?There are in my heart furies and sufferings?, Neruda quotes Quevedo, writing perhaps, for all of India. Mumbai is not unused to terror but the 60 hours of carnage that were witnessed were truly unprecedented. It seemed much like a human tsunami?clinical, senseless, maniacal and remorseless. Youngsters barely into adulthood, killing people they don?t know, wantonly. Whether it was Marx?s classification of religion as the opium of the masses or a commitment to a cause we do not understand or just plain simple hopelessness of their life chances, whatever?it was a conviction strong enough to keep them going for more than three days, alert enough to kill and maim without fear. The death lists had people from every faith, of all ages, of both genders and of every economic stratum. Kids lost parents, brothers lost sisters, fathers lost daughters and civil society perished in its wake. Our understanding will take some time to dawn but in the immediate aftermath I feel impelled to write and say?we should take care not to focus only on the security cure but to take some time not to forget the real preventive. So yes the government needs to act?it needs better prevention in terms of intelligence, quicker operations, and clearer post crisis management. A lot is and will be written here. I want to focus my piece today on the important and not just the horrific immediate.
There is an urgency to improve security for a disturbed civil society. I imagine this time round the attention will be sharper because the more affluent have been hit. But if you consider our sprawling cities?Mumbai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai and even Delhi?they are fairly safe by international standards. Sao Paulo, Johannesburg, Rio, Mexico City are clearly much less safe. But how long will they stay this way? There is a crisis lurking in India of even greater enormity. It is akin to global warming?slow, transforming and devastating; but not eye catching, not urgent and not immediate. Of our 473 million workforce, 40% are illiterate and another 40% are school drop outs. In an interconnected, global economy what hope do they have? Every year they fall further behind. Real life chances are important for them, for India and for maintaining the fabric of our society. If we could act to provide quality, non doctrinaire, secular education our children could grow up with real life chances eager to participate in the opportunities of the 21st century.
I am not arguing that quality education will curb all terrorism. But I will argue that non doctrinaire and secular education will strengthen the fabric of our society and our country. It will also help reduce income disparities and bridge the gap between the different faiths. It should teach us to argue constructively with words rather than with slogans and certainly not with guns.
Apparently the terrorist who has been arrested said he went to the LeT camps to learn how to use arms to become better at crime?in the process he got indoctrinated. Imagine that. It could happen to Indian youth too. All things considered more is wrong with our education than our internal security. Education is under funded, over regulated and without accountability. For profit private sector is not allowed entry and government schools are not evaluated or accountable and the few quality seats available in education, are under private religious trusts. Unfortunately there is no movement here. No calls for accountability and no calls for action.
We remain the country with a majority of the world?s poor but the voice of the hungry is too frail to reach our polity and clearly no match for the outcry we witness these days. This is an odd time to write this article but maybe it isn?t. What does true security mean? Whom does it include? Does an ignorant farmer dying quietly on a farm not qualify for our attention? To paraphrase Alan Paton, when that dawn will come of our emancipation, from this illiteracy and poverty?why that is a secret?
?The author is managing director, The Boston Consulting Group. These are his personal views