Page 41 - EducationWorld August 2022

Barefoot College solar and water engineering educators & students: establishment indifference

the influence of Britain’s trendy Bloomsbury Square social- countries. A prosperous middle class clearly visible in ur-
ists he naively became enamoured with communism and ban India, is inconspicuous in rural Bharat dominated by
the Soviet-style centrally planned heavy industry develop- a thin upper crust and a visibly poor, half-starved and ill-
ment model. In essence this model, officially adopted by clothed majority residing in cramped mud-walled, thatched
the Congress party under Nehru’s direction, necessitated roof homes in dusty villages with open drainage and low
siphoning rural and national savings for promotion and de- wattage, if any electricity.
velopment of heavy industry — coal, steel, power, fertilizer Surprisingly, although the majority within urban India
etc — public sector enterprises (PSEs). Inevitably, the ag- are first generation migrants from rural Bharat, the urban
riculture sector, which at the time supported 80 percent of middle class — many of whom enjoy living standards com-
the population, suffered severe infrastructure and logistics parable with Western elites — seems indifferent to the pa-
deficiencies and near-famine conditions. PSEs mismanaged thetic living conditions of rural citizens even though farm-
by commerce-illiterate politicians and bureaucrats, aka the ers provide total nourishment — foodgrains, livestock, milk,
neta-babu brotherhood, conspicuously failed to generate fruit and vegetables at arguably lowest prices worldwide
promised surpluses (‘profit’ was — and remains — a dirty — to urban India. The plain truth is that socio-economic
word in the leftist lexicon) for investment in rural infra- conditions in the rural hinterland are appalling. Although
structure and development, especially primary education village India hosts 60 percent of the country’s population,
and healthcare. it contributes a mere 16 percent of the country’s GDP (gross
The outcome of the disastrous Left turn imposed upon domestic product). Per capita income in rural Bharat is a
the newly independent nation by the Nehruvian Congress mere Rs.40,995 (net value added) against Rs. 98,435 in ur-
party — Mahatma Gandhi and Sardar Patel had strong ban India. Worse, according to the Human Capital Index of
reservations against Nehru’s juvenile fascination with the the World Bank (2020), 35 percent (142 million) of under-5
Soviet-style command-and-control economic development children in India — the great majority in rural areas — are
model — is division of post-independence India into urban stunted and “likely to suffer lifelong cognitive disability”.
India and rural Bharat. Seventy-five years after indepen- Nevertheless although following imposition of the Soviet
c
dence, it is very easy to distinguish citizens of these two heavy-industry model ( f. the Brahmananda-Vakil wage
AUGUST 2022 EDUCATIONWORLD 41