India will be the world’s education Hub in future.

At a recent event, I dared to predict that in the foreseeable future, India will be the education hub for the world, and the best education and learning destination.
Some distinguished educators expressed their apprehension that I had perhaps gone ‘too far’ in my imagination, given the present ‘reality’ of Indian education, especially when compared to US, UK, Finland, Estonia and other digitally advanced countries of the world.
We have Chautala being confirmed a 10 year prison sentence for teacher recruitment scam, the Vyapam scam, the CBSE, NCTE and lots of more evidence of the pitiable state of Indian education.
In spite of being fully aware of this, I continue to hold my view like Galilieo said ‘ e pur si mouve’ even though he was sentenced to death. And Socrates was asked to drink hemlock as he was accused of ‘corrupting the youth’.
Coming back to the point, my first thought is that education is not the ‘right’ of the Government and it has adversely taken over education, and in due course educators will reclaim learning from the bureaucrats and politicians, who are symbols of the state power. The state does not create ‘knowledge’ does nor does it own the intellectual property rights on ‘knowledge’ but claims the sovereign right to education delivery.
Philosophers, thinkers, Scientists and men of letters all created the common body of knowledge for which the ‘State’ usurps the right to disseminate and certify competence, without any evidence of competence, solely by the coercive force of ‘law’.
We will very soon realise that learning is for the learner, and is mutually created by the teacher and learner and the State has no role in it.

As an example, when Bill Gates and Paul Simon founded Microsoft in 1975, could they have imagined that in less than 40 years, it’s CEO would be a person educated in India ( and not in the famed IITs, but an enterprise promoted by a private organisation). Incidentally Madan Mohan Malaviya who was conferred the Bharata Ratna recently, was primarily for the first private initiative in creating an Indian University.
So in the refrain of Karl Marx who exhorted the workers of the world to unite, I have the dream ( Martin Luther King) of educators of the world ( or at least this country to unite).
In fact, Science the most glorious of human achievement flourishes because it is a community of Scientists that drives it, and not bureaucrats and politicians ( except for a brief episode of Lysenko in the Soviet Union).
So once this happens, what are the drivers of success? The future of education is technology delivered, in the English language and developing higher order cognitive skills such Maths, Science and Computing. And Indians have leadership in all the above 5 elements.
This is the ‘ panchtatva’ of future education.
And I always like to be inspired by two very eminent women in confirming my beliefs.
One is Olinor Ostrom who won the 2009 Nobel Prize in economics for demonstrating that unlike Garret Hardin’s tragedy of the commons, the resources held in commons are better managed by the community itself than either by the Government or the private corporate. We are the learning community.
The other is Margaret Mead, the well known anthropologist who said ” never doubt that a few committed and passionate people can change the world. Indeed this is the way it has always been.”
I close with an inspirational quote from Mark Twain :
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”