Nearly one in every twelve humans is a young Indian for whom meaningful education is of critical importance. A good education will not only help our youth get jobs and build fulfilling careers, it will also lead to the widening of our collective imagination and the shaping of the way we think; for all these reasons it ought to be an important concern of our time.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. There is a lack of infrastructure, adequate funding and genuine autonomy within educational institutions, departments within those institutions, and individuals who teach in those departments. And this is not all. There is also the question of the nature of knowledge that is relevant to our rapidly modernizing country that needs to be dealt with.
If knowledge is the core of education and if education lays the very foundation of a nation, the author argues that it is of critical importance that the plight of educational institutions and the need to generate knowledge appropriate to India are addressed without any delay.
Original and profound, this book offers a clear picture of the mistakes that have been committed in the past, confronts the present decline of knowledge and education in the country and offers a vision for the future.
Former Professor of English at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda and Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information Technology, G. N. Devy writes in English, Marathi and Gujarati. He is the founder of the Bhasha Research Centre, Baroda, and Adivasi Academy, Tejgadh, and has worked extensively with Adivasis and nomadic communities in India. He led the People’s Linguistic Survey of India (PLSI), a comprehensive documentation of all living Indian languages, forming a fifty-volume PLSI Series. He has received several awards for his writing as well as for his community work, including the Padma Shri, Prince Claus Award and Linguapax Award. Among his better known works are After Amnesia, Of Many Heroes, Painted Words and Nomad Called Thief, Vanaprastha (in Marathi), and Adivasi Jaane Chhe (in Gujarati). He has co-edited a series of six volumes on indigenous cultures and knowledge. As an activist, he played a leading role in the movement for the rights of Denotified and Nomadic Tribes, and more recently has initiated the Dakshinayan Movement of writers and artists. The author is based in Dharwad.
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