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In a world where data is currency and digital tools are the new chalk, this is a crisis, not a statistic.
Literacy ≠ Education: Time to Burn the Old Playbook
🎓 What is the soul of education?
Is it just about literacy rates, skilling youth for jobs, or reducing unemployment? Or does it go deeper—into shaping minds that can think freely, question boldly, and respond wisely to a rapidly evolving world?
Mahatma Gandhi once said,
“Literacy in itself is no education… Education means the all-round drawing out of the best in child and man—body, mind, and spirit.”
In a world shaken by war, artificial intelligence, climate breakdown, and social fragmentation, that Gandhian vision rings louder than ever. India stands at a historic threshold—not just to improve education statistics, but to redefine what education must mean for the 21st century.
🌍 Adapatability – The New Survival Skill
We live in a time when tomorrow feels like uncharted territory. Pandemics, polarised politics, job market disruptions, and algorithmic dominance have made adaptability—not academic degrees—the new survival skill.
In such a world, rote learning of textbooks has little value. The real test is whether learners can:
- Solve real problems
- Think creatively across disciplines
- Collaborate across cultures
- Learn, unlearn, and relearn constantly
The dual responsibilities of modern education are clear:
- Prepare every learner for life—not just exams
- Allow each learner to learn at their own pace, in their own way
📉 Where Do We Stand Today?
India’s National Education Policy (NEP) 2020 set the stage for ambitious reform. Its ideas are visionary. But ideas without implementation are just ink on paper.
Let’s examine what the data says:
🔎 Foundational Learning: Still Fragile
- According to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), fewer than 45% of students can perform basic math or reading tasks.
- The rise in skills is encouraging—but we started from a disturbingly low baseline.
🖥️ Digital Divide in Classrooms
- Only 54% of schools have access to the internet.
- Only 50% have working computers for students.
In a world where data is currency and digital tools are the new chalk, this is a crisis, not a statistic.
🎓 Higher Education: Wide in Quantity, Wobbly in Quality
India boasts the second-largest higher education system in the world—with 58,000+ institutions. Yet, only 28% of eligible students are enrolled in higher education.
Even where seats exist, quality doesn’t always follow. For instance:
- Almost half the mechanical engineering seats go vacant every year.
- Lack of skilled faculty makes expansion of new colleges a hollow gesture.
In research output, India fares better in numbers than in depth:
- We produce 29,000 PhDs/year, while China produces 56,000, and the US 71,000.
- Many Indian doctoral theses, however, fail to meet global benchmarks in originality and relevance.
💰 Investment: Just Enough to Stay Behind?
India spends around 4% of GDP on education—technically within the global 4–6% benchmark. But here’s the catch:
- The majority of funds go to salaries, not innovation.
- Curriculum upgrades, teacher training, or new assessment techniques often get little attention.
If we truly want to prepare learners for a different future, we must invest differently—in content, creativity, and classrooms that empower.
⚖️ Public vs Private: The Equity Conundrum
Private institutions have mushroomed, offering modern facilities—but not everyone can afford them. This deepens the class divide in education.
What’s the solution?
- Strengthen public institutions
- Offer financial support for deserving students to access private education
- Bridge the opportunity gap, not widen it
🌐 Global Models: What Top-Performing Nations Teach Us
Nations like Finland, Estonia, and South Korea have cracked the education puzzle by focusing on:
- Comprehensive teacher training
- Strong national curricula
- Smart use of assessment
- Societal respect for education
- Equitable access and emotional well-being
India can—and must—adapt these lessons to its own context.
🔄 Deschooling Societies
Back in 1971, Ivan Illich provocatively argued in Deschooling Society:
“We have become unable to think of better education except in terms of more complex schools and teachers trained for ever longer periods.”
He urged us to dismantle the one-size-fits-all funnel, and instead imagine networks of learning opportunities—flexible, diverse, and lifelong.
✅ The Bottom Line: Towards a Learning Republic
The NEP 2020 gives us a scaffold, but the house of Indian education needs more than blueprints:
- It needs willpower
- It needs investment beyond budgets—into ideas
- And above all, it needs a cultural shift: from viewing education as a tool for jobs to a foundation for life itself
Because in a world where the only certainty is uncertainty, the greatest skill we can teach is the ability to keep learning, forever.
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Petrol in India is cheaper than in countries like Hong Kong, Germany and the UK but costlier than in China, Brazil, Japan, the US, Russia, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, a Bank of Baroda Economics Research report showed.
Rising fuel prices in India have led to considerable debate on which government, state or central, should be lowering their taxes to keep prices under control.
The rise in fuel prices is mainly due to the global price of crude oil (raw material for making petrol and diesel) going up. Further, a stronger dollar has added to the cost of crude oil.
Amongst comparable countries (per capita wise), prices in India are higher than those in Vietnam, Kenya, Ukraine, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela. Countries that are major oil producers have much lower prices.
In the report, the Philippines has a comparable petrol price but has a per capita income higher than India by over 50 per cent.
Countries which have a lower per capita income like Kenya, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Venezuela have much lower prices of petrol and hence are impacted less than India.
“Therefore there is still a strong case for the government to consider lowering the taxes on fuel to protect the interest of the people,” the report argued.
India is the world’s third-biggest oil consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its oil needs and so prices retail fuel at import parity rates.
With the global surge in energy prices, the cost of producing petrol, diesel and other petroleum products also went up for oil companies in India.
They raised petrol and diesel prices by Rs 10 a litre in just over a fortnight beginning March 22 but hit a pause button soon after as the move faced criticism and the opposition parties asked the government to cut taxes instead.
India imports most of its oil from a group of countries called the ‘OPEC +’ (i.e, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Russia, etc), which produces 40% of the world’s crude oil.
As they have the power to dictate fuel supply and prices, their decision of limiting the global supply reduces supply in India, thus raising prices
The government charges about 167% tax (excise) on petrol and 129% on diesel as compared to US (20%), UK (62%), Italy and Germany (65%).
The abominable excise duty is 2/3rd of the cost, and the base price, dealer commission and freight form the rest.
Here is an approximate break-up (in Rs):
a)Base Price | 39 |
b)Freight | 0.34 |
c) Price Charged to Dealers = (a+b) | 39.34 |
d) Excise Duty | 40.17 |
e) Dealer Commission | 4.68 |
f) VAT | 25.35 |
g) Retail Selling Price | 109.54 |
Looked closely, much of the cost of petrol and diesel is due to higher tax rate by govt, specifically excise duty.
So the question is why government is not reducing the prices ?
India, being a developing country, it does require gigantic amount of funding for its infrastructure projects as well as welfare schemes.
However, we as a society is yet to be tax-compliant. Many people evade the direct tax and that’s the reason why govt’s hands are tied. Govt. needs the money to fund various programs and at the same time it is not generating enough revenue from direct taxes.
That’s the reason why, govt is bumping up its revenue through higher indirect taxes such as GST or excise duty as in the case of petrol and diesel.
Direct taxes are progressive as it taxes according to an individuals’ income however indirect tax such as excise duty or GST are regressive in the sense that the poorest of the poor and richest of the rich have to pay the same amount.
Does not matter, if you are an auto-driver or owner of a Mercedes, end of the day both pay the same price for petrol/diesel-that’s why it is regressive in nature.
But unlike direct tax where tax evasion is rampant, indirect tax can not be evaded due to their very nature and as long as huge no of Indians keep evading direct taxes, indirect tax such as excise duty will be difficult for the govt to reduce, because it may reduce the revenue and hamper may programs of the govt.
Globally, around 80% of wastewater flows back into the ecosystem without being treated or reused, according to the United Nations.
This can pose a significant environmental and health threat.
In the absence of cost-effective, sustainable, disruptive water management solutions, about 70% of sewage is discharged untreated into India’s water bodies.
A staggering 21% of diseases are caused by contaminated water in India, according to the World Bank, and one in five children die before their fifth birthday because of poor sanitation and hygiene conditions, according to Startup India.
As we confront these public health challenges emerging out of environmental concerns, expanding the scope of public health/environmental engineering science becomes pivotal.
For India to achieve its sustainable development goals of clean water and sanitation and to address the growing demands for water consumption and preservation of both surface water bodies and groundwater resources, it is essential to find and implement innovative ways of treating wastewater.
It is in this context why the specialised cadre of public health engineers, also known as sanitation engineers or environmental engineers, is best suited to provide the growing urban and rural water supply and to manage solid waste and wastewater.
Traditionally, engineering and public health have been understood as different fields.
Currently in India, civil engineering incorporates a course or two on environmental engineering for students to learn about wastewater management as a part of their pre-service and in-service training.
Most often, civil engineers do not have adequate skills to address public health problems. And public health professionals do not have adequate engineering skills.
India aims to supply 55 litres of water per person per day by 2024 under its Jal Jeevan Mission to install functional household tap connections.
The goal of reaching every rural household with functional tap water can be achieved in a sustainable and resilient manner only if the cadre of public health engineers is expanded and strengthened.
In India, public health engineering is executed by the Public Works Department or by health officials.
This differs from international trends. To manage a wastewater treatment plant in Europe, for example, a candidate must specialise in wastewater engineering.
Furthermore, public health engineering should be developed as an interdisciplinary field. Engineers can significantly contribute to public health in defining what is possible, identifying limitations, and shaping workable solutions with a problem-solving approach.
Similarly, public health professionals can contribute to engineering through well-researched understanding of health issues, measured risks and how course correction can be initiated.
Once both meet, a public health engineer can identify a health risk, work on developing concrete solutions such as new health and safety practices or specialised equipment, in order to correct the safety concern..
There is no doubt that the majority of diseases are water-related, transmitted through consumption of contaminated water, vectors breeding in stagnated water, or lack of adequate quantity of good quality water for proper personal hygiene.
Diseases cannot be contained unless we provide good quality and adequate quantity of water. Most of the world’s diseases can be prevented by considering this.
Training our young minds towards creating sustainable water management systems would be the first step.
Currently, institutions like the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) are considering initiating public health engineering as a separate discipline.
To leverage this opportunity even further, India needs to scale up in the same direction.