Baroque

The census is a credible record of change and progress, a benchmark that allows trends to be highlighted, and correlations drawn. Only correlations, can be misunderstood as causation.  

Documents mentioned in the podcast 

Padmanabha, P. "Census of India, 1981: Salient Features." India International Centre Quarterly 8, no. 3/4 (1981): 207-18. Accessed July 3, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23001895.

https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest-hour-142/leading-churchill-myths-1/ Accessed July 3, 2021

Challenge of Education, A Policy Perspective http://14.139.60.153/bitstream/123456789/1592/1/CHALLENGE%20OF%20EDUCATION%20-a%20policy%20perspective_D-5070.pdf, Accessed, July 3, 2021

How do text books, present and re-present the darker side of a nation's past? The National Curriculum Framework, provides a guideline, " A (Text Book) guide to construct understanding through active engagement with text, ideas, things, environment and people, rather than transferring knowledge as finished product."

Yet how does that guideline, translate through a process of decision-making, into text books, that present, both successes and failures. 

Further reading 

Yogendra Yadav's Recalls what it took to get a chapter on the Emergency included in political science textbooks. https://www.tribuneindia.com/news/comment/how-emergency-entered-school-textbooks-273107

In 1976, India adopted Article 51 A(h), making the development of a scientific temper, a duty of every citizen. Inclusion of that Article, put India, into a club of one, the only country, which requires, of its citizens, the development of a scientific temper, a shorthand for temperament promoted by Jawaharlal Nehru. Like some other Emergency  period changes in the Constitution, those who opposed the abandonment of democracy, retained this provision, when they came to power. 

That Fundamental Duty  would be the basis of an advance in thinking, of the purpose of education, best articulated in the National Curriculum Framework in 2005 and most recently in the National Education Policy 2020: The Indian as Global Citizen

Further Reading 

1. https://doj.gov.in/sites/default/files/Fundamental-duties_0.pdf

2. https://ncert.nic.in/pdf/nc-framework/nf2005-english.pdf

3. https://www.education.gov.in/sites/upload_files/mhrd/files/NEP_Final_English_0.pdf

Krishna Kumar uses the metaphor of a long corridor to darkness, to explain the continuities,  he surfaces in the way colonials and nationalists, understood the value of education. Reading reviews of his book, in academic journals, demonstrates, that his ideas met with both scepticism and empathy, --- reviewers pointing out the long corridor of darkness, was in reality, part of a long and winding road, that stretches, beyond Macaulay, to Charles Grant at the least, and possibly into the pre-colonial period too. 

Re-reading K. Ramakrishnan's review after all these years, again, it becomes easier to interpret that the long corridor of darkness, is not part of an edifice, but part of a long and winding road.  What Kumar's been able to do, is shine a light on parts of that road.       

Quoted works in audio

Review by: K. Ramakrishnan, Social Scientist, Vol. 19, No. 8/9 (Aug. - Sep., 1991), pp. 90-94 (5 pages). https://doi.org/10.2307/3517703

2. Reviewed Work: Political Agenda of Education: A Study of Colonialist and Nationalist Ideas by Krishna Kumar

Review by: Suresh Chandra Ghosh, History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 394-395 (2 pages)

Published By: Cambridge University Press, https://doi.org/10.2307/368203

The village of Sohagi, is at the heart of the Mirzapur-Badhoi Belt and the prime minister's visit, in 1975, was a significant signal of support to the carpet trade, and to the weaving industry. Her visit to launch, a programme for training of children to become weavers, would trigger, a series of events, that would lead Dr. Myron Weiner, to conclude, that Inda's children are not in school and learning, because the elites of the country want it to be so, 

During the Emergency, education was moved from the State List, to the Concurrent List, through the omnibus 42nd Amendment. In discussions on the health of democracy, that one amendment to the Constitution, has been identified as the single most lethal blow to the civil liberties legacy of the struggle for Independence.  Post the elections in 1978, civil liberties were restored, and those parts of the amendment, reversed. 

The shift of education, to the concurrent list, though, has remained, on the Statute books. With this move, the sources of financing and policy interventions expanded, and set the stage, for universalisation. 

Further Readings

Selva G. Universal Education In India: A Century Of Unfulfilled Dreams, https://archive.is/l9bm

https://www.livemint.com/news/india/india-s-federal-edifice-needs-a-nudge-11570981653330.html

Raveendhren, R.S. New Education Policy and erosion of states' powers, 

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The extensive media coverage, of conflicts is not new. Yet in the course of one week, schools in places as disparate as Kabul, Kazan, in Russia,and Gaza, became the centre, of global attention as hatred and fear, turned schools into battlegrounds, and children, victims of hatred and fear, pawns in wars, they did not start.  

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/34-000-gazans-seek-refuge-at-unrwa-schools-amid-israeli-attacks/2244385#the story of Gaza

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/5/17/russia-searches-for-answers-after-rare-school-shooting the story of kazan --- secondary school 175

https://scroll.in/bulletins/291/bearing-the-responsibility-of-creating-a-sustainable-tomorrow-a-citizens-pledge-to-the-future -- story of Kabul's Sayed ul Shuhada high school, afternoon shift

Myron Weiner's work has profoundly affected, public policy discussion on education and child labour. Child and the State in India achieved cult status. In a country, known to be prickly, and wearing its nationalism as a badge of honour, his central thesis, that the reason, child labour is rampant and children are not in school, is because India’s elite want it like that is cited by everyone ---- those who want to change the system and equally by those who want to maintain the status quo. 

Weiner advocated for compulsion on families to send children to school, a push for legislative action, with India following of the same path, as the east Asian countries. His ideas gained political and public attention. And yet, it was the ideal of education as a fundamental right, valued in and of itself, which would drive the inclusion of the Right to Education. The coercive element, was kept out. Years later, as schooling children became the norm not the exception, his thesis on the role of elites, continues to influence policy dialogues. The distance between ideas and ideals is shorter and at once longer, depending on which path one chooses to take. 

In his analysis of In the post-independence period, Kumar would point to both dramatic changes, such as the inclusion of all children within schools, while also pointing to ways in which the changes, were accompanied by subtle continuities. It was in the second edition of the book, that his analysis of the past would be nuanced with what he was witnessing all around him. Where earlier, the struggle was access to school, now the struggle, was to somehow, manage, even mitigate the prejudices, which had entered the classroom and were working to push select children, out of school. In his analysis, there is a central role of caste and gender. (https://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/pol-agenda-kk.pdf)

To understand the impact of his analysis on the wider community of academics, practitioners and policy-debates, it is useful to shift gaze to an earlier century. David Ricardo, published his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, in 1817 and it created ripples. It would be in 1821, when the third edition of the book was published, that the book would achieve the status of a timeless classic. It was in this third edition, that he would include Chapter 31, titled On Machinery. In this chapter, he would share ideas, on what the new technologies, then transforming production processes, would have on economy and society. A textual analysis of the chapter by the Munich School is an useful start  (  https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/73427/)

Vimala Ramachandran speaks about operationalising the ideals of equality, through the State system, in episode 2 of Baroque Conversations ...

The struggle to abolish child labour, is viewed as a good fight. But what if the work done by children is not considered labour?. What if children work, while also going to school? Can labour and school-going education co-exist, and if they do, what does it mean for the life experience of a child? 

These questions have no easy answers.   Prof G K Lieten has studied the phenomenon of children, doing the work of adults, extensively had explained, the distinction, between child labour (unacceptable) and child work, (acceptable in many if not most scenarios) as “(all) kaam (work) is not shram (labour)”. argues that the concept of work should be used as the generic term, and would refer to ”any type of work being done in any mode of employment relationship and for any purpose; it should serve as a description of the physical (or mental) involvement in a job”, while the concept of (child) labour should be ”restricted to the production of goods and services, including work in the household, that interfere with the normative development of children as defined in 1989 the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child”. 

Most  professionals, who work with children, disagree.  The understanding of how children should spend their childhood years, what experiences they should be introduced to, encouraged towards, through policy interventions, is at the heart of the two books faultline.  

For those interested, here's the study, during the course of which, I observed, that children were complementing schooling with labour http://www.negfire.org/images/reports/Maharajganj_Report_FinalDraft.pdf