APPENDIX P : OPENING ADDRESS BY DR. J.C. GHOSH AT THE FIRST MEETING OF THE EDUCATION PANEL OF THE PLANNING COMMISSION ON DECEMBER 25, 1955.
I cannot thank you too much for having agreed to join these discussions in the Education Panel of the Planning Commission at such a short notice.
The broad framework of the second Five-Year Plan is now ready. In every sector of planning, we have bad the benefit of the advice of the Ministers both at the Centre and the States and of the expert officials who are associated with them. We feel, however, that we should not start preparing the final draft of the chapter on education except after discussion of our major problems with the eminent educationists of the country.
These problems have been presented to you in the working papers which have been circulated. To the extent that they are not factual, they represent the views of the author to which the Planning Commission is not committed. I shall indicate to you some of the majore problems.
In India it is intended to achieve co-operative. commonwealth. In the world of nature, there is struggle for existence, and the fittest survive. In
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a democracy, there is free competition and subject to the willing recognition of the rights of neighbours being as important as one's own, one enjoys the fruits of one's labour. In a cooperative commonwealth, work for common good is more important than work for personal benefit. How is it possible to stamp this ideal on the general mind of our future citizens through the process of education ?
Out of a total of 4,800 crores of rupees for development expenditure in the second Five-Year Plan, 946 crores have been allocated for social services, of which 320 have been earmarked for education. I cannot help expressing my disappointment at this meagre allotment. But the Planning Commission have the consolation that they have impartially disappointed every State, every Ministry at the Centre and every sector of their own organisation. This sum of Rs. 320 crores excludes the provision for expenditure of 112 crores on vocational, technical and professional training and for initiation into research in the Ministries. It should be also remembered that the annual committed expenditure for education in the States is of the order of Rs. 140 crores.
There is also the probability that Government might yet provide an additional sum of 65 crores for improving the salary of teachers. A discontented body of teachers continuously suffering from the lack of necessities of life would unconsciously communicate their sense of frustration and their hostility to the existing political structure, to the impresionable minds of their pupils. Again, a profession which is too ill-pad to attract able men cannot be an efficient instrument for creating citizens. I would, therefore, give the highest priority 'to schemes for improving the quality of our teachers specially because it is a problem, which unlike the unemployment problem, can be solved with the resources at our disposal, if only we have the will to do so.
It is well to recognise, however, that considerable doubt was expressed in the meeting of the Economists Panel whether, the main objective of the Plan being the increase of our national income by 25 per cent by 1960-61, we can afford to allocate 19.7 per cent of the planned expenditure on social services. Again, some of the States in South India have indicated their desire to transfer between 20 to 40 per cent of the provision for education to other projects of a productive nature.
How to make the most effective use of the Provision for education in the Plan ? We seek your guidance on this problem. If you wish to suggest minor alterations in the 'allocations, to the various sectors of education, you are welcome to do so. If you wish to enter a plea for more adequate over-all provision for education, you are equally welcome to do so.
Primary Education, I feel that we should be more realistic if we keep in view the short-term objective to provide free and compulsory education up to the age of 11. It is better that we accept the definition of Primary education as education for the age group 6-11. In the paper "on the relative emphasis on Basic and Primary education", if the figures recorded therein are correct, it is stated that 47.7 lakhs of boys joined class I in 1949-50. Of these, according to existing trend of wastage, not more than 26 lakhs would have been in class IV in 1952-53. In the age group 6-10, the total number of boys in India does not exceed 2 crores. Hence, if the wastage could have been avoided, 90 per cent of the boys in this age- group should have been in school.
The problems of girls' education in the Primary stage are very different. About 40 per cent of them join class I, and no more than 5 per cent
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continue their studies till class IV. I have a feeling that if this problem is to be solved in the immediate future, women teachers have to be employed in larger numbers, and in conservative areas, classes may be held for the boys in the morning and for the girls in the afternoon in the same school. The problem of Primary education for many parts of India, to my mind is the problem of avoiding this wastage.
It is also very desirable that children should, feel intensely interested in their work and to that extent, crafts which have a natural relation to the environment of the school, should have a place in the curriculum of studies. Again, in our country we have suffered badly in the past because of the clever man's contempt for manual work. Primary education should aim at eradicating this evil and create in the child a sense of dignity for labour. I personally, however, would sacrifice quality to quantity and would not reject backward methods for making literacy universal in the age-group 6-11. I would be forward in action though backward in ideas, rather than the other way about. I also commend to the States, with meagre financial resources, the example of West Bengal, where fees are charged in class V and are willingly paid.
Middle School and Secondary Stage:- I am afraid, our education authorities in the Centre and States have not taken much note of the great exphasis on crafts and productive work in all schools which the Mudaliar Commission laid at page 27 of their report. A technical or a rural stream in any school will yield results of little value, if it is not associated with productive work. The underlying idea of Mahatma Gandhi that education should be made partly self-supporting may not be possible for children below 11, but may not be difficult of realisation for boys above 11. I would, therefore, consider that a technical workshop, or rural farm attached to a multilateral school, runs the risk of being maintained in a "half-hearted, slipshod and casual fashion"- I am quoting the language of the Mudaliar Commission-if it is not linked up with pro- ductive work. An investment of Rs. 2 lakhs in such a workshop should yield manufactured goods worth a lakh a year, and the income should meet the cost of establishment and enable the senior students to earn a part of their living. The same principle should underlie the man- agement of junior technical schools recommended by the Ministry of Education and the technical training schools proposed by the Ministry of Labour. The objective should be to give confidence to the boys to seek self-employment in decentralised small units of production, and not merely seek employment in an established concern.
A socialistic pattern is best achieved through decentralised units of production and our vocational guidance should aim at this objective. The government, so far as I know, are pledged to give all possible support to such units of production. Again, by 1961 all towns and 80 per cent of the villages
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having a population of 5,000 or over will be electrified. On the basis of industrial use of such electric power, decentralised centres of production can be located in these new sites with reasonable chances of success.
Rural farms Attached to multilateral schools, agricultural schools and Extension service schools would, in my opinion, fail in their purpose, if they cannot demonstrate that with adequate supply of water and fertilisers and proper crop-planning, it is possible for Indian soil to yield agricultural products which are comparable with the best yields in the other parts of the world. A delegation of Indian Agricultural experts who have recently returned from Japan have reported that on an average in the small farms there, the annual yield per acre of irrigated land is Rs. 1,000/- approximately. It is essential that our farms, intended for training, should have adequate provision for irrigation, and have the basic equipment and facilities, which will enable a skilled staff to- demonstrate that 'similar yields are possible in India. Boys from such schools should have the confidence that they can do what the Japanese farmers are doing, and acquire the ability to demonstrate that a gross produce of say Rs. 3,000/- may be had from an irrigated farm of three acres. This is the kind of confidence which a boy gets in the vocational agricultural departments of a full-time day school in the U.S.A. to which reference has been made by Dr. Williams in his note attached to the Mudaliar Report. We ace going to have 90 million acres of irrigated land by If6l; and in every period of five years, the land under irrigation may be increased by 20 million acres. If only these 90 million acres could give us annually agricultural products worth 9,000 crores of rupees, planing for prosperity will be a much easier job for which the services of a Planning Commission may even be dispensed with.
Proper organisation of Secondary education holds the key to the solution of the problem of unemployment. It is not possible with the present rate of growth of population and a saving of 11 per cent of the national income, to draw away from land to industries all the new entrants in labour market in the rural areas. It is anticipated that by 1961, there will be an addition of two million persons to the labour force in the agricultural sector. If six out of the 20 million acres of land to be irrigated, revert to the Government as betterment levy then two million persons can be settled on such land, and with the leadership provided by students who have completed their education in agricultural sectors of Secondary schools, self-employment in a farm of three acres of irrigated land may be a very attractive proposition to the residual labour forte of two million persons.
Similar results may be attained through the leadership of boys, who have been trained in the technical streams of Secondary schools in the field of decentralised sector of industrial production.
When Secondary education has been properly reorganised, it should not be unreasonable to request the Universities to introduce a stiff test for admission to the Faculties of Arts and Science. The admissions to the Faculties of Medicine, Engineering and Technology are already very seletive because of lack of accommodation. Such a test may be of the nature of the examination at advanced level for admission to Universities in U. K. In my opinion, such an examination should test proficiency in three languages-one European and two Indian-Mathematics, General Knowledge and genral Science. If such a test is properly conducted under the auspices of the Inter-University Board in consultation with the University Grants Commission, the problems of educated unemployed as revealed in the working paper on that subject may have manageable dimensions.
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I may be excused if I have kept my observations on a severely practical plane. In the atmosphere of the Planning Commission, the conviction grows that for the time being, our educational enterprise must largely be the handmaid to enterprises in the field of production and accelerated resource development. For the last seven months I have been passing through the painful process of tempering my vision of educational ideals with the hard facts of real life.
I cannot support too strongly the view of Prof. Kabir that once a really good student secures admission into a University, poverty should be no bar to his attaining the highest eminence which he is capable of. Such students should be the key-men whose production in maximum activity are in the interest of the State. In U. K., more than 70 per cent of students in a University receive some kind of scholarship or other. The provision made for University education in the second Five-Year Plan should include, as a major item of expenditure, merit-cum-poverty scholarships.
There are two types of students who join the University. There are those who go there to imbibe general culture and acquire a good background of knowledge which will sustain them in the struggle of life. Above all, in those days of early youth, they wish to be good citizens of India. The recent debate in Parliament on the report of the States Reorganisation Commission should convince our University authorities that they have an additional duty to perform. Facilities must be provided for the students to know what India is. They should have an understanding of the heart and mind of the people of India. Such understanding comes from close contact. Every University should make efforts to enrol as its students a good percentage of those who are not normally resident in the area in which the University is located. Arrangements may be made during vacations of a University for students in small groups to go out of their own province and start on bicycles on a pilgrimage of discovery of real India in regions, of which they have read in books but of which they have no personal experience. Help for such youth activity should be available from the provision made for the development of Universities. I also commend to your consideration the recommendation of the Conference of Sanskrit Professors that for such students, a general course in humanities with, special emphasis on the achievements of ancient India in the realms of Arts, Crafts, Science and Technology be made compulsory. An appreciation of the major cementing cultural forces in India should be an indispensable part of liberal education.
There is also the other group of students who want to acquire knowledge of the highest standard in the field of their choice. For them adequate. provision should be made for post-graduate studies and research. As will be seen from the working papers, financial provision has been made for such activities on a scale which could not even have been dreamt of a decade ago. It should be painful to all of us that for advanced post-graduate studies Indian students should have to go abroad in large numbers. I was told the other day in Calcutta that no one should be seriously considered for appointment as a professor in a medical college if he has not had overseas post- graduate education in that subjects.In other subjects also, even now foreign qualifications are held at a high premium when technical or teaching appointments are made. To the extent that this attitude is born of an inferiority complex, it should be strongly discouraged. But to the extent that it is due to lack of adequate training facilities in the country, immediate remedies should be found. It may not be possible in a poor country for every University to provide facilities for the highest possible training in every subject. The funds will not be there; the teaching and research talent will be still more difficult to secure. But we should so plan our higher education that for each impor-
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tant subject there should be one or two University centres, where teaching and facilities for research are as good as anywhere else in the world. If professors of eminence in some of the subjects are to be invited from overseas to develop such schools of studies, false pride and false economy should not stand in the way of extending such invitation. It is fortunate that four distinguished Vice-Chancellors are attending this Conference and I confess it will be indiscretion on my part to speak more at length on University education in their presence.
Working papers have been placed before you on several other subjects of topical importance which have a close relation to educational progress. I would not, however, take more of your precious time by touching on them in my introductory remarks. I thank you, once again for coming over here to give us your guidance and advice in shaping the second Five-Year Plan on Education.