Five more IITs in the offing, says Vajpayee.
Excellent. The more number of India (that should read Indian, but I worship Dilbert) Institutes of Technology that we open, the more number of civil engineers we can produce who will go into software. Who am I to argue with the concept of enrichment of human capital ?
I keep hearing about the digital divide– that deep chasm between those who can operate the mouse and those who cannot….
I am more concerned about the literacy divide….. that growing gap between those who can read and write their own names and those cannot…
If the Indian Government shares my dream of a progressive society, developed nation twenty years from now, then what is the way ahead?
The establishment of more and more IITs ?
Or setting up more and more primary schools ? And ensuring that children across the country get to go to those schools ? And stay there ?
My intention is not technology-bashing…. it is more a belief that universalisation of elementary education is what the country needs right now….
And not IITs alone…. (scroll to the bottom of this…. the man says, we need a hundred more IITs in order to eliminate illiteracy – what does this mean ? Is he confirming my suspicion that most kids going into IIT are illiterate anyway ?)
Functional literacy is the way to begin….. technical literacy without that is meaningless…. We need to set up a level playing field before taking computers into the villages….. In the present scenario, the literate get more literate (I do not say educated, note). And the illiterate stay that way….. after all, it is not possible to get more illiterate….