Return Fire: Assimilate THIS

"As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves." 


Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi






In response to a very nice comment on my last post, I have decided to address the counterpoint of a Miss Chhatrapati Lukeji in more detail. Enclosed first is her comment, followed by my lengthy response.

supi said...

You said: “ the educational initiatives fall far short of what is necessary to assimilate Indian students from rural areas into the urban economy.”

My question is: should education in the rural setting be geared towards preparing the youth for an urban setting or towards more pragmatic skills that will improve their lives in rural settings. While interning with Nourishing the Planet, I have come across numerous NGOs that are working to try and keep children in rural settings and educate them on better farming practices that will solve food security issues and create economic opportunities.

I am not suggesting that youth in the rural areas should not have the choice of where they want to live and work, but I think that a principal reason there is high volume of rural to urban migration in India, and other developing countries, is due to lack of economic opportunities in the rural setting and the promise of better ones in the cities. And lets face it, our cities do not have the capacity for this trend to continue.

And, its not to say that more pragmatic education for rural areas is focused solely on farming techniques; there are NGOs that are working to educate children and adults in rural regions with ICT skills, accounting and business skills. 

I will not deny that there is a gap in quality between education in the cities and the villages of India. But, I don't think that education in the rural areas should be geared towards assimilating them towards an urban economy. 

Chhatrapati Lukeji's Response

That is the controversy indeed. In class there were individuals who believe that such initiatives should focus more on preparing the youth for the future by emphasizing the current livelihoods of their parents. However, the counterpoint is exactly as you stated: Should the younger generation be limited to the same occupation, or should they be provided with the skills necessary to join the rapidly changing economic structure of a modernizing society?

Here is what I think. I disagree with your last point: "I don't think that education in the rural areas should be geared towards assimilating them towards an urban economy." Let me preface my argument with a few theories of modernization that have relevance to the topic.

Firstly, modernization in its current definition is a Western concept. I had initially erred in my own narrow definition of development, in that I equated it with an aggregate rise in prosperity. Though in reality socio-economic development encompasses much more than per capita wealth, I think the popularity of my definition reflects the perspective of Western society. The United States and Europe have built an economic system designed to enable the individual, rather than society as a whole, to maximize their utility. To cite this point I refer to the entrepreneurial emphasis created in a capitalist system, and the corresponding rewards system for market innovation.

Having established the individual as the fundamental unit of society, the next point is the nature of modernization itself. As has been observed in our contemporary understanding of development, modernization is irreversible. This idea was put forth by Walt Rostow, who has noted several consistencies in the real application of Western development practices in developing nations. To put it more bluntly, once individuals, especially individuals in developing countries, gain adequate wealth to reach a threshold upon which they can begin to accumulate material goods, the previous structures are viewed as undesirable. This is a widely accepted theory, and I can support it with my own field observations in our first village visit. The point is important, so I will emphasize it a bit further.

In the first village visit, we spoke with a local resident who held a positive view of modernization. Let me be abundantly clear that the initiatives in these villages, though designed to minimize any possible deviance with traditional values, are based almost entirely on WESTERN notions of development. This individual began by stating that a major obstacle in development had been a cultural tendency in the older male population to brew and consume a local beer, a tradition that had first taken root in certain village functions and then later expanded into ceremonies and further on to a routine practice (in some cases daily). Along came the NGO, BAIF Development Research Foundation, which identified this traditional practice as a hindrance to community development. They reasoned that by eliminating the practice altogether, individual families would devote less resources (time, effort, financial resources, and natural resources) toward the production of the local brew, and then use those resources more sensibly (i.e., toward an outcome that would have an intrinsic economic benefit to the family).

Therein was created a conditionality which ultimately proved successful. The men stopped drinking, and resources could be allocated more wisely (reinvestment in produce, purchase of raw materials, etc.) This led to notable, universal improvement in the quality of life among the villagers, and based on his testimony, it was widely, if not unanimously, credited as a practice that benefited the community. The problem arose with the younger generation, which found itself the recipient of a higher degree of wealth (and therefore, opportunity) than that of the preceding generation. The village youth soon began seeking additional means of fulfillment, and growing dissatisfied with village life, began to consume alcohol and to exhibit a greater degree of interest in adopting certain components of an urban lifestyle.

At this point, it could be argued that had the development not occurred, the youth would not face this problem. But such a view runs contrary to the core values of development. The problem is not that development took place, it is rather the individual choices that the village youth took with those new freedoms. Even this point digresses from the main point that I wish to make, which is this: having the current freedoms that they possess, the youth are unlikely to give up such freedoms and revert back to their original conditions. Regardless of whether their decisions make economic sense, they will not give up their current lifestyle to return to their old existence. To do so would, in their eyes, constitute a reactionary turn toward the progress that has been made through the initiatives of BAIF. Such is Rostow’s rationale when he makes the statement that modernization is, at least within the current parameters of international economic interaction, irreversible.

On to your question. Should education in the rural setting be geared towards preparing the youth for an urban setting or towards more pragmatic skills that will improve their lives in rural settings?

I know that you are familiar with the great Indian economist Amartya Sen. For anyone following this discussion, Sen has written numerous works in the field of economic development, and his work entitled Development As Freedom perfectly illustrates the point I am trying to make. Sen’s definition of development, far superior to my own, concentrates on the capabilities approach. Rejecting models that focus on per capita income or Gross National Product as primary indicators of development, Sen asserts that development should focus on expanding the freedoms of the people. As a parallel point, I should acknowledge the late Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal, who is most known for his theories on the concentration of wealth and the downward spiral of poverty. For the moment I will advance Sen’s argument of the capabilities approach.

Development is a politically charged term, and it should be noted that there is no single definition upon which all scholars agree. In Sen’s own line of thinking, development should expand substantive freedoms of the poorer classes and remove that which he has titled “unfreedoms,” which are obstacles that prevent an individual from realizing their full economic potential. He cites poverty as one such obstacle. Tyranny is another. The idea of preparing the young generation in rural India for life in the 21^st century, to Sen, is not only economically sensible, but also a moral obligation that any truly developed country should guarantee to its people. By offering only training in “pragmatic” skills to this generation is to further ingrain the obstacles that this generation faces in achieving economic freedom.

The second point that I would like to make is that it is wholly unjust and unethical to assume that the government, or any provider of educational initiatives, has any right to determine what constitutes a pragmatic education to another individual. Should the Indian government decide the livelihood of an entire generation trapped into a certain economic circumstance simply because of where they were born? It should be noted that there is such a system in place, in which the government does give training to the villagers in rural communities in what it considers a pragmatic education. That government is the Communist Party of China, and that it is violating inalienable human rights in enforcing such a system is globally acknowledge.

Farther down, you wrote: “…its not to say that more pragmatic education for rural areas is focused solely on farming techniques; there are NGOs that are working to educate children and adults in rural regions with ICT skills, accounting and business skills.”

Far from advancing your point, this actually supports mine. When you claim that you believe that education should focus more on the farming practices that you mentioned in your second paragraph, it is not clear to me how you believe this to reflect pragmatism in a rural environment. Certainly the skills that you mention; ICT, accounting, and business would have a much greater benefit in an urban environment than a two hectare plot in Maharashtra. Furthermore, it is evidence that the government is providing education for the village youth for assimilation into an urban economy, to which you have made clear your opposition.

You also wrote: “I think that a principal reason there is high volume of rural to urban migration in India, and other developing countries, is due to lack of economic opportunities in the rural setting and the promise of better ones in the cities.”

Once again, you are proving precisely MY point. The economic opportunities in the urban economy are superior, if not more highly diversified, than that of the rural economy. It is for this reason that the rural education should consider and even focus on the urban economy as a far broader platform for economic development. This point is illustrative of Gunnar Myrdal’s theory of the concentration of wealth, here referring to the tendency of wealth being directed through international trade to the urban economies of developing countries much more so than the rural areas.

Development is so far irreversible, and it is unrealistic to expect the emerging generation to wish to part with their new freedoms, especially after they have experienced them (however briefly). Amartya Sen has eloquently produced a work that is introductory to the field of development and exhaustive of his own, well-supported theory of the capabilities approach. I reject your view that a government should be the actor that determines the livelihood of its citizenry, and acknowledge that you twice provide an argument that advances my perspective, firstly with the village education that includes business oriented skills and secondly your explicit statement of the superiority of economic opportunity in the urban economy over the rural. In order to become a truly developed nation, the government must take it upon itself to provide a pragmatic education that effectively prepares the emerging generation for fluency in an urban and globalized economic system, thereby providing all citizens the freedom to determine their own future. While this is nowhere a reality (even in what is considered the developed world), given India’s rapid expansion, to aim for any less would run contrary to the fundamental principle of egalitarianism to which India currently aspires.