Educationists and politicians have mulled over what ails primary education in India, on low enrolments and high level of dropouts. Wipro Chairman Azim Premji, by his own admission not an educationist nor a scholar but a risk-taking businessman who has tasted success, today showed what was wrong with the system and set about suggesting measures to correct it.On the occasion of the 35th Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Lecture, Premji underlined the importance of placing fundamental education on the national agenda if India’s destiny has to change. Throwing out standard reasons of poverty and socio-economic conditions that are touted to buttress the argument on low literacy levels in the country, Premji said the real reason had to be found in the quality of learning. ‘‘It is like the double helix of the DNA, never complete in itself but complete together, the DNA of education runs on two strands of quality and access,’’ Premji said.At the lecture which has seen educationists, writers and Nobel laureates speak out their mind, Premji an exception to the list of speakers before him, spoke out his mind: ‘‘In my view it is an absolute imperative that we prioritise education and its issues on the national agenda, not only in discourse but in action,’’ Premji said.The experience of Azim Premji Foundation, a non-profit organisation for facilitating universalisation of elementary education, showed 50 per cent families with identical poverty levels and socio-economic backgrounds send their children to school while the other 50 per cent do not, Premji said. He said India’s primary education system continues to remain enmeshed in a process full of note accumulation and mere memorisation. This, Premji surmised was churning out standardised children like graded products in a factory — weak in creating, thinking, discovering and learning.Premji said among the several invaluable teachings of Nehru, the one closest to his heart — and Wipro’s guiding principle — is about character at the core.‘‘Early in my life I learnt that character is destiny and the character of any individual, an organisation or a society is the most important determinant of success,’’ the Wipro chief said. His articulation of what education should be like was stated in six points: First schools need to identify and eradicate elements of threat; right learning environment ought to be contextual to the learner and to the community; learning can be interesting; need to recognise the importance of individual learning; parting integrative and wholesome learning from which will emerge skills a child ought to develop. He said India with its population, will be the powerhouse of the most important resource — the productive human spirit.‘‘Malthus’ fear that humanity will not be able to feed the teeming billions has been proven wrong with the leaps of technology. Once the issue of feeding the billions is taken care of, India will be ahead of every other nation,’’ Premji observed.
