Mailbox

Your cover story ‘Shining India’s areas of darkness’ (EW March) is a devastating exposé of the country’s child healthcare and education systems. It’s difficult to believe that India is behind failed nation states such as Bangladesh and Malawi in under-five mortality, malnutrition and other child health parameters. With our "absurd superpower aspirations" we are obviously living in a make-believe world and Unicef’s State of the World’s Children 2008 should awaken our leaders from their complacency.

How can a country where 43 percent of children are moderately to severely underweight ever dream of becoming a superpower? How can Indian industry ever dream of competing globally when 43 percent of tomorrow’s work force is likely to be physically and mentally stunted? Children who don’t get enough to eat in their formative years can never become productive workers. One doesn’t need to be an Einstein to understand this!

It’s high time our "benighted babus in South Block" shifted their priorities and began providing adequate healthcare and education opportunities to India’s vast human capital, i.e children. Otherwise we will be lumbered with a population which is neither educated nor healthy!

I am a regular reader of Education World. In the latest cover story ‘Shining India’s areas of darkness’ (EW March) Dilip Thakore writes that "instead of welcoming this initiative (EW) and its suggestions to develop the nation’s abundant and high-potential human capital, this publication has had to endure the continuous hostility and suspicion of the high and mighty in government and great and good in Indian industry". He goes on to say that "several captains of industry" have been reluctant to subscribe to the human capital development objectives of EW.

I urge you to name and shame these captains of industry who pay lip service to education on public platforms without doing much about it. The public deserves to know the truth about them!

Your special report ‘Proscription cloud over student unions’ (EW March) made interesting reading. The decline of student unions over the past half century is intimately connected with the degeneration of national level politics. The corruption, violence and lack of ethics which are characteristic of student unions today, have been imported from our national political parties. Sadly, almost all student unions have been taken over by political parties to promote their narrow, sectarian ideologies. Student unions should be independent of political influences so that the students community can retain its idealism.

Our country’s future depends on idealistic young leaders and student unions play a significant role in shaping leaders. Uttar Pradesh chief minister Mayawati has become aware of what student unions can do and lifted the ban on student union elections in the state’s universities and colleges on March 5. This is commendable.

I enjoy reading the People section in EducationWorld. It tells the stories of people who are doing extraordinary work in education. In the March issue, kudos to Veena Joshi for converting her home terrace into a school for slum children in Dehradun, and Ananth Narayan for taking it upon himself to provide laboratories-libraries-lavatories in Chennai’s municipal schools. Such people reaffirm my faith in the educated middle class as people with a conscience.

Through the good work of people such as Joshi and Narayan, hundreds of children are getting a chance to educate themselves and break out of the cycle of poverty. Corporates and industry must come forward to fund these initiatives so that they can reach a larger number of children. My congratulations to all the people profiled in your magazine for believing they can make a difference!

Thanks for honouring me with the Tata Consultancy Services-EducationWorld Teachers Award 2007 in the secondary school category (EW February). Thanks to the laptop computer I received as a prize, I am more effective in taking my message of teaching maths in an interactive way to students, parents and fellow teachers.

Yet the prime purpose of this letter is to respond to the letter titled ‘Improving TCS-EW Teachers Award’ by Saroja Shetty which appeared in EW March issue.

There is no need for Ms. Shetty to worry about teachers from government and vernacular schools not being nominated for the TCS-EW Teachers awards. For your kind information, I’m proud to tell you that for the past 24 years I am teaching in a vernacular medium i.e. Marathi school. The Saraswati High School where I teach, is situated in central Mumbai and nearly 80 percent of our students are from policemen’s families while the remaining are children of mill workers. All of them learn with Marathi as the medium of instruction.

Yet, despite teaching in a Marathi medium school, I have welcomed the increasing usage of English in my school. That’s because knowledge of English is necessary for my students and myself to interact with the world.

B.S. Shinde
Saraswati High School, Mumbai

(Mr. Shinde was adjudged India’s most innovative secondary school teacher in the TCS-EW Teachers Awards 2007 — Editor).