1. Indians never *chose* Gandhi as their leader. Any kind of a leader in India would have the kinds of mass followings the way Gandhi did. While he was certainly revered, there is no evidence Indians would’ve chosen him as their leader (and thank God we didn’t). There were several others who didn’t exactly see eye-to-eye with Gandhi and I highly doubt he would’ve won a popular election.

As for Hitler, claiming that the people of Germany ‘elected’ him is dubious at best. http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/map-faq6.htm

2. Is your example of an illiterate/ignorant country electing a non-violent leader versus an literate/educated country electing a psychopath supposed to be an argument against development/education?

I fail to see the factual accuracy, contextual relevance, or the logic behind your statement.

6 Comments to ‘The Ind [...]

7 Comments to ‘The Indian Education [...]

While I completely agree that Education/Literacy is a must for a country to develop overall, I am also equally baffled by the fact that, many start-ups (including some successful ones) or companies (in the US esp) were/are started by school drop-outs or people who were not interested in studying at all! What motivates them to go forward and start a successful company if they hated education, something that we cherish as a must for a developed economy?

I don’t mean to say, schools are not necessary, but is there an alternative for our HUGE ILLITERATE population to be more informed without having to get educated or visiting school?!

Plz if possible address these concerns in your following articles!

Yes. There is something for us to think here. That some Indians are still too egoistic/ignorant to accept our sad state of affairs. No offense meant.

-Mike

One comment to ‘The Indian Edu [...]

Why do you thing an educated populace causes an improved economy? It might just be that the leaders of China are enlightened while ours are not. Are you suggesting that a better educated population increases the probability that the change agents of a country are enlightened?

Also, you haven’t defined what an education means. Is it the ability to read and write a 1000 characters (as in China) or approximately 50 characters (in Indian languages) or 26 characters? Or do you add arithmetic to the mix? Algebra? History? Archeology and anthropology? Music? Dance? Theatre? Geography? Economics? Biology? Physics? Chemistry? Civics and Law? Basic engineering? Computers and computing? etc. At what point would you consider a populace educated?

Are you planning to address such questions in the future parts of your series? I do enjoy your writing immensely and I’m waiting eagerly for the rest of the series.