The Hindu : Opinion / Letters to the Editor : State's withdrawal

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Thursday, Nov 10, 2005

Opinion

Opinion - Letters to the Editor

State's withdrawal

The article, `The State withdraws — at what cost' (Nov. 8), has an important paragraph about private schools mushrooming all over, and continues: "The idea of `common schooling,' which is practised in most of the democratic countries, is not even seriously taken up in the public discourse." Bravo. But you have left unsaid the most important point. All "developed" countries have experienced that the vehicle for modernisation of the whole population is the people's language. English-medium education is drawing resources and creating an insidious and ever widening gulf in Indian society, while inhibiting the flow of modernising ideas through the mass of the population.

Clarence Maloney,
Kodaikanal, T.N.

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It is sad that the minimum public expenditure on education of 6 per cent of the GDP recommended by the Kotari Commission in 1966 is still a distant dream.

Balakrishnan. C,
Coimbatore

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No country can be economically powerful if its economic and social elite do not feel ashamed at the degradation of the farmers. No society can claim to be civilised if it fails to provide a life of dignity and opportunities to all its members. The increasing emotional gap between the urban elite and the rural population has become even more glaring.

T. Marx,
Karaikal, Pondicherry

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The state's role in the providing the people's basic needs has been identified well. The state should not see things from a commercial perspective.

G. Veera Reddy,
Proddatur, A.P.

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