Roots of Neglect

...In 1981, however, 82.2 million of the 158.8 million children ages six to 14 still were not in school, and only 41.4 per cent of the population above age five could read...

...Indians have failed to profit from religious and secular advances elsewhere because their cultural and intellectual traditions have pulled the opposite way...

...This startling thesis, backed by intensive field research that took Weiner across numerous Indian states and included interviews with bureaucrats, politicians, social workers, teachers, intellectuals, and children, is totally plausible...

...For the most part, they have not...

...Democracy, human rights, environmental standards, and even workplace safety are clearly more than the luxuries of affluent nations...

...Weiner asserts that the explanation for the lack of support for education and child labor laws is to be found less in " India's low per capita income and economic situation" than in "a set of beliefs that are widely shared by educators, social activists, trade unionists, academic researchers, and more broadly, by members of the Indian middle class...

...man whose whole life is spent performing a few simple operations...

...Despite the widespread impression to the contrary, India does not have legislation mandating the education of children...

...Werner's account of the role of ideology in the policies of the different nations is truly splendid...

...For a very small expense the public can facilitate, can encourage, and can even impose [emphasis added] upon almost the whole body of the people, the necessity of acquiring those most essential parts of education...

...At the core of these beliefs are the Indian view of the social order, notions concerning the respective roles of upper and lower social strata, the role of education as maintaining differentiations among social classes, and concerns that 'excessive' and 'inappropriate' education for the poor would disrupt existing social arrangements...

...Relative to China, Taiwan, South Korea, and Sri Lanka—all well-known success stories in the drive for literacy —India's record looks especially appalling...

...But that would be a mistake...

...I hope it will also persuade the policy makers in those nations...

...In every improved and civilized society this is the state into which the laboring poor, that is, the great body of the people, must necessarily fall, unless government takes some pains to prevent it...

...Perhaps this follows from the fact that popular Hinduism downgrades consequential ethics...

...The Indian Constitution declared in 1950 that within a decade the government should provide "free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years...

...As Krishna says in the Bhagavadgita to the vacillating warrior Arjuna—just before the great war depicted in the Mahabharata—action (required by dharma or, loosely, duty) is important, not results...

...Naipaul's description, in An Area of Darkness, of the New Delhi hotel worker who sweeps the floor and leaves it dirtier than when he started...

...Yet the spread of literacy is widely believed to have been a critical factor in the success of the Far Eastern economies...

...Reviewed by Jagdish Bhagwati Arthur Lehman Professor of Economics and professor of political science, Columbia University American interest in India, both intellectual and public, has diminished in proportion to the prominence that Indian immigrants (now numbering nearly a million) have achieved in our universities, researchlaboratories, professions, and indeed all walks of life...

...Our many laissez faire theorists, who often confuse Smith with the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, would do well to ponder the eloquent argument for intervention that Weiner quotes at length from The Wealth of Nations: "In the progress of the division of labor, the...

...The resulting gap between the lofty aspirations of the leadership and the realities on the ground is dramatic...

...The most essential parts of education, however, to read, to write, and account, can be acquired at [an] early period of life...

...Through an examination of the historical experiences of Germany, Austria, England, the United States, and Japan, Weiner brilliantly demonstrates that the spread of compulsory primary education has been closely related to the adoption and enforcement of child labor laws...

...In fact, like primary schooling, these are values in themselves, and there is good reason to believe that in the long run they could be of economic benefit...

...The situation he uncovers is startling...

...But it hardly fares better when compared with most Third World nations...

...Myron Weiner's original and disturbing analysis of primary education in India offers lessons that illuminate much else on the current policy landscape...

...has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur...

...The willingness of governments to intervene has depended on a varying mix of ideology and interests countervailing the arguments that "poor parents need children at work" and that "poor countries cannot afford to keep children out of work...

...He points out that literacy had long been encouraged in such places as Germany, Scotland and colonial Massachusetts, where the Protestant Reformation taught that everyone should be able to read the Bible...

...Of particular interest is Weiner's recounting of the strong stand that Adam Smith (and other Scottish economists, philosophers and intellectuals) took in favor of mandatory education and child labor regulations...

...He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become...

...Prudence alone, if not social conscience and empathy, requires that poor countries attend expeditiously to the issues Weiner raises...

...So it would appear that the failure to spur social and economic mobility through education is a major reason for the disappointing performance of India's economy...

...By the 18th century, the way children were viewed had changed: They were now seen as "priceless," transformed from economically valuable wage earners to emotionally invaluable objects...

...Thenonempiricism that plagues India, where resolutions and legislation are routinely mistaken for action and implementation, is one obvious candidate...

...But there is a more universal factor involved here as well...

...And the inevitable clean-up is likely to be much more expensive than the prevention...

...If, for instance, the air fills up with smog and the rivers are saturated with industrial waste, there will be few healthy people left in the end to work the plants that stinted by polluting...

...One can only guess at the effects of India's neglect...

...The Child and the State in India persuaded me of the possibilities...

...These beliefs are held by those outside as well as those within the government, by observant Hindus and by those who regard themselves as secular, and by leftists as well as centrists and rightists...

...One might be tempted, therefore, to dismiss this book by arguably the most perceptive scholar of that nation's politics today as being of concern only to "Indiawallahs...

...Instead, following Britain, it has "enabling" state-level laws that empower local bodies to make schooling obligatory should they choose to do so...

...Moreover, by exposing the underpinnings of India's policy and pointing to the successful implementation of compulsory education in countries of various levels of economic development, Weiner encourages us to discard the preconceptions and spurious arguments surrounding a range of issues...

...Recall V.S...

...But Weiner concentrates, rather, on the causes of the negligence...

...For example, taking the percentage of literates over age 15, Weiner shows that at 40.8 per cent India recently stood far below several Asian, African and Latin American countries, among them Indonesia (74.1 per cent), the Philippines (88.7 per cent), Zaire (61.2 per cent), Kenya (59.2 per cent), Colombia (69.1 per cent), and Peru (87 per cent...