Building A Nation

By Ashok Khosla

“Go West, young man” was the slogan heard all over the eastern seaboard of the U.S. a
hundred years back. The same refrain, with or without implied gender bias, is heard all
over our own country today. Are we to infer that history repeats itself? Or that the India of
today resembles the America of the last century? Not at all.
The young people of nineteenth century America were being called upon to build a nation.
And they responded, working twelve, fourteen and sixteen hours a day, thirty days a month,
twelve montyhs a year. Painstakingly, they built institutions and infrastructure that are
today the envy of the world: universities, local democracies, businesses, transportation
networks, agricultural and industrial systems that combine to form the largest and most
vibrant economy in hisotry. Particularly, the envy of the educated young people of India
today. Isn’t that why a one way ticket to the U.S. is now widely considered in our country to
be the first prize in the lottery of life?
Undoubtedly, the model of development pioneered by America has its limits. It exploits
vast resources, both domestic and imported, at prices that are virtually free and highly
destructive of people and nature. It is technocratic and largely insensitive to issues of
human values, equity and social justice. Worst of all, it has engendered the ruthless
elimination of all obstacles, including whole peoples and cultures, in its inexorable drive
towards a homogenised, sanitized material well-being for those who can become a part of
its mainstream. Even in America, there is a growing number of people who questions the
sustainability of this model.
It is not the model, claim our young people, but the opportunities that make North America
their preferred career destination. Their own role models: parents, teachers, uncles and
aunts – not to mention their peers – concur: if the “infrastructure” does not exist at home to
make use of one’s education, why not go abroad?
Whether the opportunities and the model of development can be separated is a
metaphysical question best left to academics and philosophers. The more immediate and
much more important question facing us is: who will ever create the infrastructure if the
best trained ones choose to fly the coop? How can a nation expect to offer meaningful
opportunities to its next generation if its present generation does not begin to make the
investments needed to create them? And how can it justify using the taxpayer’s money for
a counter-productive educational system that ends up graduating its more talented young
people into social misfits, unable to find jobs or fulfillment in their own homes?
Our educational institutions are clearly not geared for the task of nation building. Our
schools are starved of funds, and hundreds of millions of our children will grow up to
languish in a state of virtual illiteracy. Yet, at huge national expense, we provide world class
education virtually free to the privileged few, mostly the children of the rich and the
powerful. Our institutions of higher learning impart values and knowledge which are of little
use in our own country, and are even proud to serve as factories to export the most
valuable national resource we have: brains. For virtually no revenue at all.
Were it not for the manifest self- interest of our decision makers, most of whom have
children who will never pay back their debt to the society that nurtured and supported
them, such irresponsible behaviour would presumably invite action – if not criminal charges
in court, atleast some audit objections or questions in parliament.
Lack of job opportunities at home can no longer be taken as a credible excuse. The five
hundred zila panchayats in the country and the five hundred gram panchayats in each zila
panchayat dsperately need technical, financial and managerial expertise. Each of these
entities, numbering a quarter of a million, needs professionals – planners, architects,
engineers, administrators and, of course, doctors, entrepreneurs and managers. But
professionals of a very different kind from those graduating from our universities and IITs
today. Specialised traning within the narrow confines of academic disciplines borrowed
from the West is no longer what we need. Nor is ignorance of the realities of one’s society.
The professionals India needs must be capable of holistic thinking and problem solving –
and making a commitment to the nation’s future. They, too, have to be the world class
professionals with the highest levels of creativity and competence, working at the frontiers
of knowledge.
Either our universities and technical institutions will very soon adapt their teaching and
research to respond to the country’s needs, or they will themselves, for sure, “go West”,
never to be seen again.