I
wrote about the need for societies to take care of
their children in a past article, [1] although the
focus of that piece was on the impact of
conflicting development models on economic growth.
This article examines the role that could be
played by education in eliminating the link
between poverty and terrorism.
First off,
in all fairness, the title should be changed for
different countries in South Asia - while it
applies to Pakistan and Bangladesh, it should
perhaps read as "Maoists ate my
homework" for India and Nepal
and "The Tiger ate my homework" in Sri Lanka. The
core problem in all South Asian countries is that
basic education has been denied to a large
proportion of children, and even among those who
get education too many get the kind that fails to
prepare them for a meaningful role in society.
Government policies that all too often focus on
grandiose projects at the expense of basic
education help to perpetuate a vicious cycle of
poverty and violence.
Multilateral
agencies have paid attention to the incorporation
of children in wars around the world. [2, 3] These
reports blame both terrorist groups and
governments fighting such groups for recruiting
children into wars. However, as is typical of
these agencies, they have missed the links among
poverty, education and war. In essence, the only
way to prevent children from going to war is to
keep them in schools. An additional benefit of
that approach is that like a fire that burns out
because of a lack of oxygen, wars collapse into
their own weight when children are provided proper
education.
Vicious cycles Among
the primary causes of a lack of primary education
is the sheer economic weight thrown against
sending children to school. In rural parts of
South Asia, many families have meager access to
land and resources, and hence find that the only
way to increase production is a linear increase in
labor inputs. In simple words, that means
employing children as farm workers. This produces
entrenched resistance to the notion of sending
children into schools.
Consequently,
countries in South Asia have much less success at
urbanizing their populations as more people in
every generation are tied to tilling land. With
smaller plots come smaller incomes, thus
perpetuating the cycle described above, forcing as
it does the poor to have more children and also
making them work. The dual impact of this cycle is
of course for greater population growth,
accompanied by fewer opportunities.
In
this volatile mix of poverty and desperation, the
introduction of external agents proves
catastrophic. Wretched people are easily seduced
by terrorist groups. Some are local phenomena,
such as the Maoists guerrillas plaguing Nepal, and
parts of India. These outfits, which ostensibly
fight the landed rich on behalf of the poor but
almost invariably indulge in illegal businesses
such as smuggling and strip-mining, find ready
recruits among the poor who are attracted by the
potential for three square meals a day rather than
any ideological commitment to Marx or Mao.
The more eye-catching outfits are of
course the international terrorist groups. Even as
Islamic terrorist groups have a hardcore cadre of
well-educated radicals, their foot soldiers
invariably comprise the desperate poor. Thus it is
that al-Qaeda found a base among the dirt-poor
Afghans, who were happy to fight a war for little
cash. It is also the reason the Taliban openly
cavort with opium producers, as they need the
money to pay their cadres who are attracted by the
money rather than religious fervor. As their
recruitment in Afghanistan has dipped, the Taliban
have found a ready supply of freshly minted
"graduates" from Pakistani madrassas,
religious schools run by Islamic "charities".
Government writ does not run in much of Pakistan,
its many religious schools included.
One Tamil, two outcomes An
example of a successful program was a midday-meals
scheme pioneered in the southern Indian state of
Tamil Nadu, which caused a vast increase in school
enrollment. [4] Alongside, the state observed a
decline in its population growth, which became
more remarkable from the 1980s. Thus it is easy to
conclude that the idea of providing incentives for
children to attend school also provided the basis
for measurable improvements in the quality of
life. It is also interesting to note that India's
famed information-technology industry is based
almost entirely in the south of the country, due
mainly to ample availability of local talent.
An element of irony is apparent in the
plight of Tamil children in Sri Lanka, where many
are being pushed to fight in the separatist war
against government forces. There, the ongoing war
has displaced thousands of children. Common with
terrorist groups operating in Africa, children are
co-opted into the war often against their wills,
according to the United Nations reports cited
above. This produces a vicious cycle of terror on
the island, which will presumably last until one
or both sides to the conflict run out of cannon
fodder.
Government
indifference At the heart of the entire
mess is government indifference. First, many of
these countries do not have legal requirements for
compulsory education even if they have been
mandated. Even the Asian countries that do have
such laws on their books do not necessarily have
the ability or willingness to enforce them.
Government resource constraints present problems
in terms of both access to schools that are near
enough for villagers to send their children, and
the manpower available to prosecute families that
do not send children to schools.
South
Asian governments too often have the wrong
priorities. Pakistan spends 60% of its national
budget on defending its borders, and a less
respectable 2% on schools. India's police service
can provide thousands of cops to protect
politicians, but the country cannot hire enough
teachers for its schools. This is a remarkable gap
in a country where 5% of educated people claim to
be unemployed. Similar observations can be made
about Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, among
others.
The second type of government
indifference concerns the quality of education
provided. In particular, the inability of
governments to construct and staff schools has
forced families to send their children to
madrassas for education in turn exposing
them to radicalization. [5] Additionally, students
from such schools are all too often unemployable
in industry, thereby presenting a greater threat
to society.
Addressing the problem will
require an intelligent approach to compulsory
schooling, monitoring enrollment and modernizing
the education curriculum. There are few
technocrats around the region who see this
picture, which is what makes the situation all the
more tragic.
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