beyondbrics

By Girija Shivakumar in New Delhi

India keenly aspires for international recognition as a “knowledge superpower,” and globe trotting Indian executives and policymakers are always eager to tout the country’s much-vaunted IT companies, and a fast-growing pharmaceutical industry , not to mention its pools of engineering, legal, and research talent.

But Amartya Sen, the Indian Nobel Laureate economist-cum-philosopher, isn’t impressed with India’s claims to emerging knowledge economy status. Rather than the glitzy software parks so beloved of Indian boosters, Professor Sen has his eye on India’s dilapidated state primary schools and its poor basic literacy rates, which raise questions about the sustainability of the foundations supporting India’s current growth path.

Currently, just 65 per cent of Indians have basic literacy, and one-third of the world’s illiterates are Indian. Despite India’s claims to be focusing on education, the literacy rate is only increasingly a sluggish 1.5 per cent per annum according to the National Sample Survey. Literacy among men is higher at 75 per cent, while just 54 percent of women can read.

“The jumps in our literacy rate in no way commensurate with the country’s economic growth rate,” Professor Sen scolded Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Education Minister Kapil Sibal, and a crowd of Indian bureaucrats in New Delhi.

In his remarks, Singh acknowledged that “no modern industrial nation has less than 80 per cent literacy” and said, “to make India fully literate and to eliminate the gender bias in literacy therefore must be our immediate priority goals.”

Professor Sen, who is currently based at Harvard University, was in New Delhi to unveil India’s grand scheme to recreate the now-defunct Nalanda University, an ancient seat of Buddhist learning that drew scholars from across Asia before it was destroyed in the 12th century.

But he warned that the power of the market to alleviate poverty and improve living standards in India could succeed only if New Delhi was committed to extending greater public resources and support towards improving the quality and access to its primary education system.

“I have been saying this for the last 40 years, and I will continue until I see improvement,” he said.

Surely India’s government will be looking forward to his next visit.