Here's a great parody of these ideas from Bastiat. It is a petition from candle-makers to the government, complaining about the competition from the sun.
First, election manifestos in India are largely documents full of whatever the authors think (rarely accurately) will get them a few more votes in an election, or signal various postures to various electoral allies, not something they have the remotest intent of implementing to the letter. If one hundredth of the promises made in the last election's manifestos were implemented, India would be a very different place.
Publishing manifestos is an almost empty electoral ritual, beyond the above mentioned mild "signaling" effects. No one holds any party accountable for what their manifestos promise and by the time the next election comes around, everyone has forgotten what the manifesto said (and there will be a new manifesto!). As an example, any party that plans to curry favor with the Muslim populace would include a "resist American imperialism" theme in its manifesto (though my friends who are part of the ground campaign report that many muslims think that Barack Hussein Obama is muslim, so they are feeling friendly to the USA and so the "anti American stance to please muslims" plank is backfiring occasionally!)
Second, the Samajwadi Party is largely confined to the "cow belt" of India, which has the least educated populace in India. There is a national election coming up in the next few days and this is just posturing on Mr.Yadav's part to score points with his uneducated/ English unfriendly constituents (or so he thinks. Most people, even the desperately poor, would,given the chance, send their children to English Medium. computer friendly schools).
A large chunk of the bureaucracy functions in English (though ever larger chunks have moved to the local language over the years) and this causes English illiterate people some difficulty when they have to interact with the bureaucracy. This is the sentiment Mr Yadav is (faintly) trying to add to his vote bank, without pissing off the english using bureaucrats. And of course, there is always a bunch of hard core language chauvinists who hate every language but their own (This in a country with 20+ official languages and 2000+ dialects) The elections are likely to be very close this year and every bit helps. The smarter folks just ignore this kind of posturing and look at what the candidate/party did in the past(vs what they said).
Think of an American politician in a heavily republican evangelical constituency talk about how he'd enforce Christian Prayer in schools and work diligently overturn Roe vs Wade. The American pol would have powerful interest groups watching and publicizing every deviation from their agendsa. In India nothing like that exists.To a much greater degree than in the USA, in India no one really cares about party manifestos anyway except in a very abstract sense. Elections are decided on local/current issues and alliances.
Believe you me, any action to make this a ground reality would cause a massive backlash, if not outright rebellion. Indian governments are largely coalitions of disparate parties and there is no way Mr. Yadav will get the votes in parliament to implement this. (he is a very canny politician, he wouldn't even try!)
To repeat, It's just posturing. Mr Yadav was recently hauled over the coals by the Election Commission for making vaguely threatening noises about a very honest and incorruptible District Magistrate in charge of overseeing the elections in his constituency and probably just wants a last minute burst of publicity to shift the focus elsewhere.
To conclude, Computers aren't going anywhere. Neither is English education. This is all posturing!
"Finding itself under attack from all quarters for its manifesto's "opposition" to English education and computers, the Samajwadi Party was on the backfoot on Sunday, at pains to underline that it was not against their use but that they should not be made compulsory.
"The SP is for a common education system that provides access to similar quality of education to all, irrespective of their caste, religion or income status. This means abolishing the dichotomy of expensive English-medium schools and affordable vernacular schools. This doesn't mean the SP is against the English language," SP chief Mulayam Singh Yadav's son Akhilesh told The Indian Express over phone from Lucknow.
Mulayam himself clarified that he was not against education in English, when it was pointed out that his son had studied in a convent school. But he insisted that it "should not be compulsory in offices", whether government or private. "I am not against English but its use should not be a compulsion. It should not be compulsory in public life," he said in Lucknow. "
I hope nothing like this ever becomes a reality. What I was worried was that if such people, popularize these ideas into the poor majority in India, then winning by numbers is not difficult for them.
When we look at the reservation of seats issue (http://in.rediff.com/money/2006/apr/12spec1.htm), such people when in power were actually able to create policies that would harm over-all development.
I wish the well-educated minority here doesn't sit back at home and we all say it our aloud that we can't tolerate such people, by going to vote!
Thanks, it was a pretty nice and optimistic read :)
reservation (kinda sorta affirmative action based solely on caste for any non Indian readers )uses an "economic progress" bait to line people up behind it. Whether the purported benefits actually manifest, one can debate about.
Removing English Education and computers has economics working against it. Your kids won't be taught English or computers because we... errr ... want them to remain peasants forever?
Besides , this move if ever attempted (it won't be . No one will be able to get it through parliament) pisses off the teachers, the urban population, students, the business folks, the bureaucrats, illiterate/poor people who want their kids to get the best education ... just about anyone who is not some kind of local language fanatic. There aren't enough of the latter around (except in small pockets) to change the last few decades of history and economics in India (though the few who do exist are very voluble).
At best they are able to shift the primary language of education in middle/high school to the local language alongside English (and there is a good case to be made for that). There's simply no way this can be done at the undergrad level and above. The logistical comlexity of textbooks preparation for a few hundred branches of science, engineering etc (for e.g) would kill any initiative like this.
but it won't get this far. As I said above no one will get it through parliament.
As I said, just posturing :-)
[ Ok I am sick of discussing politics here. Iam not sure this is an appropriate forum for this. I am signing off from this thread. ]
Too bad you signed off man. I've had a look at your comments and I must say I've learned more about modern India from reading through them, than most books on the subject.
Hi All,
Please don't get me wrong, but I don't get what hackers interest HN user can get from this article. I am from Russia and there's enough crazy politicians in my country as well, but I don't feel like it's the right place to post their ideas here.
Flagged this article.
Well some issues related to politics, etc also affect hackers, and future hackers.
For example, the education system in some places lacks vision, making hackers feel restricted, like I do, overburdened with unrelated subjects of high credits under a CS degree. Otherwise I could've learnt things I wanted to, started projects that I wished to do, and C# app dev for a project we are doing wouldn't have taken 3 months, if we didn't have tests every other week and loads of assignments to do. I could have had time to experiment, learn and create so many things then.
I think such decisions and efforts to do such illogical things as abolishing use of computer and english would create more and more problems for those who wish to learn and make lives more comfortable by use technology.
I thought such things do matter a little bit and even this one.
IIT Foundation did respond to Arjun Singh's decision on quota - http://www.iitfoundation.org/?p=83
could we also have such activities for these kind of situations.
