are serving the cause of the dark side of politics.

Most students of social sciences don't seem to have an idea as to what the State is and what its responsibilities are. We also seem to treat it as the 'other' that is distinct from the people and that which is responsible for the miseries and misfortunes that we as people suffer. Institutions such as the police which are seen as enemies are not seen as those which are empowered and legitimized by the State which is itself legitimated by the people. Most people are happy to identify democracy with just procedures such as voting and no more. People do not seem to understand the idea that democracy is self governance of the people in substance, with the procedure of voting put in, to simply identify representatives of the people, who will work for the welfare of their constituents. In my previous posts I have been saying that what is missing in Indian democracy is the deliberative component, which is obviously the key requirement. We do not seem to be able to connect institutions such the Parliament and State Legislative Assembly to the notion of deliberation. We don't seem to realize that these institutions are provided with the idea that they will serve as platforms for people's representatives to discuss the problems and prospects of their constituents, and also to find mechanisms of problem resolution. Contributing to this lack of understanding is the behaviour of our politicians who use the Parliament or the Assembly (if and when they go there) to behave boorishly. My question then is where is the substance of democracy in India? Only in procedures? Add another variable to this and it becomes even more confusing. Could we possibly have societies without power relations in them?

Power is one of the crucial variables that we need to understand when looking at the functioning of society. Otherwise why would we require authority? Authority should be seen as the official and legitimate empowerment of offices and officials so that these can deter naked power. The existence of authority is the acquiescence to the existence of power relations. Democracy seeks to overcome naked power and jungle law through a deliberative process and hence deliberation is at the centre of all democratic thinking. But it seems when judging the functioning of institutions and offices it seems as if we see authority abstracted from the context of naked power in which it exists and hence our disbelief in police and the State. Contributing to this are politicians who use the authority vested in them by their constituents as naked power rather than legitimate authority. How else does one explain the distancing of elected representatives from their people?

Politicians have by and large misused the trust of the people to get into manipulations that have very little to do with the interests of their constituents. The interest of the constituents is used as a facade for the pursuance of the politicians own ends, which rely heavily on the politicians ability to extend their naked power. When what should have been legitimate authority begins to act in the manner of naked power, there is a cascading effect that extends to all other institutions as well. We therefore forget that the police and bureaucracy are at one level people common people but those who can go against the disempowered people by serving the interests of various contending paradigms of naked power. Separatists movements and secessionist movements like the onetime Khalistan movement and the present Kashmir movement or extremist movements like Maoism are all conjured by politicians by pitting people against people for the furtherance and fulfillment of their (politicians) own goals of power mongering.

When the UPA was voted into power in the year 2004 and when the Sensex crashed by then unprecedented four hundred points in one day. This crash happened because of the combine of Communist parties had sixty two seats in the Lok Sabha and the fate of the Congress led UPA was felt to be very much in the hands of the Communists. The then Finance Minister, Mr. Chidambaram had to speak to the captains of the industry and allay their fears. Then this piece appeared on one of the websites[12] where the writer claimed that the will of two billion Indians was less significant than the economic activity in a two kilometre radius in Mumbai. The writer of that piece was clear about where his loyalties are. They are with the people, their will and democracy. How I wish the argument was so simple. What constitutes the Will of the People has the potential to fall into the gamut of rhetoric and an empty one at that. To demonstrate proof of what I am saying let me tell you a story here. I once got into an argument with Prof. Gurpreet Mahajan of the Centre for Political Studies, JNU. I had gone to do a refresher course and Prof. Mahajan was speaking about John Rawls, Multiculturalism and Democracy. She concluded that the definition of democracy should be "fairness". She told me then that to always stick with the definition of democracy as will of the people was untenable.

Over the years (there have been almost thirteen of them now) I have time and again pondered over this question without getting anywhere close to an answer. Really democracy in operation does not lend itself to any easy definitions. Prof. Mahajan had pointed out to me that it was not easy or possible to establish what the will of the people was[13]. Is it unchanging and always well deliberated? Is it the majority will and in that case what about those who do not subscribe to that majority will? Difficult questions indeed and that is why I have asked myself if democracy is a problematique (as in a source from which a number of problems emanate). And to me it seems that it is. In India majority opinion is “demonstrated” as being in favour of something or someone when the powerful support or espouse a cause. It can be seen as the demonstration of might. It is for reasons such as this that philosophers such as John Stuart Mill warned of a “tyranny of the majority” [14]when majority opinion becomes the order of the day.

It is very true that might can become right and I think it is for this reason that Rousseau had talked about the untenability of a democracy based in the show of strength of any kind by a majority. I am at this ripe old age beginning to understand the true brilliance of people like him and what he meant when he talked about the General Will and in what seemed an idiosyncratic move proposed the alternative of a single Universal Legislator who could embody and act for the good of 'ALL' when instances where direct democracy is not possible or fails[15]. He shrewdly suggested two alternatives so one could take over when the other failed. But coming to the context of India coalition politics and a general tendency to favour aggressive groups who threaten, blackmail and disrupt society has now firmly come to the forefront and the only solution to that is an enlightened people. But the failure of the education system in the last 63 years has ensured that enlightenment of the people is a distantdream. The only way that one can break out of this particular problem that the country faces is by building a solid system of education that will enlighten its citizens sufficiently enough for them to participate in various deliberations that concern them and their welfare. That would ensure that power mongers, power brokers do not hijack the agenda of democracy or the democratic process away from the general interest of all people to that of only the few. Education therefore is the most critical variable that makes possible the most primary of all forms of empowerment.