https://www.india-seminar.com/2023/761/761-10-DEVESH KAPUR.htm?s=09

DEVESH KAPUR

I and the public know

What all schoolchildren learn,

Those to whom evil is done

Do evil in return.

– W. H. Auden

LIKE many other democracies India’s democracy also comes with many qualifying adjectives, among others ‘patronage’, ‘electoral’, ‘illiberal’, ‘precocious’, ‘deficient’, ‘reduced’. These adjectives have changed over time but increasingly they indicate a decline in the quality of India’s democracy. Many reasons have been attributed for this, ranging from the weakening of India’s public institutions and political parties (especially the Congress), the grievances and anxieties of the majority community assiduously stoked by the ruling party, the insidious effects of social media, legal changes and shifts in bureaucratic practices, and the like.

The ease with which democratic backsliding has occurred without too much protest or resistance raises the question why Indian society has found it so much easier to accept this reversal. While there certainly have been protests, such as against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) or National Register of Citizens (NRC), or the farmer protests, these have by and large been few and far between.

This essay explores another comorbidity behind the weakening of India’s democracy: education. In general education is viewed as strongly correlated with democracy. But given that Indians today are much more educated than in the past, at least formally, this seems puzzling. Even as India has become more educated, its democracy is becoming less healthy. However, India is not exceptional in this regard. Democratic backsliding is apparent worldwide even as the world has become more educated.

Empirical evidence on the democracy-education link in India is mixed. Survey data from the 2014 National Election Study (conducted by Lokniti) found little difference in voter turnout between illiterate and literate voters. However, among literate voters, turnout among the college educated was lower than among the less educated. A more recent Pew survey (conducted in late 2019-early 2020) asked respondents which would be better suited to solve the country’s problems: a ‘democratic form of government’ or a ‘leader with a strong hand.’ While 46% of respondents preferred the former, 48% preferred the latter. However, those with a college degree were more likely than those with less education to prefer a democratic form of government (51% vs. 45%).1

Why has education’s promise with regards to democratic deepening been unrealized? The hypothesis that education leads to a more democratic politics enjoys wide support. Indeed, for some the ‘correlation between education and democracy is clear.’2Education has been viewed as a crucial determinant of ‘civic culture’ and a higher participation in a whole range of social activities, which in turn drives greater participation in democratic politics.3This could be either because education indoctrinates the virtues of political participation or because education also produces social capital via the innumerable social interactions within classrooms and educational institutions. By improving inter-personal skills, education facilitates civic engagement and thereby greater political participation.

That democracy needs education seems pretty intuitive, but that simply opens a can of worms about education itself: the types of education, the content of education, how it is provided, who provides it etc. The classic works linking democracy and education – such as John Dewey’s, Democracy and Education (1916) and Amy Gutmann’s, Democratic Education (1999) – were rooted in the philosophy of education and how it could be imparted in more democratic ways, rather than the effects of education on democracy.

In pre-colonial India, education was essentially a system of rote-learning within ‘gurukuls’ and ‘pathshalas’ (and severely limited to a tiny upper caste group) and ‘madrasas’. The colonial education system was geared to providing clerks and babus to the colonial administration, further entrenching a rote system of education. Gandhi, Tagore, Aurobindo and Krishnamurthy, all sought to rethink education as a way to inculcate internal virtues (values) in human beings, especially empathy and service. Their thinking and experiments largely died with them. Others (such as Krishna Kumar) have also tried to move the education discourse beyond standards, accountability, and exam results to values such as habits of cooperation, critical and creative thinking and the need to be aware democratically conscious citizens. But the vice-like grip of the former remains undiminished. This is apparent in the three key arenas of education: schooling, college and professional education.

The dismal failures of ‘socialist’ India to provide the most basic public good of universal schooling in the first half century after independence is well known. Primary education was constitutionally a state subject but almost no state government (Kerala and later Himachal Pradesh were exceptions) showed a commitment to mass education. Despite the rise of lower castes to political power, these parties also failed to do much in this regard. The fact that a communist government in West Bengal, in power for more than three decades, performed so weakly on primary education – the one area that communist governments worldwide have performed well on – underscores the neglect.

Paradoxically, central governments in neo-liberal India – the NDA with the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the UPA with The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act – gave much greater emphasis to universal education. But while India has made substantial progress in access to schools and higher education, learning outcomes are extremely weak. This seems unlikely to change soon. The education system in states is a ‘sorting and selection’ system rather than focused on ‘human development’ more broadly, structured to ensure schooling but not learning.

This apathy is manifest in multiple dimensions. The large number of teacher vacancies, endemic teacher recruitment scandals in states of all political stripes and high absentee rates of public school teachers (despite being much better paid than their private counterparts), are all well documented realities and a damning indictment on how well India’s politicians safeguard the interests of the country’s children. Lip service apart, no political party either understands or has a deep commitment to improving learning, let alone ‘joyful learning’. Children do not vote or protest and hence have no political voice.

In principle, ‘extramural education’ – within families, cultural institutions, and mass media – can potentially offset the gaps (at least partially) of weak school education. But how likely is that in India in the foreseeable future? Two interventions, however, could at least potentially break rigid social boundaries and build a more egalitarian ethos among children, with longer term payoffs for democratic values. While the Mid-Day Meal programme’s (the world’s largest school feeding programme) primary aim has been to improve the nutrition of undernourished children and school attendance, it also had the potential of commensality, with children from all social groups eating together. But this will not occur if specific social groups migrate to private schools.