Amartya disagrees with Burma policy
Praising the recently-implemented landmark Right to Education Act, Nobel Laureate Prof. Amartya Sen on Tuesday stated that the country needs to promote the spread of literacy if it wanted to come in the league of developed nations. He, however, disapproved of India’s policy on Burma.
“The Right to Education is one of the most important laws that has been implemented in the country. India can only continue with its pace of expansion and development if it is willing to invest more in educating its citizens,” Prof. Sen stated while delivering a lecture on the “Centrality of Literacy”.
He said that Maoist extremists in India were doing the exact opposite of what their Chinese counterparts had done for China. “While Maoists here are trying to destroy educational set up in the areas dominated by them, we know that the Chinese owe their present day development and progress due to the focus that was laid on spreading literacy by Maoist activists,” Prof. Sen said. He pointed out that Japan had embarked upon its journey to becoming a developed nation by starting to spend a major amount of its budget on education.
“Unless we are able to spread literacy we will be depriving the citizens of this country of their legal rights while at the same time contribute to the spread of lack of health awareness and depriving the marginalised their right to progress,” Prof. Sen said.
He stressed on the need for India to become more assertive at the international level and take a leading role in bridging the gap between so called “divide between civilisations”. He, however, pointed out that India should not play host to leaders of countries like Burma, “As it went against the democratic principles of the country.” “As a democratic citizen I oppose this,” he stated.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the country has a “long way to go” in spreading literacy, adding that paucity of funds will not be allowed to hamper the spread of education in the country. “We still have a very long way to go in spreading education,” Dr Singh said. He said that according to Unesco’s Global Monitoring Report 2006, out of 771 million illiterates in the world, 268 million were estimated to be residing in India, which accounts for nearly one-third of the world’s non-literate.
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