India

India's achievements during the post-Independence era are phenomenal. The progress India has made in educational, professional, scientific, and technological spheres can neither be underestimated nor adequately summarized in a brief essay.

India's vision for its education system is reflected in the resolution passed by the UNESCO-sponsored World Conference on Higher Education in Paris, which reads:

Ultimately, higher education should aim at the creation of a new society—nonviolent and non-exploitative—consisting of highly cultivated, motivated and integrated individuals, inspired by love for humanity and guided by wisdom. (Quoted in Tiwari 2000)

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The gap between rhetoric and reality, however, is evident if one travels through India's vast cultural landscape. India is a land of contrasts. One finds impoverished schools and marginalized children as frequently as squalor and poverty. The ubiquity of deprivation, cruelty, and neglect outweighs the glamour and elegance of elite schools which nourish the chosen ones of the rich and influential classes.

The Indian educational system maintains its dynamism by interacting with international bodies that seek collaboration and partnership. India's collaborative endeavors with foreign universities and professionals, especially in the United States, Canada, most European countries, Russia, Japan, and many Afro-Asian countries, is a success story. The American Institute of Indian Studies, the U.S. Educational Foundation in India, and the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute, to mention the main ones, organize bilateral programs of international significance.

India's goal of achieving universal access and achievement, noble as it seems, will ring hollow and hypocritical unless the barriers of inequality and injustice are demolished through a thoughtfully planned program of progressive education and equal opportunity. It takes a village to raise and to destroy a child. The plight of poor children has not received the attention it merits, while the culture of privilege looms large with ominous consequences. India's cultural conundrums are mirrored in an educational system that treats people with different backgrounds in different ways. True universal achievement will require more than self-congratulatory reports and self-righteous resolutions.