The Water Cooler
A refreshing gulp of reports and ramblings from policy-central.
India targets urban youth
I was really pleased to find
this article in today's Globe and Mail. It's about a program
India is implementing in an attempt to integrate and educate some
of the country's
32 million street kids.
Reading the article, I was reminded of an issue of The Economist, I think from April 2006. The cover story was something like, "Will India fly, or flop". Of course, after reading the special section on India -- the boom of its IT and BPO sectors, the cultural and infrastructural obstacles the country faces -- I was far from satisfied the grand question The Economist had posed itself had been answered.
Having travelled in India rather extensively myself, it is a question I often ponder. Sometimes I think you have to have witnessed some of the problems any holistic development of India must ultimately face to even begin to understand the complexity of the problem. I'm quite sure I don't come close to understanding it myself.
This fall I had the great opportunity to chair a discussion with Indian Ambassador to Germany, Meera Shankar, where I tabled a number of my most pressing questions about India; urbanization, modernization -- you name it. If I came away from that discussion having learned anything it's that change in India is, almost by definition, incremental.
I guess I already knew that, in some intuitive way. Indeed, ever since my visit to India in 2002 I have watched the country's lightning development with bated breath. It's a little bit like watching the stock market: some days it just blows you away -- you want to go out and buy India a big congratulatory Hallmark card, a musical one, with a Holy Cow on the front. Other days you just shake your head in complete bafflement that you could have ever expected anything else from such a risky bid.
Well, after reading about India's Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan campaign for universal education, as it is called, I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the world's self-proclaimed "biggest democracy on earth."
The fact that the program was launched in 2001 out of inspiration from the Millennium Development Goals confirms another issue grappled with here at The Water Cooler in the past; namely, that even if completely unattainable, the MDGs serve a valuable purpose as a guiding light and motivator for global development policy.
Maybe today's the day I should buy up penny stocks in Indian IT. then again, maybe I'll sleep on it a few more months, or years.
Source:Jens Benninghofen
Reading the article, I was reminded of an issue of The Economist, I think from April 2006. The cover story was something like, "Will India fly, or flop". Of course, after reading the special section on India -- the boom of its IT and BPO sectors, the cultural and infrastructural obstacles the country faces -- I was far from satisfied the grand question The Economist had posed itself had been answered.
Having travelled in India rather extensively myself, it is a question I often ponder. Sometimes I think you have to have witnessed some of the problems any holistic development of India must ultimately face to even begin to understand the complexity of the problem. I'm quite sure I don't come close to understanding it myself.
This fall I had the great opportunity to chair a discussion with Indian Ambassador to Germany, Meera Shankar, where I tabled a number of my most pressing questions about India; urbanization, modernization -- you name it. If I came away from that discussion having learned anything it's that change in India is, almost by definition, incremental.
I guess I already knew that, in some intuitive way. Indeed, ever since my visit to India in 2002 I have watched the country's lightning development with bated breath. It's a little bit like watching the stock market: some days it just blows you away -- you want to go out and buy India a big congratulatory Hallmark card, a musical one, with a Holy Cow on the front. Other days you just shake your head in complete bafflement that you could have ever expected anything else from such a risky bid.
Well, after reading about India's Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan campaign for universal education, as it is called, I'm feeling pretty optimistic about the world's self-proclaimed "biggest democracy on earth."
The fact that the program was launched in 2001 out of inspiration from the Millennium Development Goals confirms another issue grappled with here at The Water Cooler in the past; namely, that even if completely unattainable, the MDGs serve a valuable purpose as a guiding light and motivator for global development policy.
Maybe today's the day I should buy up penny stocks in Indian IT. then again, maybe I'll sleep on it a few more months, or years.
Source:Jens Benninghofen
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