let my

country awake
the h u m a n role in development:
thoughts on the next ten years

Malcolm S. Adiseshiah
Deputy Director-General of the
United Nations Educational, Scientific
and Cultura1 0rg anization

unesco
 the h u m a n role in
development: thoughts on the next
ten years

Malcolm S.Adiseshiah
Let my country awake
Published in 1970 by the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
Place de Fontenoy, 75 Pari~-7~
Printed by Corbaz S.A., Montreux

0 Unesco 1970
Printed in Switzerland
SHC.6g/D.55/A,
 Preface

The General Conference of Unesco at its fifteenth session

authorized, within the provisions of Resolution 3.25I, thepublica-
tion of a work designed to clarify certain basic concepts concerning
the contribution of education,science and culture to development,
that might serve, in some measure, as a guide to Unescos con-
tribution to the United Nations Second Development Decade
I 970-80.
In the course of the discussion leading to the adoption of the
resolution, reference was made to many statements made by
Dr.Malcolm S. Adiseshiah, Deputy Director-Generalof Unesco,
during the First Development Decade and, in particular, to the
speeches given by him on education and dfvelopment: Oxford, United
Kingdom, I96I ; Cambridge, United Kingdom, and Tananarive,
Madagascar, 1962; Madras, India, I 963; Port Moresby,
Territory of Papua and New Guinea, 1965;Madras, India, and
Seinajoki, Finland, 1967;Leysin, Switzerland, 1968;on science
and development: Toronto, Canada, and Lagos, Nigeria, I964;
Santiago, Chile, 1965;New Delhi, India, 1966;Madras, India,
1967;Washington, United States of America, 1968; and on
culture and development: Mysore, India, I960; Pondicherry, India,
and Sheffield, United Kingdom, 1963;New Orleans, United
States of America, 1966;Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 1967;London,
United Kingdom, I968.
This book is largely based on facts and ideas presented in
these speeches and in other statements and articlesby Dr.Adiseshiah
over the same years. It also draws on official United Nations
and Unesco publications and many books on economics,develop-
ment and education. References to these publications and precise
information on the subjects and circumstances of the speeches
mentioned above are given in the bibliography at the end of this
book.

Unesco wishes to thank:

Pergamon Press, London, for granting permission to reproduce
from an article written by the author entitled HumanResources:
Education, Training and Technical Assistance appearing in
W a r on Want, Report of a Conference on the United Nations Development
Decade; Dodd,Mead &Company,New York,for granting permission
to reproduce from an article written by the author entitled Edu-
cation and Developmentappearing in Restless Nations, A Study of
World Tensions and Development; and the University of Toronto
Press for permission to reproduce from articles written by the
author entitled Welfare in Economic Thought: Some Micro-
Economic Propositions and Welfare in Economic Action : Some
Macro-Economic Conclusionsappearing in W e v a r e and Wisdom.
The book was edited,under the direction of the author,by Mr.
Michael L.Wolfert.
Finally, while gratitude is expressed to Mr. Wolfert and to the
many persons within the Unesco Secretariat, at Headquarters and
in the field,as well as to governmentofficialsand private individuals,
who generously gave much time and effort to provide statistical
and other data used in the book, the entire responsibility for the
presentation of facts, analyses, interpretations and opinions rests
with the author.
 Contents

Foreword 6y the Secretary-General of the United Nations g

Prologue
A word on where I stand II

Book One Development and the minds of men

I. Welfare in economic thought: the groundwork
of development theory 25
2. Welfare in economic action: the concept of
economic growth and development 38
3. Education and development: the h u m a n role
in economic growth 49
4. Education versus underdevelopment 70
Annex: A cause study of unemployment of
engineers in India 91
5. Education for development in the
industrialized countries I 04

Book Two Development: alpha and omega

6. The honoured servant and fateful driving
force: science for development I 25
7. Creating resources 143
8. A glimpse of the new culture perhaps: learning
to live, living to learn 157

Book Three The cross-roads

9. The crisis of m a n 183
IO. A second development decade: one that
works 208
I I. The role of the university 237
Annex: Comparative data for educational
enrolment and population 256
 Book Four Unesco at work: three places, threefunctions
and a state of mind
12. Even a blade of grass 263
13. Towards a community of thought 284
Annex I: Conventions, Agreements, and
Recommendations 30I
Annex 2: Unit costs of the Unesco Research
Centre on Social and Economic Development
in Southern Asia 304
Annex 3: Application of cost-benefit analysis
to Unescos programme of oceanographic
research 308
14.The art of the impossible 310
Epilogue
A word on what I have learned-the h u m a n
face 333

Bibliography 345

Index of persons 363

Subject index 365

 Foreword
by the Secretary-General
of the United Nations

As the United Nations reaches its first quarter-centuryof service

to mankind, we must recognize the ominous fact that civiliza-
tion, still threatened by war, inequality of living standards, over-
population and environmental pollution, continues to face the
everpresent possibility of extinction.
I pray that mans dramatic voyage to a neighbouring planet
will provide fresh momentum to the universal quest for peace on
earth. During the past twenty-fiveyears-a period of unparalleled
change in the history of mankind-we have learned that develop-
ment is the road to peace. Ifwe can successfully meet the challenge
of improving the lives of men, women and children everywhere,we
will have laid the firm and lasting foundation on which to build
the orderly world community which is our ultimate goal.
The 196os,which the General Assembly had designated as the
United Nations Decade of Development,brought forth universal
realization of the importance of the human factor in economic
and social development. As we embark on the Second Develop-
ment Decade of the seventies, we also recognize the concomitant
necessity for spiritual and moral development. One of the
greatest obstacles to world development is the moral inertia
which seems to be holding back the spirit of men in all societies.
M y hope is that by harnessing the idealism of youth and channel-
ling this powerful force into the constructive world-wide tasks of
development,we will at last have set in motion the drastic trans-
formation of traditional concepts and attitudes required by our
rapidly changing world.
In his humanistic approach to the role of education,science and
culture in the development process, Dr. Malcolm Adiseshiah has
reviewed the past in order to seek improvement in the future. The
philosophy of development set forth in this volume is a bright
beacon which should help to guide Unesco successfully into the
Second Development Decade.
The decade begins auspiciously with the designation of 1970as
International Education Year. The world communitys attention
will thus be focused on education as the key to human development.

9
Foreword

The concept of education as a lifelong, continuing process is

already widely accepted and has opened the door to profound
educational innovations which Unesco will help to develop during
the coming decade.
Let m e raise m y voice in support of the authors eloquent plea
for mankind to awaken to a better and fuller life. The physical
and intellectual resources to achieve this are at hand. If we will
only expand our imagination and let our spirit soar, the distant
dream of a just and peaceful world will become a living reality.

U Thant
New York, August 1969

IO
 Prologue

A word on where I stand

Development theory and practice, despite its technicalities,is not a
technical subject.In its deepest sense,it is philosophical: it involves
evaluation and judgement on the good society,on the good life for
men and nations. In its broadest sense, it is political: it requires
political judgement and decision,on the means and ends of social
and economic action.
The authority with which one writes on such a subjectis therefore
not a technical one. N o matter how many years of experience one
may have in working for development or in struggling to analyse
and comprehend its various aspects,one can never pretend to be an
experton development,with all that the word expertconnotes
of a wisdom, method and grasp of detail which the layman cannot
hope to obtain. O n the contrary, development is a problem which
everyone can understand, an effort in which everyone must par-
ticipate.
It is true, however,that in writing on development I a m able to
bring to bear not only m y own experience as an administrator,in
various capacities, of Unescos programmes of development assist-
ance,but also those ofthe entire Secretariatthrough more than twen-
ty yearsofdevelopmentefforts.As Deputy Director-General,Ishould
add,my point ofviewis necessarily an institutionalone:my own think-
ing is necessarily a function of the policy of the Organization and
of the United Nations system as a whole, as it has evolved over the
years; my own convictions are in profound agreement with those
which Unesco has come to represent. Nevertheless it is m y own
thinking which will be set out in these pages and m y own convictions.
I write now, as I have always spoken and written, as a person, for
I know no other way to speak.
The statement I wish to make is thus a personal one, and to
explain its multiple sources and inspirations I must go back to the
great realities which have made up so much ofm y life-the realities
ofUnesco,of India,and ofthe science of economics. I must go back,
I1
Let m y country awake

with something of a shudder, to the beginnings of m y interest in

economics some four and a half decades ago. I must go back to St.
Pauls College, Calcutta University, and the Christian College in
Tambaram,Madras,where Iwasnourished andcherished,and where
Iwas given the spiritual support and material means for experiment-
ingwith educationasthemotiveforcefordevelopingtheruralcountry-
side and its wonderful people;the villages ofBengal and South India
with their rural service centres where w e worked out the economics
of hand-pound rice, hand-madepaper, hand-loomed textiles,crop
rotation and rural credit, rural medicine and sanitation,adult lit-
eracy and curricular reform. It was there that I found the testing
groundforthemany ideas and plans that I carried with m e to Unesco
in Paris and from there to the four corners of the earth.Back of these
greatinstitutionswhere Itaughtis m y universityAlma Mater,Loyola
College in Nungambakkam, and behind it Voorhees School and
College in Vellore where I gained the knowledge,insights and per-
spectives, intellectual and spiritual, which Christian educational
institutions in India have contributed to the hundreds of thousands
of their sons and daughters.
M y training and research under the wise guidance of Father
Basenach and Professor P.J.Thomas in Madras,Benoy Kumar and
Nalini Ranjan Sarkar in Calcutta, Percy Barrat Whale and John
Maynard Keynes in London and Cambridge,led to curious intel-
lectual oscillations. Starting from a strong analytical bias, with its
heavy concentration on what we used to call IndianEconomics,
the pendulum swung to one of pure theory,where ends were taken
as given and means limited. All interest was then concentrated on
the elaboration of theories and theoreticalmodels which defined the
ways in which scarce resources could be employed as between fixed
uses,so that their ratios of marginal substitutability or productivity
would be equal or near equal.
As this period was also coterminous with the last stages of m y
countrys struggle for national, political and economic liberation,
however, side by side with this abstract and rigorous concentration
on pure theory and static models, I was engaged, with m y fellow
economists in the university,in work on planning the future indus-
trialization ofIndia (and the Madras State), and the practical task of
developinga smallruraldevelopmentlaboratory.These two taskshad
nothing to do with work on theory,and therewas a curious dichotomy
at this stage between thought and action,between the lifeofthe mind
and that of the spirit. I recall attending two meetings of the Indian
Economic Association in the pre-independencedays,when the ab-

I2
 Prologue

sence of this tension between theory and practice in the leadership

of the Association led some of us, who by this time had earned the
sobriquet of YoungTurks,to stage a revolt at the annual elections
and get ourselves elected.
I do not know ifit is a mark ofsenility or wisdom,but I have since
gradually come to the conclusion that for the economist,neither are
the ends given,nor the means limited.I believe that the economist,
who has by definition specialized knowledge about the alternative
use of resources, has also, by the very nature of his knowledge, a
special responsibility to advise on the ends for which resources are
used: is it not better then to acknowledge openly that ends and
means are inextricably interlinked and that the mind ofman cannot
be compartmentalized?I know also that what we have come to call
development economics rests on the fact that resources are not
immutably limited but expandable.Every day I advise govern-
ments, at their insistent request,on ends, and I do this as an econ-
omist because I know little else. Every day I participate, in some
small way, in decisions which aim at expanding the sum total of
available resources, and to this too, I bring m y economics equip-
ment. For the economist,beyond all else,is concerned with advising
on ends,whether they be those of an affluent economy or one shat-
tered by war and drought, whether they be those of a scientific-
industrial society divided by the immensity of its own growth and
power or of a subsistence economy enfeebled by its own poverty.
And he is engaged not only in examining the alternative uses of
resources,but also, and more significantly today, in the devising of
resource-expandingprogrammes and techniques.
The concept of development has emerged,as we shall observe in
succeeding chapters, from the confrontation of welfare theory and
the science of economics in a world characterized by accelerating
political, social and economic change on the one hand, and a
radical growth of interdependence on the other. Yet it is a concept
which goes far beyond the traditional concerns of economic theory
and even practice.When we speak ofdevelopment,we enter a realm
which, although it cannot be charted without the use of economic
tools,cannot be altogether defined nor fully comprehended through
the use of economics alone.
Philosophy was once the queen of sciences, the discipline by
which,it was felt,a man or a nation could come to understand what
should be done in life,and what should not be done.And philosophy
dealt above all with the question of values, of what was important
and what was not,of what the good life on this earth consisted,and
Let m y country awake

of what it did not. I do not pretend to be a philosopher and yet I

recognize that this is precisely the realm one must enter in analysing
development and advising on its means and ends.
I venture into it,I need hardly add,with a great deal of timidity,
for philosophy has become the science,par excellence, which no one
seems any longer to comprehend, the realm of discourse where no
one any longer seems to agree.Yet I do so also with conviction and
strength:with conviction because I know very well what m y beliefs
are;they have been forged in m y mind and heart and spirit through
m y life in India and m y work for Unesco, and through Unesco for
all its Member States. It would be idle for m e to change those
beliefs at the very moment when the General Conference of the
Organization has given m e the opportunity to state them. And I
will analyse and define and argue for those beliefs with all the
strength which I can summon because the moment in which we live
demands strength of each of us and all of us, because it seems to m e
no longer possible to avoid considering the political and economic
life of men in terms of the good life for man and the good society
which could pernlit such a life,and because above all it is no longer
possible to postpone the search for those actions which we can all
take, alone or together, to free, to teach, to discover, to build, to
heal and comfort and make whole.
But that is enough about myself: I want now to turn to the anti-
memoire side of this introductory chapter, and in the interest of
brevity, to remain rigorously selective. Modern economic thought
and practice is dominated by some remarkable personalities,many
of whom I have met; a description of their role would fill pages. I
would like, as briefly as possible, however, to refer to just a dozen
of these unforgettable encounters.
Arthur Lewiss expos6 of growth as a function of the 5 per cent
savers moving up to IO per cent.
Theodor Schultz describing the economics of human capital
formation and the methods of agricultural resurgence.
Strumilin and Harbison demonstrating,both for their own coun-
tries and others,that education as a major contributor to the devel-
opment of human resources has one of the highest pay-offs of any
given unit of investment.
Nehru explaining his view that industry and the application of
science is the lead sector for Indiasclimb out of its poverty morass
and stressing the need to mobilize the countrystremendous human
potential for the development task. Unescocan help in our efforts
to educate our people, to rouse them to life, he once told me. If
 Prologue

that succeeds,we need nothing else. For we will have 400 million
heads and hearts, 800 million feet and hands and they will build
themselves all the roads,railways,schools,hospitals and homes and
grow all the food and cloth we need.
Raul Prebisch and Gunnar Myrdal drawing the pointed lessons
from the rich/richer- poor/poorer nations dichotomy into which
our world is increasingly being divided.
Julius Nyerere and Sekou Tour6 setting forth and demonstrating
a doctrine of basic autonomous development which springs from a
nationswill and resources.
Eugene Black and George Woods trying to prod development
assistance out of its doldrums, not out of any fear that it will be
abandoned, but to ensure that the rich/richer quarter of our world
does enough, does it right and does it on time.
Paul Hoffman,the architect of post-war European development,
drawing upon the declaration of the Encyclical Populorum Progressio,
in which development is described as the new name for peace, to
point out that between 1958 and 1967only one country in the per
capita income bracket of $750 a year or more underwent a major
internal upheaval, whereas 87 per cent of the countries with per
capita income of $100or less averaged two major outbreaks of
violence per country.
Finally,among the many thousand encounters with men influen-
cing economic thought and social action,Unesco Director-General
RenC Maheus expos6 is moving: that it is not underdevelopment
and poverty that the people of the world cannot continue to
bear,for they have long been used to it,but the continued existence
and aggravation ofinequalities in development,so glaring that they
become inequities which patience cannot explain nor resignation
overcome,a burden on human conscience and a threat of the final
conflagration.

What has been Unescos experience in striving to promote devel-

opment? In the chapters which follow,and which attempt to define
development in broad and compreheiisible terms and situate the
crucial human role,the role of education,science and culture in the
over-alldevelopment effort, I believe that the Organizations col-
lective experience,and the growth and evolution ofits concepts and
working methods,will become clear.
When Unesco began its development programmes, however,the
situation was by no means so clear-cutas it is today.
The launching, in July 1950,of the United Nations Technical

5
Let my country awake

Assistance Programme threw Unesco quite abruptly into the mael-

strom of the development effort. Amonth later, on the first day of
August, I flew from Paris to Lebanon and sat down to discuss for
four days,with the Minister of Education and the Director-General
of his Ministry, the role which Unesco could play in assisting
Lebanese development.Neither they nor I,I must confess,had any
idea ofwhat the technical assistanceprogramme was,how it defined
development or what Unesco could do about it. W e knew only that
w e had three baskets before us,the basket ofeconomic development,
the basket of Unescos broad, multifarious programme, and most
important of all the basket of what Lebanon needed and desired.
W e spent our four days together discussing educational and
scientific problems, the school and university situation and agreed,
finally,that what was needed was a good educationist to advise the
Government and work with the Ministry. I then sat down in the
Ministry ofEducation and typed the request which the Minister and
I had discussed and agreed upon. The Minister and I signed the
basic agreement for Unesco Technical Assistance which I had
brought with m e from Paris together with the Annex to that agree-
ment which set out the mutual obligationsforprovision of a Unesco
EducationalAdviser.O n completionofall this,at the end ofthe day,
I cabled the then Director-General,Jaime Torres Bodet, to say:
TodayTechnical Assistance has started in Lebanon.I went on to
Iraq,where the same thing happened,and following that to Iran,
Pakistan,India,Ceylon,Burma, Thailand and Indonesia.When I
returned to Paris, Unescos technical assistance programme had
indeed begun.
There are two lessons which I draw from this first, rather helter-
skelter beginning. The first was that if one waited for rigorous and
detailed definitions and rational planning before beginning to act,
as like as not nothing would happen. In most underdeveloped coun-
tries, one must accept an ad hoc and pragmatic approach when one
wants to start something. Once an effort has begun and a commit-
ment made, on the other hand, rationality and planning become
more and more necessary.
The second lesson was that the basketswhich I mentioned
-economic development and Unescos programmes-have multi-
ple and rich interrelationships. Education, science, culture and
communication are the ways in which a society or an individual
person comes to fruition.They are openings,doors,windows,moun-
tain passes, not corridors, not fixed systems. They represent a way
inward into the heart and mind of man, and a way outward toward

16
 Prologue

that civilizationof the universalwhich Rend Maheu chose as the

title and hypothesis of the book ofhis speeches andpensdes published
in 1966.Surely they are among the deepest rewards and most un-
contested blessings which economic growth can give to a people:
the possibility of enriching their lives beyond production and con-
sumption,beyond the day of labour in the fields and the perennial
darkness after sundown;the assurance that they will share in the
benefits of scientific progress;the knowledge that their children will
know what other children know.
Yet there is another side ofthe coin,the production side. Without
entering at this point into the various theoretical and practical con-
cepts which form the basis of the ideas set forth in the following
chapters,I should neverthelessstate that education and science are
not merely consumptionitems: they are also production factors.
They contribute directly and massively to all development efforts.
Indeed they are among its strongest and most irreversible driving
forces. Unesco itself has come a long way in learning and teaching
this fundamental lesson since those early days of enthusiasm and
some natural confusion.
The Organization has moved from the first, faltering efforts at
providing technical assistance to a greatly expanded operational
effort to assist the developmentefforts ofMember States.It has done
much to bring home to the governments and peoples of the world
what is at stake in the development struggle. And most of all it has
served as a focal point for the promotion and planning,at the inter-
national, regional and national levels,of the development of edu-
cation and science within the framework of over-alldevelopment.
Almost ten years after the first mission to negotiate technical
assistance projects in Asia, the representatives of Asian Member
States met in Karachi to forge a regional plan for the development
of education in their countries;the decision was indeed a historic
one. It represented the first such regional plan, and as such a great
turning-point in the history of the newly independent countries.
Like every such turning-point,this one was not without conflict and
drama. The conference nevertheless adopted a staged and targeted
plan for expenditure and expansion,the Karachi Plan for Universal
Primary Education for all Asian children by 1980.Five years later
this Plan,adapted and modified to meet the needs which experience
in meeting the targets had revealed, and further quantified, was
reaffirmed in the Asian Model approved by the Conference of
Asian Ministers of Education and Ministers responsible for Eco-
nomic Planning meeting at Bangkok in 1965.
Let m y country awake

But most of all, I believe, the achievement of the Karachi Con-

ference was psychological and political. It was a declaration to the
world and to the peoples of Asia that political stability would not
mean a continuation of the economic and social status quo, that
change and progress was not an act of God or the result of external
intervention, but the fruit of national purpose and determination.
As I mentioned in my opening address,a friend of Asia had said to
m e shortly before the Conference: Inyour relationswith the West,
when it comes to economic matters, you Asians seem to suffer from
an inferiority complex, and so feel you can do nothing without
Western aid;when it comes to cultural matters, you seem to suffer
from a superiority complex,leading you to look on us patronizingly.
The result of both attitudes is a tragic condition of Asian inaction,
in strong contrast to the dynamic and explosive revolutionary activi-
ties which ought to characterize the billions of awakened human
beings inhabiting the continent.
It was this rather harsh judgement on Asia and Asians which the
Conference set out to contradict and which the common actions of
Asian Member States to achieve the goals fixed by the Conference
did succeed indeed in contradicting.
Shortly after the Karachi Conference,the then Director-General
of Unesco, Vittorino Veronese, travelled to Manila to attend the
third Asian Conference of National Commissions for Unesco. H e
was confronted with the just-formulated Karachi Plan with its
estimated cost, over the twenty-year period it covered, of some
$54,000million, including a IO per cent external assistance com-
ponent. It was probably this latter aspect of the Plan, with its
implications for their own foreign aid programmes, that seemed to
frighten the representatives of many of the major aid-giving coun-
tries who met immediately with Mr.Veronese, explained their
political, technical and financial objections to the Plan and forced
him into a position in which he had to declare in his address to the
Conferencethat the Karachi Planwas not a plan but simply a survey
of Asian educational needs. The National ,CommissionConference
responded by endorsing the Planin no uncertain terms,and between
that time and the elaboration and approval of the Asian Model re-
ferred to previously,wherein an annual educational expenditure of
more than $4,000 million is recorded for the continent, i.e. a
minimum of more than $80,000million for the twenty-yearperiod,
much water has flown under the Asian development bridge.
Despite the differences in educational strategy, pertaining to
particular economic and educational situations,the similar plans

18
 Prologue

adopted by the Arab States later in 1960 and by the African and
Latin American countries in 1961and 1962 respectively were no
less ringing declarations in political and psychological terms. They
were declarations that political independence was going to mean
economic development, and that economic development, in turn,
was going to be founded on the expansion of education, on the
awakening of the human mind and spirit,on the liberation of the
peoples of the world from their age-oldignorance and poverty.
The twenty-yearAddis Ababa EducationalPlan,which called for
an increase in educational expenditures from $500 million
in 1960 to $2,500 million in 1980,began by stating that:
The Conference of African States on the Development of
Education in Africa has given serious and detailed consideration
to several important matters. It has made a penetrating analysis
of Africas educational needs for economic and social develop-
ment. It has studied the interrelationships of education and
economics and affirmed that the strong financial support of
education in Africa will prove to be a high-gradeinvestment both
for African States and for external agencies. It has noted the
importance of reform of school curricula and teaching materials
at all levels.
The Tananarive Conference on African Higher Education,which
followed it, concluded:Africaninstitutions of higher education are
at once the main instrument of national progress,the chiefguardian
of the peoples heritage and the voice of the people in the inter-
national councils of technology and scholarship. This triple role,
progressive, conservative and collaborative, is an excitingly chal-
lenging one. The Tananarive Conference is confident that African
higher education can and will rise successfully to this challenge.
The Latin American Conference in turn concluded its Santiago
Declaration with the words: In adopting this declaration, the
States participating in the Santiago Conference solemnly confirm
their decision to make the educational development and accelerated
economic growth of each and all of them additional factors in
achieving, within a real equality of opportunity, not only the
material prosperity of the peoples they represent, but also full self-
realization in independence and greater social justice, in order to
make an increasingly solid contribution to the common task
demanded by world peace and human civilization.
From these first beginnings, contested and sometimes even de-
rided as they were, to the successive conferences at which develop-
ment of education and subsequently the ;implantation of science
Let m y country awake

and technology and their application to development were pro-

moted and planned, a great step forward was taken toward the
effective realization of the pledges contained in the United Nations
and Unesco charters, toward a world in which those who are dis-
possessed can hope to achieve social justice in all areas of life not
by grace or favour, but as a matter of right.
That step was not taken quickly,nor without effort and struggle.
Yet agreement among the nations ofthe world on real issues is never
easy, never automatic, and I could not but see the 1968 Interna-
tional Conference on Educational Planning as the crown and
triumph ofall those patient,untiring individual efforts. It was there,
for the first time, that more than ninety governments were repre-
sented, delegates from rich societies facing the challenging tasks
imposed by affluence and from poor societies with equally urgent
but primordial tasks;the representatives of socialist countries where
planning is built in as a way oflife, and from non-socialistcountries
where planning as a function emerges through a process of discus-
sion and definition; the educators, planners and economists from
countries with centralized education structures and from those
where the educational plan is conceived and supervised by the local
community, and sometimes by the individual school or college;it
was there that all these many-sided,wide-ranginggroups were able
to reach agreement on a concept of development, a strategy for
educational progress,a guideline to educational planning and some
fundamental lessons for Unesco, the United Nations system and all
their Member States.

When I first committed to memory, in secondary school,Tagores

inspiring Gitanjali, from which I have taken the title of this book,
it seemed to m e a call for m y country, India,to awake.And was it
not for an awakening ofits multicoloured,astonishing people,repre-
senting almost all the races and creeds of the world, holding in
balance the extremes of poverty and riches, of the ancient and the
new, that India had struggled for its independence, that its great
and beloved leader,Jawaharlal Nehru, cried out more than two
decades ago, as the chimes of midnight rang out: Longyears ago
we made a tryst with destiny, and now comes the time when we
shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure but very
substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour when the whole
world sleeps,India will awake to life and freedom.
Yet as the years have passed, as I have come, through m y work
at Unesco, to visit almost all its 125 Member States,and striven to

20
 Prologue

serve them in their development efforts,I have come to realize that

such an awakening cannot take place unless all awake, that no
individual person or nation can develop and prosper unless all those
around him do so also, unless all strive together to reach the com-
mon goal of peace and a better life for the peoples of the world.
There have been disappointments in the development effort,and
I will be the first to recognize them. There have been failures to
agree,failures to change,failures to serve. There have been prom-
ises which have proven empty, declarations which have rung false,
pledges which have gone unfulfilled. The United Nations system
which seemed to promise a new world order has not yet emerged as
the dominant force in international relations. The development
effort and the struggle for human rights and social justice it has
promoted for so long, have not yet become the spearhead linking
all humanitysimmense forces in the struggle for the future.
These have been bitter lessons for m e personally to learn. Yet
over the years they brought patience again and the hope that w e or
others after us can make the United Nations system the instrument
of human progress and betterment that the governments of the
world have pledged it to be, that w e or others after us can make that
system work in the spirit and not merely the letter of its laws.
It is m y fervent wish that m y readers will come to share that
hope, and in the pages which follow I shall try to set forth its foun-
dations, explain its rationale,define its limits and perspectives. In
doing so,I do not speak for Unesco or the United Nations so much
as Unesco and the United Nations speak through me. And they
speak to no tlite group,no special category of countries or peoples.
They speak to each human person and to all.
Education is a mutual exchange,not a one-wayflow. It is a dia-
logue, a confrontation,a shared effort which rewards all who are
engaged in it. So,too, development is a mutuality; it is global; it
requires a common purpose and struggle, not intervention from
without or exclusion from within. It is thus that when the United
Nations and Unesco speak about education and development,
about the human role in economic growth and progress, they can-
not, like some others,lift their voices only to the underdeveloped
or only to the developed countries, only to those who possess or
only to those who are the dispossessed of our world.
For there is a single theme which runs through the chapters
which follow, which appears and reappears through the diversity
of their subjects and the multiplicity of disciplines which they call
upon to make their point. There is a single theme which echoes

21
Let m y country awake

and re-echoes through the emergence of development theory and

the first decade of efforts to put it into practice, which threads
through and links together all of developments multiple economic,
social and political aspects. It is the same theme which, I believe,
will return again and again like a leitmotive throughout the decade
of development efforts that lies ahead. It is not one man but all
men; it is not one country but all countries which must awake.
It is true that we cannot yet perceive, in all its plenitude and
concrete reality, the country of the future,that w e cannot yet
envision in their entirety the practical measures and arrangements
which will make a reality of that country of brotherhood and com-
mon effort which has been written into our charters and pledged
by the governments of the world. Yet this is the call of the United
Nations and Unesco. It is a call to all governments and all peoples.
It is uttered in their own languages.It can be heard in their own
voices. And I believe there is no greater honour that could be
bestowed upon m e than the possibility of adding m y voice to
their voices, to say with them again and again until finally we are
heard:Let my country awake.

22
 Book One

Development
and the minds of men
Chapter I Welfare in economic
thought: the groundwork of
development theory

It is not wonder (which is the

starting-point of philosophy) but
rather the social enthusiasm which
revolts from the sordidness of mean
streets and joylessness of withered
lives, that is the beginning of
Economic Science.A.C.Pigou (The
Economics of Welfare).
Welfare has provided the foundation for much of economic analysis
and thought.Ofthe different avatars it has taken at different points
in time and space and history,development is but the most recent,
and the most encompassing.
The outer shell of welfare has been coated and recoated, the
inner kernel has remained intact. It dominates economic analysis to
the point where it is part of the warp and woof of things economic.
It appears as wealth (Adam Smith, H.Sidgwick), as pleasure or
huppiness (J.Bentham), as utility (A.C.Pigou), as value and price
(D.Ricardo), as money or real income (J.M.Keynes), as ophelemity or
the preferred or chosen position (V.Pareto,D.Little),as aesthetic realiza-
tion (K. Marx), as the or astateofequilibrium (L.Walras,A.Marshall),
as the or an optimum (A.Bergson), and finally, as development and
growth (W. W.Rostow,A. Lewis, H.Myint).
The idea of development and growth is thus both new and part
of a continuing tradition. It shares with all the various reflections
of welfare I have mentioned three basic traits. The first is the at-
tempt to seek out, to understand and to describe the laws which
characterize men in one particular slice of their existence, in the
ordinary business of life,whether it be Robinson Crusoes or that
undertaken on the island of Mauritius, whether it be that of the
representative firm or of Milorg. The second trait leads beyond this
stage of description,understanding and analysis,to an inquiry into
the bases of these various embodiments ofwelfare-What is wealth?
Whence comes happiness? Should this be of value? Can one
move from one position ofoptimum to another,through a more equi-
table distribution of income? Can the preferred positions of two

25
Let my country awake

individuals or groups take into account the balancing or compensa-

tion ofincreased pain and disutility caused to one and added pleasure
and happiness accruing to another? O n what other bases than those
usually called economic are growth rates dependent? And it is at
this point that we begin to glimpse the third common trait: the
vagueness at the edges ofthe economistsuniverse of discourse,lead-
ing in one direction toward a larger synthesis in the world of
thought,and in the other toward more decisive causes in the world
of action.
Economics is concerned with the ordinary business of life in a
somewhat narrow and limited sense.It is usually restricted to those
sectors which can be brought under the measuring rod of money or
some other such quantitative criterion. Yet mans life, even in its
ordinary business,is not so limited. When we try to comprehend it
fully,economics must take its place alongside ethics, aesthetics, psy-
chology,jurisprudence, sociology,history,anthropology,linguistics
and philosophy, providing a solid base perhaps,but nothing more.
When we try, on the other hand, to improve the life of man, w e
must turn not only to the other human and social sciences,but also
to legitimate political authority and to those great political move-
ments which have characterized our epoch and indeed all epochs in
mans history,and which have made economics their handmaiden.
It is for this reason that the first trait-that of discovering and
describing regular, repetitive relationships between human actions
in terms of consumption,production, savings,income and trade-
constitutes the largest sector of economic thought. It is one way of
beginning at the beginning, and I thought it only reasonable to
begin m y analysis of the idea of development by examining mans
welfare from this point of view.
One of the principal objects of economic analysis is to study what
conditions are necessary and/or sufficient in order that all three
economic elements which make up mans daily life, i.e. consump-
tion, production and saving, are at a point of optimum, that is a
point above or below which he will be worse off.
In terms of this approach,man is seen as continually striving,in
all his actions,to reach a position ofpreference or point ofoptimum.
This is an elementalfact of welfare which can be tested by observa-
tion, and which can lead to valuable results provided one remem-
bers that, because human beings are complex, as by extension are
their motives, only a small part of human welfare is involved.
As a boy I used to watch m y parentsdaily actions with consider-
able fascination.M y father thought he had a penchant for bargain-

26
 Welfare in economic thought

ing, and I soon realized that he never bought anything-linen

textile to wear,a basket ofmangoes to eat-unless the seller reduced
his price by 25 per cent. M y mother, on the other hand, did not
like bargaining. The result was that,when the shopkeeperssaw m y
father, they would mark up the article. Linen costing one rupee
would be offered to him for two. After hard bargaining m y father
would buy it for one and a half rupees. M y mother would go to the
same shop some time later and purchase the same linen for one
rupee. Both m y parents felt that their respective positions could
not be improved by any other course of action.
Similarly,m y father was a great saver and m y mother was steeped
in acts of charity, and both felt themselves in a preferred position
when they postponed present consumption-my father by putting
away a rupee for the house he was to build, m y mother by giving
away a rupee to a needy friend. And there was the same kind of
balance-stemming from different subjectivecriteria,between work
and leisure. M y father, after a hard days work in the university,
insisted on personally supervising the contractor who built our
house at a cost of 40,000rupees. M y mother later built a similar
house by choosing a good architect,and staying at home,at a cost
of 35,000 rupees. I realized even in those days that, although m y
father paid 5,000 rupees more and expended time and effort in
supervising the contractor, he felt himself to be in a position no
worse off than that ofmy mother;m y parentsrespective choices had
been between various alternatives of work and leisure and these
were the important and determining elements.
In any case, analysis of the causes necessary and/or sufficient to
reach a point of optimum, involves a micro-economic approach
which might well be introduced in easy stages. For the sake of sim-
plicity, we shall eschew the usual mathematical tools, sacrifice a
certain precision and, in the interest of clarity, shall assume that
there are no important or violent changes in the environment,in
population,in tastes,in the variety or, at least in the initial stages,
quantity of goods and services, and in the means of producing and
distributing them. Under these conditions, the individual is better
off when, after examining the various alternative uses and combi-
nations confronting him,he chooses that distribution of his re-
sources which, he feels,places him in the best possible position. It
will now be possible to elaborate a series of propositions derived
from welfare-propositions that seem tautological,but which both
describe and govern our daily actions.
The first proposition relates to consumption,that is, to man seen

27
Let m y country awake

as a consumer-as a person who enjoys life by using up a certain

amount of goods and services to meet his various needs. It states
simply that people get the most out of their limited resources when
they distribute them among their various uses in such a way that,
at the margin, one resource can be replaced by another. This pro-
position is usually demonstrated in the familiar box diagram which
shows,in relation to the curves, that no movement from the tan-
gency position will place the two persons concerned in a more
preferred position.What is so demonstrated for two persons engaged
in buying and selling and consumption of two goods is equally true
for any number of persons and any number of goods. Thus, at the
margin, the rate of preference between any two goods for any indi-
vidual is accurately reflected by the price ratios of those goods.
Let us assume that our consumer prefers apples to oranges, that
is, he would pay more for one apple than for one orange, but that
in the market oranges are twice as dear as apples. Then our con-
sumer will buy apples up to the point at which he would be pre-
pared to exchange two apples for one orange, because up to that
point he rates apples more highly than the market. Moreover,it can
be demonstrated that this first condition can only be fulfilled when
every consumer faces the same price for each product, as otherwise
there would be scope for improving the allocation of goods among
consumers. Thus my father and mother would both have been
better off,if, say through an intermediary,m y mother sold her cloth
to m y father at 1.12 rupees (1.5 less 25 per cent). Differences in
tastes are reflected not in differentprices, but in different quantities
purchased at the given price.
The second proposition relates to the work each person has to do.
Individuals and groups aim at attaining a similar optimum position
with regard to the quantity and kind of work done and the leisure
time available.Thus each person will aim at equating at the margin
the amount of leisure he would like with the extra amount of work
he would otherwise perform. Here then is our second proposition.
People get most out of this alternativeofwork and leisure by equat-
ing the rates of their replacement at the margin. An optimum posi-
tion requires that preferences at the margin between work and
leisure should be accurately measured by the returns accruing from
such work.
The third proposition refers to savings. What guides the actions
of the individual group or community in saving and in investing
such savings? Here again each person tries to equate at the margin
his present and future consumption of any given good or service.
28
 Welfare in economic thought

This means that,at the margin, a sum of money in hand or a fixed

deposit in the bank or a share are substitutable.
Whether money is saved or spent is determined by price and in-
terest movements. This principle holds for goods and services, as
well as for bank deposits and shares, and applies to all individuals
in the community.And this is the basis of the third welfare propo-
sition: individuals will be in the position of optimum when their
units of savings and investments are, at the margin, substitutable
not only among themselves, but even more so in relation to alter-
native current consumption possibilities. At this point,their rates of
preference as between saving and investment on the one hand,and
present consumption on the other are accurately reflected by the
rate of interest.
The fourth proposition concerns production ofgoods and services.
Here we must abandon one ofour many assumptions-the existence
ofa fixed quantity ofgoods and services-and consider the optimum
position with regard to goods and services,if their quantities can be
increased or decreased. Any given volume of production is the
result of the factors employed in producing them, such as land,
labour and capital (there are other factors involved which will be
discussed later). Hence optimum production will be attained when
the ratio of marginal products of the factors are the same, in all
cases where they are employed. This means that, where the ratio
is lower in one use,the factors in that use will move out to a higher
use.
This simple rule of thumb is, of course, subject to many welfare
qualifications.In the case of the human factor,labour,there are the
complications of the work/leisurealternative occurring when a shift
from one employment to another is involved,and in respect ofindi-
vidual preference for particular jobs.A n extreme case was a society
I once visited which was governed in its daily life by the age-old
wisdom: Ifever the urge to work comes over you,just lie down and
the feeling will pass away. The alternatives here are, of course,
never-ending and complex. Further,in moving factors,the substi-
tutability of the ratio of their production at the margin is not the
only decisive element. There are side effects such as decreasing the
supply of some other commodity, adding to mental confusion or
enjoyment through,for example, modern advertising,opening up
new avenues of employment or diminishing the filth and noise of
modern urban life. All this must be weighed in.
Further optimum production requires that the price of products
be equal to their marginal cost and that the price ratio of products
Let m y country awake

be proportional to their marginal displacement costs. In so far as

there is a price-marginalcost differential in any product, free com-
petition,so far assumed,is absent. Questions of the public share in
the differential, taxation, arise. Also, taking into account the side
effects referred to earlier, the possibilities of expanding the produc-
tion of goods and services which give off positive effects, and con-
tracting those that produce negative ones, arise in relation to any
welfare criterion.
These changes in the production schedulewill involve changes in
the distribution of goods and services as between individuals in the
community.Heretofore we have ignored such changes but now can
no longer do so. The welfare concept,seen in the light of optimum
production and its distribution effects,involves quite a few possibil-
ities which I can only indicate broadly and without repeating their
many qualifications. If production can be increased and no one
made worse offas a result, an optimum position has clearly been
reached.Even ifthe total volume ofproduction is increased by only
a single good,and provided no one is worse off after the fact,a new
optimum will have been attained. This then is our fourth proposi-
tion. A n increase in the volume of a communitystotal production,
whether it be brought about by increasing some goods without
decreasing others, or by shifting production factors to sectors in
which prices are higher, is an optimum position to the community,
provided the share of the goods accruing to the poorer section of the
community is not reduced.
The fifth proposition relates to distribution and redistribution,
and arises from the limitations and obstacles to the realization of
optimum conditions of consumption,work, savings and production,
as previously elaborated. In dealing with consumption,for instance,
we treated people as independent units whose preferences depended
on their individual stocks and their isolated consumption patterns.
But individuals in society are interrelated as consumers, and a pre-
ferred position to an individual or group often involves less preferred
positions for others. It might follow that, for society as a whole, a
counterbalance of, for example, some sort of rationing might be
needed.Similarly,earlier assumptionsofunchanged and unchanging
tastes,perfect knowledge of the future and time preferences as well
as the many side effects of the work of one individual as compared
to another,need now to be modified. Inbrief,theoptimum conditions
described so far must be modified from the point of view ofdistri-
bution, as technically such optima could be attained even with
zero incomes for certain individuals or sections in the community.
 Welfare in economic thought

Again, under certain rather limited conditions, an increase in

production will be a preferred position to the community,whether
it results from expanding or subsidizing those sectors which are
functioning under conditions of increasing returns to the factors
employed,or from taxing or in other ways curtailing those sectors
which are functioning under the opposite condition,i.e. of dimin-
ishing returns to the factors invested. More precisely,the welfare of
a community might involve expanding those activities and indus-
tries where the ratios ofprice to marginal cost are above the average
and contracting those whose ratio of price to marginal cost is below,
leaving aside the side effects of these activities and industries. This
leads to the presumption, again under certain conditions,that any
form offurther direct taxation which replacesindirect taxes,certain
public utility undertakings such as roads, railways,bridges, water
supply,parks and museums, which are financed from direct taxes,
and/orwhose price is below marginal cost,will have similar effects
on distribution. In fact,in the case of some of these public utilities
where marginal cost is zero or near nil, their utilization is free, as
in the case ofparks,roads and water,bridges and museums,in most
cases. In the case where a public enterprise has positive costs,if its
price structure is to cover its total costs then,from the point of view
of optimum distribution, it must be multi-priced-charging a
higher price for the richer members of the community and a lower
one for the poorer.
This reasoning could be even further generalized from the point
of view of welfare. In extreme cases,if any gainful economic organ-
ization of the community causes gains to some of its members and
losses to others,an appropriate pricing,subsidizingor taxing policy
will tend to compensatethe losers for their losses,particularly ifthey
are the poorer sections of the community. Our fifth proposition is
thus that any situation (such as those set forth above) which results
in increasing the net share ofits poorer section without diminishing
the total volume of a communitys production is part of that
communitysoptimum position.
The sixth proposition relates to national income. At this point
another of our assumptions must be dropped-that the factors used
in the total volume of production are a fixed quantity. N o w we
should recognize a certain amount of elasticity in the supply of
factors which go into the production of the total volume of goods
and services.Further,the implicit assumption referred to and modi-
fied to some extent earlier,namely the absence of free competition
and the presence of various forms of monopolistic organization and

3
Let my country awake

restrictive associationsin the units ofproduction,is now given force.

In computing the national income and making inter-temporal
comparisons of the national income,a well-wornfriend,in the form
of the appropriate index number, is normally used-with due
caution engendered by all that has been said and written on
unreliability and the large margins of approximation in all social
accounting and economic statistics.The index

or

simply states that value of the national income in Period 2 is not

less than the income in Period I, valued at P2 (i.e.current) prices,
and that value of the national income in Period I is less than the
real income in Period 2, valued at P1 (i.e. base year) prices. Its
meaning is tautological.
The composition of the national income on the other hand is
quite another matter. It includes both individual and collective
goods and services,together with such factors as labour and capital,
which can be expanded in accordance with propositions similar to
those set forth concerning the production of goods,provided distri-
bution effects are not worsened. Moreover obsolescence, upkeep,
and replacementof capital must be taken into account in order that
the computation of national income may include such parts of the
total output as represent a net addition to the communityscapital,
whether under public or private auspices. In this manner,it will be
possible to reckon in the national income all savings in the com-
munity from private corporations and public sources,and,a quantity
vastly more difficult,the production potential of the community at
different points in time. This means that the national income is
computed by adding disposable income, i.e. wages and salaries,
interest and profits minus direct taxes, plus transfers, savings and
free public services. The sixth proposition which emerges is that any
increase in the measured national income, provided there is no
worsening of its distribution, is a preferred position for the com-
munity.
The seventh proposition is based on an analysis of international
trade. Let us suppose that a country has reached all the previously
analysed positions of optima.Barring an extraordinary coincidence,
the prices of a number of goods in that country will be higher or
lower than those of similar goods in another country or countries.
Then trade-the international exchange of goods-follows. Thus
far,no account has been taken ofthefact that some commodities may

32
 Welfare in economic thought

be produced in excess of domestic demand,for export purposes, and

that the excess of demand over domestic production in some lines of
production will be met by imports. Nevertheless, an optimum
representing national self-sufficiency in any full economic sense
involves the correction of domestic imbalances through exports and
imports. This is the simple and historic argument for freedom of
international trade-a system of international exchanges which
enables each country to enjoy the many-sided advantages of inter-
national specialization,in accordance with the principle of compar-
ative costs. Canada can make not only jet engines but also textiles
at a lower cost than Hong Kong. But because Canada has a rela-
tively greater cost advantage over Hong Kong in making jet en-
gines than in manufacturing textiles, the optimum for the two
countries might well require Canada to devote its resources to jet
engines and Hong Kong to textiles,which are then exchanged for
each other. After trade has taken place, the optimum position is
reached again at all levels. The trade equilibrium like the pre-trade
optimum position subsists in a situation in which no changes will
make anyone better off.
The most striking example of an optimum position for a country
involving free internationaltrade dates from the nineteenth century,
during most of which the United Kingdom was the economic centre
of the world. With the fifty-yearstart given to it by the industrial
revolution and as a result of free trade,the United Kingdomsover-
all import coefficient roughly doubled in thirty years from 18to
36 per cent. By the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the
twentieth century, it accounted for 36 per cent of the worlds ex-
ports ofmanufacturesand 27 per cent ofits imports ofprimary com-
modities-a position never before or ever again attained by any
country. Here is the classical case and vindication of free trade. It
is not surprising,therefore, that for a large body of thinking men
and women, even today, the optimum position for every country is
sought in the removal of obstacles which impede the free play of
international trade forces and their basis in comparative costs.The
regional groupings of the European Economic Community, the
European Free Trade Association, in Western Europe, and the
Council for Mutual Economic Assistance,in Eastern Europe,never-
thelessremain some distance from the classical doctrine offree trade.
Even in its heyday, however, the optimum as a function of free
international trade admitted to important exceptions. The well-
known infant industry argument indicates that a position of opti-
m u m will be reached after a temporary passage through a less

33
Let m y country awake

preferred position when the relative costs of the industry in ques-

tion will be reduced,as the infant grows up. New equations of pro-
duction and consumption and relative prices will then have been
attained. A second and more powerful argument may be advanced
from the point of view of distribution. In certain cases, a carefully
worked out tariff policy can bring about an optimum position in
terms of employment, in the supply and distribution of goods and
services in demand by the poorer section of the community,so that
the community as a whole is better off in the post-tariffthan in the
pre-tariffera. The seventh proposition resulting from this analysis
of international trade may now be formulated. Internationaltrade
-free or protected-is a condition for a nation to place itself in a
preferred position.Free internationaltrade is a condition for achiev-
ing a world optimum. There is a case, however, from the point of
view of distribution of incomes between various members and sec-
tions of a community for the hypothesis that a carefully constructed
post-tariff optimum might well be in that particular countrys
interests.
The eighth proposition concerns planning. Welfare criteria point
to long-term considerations,hindsight and far-sightednessin eco-
nomic analysis and related action. At this point a close look should
be taken at planning as a tool or technique to reach an optimum
position or positions for the community.There are wide differences
in the meaning and content of planning and,in all economic liter-
ature, probably no other politico-economic phenomenon arouses
more violent emotions-proceeding in most cases,from deep-seated
social convictions. I use the term simply to refer to the setting of
goals or targets,and the elaboration ofmeans whereby these targets
may be achieved. The former is outside, the latter within the eco-
nomistsuniverse of discourse.For FrancesFifth Plan,covering the
years 1966-70,which was approved by the National Assembly on
I December 1964,the planners recommended a 4.5 per cent annual
rate of economic growth as the target. The Assembly and the Gov-
ernment, however, decided that the recommended rate was insuf-
ficient and instructed the economists to revise the plan on the basis
of a 5 per cent annual growth. In the complex technological world
of today, the movement towards optima involves the planning of
targets and goals and whether these be recommended by a council
of economic advisers of the type of the United States of America, a
planning commission of the French or Indian type, or a Gosplan
body of the Soviet type, their final determination is in the hands of
political authority. When it comes to the elaboration of means

34
 Welfare in economic thought

-complex, innumerable,highly decentralized and localized-it is

the economist who has a major,if not determinant role to play.
T w o general situations in any system of planning may be noted.
First, the general criteria for the optimum that prices must be equal
to marginal costs or as nearly equal as possible (dependingon exist-
ing technical market perfections), might require public interven-
tion in some sectors of production: for example, in a situation
where a few large units have the power to divorce price rather
seriously from marginal cost. This condition may be generalized,
whatever the political or economic structure under consideration.
If it can be achieved by the free play of the market, then that is
indicated;if it can be achieved only by public ownership and man-
agement, then that would be required. In between there are many
alternative forms of intervention which planning techniques must
encompass.
The second area which calls for similar action is where the com-
munity has decided that certain goods should not be available;
where certain goods can only be consumed simultaneously or col-
lectively; where a given aggregate magnitude of investment in a
particular sector is an absolute requirement for the community.In
these cases, the attaining of the optimum again calls for planning
of the means in a detailed and regulated manner. The eighth pro-
position which emerges is that the explicit elaboration of the goals
and targets to be fixed by political authority,and indeed by society
as a whole, and the working out of the detailed means of achieving
them, are a function of welfare economics today, and a means of
attaining the optimum position which every community strives
toward.
From the eight propositions that have been derived from an analy-
sis of the welfare foundations in economic thought, three broad
conclusions can be drawn. First,the welfare of the individual,the
group and the community requires that the available resources be
efficiently distributed between various competing uses. Here what
is required is forethought, skill and knowledge in the allocation of
resources,so that the individual,the group and the community are
in the most favoured position.
Second, such welfare requires that the optimum be reached by
making every effort possible to increase the resources available.
Such was the main preoccupation of the founding fathers of eco-
nomic science. They saw the optimum as the resultant of a con-
tinual struggle between nature and man, nature with its apparent
limits and man with his unlimited possibilities. In the modern

35
Let m y country awake

technological era, with the assurance that there is no long-term

limitation to resources and their use, we are simply going back to
this second condition for the optimum-that of bending all our
efforts,in every possible manner, to increase available resources. (I
will return to this idea when we examine the role of science in
development.)
The third broad conclusion is that the optimum requires a pro-
gressive improvement in the distribution of goods and services in
favour of the poorer and less favoured sector,without jeopardizing
the efficiencyof allocation of resources, which it need not do, and
without diminishing the total resources, the aggregate volume of
production,which it should not do.
Welfare considerations,as pointed out at the outset, constitute
the yardstick by which these conclusions are seen to be in need of
further reinforcement.First,the economist is looking at life through
a microscope and is seeing through it only a microcosm of an entire
organ-vital in itself, but a minutia. That particular microcosm,
further,has no life ofits own.It takes on life-considerably changed
and modified-when seen in its organic setting. I will only recall
here the second and third facets of the impact of welfare on eco-
nomics, which I have not dealt with except in a cursory manner,
when discussing some aspects of distribution, international trade
and planning.Whether one goes as far as to affirm this interrelated-
ness by saying that economics cannot be divorced from ethics
or by pointing out that the reality of mans preferences, the content
of a countrys needs, the ethics of a societys demands are to be
found outside of economics,the point at issue is granted.
This is the point at which the formal analysis of optimum, of
choice,of preferred position, has to be corrected by the totality of
mans life and outlook, and the real significance of societys de-
mands. In this setting,human wants are not given;choices are not
static. Optimum and preferred positions are the result of dynamic
and changing needs and situations.I a m not able to join in charac-
terizing wants as themost obstinately unknown of all unknowns in
the whole system of variables. I will admit, however, that the
establishment of optimum through meeting existing wants is only
a first exploratorystep.Like the door to myfathershouse in which
there are many mansions,it opens up a whole host of other possi-
bilities and interrelated needs, and to base our analysis merely on
preferences and choices of known quantities is like stopping at the
entrance to the house. The repetitive character of action and phe-
nomena, on which all scientific analysis is built is, in the case of
 Welfare in economic thought

man, only the introduction to understanding his behaviour. From

repetitive action he moves on to innovative action, from existing
and known needs he moves on to building his higher and better
wants.
This interrelatedness points to the need to take into account the
kind of dynamics of life and society which are not encompassed
within the economists universe of discourse. In the affluent soci-
eties, which Europe and North America represent,in this rich one-
third of our world, is it really necessary to expend so much effort
and concentrate so much of our attention on the examination and
analysis of optima and preferred positions, which emerge from
grubbing around at the margin? A rich society can only progress
further through allowing for wastes in order that it may continue
in its affluence.To such a society,equations,arrived at by squeezing
out this and adding to that at the margin, are not of decisive impor-
tance,because it has passed beyond that particular point. Many of
its preoccupations are of an extra-economic order, and must be
dealt with as such. Yet if one-third of our world can be described,
grosso modo, as wealthy,rich,affluent,economically developed,the
other two-thirds must be described as poverty-stricken and eco-
nomically developing.The wealthy one-third in Europe, North
America and Australasia has an average per capita income ranging
from some $1,200 to $2,400;during the decade 1950-60 their
share of the wealth of the world (gross domestic product,
excepting some socialist countries whose computation is on a differ-
ent basis) was 85 per cent. In the poor two-thirdswhich comprise
the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, average per capita
incomes range from $120, in Africa as a whole, to $340 in Latin
America; their share of the wealth of the world was 15 per cent.
What are the dynamics of this world situation?What are the eco-
nomic forces at play? What laws characterize their behaviour? And
what measures do welfare criteria suggest which could guide or
control them on behalf of a11 nations, communities, groups and
individual men and women everywhere?
These are some of the questions which the idea of development
seeks to answer.

37
Chapter 2 Welfare in economic
action: the concept of
economic growth and development

Damn Economics! Let us build a

decent world! F.V. Hayek (Road
to Serfdom).
W e are concerned with the nature
and causes ofthe Poverty ofNations.
And do not let us make a mistake
in the multiplication table.R.G.
Hawtrey (Currencyand Credit).

Tools for growth economics

In speaking of the wealthy one-third and poverty-stricken two-
thirds of our world, I began with a rough yardstick, average per
capita income,which does not really tell the whole story,certainly
not the true welfare story,which is our concern. Nor have Ieven at-
tempted to define those broad and sweeping terms, developedand
developing,which today are so widely and indeed loosely used that
they often seem to contradict each other when applied to real
situations.
It is true that we have come to classify countries into rich and
poor,statesinto developed and developing;nationsinto modern and
modernizing; societies into dynamic and stagnant; regions into
developed and underdeveloped;the world into the first,second and
third worlds; and in a recent, challenging addition to a rich and
growing terminologicalliterature,into the hard and soft states.This
classificatoryjungle should not worry us too much. Each distinction
has its specific purpose and particular use,and the whole process is
rather like cutting a cake,in any one of several ways,each depend-
ing on the given bias, that is, the intentions and purposes of the
producer and consumer. Yet there are concrete,undeniable facts
behind these words and concepts which seek to deal with them.
There is a cake which is being cut and at least part of that cake is
measurable.
Economic development in its most restricted sense may be defined
as improvement in per capita income,i.e.an increase in the number
resulting from dividing a countrysgross domestic production by its

38
 Welfare in economic action

population. Can we then conclude that if an increase in per capita

income has been recorded, economic development has occurred?
M y answer is a qualified yes. Per capita income can provide a
general indication if the inherent limitations of the indicator are
borne in mind. There are the usual statistical problems and resulting
imperfections arising from unreliable, incomplete and, in some
cases, absent statistics, which turn our estimates into mere guess-
timates. Unfortunately, these problems frequently become serious
when the newly independent countries are the subject of study.
A further problem arises in equating per capita money incomes
with per capita real incomes. When money is translated into the
goods and services which it represents,we face a host of imponder-
ables in terms of comparability. Mink coats and woollen sweaters
and gloves,for example,which are part of real income in the rich,
cold north,give rise to conundrums in the real income computation
of the tropics.
Finally,there is the more basic problem that what w e are mea-
suring is only part of what we are trying to measure, that it is
merely the tip ofthe iceberg.For the per capita income yardstick has
only a tenuous ifimportant relationship to thefullscope and meaning
of economic development which,conceived in real terms, involves
improvement in levels of living. These latter have been defined by
the United Nations as comprising nine components: health, food
consumption and nutrition,education,employment and conditions
of work, housing, social security, clothing, recreation,and human
freedoms. And this broad characterization of economic develop-
ment, to which I shall return in some detail,must be borne in mind
continually as a valuable check-listand guide-postto more quanti-
fiable and measurable definitions.
Even so the per capita instrument is the only rough and ready
measure of the welfare and ill-fare of the individual and of the
wealth and poverty of nations that is to hand. Its function is prima-
rily one of education and illumination.Its appeal is to the heart and
conscience. It echoes the abstract propositions I have advanced
concerning distribution and its relation to optimum, as well as
pressing problems of production. It adds to them an almost human
voice.
A more reliable indicator of economic development is to be
found, however, in the rate of growth of the economy. This is
a concept borrowed from biology and traces back to one of the
conclusions of Alfred Marshall, that the Mecca of the economist is
economic biology rather than economic dynamics. It is clearly

39
Let m y country awake

necessary that development, which is a form of change, be

measured through comparisonsintime.When economic development
is under discussion,however, there must not only be a time series,
as with per capita income,but also a space reference. There must
be a comparison between periods of time for a given country but
also between one country and another or several others,preferably
at similar stages of development and/or having similar structural
features,for that same time series.
When this is attempted, it is on the whole more satisfactory to
measure economic development by the rate at which the gross
domestic product or the per capita income of the countries con-
cerned is growing.For the decade 1950-60,the gross domestic pro-
duct for all countries of the world increased at the rate of 4per cent
per annum. (Again this computation does not take into account the
economies of some socialist countries where information is not
available on a comparable basis.) For the developing countries of
Asia, Africa and Latin America, the growth rate was 4.8per cent;
for the developed countries including Australia, Japan and New
Zealand,it was 4per cent.The per capita growth rate for the decade
was 2.2 per cent for the developing and 2.7 per cent for the devel-
oped countries.
This method of measuring economic development has several
advantages. It indicates the trend or direction in which a countrys
economy is moving, and it is this rather than the situation at any
given point of time which is important in the kind of changing
world and national situations we face today. Growth rates derived
from gross domestic production give a picture not simply of the
total volume of production and ofincreasesin the totals as between
different countries and different points of time, but also, by impli-
cation,of the countriesability or capacity to produce. This distinc-
tion between total volume of physical production and its changes
on the one hand,and the capacity to produce (or productivity) and
its changes on the other, is of decisive significance in growth
economics.
In the micro-economic analysis outlined in the previous chapter,
movements to positions of optimum-of production, price and
income and their interrelationships-were assumed to be taking
place within an unchanged social and technological framework.
When changes were taken into account, they were considered,for
the purpose ofanalysis,and even when they were caused by socialand
institutional conditions, to result from exogenous factors,i.e. fac-
tors which were not themselves subject to examination.There were
 Welfare in economic action

good reasons for this methodology. It was needed not only to hone
and sharpen our economic tools,but also to avoid mere descriptions
of phenomena and a tiresome listing of institutions and their
changes. It must also be recalled that w e confined analysis for the
most part to very short-termor very long-termmovements and,in
both these cases, taking exogenous factors as given is a realistic
approach.
When we turn to growth and development,however, there can
be no exogenous factors.Economic analysisconcerning growth must
integrate the actual social and institutional conditions within which
movements toward the optimum take place. Indeed it must situate
them directly within the traditional input-outputmodels which are
normally based on fixed doses of capital and labour,together with
a given supply of land and technical knowledge. And it must
examine and distinguish the actual forces behind technical knowl-
edge, the technological framework of a country and its highly
sophisticated aggregates of capital and labour.
For such a task, growth rate indices are often more significant
than static computations which do not take the time factor into
account. As between the two we have been discussing-the first
based on gross domestic product and the second on per capita in-
come-the latter is more useful because it takes into account popu-
lation and its trends. In many countries, these are of growing
importance. Indeed, both for the world in general and for most
low-incomecountries,the real rate of growth,measured in terms of
per capita income, is only half the growth recorded in the total
volume of production.
In using these tools, however, account must be taken of at least
two of the general limitations I have already mentioned. The usual
statistical imperfections with regard to available data involve mar-
gins of error so large that care must be exercised in taking the
indices too literally,particularly when they include, as they must,
several decimal points. But most of all we must recall again and
again that we are dealing with economic development not in its
totality,but only in some manageable and measurable manner.Eco-
nomic growth, in the restricted sense in which we have been con-
sidering it, is only one sector-important and decisive though it
may be-of the total development process in which all countries
everywhere are engaged. Such development includes growth of all
kinds,economic and social,and change-in social structures,value
systems and political objectives. Economic development in the re-
stricted sense is but one instrument for attaining that increased
Let m y country awake

human well-being which in the final analysis is the aim of every

community,and the relationshipbetween the economic sector and
other sectors in attaining this end may be one of conflict as well as
harmony. In this sense, economic development and its indices are a
part of the much wider total development drive of countries and
nations,and aid in meeting the needs and carrying out the objec-
tives of this wider and more comprehensive effort.

The development doctrine: of philosophy and bread

I have said that the concept of development is new. It is as new as
the independence of Asia and Africa. It is coterminous with the
nations which gained their independence after the Second World
War. It is as recent as the United Nations.
Before the First World War, the traditional preoccupation of
statesmen was to maintain a stable equilibrium,a constant balance:
the economic balance which freely operating market forces and what
economists called the invisible hand were to ensure; the political
balance which the concertofEurope,which was responsibleforAsia,
Africa and the Americas,was intended to preserve. In the period
between the wars,thisnationaland world equilibrium was rudelyand
violently shaken. The trade cycle and the disquieting convulsion of
the great depression; the October Revolution which produced the
first Communiststate,which set out to defy all cyclical laws under
which prosperity and depression alternated with each other; the
ambitions of other colonial powers which considered themselves
havenots;and the anti-colonialrumblings and freedom struggles
in various colonies-all these caused attention to be concentrated
on unravelling the secrets that might restore the equilibrium, even
ifsuch secrets involved somepump-priming,so long as uninterrupted
prosperity could be ensured for the few nations which then
controlled the destinies of the world, and so long as the placid
contentment of the masses in India and other colonial lands was
not disturbed by a naked fakir,an armed minority, a handful
of fanatics,a smallcoterieof irresponsible and unrepresentative
agitators.
Overhanging the economic world of the havenations of the
inter-war period was the Damocles sword of economic regression
and stagnation, assumed to be an inevitable feature of economic
life, variously and varyingly attributed to demographic explosion
(Malthus); diminishing agricultural returns (Ricardo); the dead-
ening hand of the state (Mill); taxation (Physiocrats); the crisis in
 Welfare in economic action

capitalism (Man); sun-spots and depletion of natural resources

(Jevons); the vanishing entrepreneur (Schumpeter); falling mar-
ginal productivity of capital and the liquidity trap (Keynes); and
the Road to Serfdom (Hayek).
It is indeed a far cry from those days of static balance and engi-
neered prosperity for the few-so near to so many of us-to the con-
cept of development enshrined today in the Charter of the United
Nations and exemplified in such a striking manner by the General
Conference of Unesco, at its fourteenth session in I966,when I 20
(independent) Member States, three Associate Members (not then
independent) who form Unesco,assisted by some 250 international,
non-governmentalorganizations and private bodies associated with
it, joined in an impressive debate on development and adopted
legislation aimed at galvanizing it. The Conference declared that
the requisite conditions for development.. . have not yet been
secured in the majority of developing countriesand that thegap
between the developed countries and the developing countries is
still widening and creating greater social, political and economic
tensions. The Conference considered further a Declaration of a
Round Table comprising some thirty outstanding leaders of the
Unesco world and Nobel Peace Prize winners, and warned of the
threat to peace stemming from this growing inequality in develop-
ment.
It is true that the idea of development has displaced previous
welfare conceptions and gained general acceptance in the inter-
national community. Development is today a United Nations objec-
tive.Yet an official doctrine has never been adopted. In spite of this
lack it is possible to bring together various and separate decisions
taken by the United Nations bodies in order to identify the elements
of an implicit doctrine of development.
For us in the United Nations development first means growth in
precisely the terms I have previously outlined:growth which is pri-
marily quantitative,which is essentially economic, which is basi-
cally measurable; which is both the cause and consequence, the
source and symbol of other social signposts.A country whose stand-
ard of living is not rising, whose annual per capita income is not
increasing, is not developing; it is not meeting the first test of
development.
Second,theUnited Nationsdoctrineofdevelopmentmeans change:
change from a pastoral,nomadic to an agricultural economy,from
a subsistenceto a cash economy,from a single crop to a diversified
agro-industrialsystem. This means adopting and adapting the ways

43
Let m y country awake

of modern science and technology;it means searching and seeking,

being open to innovation and experimentation;it means developing
intellectual flexibility and creativity; it means revising, discarding
and/oradapting traditional customs and accepted hypotheses;and
it means that all these causes and consequences of change must be
placed firmly within the framework of universal values and their
particular national and local expression. This second element of
development, change,is in its totality non-measurable,non-quan-
titative and stems from the qualitative,moral and spiritual strivings
and characteristics of man; it reflects his effort to achieve a society
in which he can live creatively and peacefully.
Third, development is growth plus change, not growth first, and
change second,in some kind ofchronological order.For growth also
takes place through mutation and change,just as change is a con-
sequence of growth. Development is, in the end, a form of human-
ism,for its finality is the service of man. It is moral and spiritual as
well as material and practical. It is an expression of the wholeness
ofm a n serving his material needs offood,clothing and shelter,and
embodying his moral demands for peace, compassion and charity.
It reflects man in his grandeur and shame,moving him ever forward
and onward,yet ever in need of redemption of his errors and folly.
Fourth, the United Nations concept of development is global: it
makes development an international obligation. There is no devel-
opment if one part of the world is developed and the other remains
underdeveloped. The Frenchexpression (tiers monde(inits economic
overtones)and the English term (underdevelopedregions and coun-
tries express current historicalfacts but they are also a denial of the
doctrine of development. In fact these terms are merely a kind of
intellectual shorthand,a sort of United Nations jargon, a form of
popular slogan that we have come to use generally and unquestion-
ingly. For one thing all countries, all economies, all societies are
developing. The development doctrine does not require that so-
called developed countries stop developing so that the so-called
underdeveloped countries can catch up. Development does not
mean stagnation for any country or region. The equity it calls for is
equalization of high standards,not the sharing of poverty. In fact
the Unesco declaration makes reference to the fact that all countries
are developing,but that the levelfrom which they start and the rate
at which they grow is a fact of history and a threat to peace.
It is indeed because all countries are developing at an uneven
pace, that there is a rich minority and a poor majority of coun-
tries.

44
 Welfare in economic action

But the doctrine of development I a m outlining does not enshrine

that minority or majority. Rather it establishes a common co-
operativeframeworkin which all are involved,a common obligation
to which all are committed.This obligationis written into the found-
ing Charter of the United Nations: W e the peoples of the United
Nations determined ...to promote social progress and better stand-
ards of life in larger freedom have decided ... to employ inter-
national machinery for the promotion of the economic and social
advancement of all peoples.Similar obligations are written into the
constitutions of the United Nations Specialized Agencies. The
Unesco Constitution affirms: the States ...do hereby create the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
for the purpose of advancing,through the educational and scientific
and cultural relations of the peoples of the world, the objectives of
international peace and of the common welfare of mankind ....
The legislation launching the United Nations Development
Decade spells out this obligation. First, there is the national obliga-
tion to achieve, in every developing country,a substantial increase
in the rate of growth, with each country setting its own target,
taking as the minimum objective the attainment of an annual
growth rate of 5 per cent of an aggregate ofnational incomeby the
end ofthe decade. Secondly,the international character ofdevelop-
ment is recognized with equal force in the pledged obligation to
achieve a flow of international capital and assistance to the devel-
oping countries of at least I per cent of the combined national
income of the economically advanced countries.
Developmentthus places obligations on the individual citizen and
the State in the underdeveloped world to make the hard, difficult
and unpleasant decisions necessary to promote development. It
places obligations on the individual citizen and the State in the
developed world to make the equally hard decision but relatively
small sacrifice to consider and operate the development of the
underdeveloped world as a world social security system. W e must
repeat once more that the superfluous wealth of the rich nations
should be placed at the service of the poor nations,H is Holiness
Pope Paul VI stated in Populorum Progressio. Therule which up to
now held good for the benefit of those nearest to us must today be
applied to all the needy of the world.Finally,development imposes
on the internationalcommunity theobligationto help the two groups
of countries in defining jthose hard decisions,in mobilizing public
opinion in their favour and in offering its services to states and citi-
zensfor their execution in the most effective and economicalmanner.

45
Let m y country awake

Fifth, development is peace: to work for development is to work

for peace. This is the United Nations and Unesco doctrine.As Pope
Paul wrote in Populorum Progressio and in his message to the
Secretary-Generalfor the 1967meeting ofthe United Nations Devel-
opment Programme: Developmentis the new name for peace.
I have already called attention to the solemn declaration of
Unescos Round Table in which particular account is taken of the
grave consequencesfor peace resulting from the growing inequality
of means and living standards as between the highly industrialized
countries and countries in course of development.For the threat to
peace is not just poverty. Poverty has always been with us and will
in some form,at least in spiritual and moral terms,always be with
us. It is inequity,it is injustice and the denial of basic human rights
to one part of mankind, and its awareness of it, that endangers
peace, that can kindle the fuse to the final explosion. For us in the
United Nations, peace, security, development, human rights and
international understanding are all one and indivisible. They are
the warp and woof of the fabric which is man; they are inseparable
strands in the design which is human society.
Sixth,development is resource-demanding:it demands resources
-resources which can be created by decisions,decisions to use exist-
ing resources and not waste them.Again the Round Table declared
that according to official documents, roughly $I50,000 million
are devoted annually to expenditure on arms and that even IO
per cent of that sum, if allotted to a peace budget placed at the
disposal of the United Nations agencies, would have a great psy-
chological effect and would gradually contribute to bridging the
gulf between the rich and the poor countries. Unescos General
Conference itself then called attention to the fact that all Member
States had agreed at the start of this decade,in a resolution of the
United Nations General Assembly, that I per cent of the national
income of the economically advanced countries should be set aside
for development purposes and that this modest target had not been
met by any ofthe countries which have the resources. Such transfer
of resources as do occur,it points out, place new burdens on weak
economies. Today, it is decision which creates resources and not
resources which enable decision-making.
Following the 1965 decision to create the United Nations Con-
ference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD)and the 1968
UNCTAD 11,Member States are now awaiting the further decision
of the highly industrialized countries to initiate policies that will
widen international trade (80 per cent of which is between them-
 Welfare in economic action

selves), that will encourage with little or no tariff barriers imports

of primary,finished and semi-finishedgoods from Asia, Africa and
Latin America and that will provide exchange equalization credits
to even out such trade fluctuations as may still persist.
Here lies a vast development resource area. A renewed call has
therefore gone out from UnescosGeneral Conferenceto its Member
States to execute these agreed recommendations on trade and to
earmark I per cent of their national income for development.
This I per cent would provide $15,000million in development
resources, a figure which has a curious identity with the IO per
cent disarmament budget for peace recommended by the Round
Table. Even more so,as was stated at the Conference,it would pro-
vide a most effective way ofbuilding the development challenge and
its overriding call into the structure of M e m b e r States, not only
through external aid ministries, but in the very process ofplanning
national growth and assuring national services.
Lastly,for man in society,development is both redemptive and a
call to redemption. It is redemptive because through it man can
choose desirable change and avoid that which is undesirable.H e can
organize to avoid the Aberfan slagheaps of development, which
buried alive over I IO innocent children;he can join committees in
the richest nations to preserve the beauty of his country and the
purity of water and air contaminated and poisoned by the fumes
and refuse ofdevelopment.H e canjoin Unesco in a world campaign
to safeguard the worlds heritage in Abu Simbel whose inundation
and loss to humanity seemed at one point to be the price of Nubian
development. H e can respond to the appeal launched by the
Director-Generalof Unesco,RenC Maheu,to restore the priceless 50
million manuscripts,the I0,000art treasures,the eighteen churches
and seventy learned institutionswhich have been damaged by floods
and industrial waste and oil in what Maheu described as those
radiant stars of beauty,that springtime of the human heart, which
belongs to all mankind-Florence and Venice.
Development is also a call to redemption; it is itself in need of
redemption of the disorder and suffering it has brought with it; the
revolt of youth,the crises and upheavals in the universities and in
society as a whole which it has made possible; the mental confusion
and moral disorder of the large urban agglomerations it has
generated; the international and national misunderstanding and
contempt for others of different groups and colours and races and
nations only exacerbated by the mass media; the growing and har-
rowing tale of mans inhumanity to man which technology has

47
Let m y country awake

accentuated. It is a call to redeem injustice and violence and in-

equity without falling once again into those same crimes in our
effort to end them. It is a call to all ofus to join together in creating
resources rather than fighting each other to possess them. It is a call
to awake to the situation of humanity seen as a whole; to awake to
its ideals that we have never yet put into practice; to awake to the
common task which calls us to set against the enormous needs of
mankind its infinite possibilities.
This then is the doctrine of development which has gradually
emerged over the past twenty-fiveyears through the collective and
individual recommendations and decisions taken by the United
Nations and each of its Member States.
H o w is development to be caused and driven forward until the
process sustains itself? What are the roles which education,science
and culture must play? H o w can their contribution be made most
effectively? These are some of the questions to which I now turn.

48
Chapter 3 Education and
development: the human role in
economic growth

The contribution of education to development in its broadest sense

is clearly primordial.
Its contribution to measurable economic growth, on the other
hand, has long been ignored or neglected. Indeed, the true eco-
nomic role of education has only gradually gained general accept-
ance and only recently come to the forefront of development eco-
nomics. If no longer the subject of dispute, it is nevertheless often
misunderstood and even more frequently the subject of controversy.
The reasons for this neglect,in economic thought and practice,of
what has since come to be called investment in human resources,
are basically tautological and traditional. The economics of static
balance tended,in general,to place investmentin human resources
and particularly in formal education squarely in the category of
consumption expenditure. Needless to say,education is a consump-
tion good. It does form part of the real wealth of nations. It is one
of the nine components of the levels ofliving defined by the United
Nations. The gap in traditional thought was simply that of accept-
ing a half truth in place of a whole truth, of letting the attractions
and rewards of education as consumed by the individual almost
totally overshadow its role as a servant of growth and factor of
production.
Indeed, traditionally,going to school was put on all fours with
going to a restaurant. If the consumer wanted a good Burgundy
with his bird, he went to a Mayfair restaurant. If he wanted Greek
and Latin with his history and literature,he went to Westminster or
Winchester,where he paid much more than elsewhere.All expendi-
ture on education, whether by the individual or the State, was
treated as a consumption item-and a somewhat costly,extravagant
and wasteful consumption item at that.
Together with this conception of education,came the traditional
canon offoresight and frugality: one consumes only as much as one
can afford. If one could afford the prices of a Mayfair restaurant,
one went there. Even so one was abjured to weigh the satisfaction of
an excellent meal with fine wine against that of a durable pair of
shoes or a new suit. Similarly,it was felt that an individual should

49
Let my country awake

go in for only as much schooling as he and his family could afford.

Even ifone could affordit, the advantagesoffurther schooling had to
be carefully weighed,in the case ofgirlsfor instance,against those of
a sizeable marriage endowment in the form of a dowry.
Such reasoning was extended to castes and groups and classes as
well as the sexes.Indeed not many years have passed since the chil-
dren ofthe cook,the chauffeur and the gardener were exhorted not
to have their heads turned by going to school or college, to
remember their station in life, etc. The same injunctions to econ-
omy, prudence and the natural order of things seemed to apply to
whole nations as well. Nations were pooror richin accordance
with their gross national products. Poor nations were advised not
to wastetheir resources on education,for good laws were sufficient
to achieve prosperity, and once prosperity was achieved, then the
people could be given education. In the interim,which tended to be
of indefiniteduration,such nations should have only as much edu-
cation as they could afford.Quantitatively, they should not have
more primary, secondary or higher education than was neededto
run their public services. Qualitatively, their educational systems
should be so devised-i.e. cut,reduced,economized and made into
multi-purposehodge-podgesseeming to serve all kinds of mutually
contradictory purposes at the same time-that it cost the country
concerned and its resources the minimum possible, preferably
nothing at all.
Unfortunately this conception of education seems still to persist in
some rather august quarters, although in more refined forms. The
first criticism,in The Times Educational Supplement, of the twenty-year
Addis Ababa Plan for the development of education in Africa, es-
tablished by the Conference ofAfrican Member Statesin May I 961,
is an illuminating illustration of the modern forms this thesis can
take. And there remains,even today, a handful of technocrats and
economists who still say,and even write,in rather more oblique and
technical language,that while the developed countries should pro-
vide education as a function of their demand for instruction, the
developing ones should do so as a function of the supply of resources
available to them.
What, then,is the argument to the contrary? What is the case for
considering expenditure on human resources in general and on
education in particular as a profitable investment?
The contribution of education to economic growth can,in fact,be
demonstrated very clearly.National development does not depend
merely on natural resources. Ifsuch were the case the Scandinavian
 Education and development

countries or Switzerland would be among the poorest in the world,

and the oil-richArab lands or the mineral-ladenareas ofthe Congo
and Brazil would be among the richest. There is something in
between the land and sea and their riches and the per capita
income of a country, some key variable which links the two, and
that variable is not simply the resources with which nature endows
a country.
The most dramatic expos6 of this variable may be found in a com-
munication addressed to Lenin in 1919by the Soviet economist,
Strumilin, on the eve of the launching of the Soviet Unions first
great industrialization programme. Strumilin warned Lenin that
the vast hydroelectric power grids he was planning, the huge
industrial enterprises about to be initiated, the steel mills, the
machine-toolfactories and even mechanized farms would not pro-
duce what was needed, unless an equivalent level of investment in
education were also provided. Strumilin arrived at this conclusion
through studies which showed that, in his country, primary edu-
cation meant a 79 per cent increase in the output and wages of a
labourer;second-leveleducation an increase of as much as 235 per
cent;and higher or university education,as much as 320 per cent.
It may be noted that this relationship between education,produc-
tivity and income was established for the Soviet Union at a time
when her economy was still largely underdeveloped and agricul-
tural,much like those of Asia, Africa and Latin America today.
But it is equally true of the most advanced economies.Analysing
the economic situation of Arkansas, one of the more backward of
the fifty states in the United States,the lead writer of Time states:
Thefirst new plants,notably apparel factories,generally paid low
wages: many recruited women workers exclusively (a go-gitter in
Arkansas is not an ambitious fellow,but one whose labour is to go-
git his wife at the plant). Despite the progress that has been made,
Arkansas still ranked forty-eighth among the states last year in
hourly wages for production workers ($I.83 versus a national aver-
age of $2.61). N o w a drive is on to attract more sophisticated indus-
try, such as electronics. T o succeed,Arkansas must offer a skilled
work force. But its under-financed educational system, spending
only $376 per pupil a year compared with the national average of
$532 in 1965 is not up to the task.
These are striking and dramatic examples of the way in which
the contribution of education to economic growth has become
generally accepted.Both are based essentially on analysis of wages
and output. Yet this is only one of a wide variety of approaches

51
Let m y country awake

which have been elaborated in recent years in order to determine

the role of education in the development process, and if possible
to measure its precise quantitative impact.
These approaches may be understood more clearly if, bearing in
mind the ways we have previously defined of measuring economic
development,i.e. as the rate ofincrease ofa country's gross domestic
production or per capita income, we turn to an examination of the
factors that produce economic development.
In economic analysis, the total volume of production in a
country is described as the output function of the three factor
inputs of land,labour and capital. When w e pass from stationary
models illustrating this input-outputrelation to the actual process
of growth and development and in particular to an explanation
of the growth rate of an economy, then these movements are
seen as a resultant of additions to the stock of capital and labour.
Using Y as GDP,L as total man hours of labour, rc as labour
productivity, X as total capital, C.O.R. as the capital/output
ratio, Y'L'Kas annual rates ofincrease of GDP,labour and capital,
and y and Z as constants, three frequently used equations to
express these relationships are:
I
Y = L x x or y=~x- or Y = LYKZ.
C.O.R.
A n explanation of gross domestic product in terms of land,
labour and capital hides the fact, however, that these are not
simply physical quantities. Economists have long been aware of
this. Adam Smith,the founding father, attributed the economic
activity and progress of his native Scotland not only to its land
and labour but also to its national system of education. For
labour,it was recognized,should be treated not as an available
stock of uniform man-hours or man-days,but as one which has
varying qualitative characteristics. Again capital formation is not
simply the stock of such physical capital as machines, tools, seed,
fertilizers and hydroelectric dams. Its efficiency is as important
as its total quantity. Nor is land itself a fixed quantity. Pervading
these factors-land, labour and capital-are such input items as
education, training, productivity and technical progress, which
produce enormous differences in the amount of land actually
used, and in the quality of capital-stocks and flow, and labour
itself. W e must, therefore, conclude that these three factors can
explain the total production of a country only if full account is
taken of other factors which flow into them.

52
 Education and development

It is thus that, when explaining growth rates-whether of gross

domestic product or per capita income-that when we search
for the causal factors of economic development as so defined, the
hints and generalities which earlier economic theories advanced
about the role of factors other than land, labour and capital,
come clearly and sharply into focus.
Economists then began to compare rates of increase in total
production to rates of increase in the capital and labour employed
to produce that total. Applied to a wide range of countries, their
analysis uncovered a large residue, ranging from 60 to 80 per cent
of the increase in total production, which could not be explained
by the input factor increases of capital and labour.
When comparing the gross national product of the United
States over nearly forty years (1919-57),for instance, it is found
that the increase in land,labour and capital investment during this
period should have produced only one-third of the increase in the
gross national product that actually occurred. In the United King-
dom,studiesoftheincreasedinvestmentofthe three factorsina group
of manufacturing industries, during a six-year period, seem to
account for 25 per cent of the increased output of these production
units during that period. In the Soviet Union,analysis ranging over
a thirty-yearperiod has established that some 20-30 per cent of the
national income is not imputable to the physical factors. Alterna-
tively, during 1950-60,in Japan, there was almost no increase in
investmentin the traditionalthree factorsin agriculture-save a mere
2 per cent increase in cultivated land-but 20 per cent increase in
rice production was registered. Again, Israel, during the same
period,with an increase of IO per cent ofinvestmentin the classical
factors,has nevertheless averaged a 60per cent increasein her agri-
cultural production. Mexico, with an increased investment in the
traditional sense of 22 per cent in her agricultural sector during the
period I 945-60, has more than doubled her agricultural output.
Efforts were made to measure the relationship between growth
rates and education or,more broadly, the human resources factor
(which would include formal schooling, training,mass media, re-
search of all types and health). Can we ascribe the 60-80 per cent
of the rate at which the gross domestic product or the per capita
income of a country is increasing to its investment on human re-
sources-of which education is quantitatively predominant and
qualitatively decisive?
These and related questions may be posed more concretely
through the construction of the following tables showing school

53
 Let m y country awake

Table I

Primary education Second level

(millions) (millions)

Region Enrolment Populationage5-14 Enrolment Population age I 5-1

1950 1960 1965 1950 1960 1965 1950 1960 1965 1950 1960 196
~

World
total 177.2248.5 299.3 425.3 511.4 574.3 38.0 64.0 93.8 180.1 204.9 234.
Africa 6.3 13.8 18.5 38.6 53.6 60.1 0.1 1.2 1.9 16.5 21.6 24.
America,
Latin 15.4 27.0 34.7 40.3 53.4 62.8 1.7 3.9 6.7 16.4 21.1 24.
America,
North 23.8 33.8 32.9 35.8 39.5 43.6 6.9 11.2 18.7 12.7 14.9 18.
Arab States 3.0 7.1 10.5 19.2 24.7 28.0 0.7 1.3 2.5 8.0 10.1 11.

Asia 52.5 85.3 110.8189.2 224.4 255.7 12.5 20.9 29.9 80.4 92.0 100.

Europe 42.9 49.1 51.0 60.7 71.8 73.3 12.8 19.3 24.5 27.2 30.2 35.
Oceania 1.6 2.4 2.6 2.7 3.0 3.3 0.4 0.8 1.1 1.2 1.2 I.
U.S.S.R. 31.7 30.0 38.3 38.8 41.0 47.5 2.8 5.4 8.5 17.7 13.8 18.

Source: Tables I to 3 are based on data derived from Unesco Statistical Yearbook,
1968.Following conventionsin that work '-' denotes magnitude nil or negligible,
and '. ..' data not available.

NO&on Tables I and z

The major areas were constituted (1950-65)as follows:

Africa: Angola, Botswana, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde Islands, Central
African Republic, Chad, Comoro Islands, Congo (Democratic Republic of
the), Congo (Republic of the), Dahomey, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia,
French Territory of the Mars and the Issas,Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea,
Ifni, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali,
Mauritania, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Portuguese
Guinea, Rtunion, Rwanda, St. Helena, SSo T o m 6 and Princlpe, Senegal,
Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, Southern Rhodesia, Spanish
Sahara, Swaziland, Togo, Uganda, United Republic of Tanzania, Upper
Volta, Zambia.

54
 Education and development

Third level Percentage of national National income

(millions) incomespenton per capita per annum
education (U.S.8 )
(figuresin parentheses (figures in parentheses
Enrolment Populationage 20-24 &ow the number of show the number of
countriescovered) countriescovered)

rg50 1960 1965 1950 1960 1965 1950 1960 1965 1958 1965

i.3 11.2 18.1 167.2 193.5 199.9

1.03 0.07 0.1 14.7 18.5 20.7 ... 2.7 (15) 3.8 (20) 88 (31) 120 (31)

).3 0.6 0.9 14.2 18.1 20.7 2.1(18) 3.4 (25) 3.9 (26) 272 (24) 338 (24)

t.4 3.7 5.9 12.5 12.3 15.0 I-55(2) 5.55 (2) 7.5 (2) 1809 (2) 2367 (2)
1.05 0.2 0.3 6.7 8.5 9.9 0 . 4.' (9) 4.5 (9) 136 (12) 211 (12)
*

:.o 2.1 3.6 71.4 82.9 88.7 1.9(12) 3.1 (14)3.9 (16) 150 (22) 234 (22)
:.3 2.1 3.2 30.3 31.3 30.0 3.15(18) 4.2 (25) 6.3 (26) 751 (19)1249(19)
1.06 0.1 0.2 1.1 1.0 1.2 2.1(2) 3.7 (2) 4.35 (2) 1149 (2) 1667 (2)
1.2 2.4 3.9 16.3 20.9 13.7 5.8 5.9 7.3 ... ...

America, Latin: Antigua,Argentina,Bahama Islands,Barbados,Bolivia,Brazil,

British Honduras, Cayman Islands, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba,
Dominica,Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, French Guiana,
Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras,Jamaica,
Martinique,Mexico, Montserrat, Netherlands Antilles, Nicaragua,Panama,
Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, St.Kitts-Nevis and Anguilla, St.Lucia,
St.Vincent, Surinam, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands,
Uruguay,Virgin Islands (United Kingdom;United States), Venezuela.
America, North: Bermuda,Canada,Greenland,St.Pierreand Miquelon,United
Statesof America.
Arab States: Algeria,Bahrain,Iraq,Jordan,Kuwait,Lebanon,Libya,Morocco,
Muscat and Oman, People's Republic of Southern Yemen, Qatar, Saudi
Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Trucial Oman, Tunisia, United Arab Republic,
Yemen. [Continued overleaf ]

55
Let my country awake

Table 2

School enrolment ratio (unadjusted)

Region First level Second level Third level

1950 1960 1965 1950 1960 1965 1950 1960 1965

World total 42.5 48.6 52.1 21.1 31.2 40.0 3.8 5.8 9.1
Africa 16.3 25.7 30.8 0.6 5.6 7.9 0.2 0.4 0.5
America, Latin 38.2 50.6 55.3 10.4 18.5 27.9 2.1 3.3 4.3
America, North 66.5 85.6 75.51 54.3 75.2 100.01 19.2 30.1 39.3
Arab States 15.6 28.7 37.5 8.9 12.9 21.7 0.7 2.4 3.0
Asia 27.7 38.0 43.3 15.6 22.7 29.7 1.4 2.5 4.1
Europe 70.7 68.4 69.6 47.1 63.9 68.4 4.3 6.7 10.7
Oceania 59.3 80.0 78.8 33.3 66.7 73.3 5.5 10.0 16.7
U.S.S.R. 81.7 73.2 80.6 15.8 39.1 47.0 7.4 11.5 28.5
I. The drop in the first-level ratio and the great increase in the second-level
ratio is :due to a reallocation of grades between levels in the United States
of America.

Asia: Afghanistan,Bhutan, Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Ceylon, China (Taiwan),

Cyprus, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel,Japan, Korea (Republic
of), Laos, Macao, Malaysia, Maldive Islands, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan,
Philippines, Portuguese Timor, Ryukyu Islands,Sikkim, Singapore, Thailand,
Turkey, Viet-Nam (Republic of).
Europe: Albania, Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Den-
mark, Faeroe Islands, Finland, France, Germany (Federal Republic of),
Eastern Germany, West Berlin,Gibraltar,Greece, Holy See, Hungary, Iceland,
Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, Monaco, Netherlands,
hTorway,Poland, Portugal,Romania, San Marino, Spain,Sweden,Switzerland,
United Kingdom, Yugoslavia.
Oceania: Australia, British Solomon Islands,Cook Islands,Fiji, French Polynesia,
Gilbert and Ellice Islands, Guam, Nauru, N e w Caledonia, New Guinea,
New Hebrides, New Zealand, Niue, Norfolk Island, Pacific Islands, Papua,
Samoa (United States), Tokelau Islands, Tonga, Western Samoa.
U.S.S.R.
N.B.Areas excluded: China (mainland), North Korea, North Viet-Nam.
 Education and development

enrolment ratios,educational expenditures and growth rates of per

capita income for the major regions of the world (Tables I and 2).
Table 3 also shows percentage of adult literacy and average growth
rates of GDP for selected countries (see note below Table I).
Turning to Tables I and 2 it can be seen that in one major area
-Africa-with a first-levelenrolment ratio of only 30 per cent, a
second-levelenrolment ratio of less than I O per cent and a third-
level enrolment ratio ofless than I per cent,the per capita incomeper
annum is around $I 20. T w o other major areas with a slightly better
educational picture-Asia and the Arab States-with a first-level
enrolment ratio of around 40 per cent, a second-level enrolment
ratio of under 30 per cent and a third-levelenrolment ratio of less
than 5 per cent, have a per capita income per annum of between
$200 and $250. A fourth major area with a still slightly better edu-
cational situation, Latin America (having a first-levelenrolment
ratio of above 50 per cent although with a second-levelenrolment
ratio ofless than 30 per cent and a third-levelenrolment ratio ofless
than 5 per cent), has a per capita income of around $340. O n the
other hand in Oceania,Europe and North America,where the first-
level enrolment ratios are upwards of 75 per cent,second-levelen-
rolment ratios are 70 per cent or more and third-levelenrolment
ratios are I O per cent or more, the per capita income per annum
ranges between $1,250 and 962,500. The interesting question these
figures pose is to what extent is education a causal factor in, and/or
a product of these national income differentials?
Similarly,when turning to Table 3,it may be noted that for all
countries listed school enrolment ratios have steadily increased be-
tween I 950 and I 965 and for most countrieswhere schoolenrolment
ratios at the first and second level were less than 80per cent in 1960,
the increase has continued between 1960and 1965. The enrolment
at the third level expressed as a rate per IOO,OOO population has
increased between 1950 and 1960 and between 1960and 1965 in
every case. Is there a relation between this educational expansion
and the average annual rate of growth of real gross domestic prod-
uct which is rarely less than 4 per cent and is, in a number of cases,
above 5 per cent? Did the large decline in the Philippinesilliteracy
rate contribute to the annual increase in its production of between
4.5 per cent and 5.5 per cent?
Further,Tables I and 2 indicate that there is a remarkable rate
of educational increase in the period covered (even allowing for the
increased educational enrolment that must follow population in-
creases) in Asia, Latin America,Africa and the Arab States,as well

57
 Let m y country awake

Table 3

First-and second-level
enrolment as a Third-level enrolment Percentage of adL
percentage of per IOO,OOO of illiteracy (15 yea1
Country relevant age group population and over)

Census or estimates around

1950 1960 1965 1950 1960 1965 1950 1960

Australia 83 93 92 44' 785 I-2 1-2

Brazil 30 5' 47 98 '35 '89 50.6 39.4

Canada 71 81 76 593 793 1651 2-3 2-3

Chile 62 74 77 I 60 33' 508 19.8 16.4

Ethiopia ... 4 8 0.4 5 IO 95-99 ...

France 78 95 9' 334 595 I 042 3-4 2-3

Germany
(Fed. Rep.) 91 83 90 256 499 632 1-2 1-2
Greece 70 70 81 I . .
352 678 25.9 19.6
India 21 34 44 1'3 255 344 80.7 72.2
Indonesia 27 4' 47 8 48 99 80-85 57.'
Ivory Coast 5 26 32 IO 60 95-99 95.0

Japan 86 9' 93 47' 750 I 140 2-3 2.2

Mali 3 6 '4 - 3 95-99 97.8
Mexico 40 58 66 2'4 38.9 34.6
N e w Guinea ... 36 45 - 312
2 90-95
N e w Zealand 88 92 92 742 837 2100 1-2 I- 2
Pakistan 20 26 93 161 258 80-85 81.2
Papua 44 53
27
49 - - 88 80-85 ...
Philippines ... 70 83 902 992 1441 40.0 28.I
Sweden 75 80 85 241 493 923 1-2 1-2

Syria 35 45 54 86 3'5 62I 70-75 70.5

U.S.S.R. 83 78 82 693 1117 '674 5-10 2-3
United Kingdom 75 81 102 264 442 615 1-2 1-2
United States
of America IO0 I02 109 I 508 I983 2840 3.2 2.2

58
 Education and development

Percentage of national
icome spent on education.
Public expenditure Percentage Of national A~~~~~~
annual rate of of real
Figures in parentheses
public and private show budget spent On
education gross domestic product
expenditure combined)

Estimates around Estimates around Total around Per cabita around

1950 1960 1965 1960 1965 1950-60 1960-66 1950-60 1960-66

I .8 4.3 10.1 10.9 3.' 2.8 1.1 I .2

(5.0)
2.5 ... '4.5 16.5 5.8 4.3 2.8 1.3
3.1 8.5 ... ... 3.9 5.6 I .2 3.7
:3.21 (8.7)
... 3-6 16.6 I 3.0 3.6 5-3 I .2 3.9
(4.1)
... ... 9.I 9.1 ... ... ... ...

... 4.8 ... 17.9 4.5 5.2 3.6 3.8

3.2 4.5 ... 10.3 7-9 4.5 6.7 3.3
... 2.8 ... ... 5.9 8-5 4.9 7.9
0.8 2.6 13.4 14.1 ... ... ... ...
I .2 ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
... 15.1 20.2 ... ... ... ...
(2:) I 0.8
4.8 5-8 11.1 9.0 9.8 6.4 8.7
(7.3)
... ... '9.3 19.1 ... ... ... ...
0.8 2.I 15.8 24.I ... ... ... ...
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
2.4 4.4 9.6 I 1.4 4.0 4.9 I .8 2.8
0.4 1.7 ... ... ... 5.7 ... 3.6
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
2.4 3.3 27.4 29.I 4.5 5.5 1.5 2.1

3.5 7.3 ... ... 3.3 4.6 2.7 3.8

(7.5)
... ... I 4.8 I 7.8 ... ... ... ...
... 7.3 '3.4 16.4 ... ... ... ...
... 6.4 10.9 12.4 2.8 3.0 2.4 2.3
3.I 5.3 6.5 ... 18.8 3.3 5.0 1.5 3.5
(6.7) (8.0)

59
Let m y country awake

as an increase in the per capita incomes in all these four areas. The
question that suggests itself is, what has the rate of educational
growth contributed to the growth of per capita income? Similarly,
turning to Table 3, one could further ask how much of the increase
in Australias gross domestic product of between 2.8 per cent and
3.I per cent per annum can be attributed to the spectacular expan-
sion of its third-level education, where enrolment rates nearly
trebled during this period? In other words, is it possible to quantify
the consequences of increased education in terms of increases in
gross domestic production?
The rate of investment in education,of which the public expendi-
ture on education shown as a percentage of national income is an
indicator,also shows a remarkable increase for all regions during the
fifteen-yearperiod under discussion (for the Arab States and Africa
comparable figures are available only for a five-yearperiod)-both
the developing and the developed.The percentage increasesfor the
developed countries conceal a much larger absolute increase in
public expenditure in education,given the size of their national in-
comes,compared to those of the developing countries (see Tables I
and 2). During this period there was a doublingin educationalexpen-
ditures incurred in the IJnited States in relation to its national in-
come. What quantitative effect did this have on the growth of the
total production in the United States, which in the last six years
was running at a rate of 5 per cent per annum? What part ofthe 5.7
per cent rate ofincreasein domesticproductionin Syriabetween 1960
and I 966 is attributable to the increasein the percentage ofthe total
national budget devoted to education in this country, which rose
from 14.8per cent in 1960to 17.8per cent in 1965(see Table 3). In
other words, what causal relationship does the rate of investment in
education in a country bear to the size and rate of increase of its
national income?
In summary, these questions may be stated as follows. First, is
there a causal relationship between the rate of educational expan-
sion measured by school attendance and literacy development and
the rate of growth of the gross domestic product of a country?
Second,if there is, is it possible to measure this relationship? What
part of the rate of growth of the gross domestic product is the result
of educational expansion? Third,what is the return in terms either
ofincreasesin individual earnings or ofincreasesin total production
volume of increases in educational expenditures and investments?
Attempts are being made today to give answers to these questions,
all of which relate to the precise contribution which education

60
 Education and development

makes to economic development, One line of investigation has

already been mentioned. It identifies by subtraction the extent to
which growth in gross domestic product is due to increase of labour
and capital, and attributes the residue to education and advances
in knowledge. It is possible from this kind of analysis to affirm that
education contributes directly to increases in total production.
When it comes to measuring the precise contribution of the educa-
tion factor,however, two problems arise.
In the first place, capital does not necessarily consist in an un-
changing physical quantity like wooden ploughs,and its constantly
changing quality and productivity have to be identified,measured
and allowed for before the residue is calculated.In general,in devel-
oped countries,growth rates are not dependent on increasing rates
of net investment but on constant improvements in the quality of
capital. In these economies,large volumes of physical capital are
being regularly replaced by better and more efficient capital.In the
second place, and more fundamentally,the residue is really another
term for expressing the unknown,and disguising a confession of our
ignorance.It is the grab-bagfor all sorts offactors which include,in
addition to education, changes in the product mix, training and
public health, research and development, economies of scale and
structural changes,each of which accounts for parts of the residue.
Tools must be developed to break down this residue in terms of the
separate contributions of each of these many elements, before the
contribution of education to economic development can be isolated
and quantified in this way.
A second line ofstudy examines the relationship between expendi-
tures on education and national income and/or physical capital
formation. Here studies for the first half of the present century of
certain countries show that resources spent on education increased
three and a halftimes faster than money incomes or physical capital
formation.In the language of the economist,this indicates that the
income elasticity of demand for education was about 3.5 for that
period; that is to say, people during this time period preferred to
spend their money on education at a rate three and a half times
higher than the rate at which they spent on capital. Other studies
show that the total cost of education (including opportunitycost,
i.e. the income forgone in choosing to be educated) representssome
1 2 per cent of the gross domestic product. These are some of the
indices of the contribution of education to economic development.
In this approach,the complex reasons for expenditures on education
are not differentiated.It is clear that the pleasure one derives from

61
Let my country awake

some educational activity-reading a classic,for example,or paint-

ing a mural for ones own enjoyment, and the cost incurred for
acquiring these abilities,make no contribution to the growth of the
gross domestic product. Again this line of inquiry rightly affirms
that it is because educational investment is productive that it has
been expanding rapidly. It has still to work out methods of iden-
tifying that part of educational expenditures which can be related
to the growth of production.
A third series of studies in this field compares the earnings of
persons who have had education, with those who have had none,
or those who have had more training with those who have had
less. Differences in education are then related to differences in
the earnings or in productivity of the persons concerned. Studies
of the effect on life-time earnings of expenditure on education as
between different persons, at different levels of education, with
due account taken of opportunity costs, or the income which the
individuals concerned could have earned while in school and
college, show that the rate of return on such educathnal invest-
ment varies from 1 2 to 14per cent. Calculations in the United
States suggest that the return on primary education is as high as
25 per cent. The investigations in the Soviet Union referred to
earlier show that elementary literacy attained during every year
of primary schooling increased labour productivity by an average
of 30 per cent;while every year of on-the-jobtraining of illiterate
workers increased their productivity by not more than 12-16 per
cent,and thus that one year offormal education nviy be considered
to be twice as productive as one year of factory training. In
addition, the total public education expenditures of five years of
primary schooling were paid off by increased productivity in
less than two years. These various investigations make clear that
benefits in terms of productivity and earnings are related to
educational investments and point to the optimum levels of
educational expendituresthat may be incurred by individuals and
society.Furtherworkisneeded,however,to refinethereturnsconcept.
Thefactthat amansearnings are notonly the result ofhis education
but also his social position and family tradition,must be taken into
account and weighed. The fact that education is an interrelated
pyramid must be borne in mind in calculating the rate of return
for one level of education. Finally, a great deal of research still
needs to be done on the nexus between earnings and productivity.
A fourth line of study examines the profitability of firms and
business concerns and relates the differences in their profits to

62
 Education and development

the different educational input5 that go into their productive pro-

cesses. Studies are made, for instance, of the relation between
the number of workers in one or more firms who have had post-
secondary education or the amount spent on research and the
profits of the enterprises in question. In one famous case, research
on hybrid corn in the United States was shown to be paying
off at more than 700 per cent per annum. At the more mundane
level, investigations of the profits of firms with heavy educational
inputs indicate that a large part of their profit-in some cases
up to 70 per cent-is attributable to such inputs. This particular
line of inquiry is of special interest because one can be certain
first that firms will not go in for education for purely social
or humanitarian reasons and second that not all firms need go
in for heavy educational inputs. It is for these reasons that these
studies can throw light on the contribution of a given amount of
educational investment to production and profit, provided further
work is done on means of allowing for and measuring profitability
that may be attributable to market forces and external economies.
Finally, inter-country comparative studies are undertaken
along lines set forth in Tables I, 2 and 3, wherein enrolment
ratios, adult literacy percentages and the rate of growth of gross
domestic product and per capita incomes as between countries
at different periods of time, show a positive correlation between
education and economic development. The sample of countries
and data given in these tables seems to m e large enough, and the
correlations valid. In countries as far apart and diverse as Sweden
and Japan, the Federal Republic of Germany and Mexico, the
Soviet Union and Israel,Czechoslovakia and Ghana, there seems
to be more than an accidental or coincidental force at work linking
high rates of educational investment and high rates of national
income growth. Equally, a low rate of educational investment
such as is prevalent in India,Brazil,Greece, Ethiopia and Pakistan,
for example, seems to be accompanied by a low rate of national
income growth. Education can then be seen to contribute in
some measurable manner to growth rates.
In this connexion, Unesco is in the process of developing
certain norms which are being applied to educational develop-
ment programmes in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Some of
these norms are:
Total public expenditure
I.
Gross national product
Let m y country awake

Public (or total,if available) education expenditure

2.
Gross national product
Public education expenditure
3' Total public expenditure
Public (or total) education expenditure
4. Total investment
Education investment
5m Total investment
External aid
6.
Total public expenditure
These relationships are linked and in most cases form a recog-
nizable pattern, e.g.:
Budget Education expenditure
low % - - low %
GNP GNP
Public expenditure education
= low yo
Total public expenditure
unless there is heavy external aid.
If one or another of these proportions is very high or low, the
reasons are subject to study. The norms are ofvalue,therefore,in
assessing the educational effort of countries on a fairly comparable
basis,and also form a convenient index for comment on the relation-
ship between educational investment and total national resources.
Pictures of this kind can also help to stir the educational con-
scienceofa particular country or group ofcountries and show them,
by comparison,what is possible and needed. Even more,as countries
at different levels and stages of economic development are com-
pared, immediate lessons may be drawn that are applicable to
those developing countries which are asking themselves what
their next step should be to promote or accelerate development.
The main problem here lies in the uncertain comparability of
economic and educational statistics and in the difficulty of dis-
tinguishing between education as a production factor on the one
hand, and a consumption good on the other.
Despite these difficulties, and in view of the various approaches
I have outlined and the impressive body of research findings
 Education and development

already accumulated,I believe that we cannot but conclude that

education is a key agent in promoting economic development.
I believe in fact that no other single factor can break the inter-
locking vicious circle of low income,low investment,low produc-
tion and low income which the developing countries face. The
rate of return on investment in education, although not precisely
measurable for the various reasons discussed, is nevertheless
among the highest in the public and private sectors, and I per-
sonally believe it is indeed the highest.
But how is a given investment in education and other parts
of the human resources formation complex, as an input item,
related to the incremental output of the gross national product?
What are the forces through which one, the educational input,
for instance, acts on the other-the rise in production?
These forces may be divided into two broad groups.
First,education provides the speciJic skills needed for the proper
performance of a number of occupations. Investment in educa-
tion, training and research, in schools and universities, through
adult education, literacy and vocational training programmes,
enables men and women to acquire the knowledge and techniques
by which they can produce more and earn more.
Second, education creates, influences and conditions the socio-
cultural framework of a society and acts as an indispensable and
dynamic element of the infrastructure required for development.
It keeps intact and continually adds to a countrysstock of knowl-
edge, making possible the discovery of new methods and tech-
niques and the adaptation of existing ones, and fosters a readiness
to consider new ideas and accept new attitudes, institutions and
processes. Most of all, it promotes social and occupational mobility.
At certain points in a countrys development, this socio-cultural
roIe ofeducation may be the cause ofsocialtensions precisely because
it creates new aspirations and widens horizons. At other junctures,
it may become the most effective force in relieving tensions and
creating understanding not only as between different groups and
classes within the country concerned but also on an international
scale.
In the developed countries like France,Japan, Federal Republic
of Germany, United Kingdom, United States and the U.S.S.R.,
given the conditions of relatively full employment and factor
mobility, accompanied by a development-oriented socio-cultural
infrastructure, education can most clearly be seen to act on eco-
nomic development in the first way. It promotes economic growth
Let my country awake

by providing the labour force with new skills required by modern

technology, by reorienting and adapting existing skills and pro-
viding new knowledge and techniques that go into the production
process.
Recent heavy investments in science education in such countries,
for example, are aimed at providing the labour force with that
generalized skill and innovation-mindednesswhich modern industry
now requires,rather than the highly specialized craft skills required
at earlier stages of development.
Re-training and re-adaptation of skills are called for not only
by changing technology, but also by shifts in international trade.
Large parts of current investments in education and training in
Europe are aimed at enabling the labour force to re-adapt its
skills in face of the rapid development of automation. Increments
in educational investment in the United States are often aimed at
re-trainingthe working force so that it can concentrate more fully
on production lines in which it has a comparative advantage
internationally. For example, even though the United States
labour force can produce textiles and plastics more advantageously
than the labour force in,say, India or the United Arab Republic,
re-trainingwill enable it to produce electronic goods even more
advantageously. Finally, increments in developmental research,
whether in photo-synthesis or synthetic fabrics or a host of other
fields, open up whole new areas of productive activity with very
high rates of return.
In the underdeveloped countries,such as Brazil, India and the
United Arab Republic,for example, education promotes develop-
ment first and foremost by acting on their socio-culturalinfra-
structure. It influences, changes and moulds their social and
cultural institutions. It encourages the individual attitudes of
integrity and efficiency, and the communal attitudes of rationality
and co-operativeness.It provides a means of reducing the large
mass of unemployment and under-employment and of changing
land-tenuresystems which do not promote productivity. It multi-
plies the institutions for spreading knowledge, promoting inno-
vations, widening choices. It influences the local and central
structures for self-government. It awakens the mind and the
imagination. It kindles hope and awareness, and the will and
determination to create a different future.
In India, for example, educational investment must aim at
reducing its large backlog of unemployed or under-employed
human resources and not simply at increasing production. It

66
 Education and development

must strive to reduce the wastage and high drop-outrates prevalent

among the poorest 20 per cent of the countrys households, so
that hope for their future can exist. Adult education, together
with libraries, museums, radio and films,must bring knowledge
and information on the choices that individuals and families
face, so that the farmer, over his lifetime, will become alert to
techniques and methods of production which are well known
outside his immediate circle, but of which he remains unaware
to this day,and so that new horizons will be opened to the industrial
labour force. Nor will even a sound system of scientific general
education in India simply increase the total national production;
its immediate effect will be to bring to the young generation
in India the experimental,inventive and manipulative spirit and
attitudes which will welcome and foster change.
In so radically distinguishing the double development function
of education,I have tried to establish a clear and comprehensible
dividing line. I recognize that the reality is, of course, far more
complex and heterogeneous. It is not m y intention to imply that
in underdeveloped countries education does not impart and
increase manpower skills and so contribute to development. What
I wished to stress was rather that an even more important, direct
and, in the long pull, decisive contribution of education in such
countries is its effect on their socio-culturalinfrastructures.
Similarly, I do not mean to imply that in developed countries,
education does not promote development through its impact on
such infrastructures,for once again the opposite is the case. The
most immediate, or at least the most visible and measurable,
contribution of education to development in such countries is via
its impact on manpower skills. In fact, as I will point out in some
detail in Chapter 5, education has a vital role to play today in
helping the advanced industrial countries deal with their alarming
problems of social waste,the facts of leisure,the crying demands of
youth and above all the overriding claims of international equity
and peace. The real distinction I wished to make is between
construction and reconstruction, between creation and repair.
In delineating this double link between education and develop-
ment, however, we must not forget that education also has a
double function.
I have often compared this double function to that of the
sheep, whose role is to produce both wool and mutton, but a
more accurate comparison would be with a coconut tree, which
is desired not only for its fruit, milk, fibres and leaves, but also
Let my country awake

for the beauty of its tall, willowy length and lazily moving leaves
silhouetted against a setting sun.
Education is a production agent. It contributes to the produc-
tivity of other factors. It provides and adds to human skills. It
promotes innovation and invention.It contributes to and facilitates
change. It is in these ways that education produces higher growth
rates in the economy and rising levels of living among the popula-
tion.
At the same time education is also desired for its own sake and
not only for what it can produce. It has its own vocation and its
own calling. Its contribution to development does not exhaust its
dimensions. Its vocation is man, in whom there are both heights
and depths which development cannot reach. Its calling is toward
truths which must be pursued in spite of all barriers and beyond
all bounds,including those of development.
I began this chapter by pointing to the partial wisdom which
the idea of education as a consumption item represents. I must
end by paying it supreme tribute. For if development may be
thought of as the awakening of a nation, education must be recog-
nized as the awakening of the individual human mind and
spirit. As such, it is a source of never-ending satisfaction, not
subject to the law of diminishing returns. It is the principal in-
strument for the preservation and dissemination of cultures which
are national in origin and universal in aspiration; it is the most
important way we have of understanding ourselves and our
history; it is our only means of assuring its continuity.As such,it
is expensive only in one sense;in another it is beyond price.
Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states
that Everyone has the right to education. Populorum Progressio
declares: Basic education is the primary object of any plan of
development. Indeed hunger for education is no less debasing
than hunger for food: an illiterate is a person with an under-
nourished mind.
Yes, education is the inalienable right of every man, woman
and child on the face of this earth,in poornations and in rich.
Yes,it is a consumption good. It is wealth in itself. Is there any
more inestimable treasure that we, the educated, possess in this
world now changing so fast it seems almost to disappear before our
eyes and reappear in a different form each day, in which our
shoes wear out, our cars go obsolete, our houses begin to fall
apart, our businesses become outmoded, in which our nations are
born and change and threaten each other and edge toward the

68
 Education and development

precipice, is there anything more valuable to us besides our very

lives than the knowledge that our children wherever they may live,
can know what other children know, that we ourselves,if we had
the will and the patience, could learn what other men and women
learn?
Yes, education makes development possible. But surely education
is itself one of developments supreme goals. And as we turn now
to some ofthe consequences for education as an agent of economic
development, as we turn to the hard, practical questions which
limited resources and competing needs pose so acutely, of how
much education, what kind, where and when-to the question,
in brief, of how to make education work most effectively for
development, let us never forget that supreme goal which is
common to both and which is the awakening of man.
Chapter 4 Education versus
underdevelopment

T h e case for education planning

Educators are often bewildered by economists. They tend to
keep their distances, maintain a healthy respect and go about
their age-old business. Yet education today, precisely because
economists, administrators and political leaders have come, and
will come more and more to recognize it as an explosive economic
force, has become too important to economic life to keep its
distance much longer. It must learn to accept the consequences
of its role as an agent of economic growth.
It is m y belief, and I will try to demonstrate its validity, that
these consequences, or constraints, or opportunities, depending
on ones point of view, can be consonant with the broader human
aims and purposes which have been traditionally associated with
the teaching and learning process. Indeed, experience has shown
that when there is true co-operation between the educator and
economist,when each learns from the other, when it is the econo-
mist himself who strives to find the means of financing more and
better education,when it is the educator himself who sets his own
task and who devotes his own rich experience to making edu-
cation a more economical,more efficient, and more effectiveforce
in the economic life of his country-it is then that these aims and
purposes will often be served more completely and to a higher
degree.
What are some of these consequences? What are some of the
constraints which education must face if it is to work most effec-
tively for economic growth and development? The first and most
basic one is financial. It involves the fundamental question, how
much education? In the tragic circumstances of underdevelop-
ment, this question is the hardest of all to answer in human terms.
What it really means is how many children will not be educated
at all, will never enter a class-room.H o w many will enter but
never complete primary school? H o w many will never enter
secondary? H o w long will it take for the education situation to
improve?What will it cost to improve it?
 Education versus underdevelopment

A new discipline and methodology has been gradually and

painstakingly developed for tackling questions such as these. It is
called educational planning. I cannot hope in these few pages to
give a comprehensive idea of the multiple techniques of analysis
of which it consists, the detailed steps involved in elaborating
an educational plan and the many economic and non-economic
factors which such a plan must take into account. The Unesco
publication Economic and Social Aspects of Educational Planning provides
a thorough account of the present state of the art. What I would
like to do, however, is give some idea of the reasons for which
this methodology is necessary, of the kind of problems it actually
tackles in practical situations and of the kind of solutions its use
can lead to.
The double function which education fulfils, as both a con-
sumption good and production factor, provides the first clue to
the nature of the problems to be faced,as well as a valuable guide
to policy and practice.
The two functions are fundamentally complementary. Just as
education adds to the individualsproductivity and increases his
enjoyment at the same time, so too with society as a whole. For
the community, the production function of education is instru-
mental, that is to say its ultimate purpose is to increase consump-
tion and human welfare, of which education itself represents an
important part.
Although more education is both the cause of economic develop-
ment and one of its justifications,it is nevertheless often the case
that, at the level ofthe community,the two functionsofeducation-
the production factor and the consumption good, the agent of
economic growth and the right to which every member of the
human race is entitled, may come into conflict,in the short run.
Both the individual and community have to bear in mind this
double function of education. Most of all, it is important that not
only the economic but also the non-economicpurposes of education
be fully taken into consideration in the final answer to the question:
H o w much education?
That question must be asked and answered in every country.
Every country faces,intheshortrun,thedirefactoflimitedresources,
and these resourcesmust be divided up and allocated as between edu-
cation and other sectors of the economy. For developed countries,
where a high factor mobility and full employment are prevalent,the
theoretical answer is clear. Optimum allocation of resources is
attained when the ratios of marginal returns to prices are equal
Let my country awake

in each of the various uses and price ratios are proportional to the
marginal displacement costs. If this were not so, it would pay the
community to shift resources from uses where the ratio is lower
than average,to those in which they are higher, until equalization
is reached. Even in the developed societies, however, account
must be taken ofthe general objectives ofnational policy,including,
for example, such factors as promoting the arts or preserving the
beauty of the landscape, defence or other priorities, as well as
distribution effects which may be desired with regard to the
poorer or discriminated sectors of the community and which may
lead to State and other intervention with market forces,etc.
In the case of education there are at least three complications,
the first of which I have earlier alluded to: the consumption and
human rights aspects of education, the difficulty of measuring its
returns, and the long gestation period of educational investments.
In affluent societies, the consumption aspects of education have
naturally much greater play and the increasing attention being
given to its human ends and purposes, as well as to the general
expansion of education facilities as part of social and national
rights, means that, in those societies, more is spent on education
than economic models and calculations would call for. For
developing countries, where it is more important that the action
of education on the socio-cultural infrastructure be quantified,
precise measurement is an even more formidable obstacle. The
analysis earlier undertaken suggests that even so, the break-
through that these countries are looking for, the key to their
development is to be found in education,that is, in the discovery,
creation and development of their human resources.
To illustrate this point, it may be sufficient to quote from some
of the experience and recommendations for the seasoned econo-
mists who have advised developing countries on their over-all
economic development plans and policies. A mission sent by the
World Bank, for example, in order to make recommendations
concerning a five-year economic development programme for a
non-self-governing territory which was preparing for self-govern-
ment,stated this conclusion clearly and aptly.Economic,social and
political progress [in the territory],their report stated,willdepend
on the progress of the people themselves. A central role here falls to
education in providing ideals,objectives and motivation forprogress,
in changing attitudes,beliefs and practiceswhich might hinder it and
in imparting the knowledge and skills needed to meet the demands
oftheadministration and economy for skilledindigenousmanpower.

72
 Education versus underdevelopment

A distinguished economist who is often called in as an inter-

national consultant on similar tasks made the same point more in-
formally and succinctly. M y first rule,he told me, is:When in
doubt,educate. M y second rule is: If still in doubt,still educate.
Educate more.
It is thus that for developing,poor societies,rather more should
be spent on education than a strict balance-sheetapproach would
indicate, and it is this imperative that accounts for the fact that
educational expenses have been going up at around 15 per cent
annually during the past few years. It has been calculated that ifwe
go on increasing educational investment at the present sate,educa-
tional expenditures will consume the whole of the worlds gross
domestic product within sixty years. This kind of calculation is ra-
ther like a bogymanfrightdirected at children;let us hope that like
those bogymen, it will disappear with growth and experience. For
it is clear that the present levels are needed now, that there are natu-
ral correctives and that the worldsGDP is hardly a fixed quantity.
In fact,guidance as to desirable allocation ofresourcesto education
must be sought from the national policy objectives and national
development targets embodied in national development plans or
programmes,using the usual economic calculus mainly as a check-
point. National planning as the elaborationofobjectives and targets
and the means of attaining them is generally accepted today in all
countries,and it is in the light ofsuch programmes that educational
sectoral plans may be drawn up and the desirable allocation of
resources for education determined.A national plan or programme
is thus the first desideratum for determining the resources to be
allocated for education and for defining its place in the economic
development of a country.
A second desideratum is manpower needs. The amplitude of the
educational sector in any national plan should, at its minimum
level,be derived from the manpower requirements of the economy.
As the educational process is long-six years for a first-levelgrad-
uate, twelve years for the second-level,and fifteen or more for the
third-levelskilled person-manpower requirements must be derived
not from the current short-term plan which usually encompasses
five years, but over long-term development perspectives ranging
from fifteen to twenty years.
The manpower requirements of a current plan can be met from
the educational system only to a limited extent,by re-directingthe
current educational stream and changing the present educational
mix. But there are very quick and sharp limits to such changes. It is

73
Let m y country awake

only by estimating,over a period offrom fifteen to twenty years,the

demand for skilled and semi-skilledpersons in agriculture,including
forestry and fishery,in small,medium and heavy industry,in terti-
ary occupations,in public administration and above all in education
itself (the largest consumer of skilled manpower), and by allowing
for further changes in the occupational structure and the skills
needed,that a manpower projection can be made. A basic assump-
tion is thus to be made, namely,the demand for various categories
of educational inputs must be based on a series of variable input
coefficients-such as technology,substitutability,etc.
The techniques for assessing manpower requirements, based
largely on comparisons with countries in similar stages of growth
and certain input-output,skilled labour to total work force, and
other ratios, are well known. Their results can then be translated
into educational terms and provide the ground base,the lower limit,
forplanning the educational system.They can provide only the mini-
m u m ofgroundwork because thefinaleducationalplan forthecountry
must take account ofother national objectives,and because the man-
powerbase cannotreallyallowfortherapid changesthatsciencebrings
about and for the elasticity of substitution of various input factors.
The manpower approach to planning education leads necessarily
to the perplexing problem of priorities which the educator and ad-
ministrator invariably face. Developing countries are characterized
on the one hand by a large surplus of unemployed or under-
employed labour, usually unskilled, and on the other by an acute
shortage of skilled and semi-skilled labour. In some countries, a
problem also exists as to intellectual unemployment which is evi-
dence that the educational investment has, in the past, been mis-
directed. (In the long run, this problem will solve itself, of course,
when the educated unemployed find other employment,through
re-trainingand re-adjustments,but in the short run,this wastage is
not justifiable.) Under these conditions,countries have to decide on
the manner in which they will invest their limited educational re-
sources.The African countries decided in I 961,at the Addis Ababa
conference, that they would slow down the expansion of their pri-
mary education programmes,which at that time provided schooling
on an average for over 50 per cent of their children,to an increase
of about 5 per cent annually, while expanding second-leveledu-
cation at a rate ofabout 60per cent annually. Similarly,some Asian
countries have decided to slow down the expansion of their univer-
sity systems and expand their technical and agricultural second-
level education.

74
 Education versus underdevelopment

The question of priority in relation to the sector and level of edu-

cation is complicated as a result of education being an interrelated
series of levels. Expansion of secondary education requires,on the
one hand, expansion of primary education to produce students who
are qualified to enter the secondary schools;on the other,it requires
expansion of the third-level,to provide secondary teachers and
teaching material. The educational pyramid and the educational
mix in a country indicate the limits within which priorities for par-
ticular educational levels can operate.T w o concrete examples ofthe
way this double process,manpower assessment on the one hand and
the establishment of educational priorities, an educational pyramid
and mix on the other, can best illustrate how it works in practice.
In the territory referred to previously, the Bank mission, after a
careful assessment of development needs,recommended the highest
educational priority to expansion of secondary and technical edu-
cation. T o achieve this, it also recommended a programme for
increasing the number of primary school graduates, not only by
opening a few more primary schools,in areas where there are no
schools,but more importantly by taking steps to reduce wastage at
the primary level and use to the full the capacity of existing schools.
A particularly difficult element in the recommended programme
was what was termed concentrationof effort.Toobtain the maxi-
m u m benefit for the development effort,the report stated,expendi-
tures and manpower should be concentrated in areas and activities
where the prospectivereturnis highest.Itwasthusrecommended that
the educational effort-especially its expansion-should be concen-
trated where the population and the school-goingage group was
already concentrated,while allowing for some expansion in areas
where there is no schooling. This kind of difficult choice for the
subsequentfive years was, however, to lay the basis for the gradual
widening of educational opportunity.
A second concrete example is that of my own country. In calcu-
lating Indias educational requirements as a function of her de-
velopment plans, the first step involved was to calculate perspective
employment and manpower needs, i.e. the supply and demand
sides of the manpower picture.

Employment needs-supply side. According to the draft Fourth Five

Year Plan,Indiastotal labour force stood at around 205 million
in 1966.Included in the estimates was an unemployed force esti-
mated at some g to IO million, to which would be added some
I 6 million, if under-employment-or disguised unemployment-

75
Let m y country awake

both rural and urban,were taken into account. This meant that,at
the 1966level of agricultural and industrial technology,only around
180million of the labour force of 205 million were fully employed,
and that this gap might be somewhat widened by the end of the
1960s (roughly coinciding with the start of the Fourth Plan). The
reason for believing that the gap would widen somewhat,was that
this is a characteristic of a dynamic but underdeveloped economy.
A n expanding economy,like that of India,creates hopes and expec-
tations of full-time gainful job opportunities in that part of the
labour force where they did not exist before; the expanding edu-
cational programmes of the country,at all levels,add to this force;
the reduction in the size of land holdings,in the rural countryside,
covers the pretence of under-employedworkers,whose volume has
brought the marginal productivity oflabour in the agricultural sec-
tor of the country to near zero. (In current plans, large masses of
the labour force were drawn out of that sector,without in any way
diminishing the product.) The normal accretions of women to the
total manpower pool was a further element; moreover, the normal
employment multiplier,which is ofthe order of 3 or 4for developed
countries,would probably have to be scaled down to between I and
1.5for an economy like Indias.
In such a large and heavily populated country with a quantitively
impressive labour force,there was also the trend towards the use of
labour-intensivemethods in all forms and types of gainful occupa-
tions,including those regarded as the most modern. It was true that
further expansion of output per production unit could be obtained
by using existing unused labour capacity rather than by creating
new job opportunities. The general conclusion, open to serious
doubt,viewed from the supply side,was that the implicit assump-
tion that so long as the dynamics of the economy were conserved
during the current and next plan period, and the gross national
product continued to grow at an average rate of 4-5 per cent,full
employment would follow.This supply problem could,in part,have
been better met if the concept ofperspective planning were accepted
in its entirety and provided that the medium-term plans embodied
the consequences of such perspective planning.
Manpower need.-the demand side. Another manner of looking at the
perspective of Indiastotal labour force was to analyse Indiasman-
power needs.Attention would be concentrated on certain aspects of
skilled manpower needs,for two reasons: first, because the demand
for unskilled labour was a relatively low component-3-4 per cent
 Education versus underdevelopment

ofthe total Indian labour force;and second,because some statistical

figures and projections were available for certain groups of skilled
manpower.
At the beginning of the I ~ ~ O some
S , 37,000 scientific personnel
(graduates in physics,chemistry, botany, zoology,geology,mathe-
matics,and statistics) were in employment.It was estimated that by
the end of the Fourth Plan period, some 75,000 scientific personnel
would be needed. Turning to agriculture and allied occupations,
some 24,000trained personnel were in employment in 1960,while
by the end of the decade about 45,000personnel in these occupa-
tions would be needed. In the engineering trades, 130,000persons
were employed in 1960,and a need of some 200,000had been fore-
cast by the end of the decade. (This forecast, however, as the
targets involved were being met, has raised problems which are
discussed in the annex to this chapter.) Total craftsmen employed
in engineering and non-engineeringtrades stood at a little over I
million in 1960,and by 1970 the need would be about 2 million.
By the end of the decade, over IOO,OOO managerial personnel and
50,000medical personnel would also be required. Taking these few
samples of skilled manpower needs,it was noted that the dynamics
of Indian development would require an approximate doubling of
skilled manpower during the decade.
H u m a n resources sector and perspective planning. In the context of eco-
nomic disequilibria revealed by an examination of employment
needs viewed from the supply side and manpower needs viewed from
the demand side, the case for perspective planning was to become
clear. The first steps in planning everywhere have involved a short-
term or medium-term base-from three to five years. But it was
realized very quickly that the planning of education,health, train-
ing, research and use of modern media of communication, which
are all essentially part of the socio-culturalfacets of a given society,
and which are all intended to include change,cannot be carried out
even on a short-or medium-term basis, except in the perspective of
fifteen-or twenty-yearplans.
It has already been pointed out that the assumption that the
dynamics of an expanding economy such as that of India will pro-
duce their own solution to the backlog of unemployment has not
proved valid. Far from this slack being taken up in some automatic
manner, there is reason to believe that the unemployment backlog
is likely to increase. A framework of perspective planning over a
period of from fifteen to twenty years had to be created in order to

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Let my country awake

expand non-agricultural employment opportunities ahead of this

growing backlog through such measures as the dispersal of indus-
tries, the promotion of industrial estates, and the location of inte-
grated projects in backward regions. In this perspective,efforts had
to be directed to reducing the gap between incomes in the agricul-
tural and non-agriculturalsectors and the maintenance of a rela-
tively high marginal productivity rate ofcapital,which would have
immediate consequences on wage rates. The short-termplans had
to be formulated along these long-termlines,if growth plus change
was to be achieved.
Perspective planning was seen to be unavoidable,mainly in the
education, training,health and developmental research fields. The
trained manpower needed for industry or commerce or agriculture
or health, would take anything from fifteen to twenty years to turn
out. Some changes could have been made in current educational
training and health systems,to meet a small part of current man-
power needs.But the experienceofthe Engineering Personnel Com-
mittee of the Second Plan period was instructivein this regard.The
Committee made an excellent estimate of engineers needed during
the Second Plan but had no means of suggesting how these needs
could be met, except to a very small extent by changing the educa-
tional mix.The lesson has now been learnt and the analysis and
conclusions of the Thacker Committee, the Working Group on
Technical Education and Vocational Training, and the Report of
the Health Survey Committee,have laid the groundwork for meet-
ing one part of the manpower needs, at least in their proper per-
spective. In any case, it is now clear that, in the human resources
sector, which is characterized by a long gestation period,
perspective planning and all that it involves is inescapable. As
with India, so also with the vast majority of developing Member
States.
Faced with the problem of severely limited resources, with the
urgencies of educational reform, the paucity of research and the
interconnected,interacting nature of action at any level on the edu-
cational system as a whole and on the broader economic,social and
cultural infrastructureofthe community,developing countries have
turned to educational planning. Planning enables each country
concerned to examine the inter-and intra-sectoraloptions facing it
and to make choices in the light of all factors involved.It permits
the educationalsystem to be designed in terms ofover-allobjectives,
translated into concrete targets based on the study ofoptions, to be
attained by given resources within a time path.

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 Education versus underdevelopment

The unit and methodology of educational planning varies in

different countries.In centrally planned economies, the unit is the
nation and the methodology is based on manpower budgeting. In
free-marketeconomies,emphasis is placed on the individual school
or university and one of the principal methodological tools is the
varying of the course content. A majority of developing countries
use a unit and methodology which are a mixture of some elements
of each or a combination of both.
But whatever the unit and whatever the methodology,planning
has been the major innovation and principal step forward in the
development of human resources during the sixties. Its techniques
are still in process of elaboration,its methodology is still experi-
mental but it has become the first and most basic weapon in the
battle between education and underdevelopment. As such, it has
been consciously and purposefully adopted by almost every devel-
oping country.

The fight fw quality and efficiency

If educational planning is the first weapon to be forged, however,
it is not the only one urgently needed in developing countries. A
further requirement for maximizing the contribution of education
to national development is the avoidance of waste in the educa-
tional system. Some part of the wastage may be due to that robust
process of natural selection and free choice which is one of the
most precious characteristics of a free society-a characteristic
which should be preserved at all costs, provided the choices are
real. Yet often, particularly in low-income countries, they are
not real, and for the most part the phenomena consists of straight
wastage. T o the extent that it does, the educational system is
not contributing to national development,but to misdevelopment.
Its investment sours into disinvestment.
Surely the problem of wastage in the development of human
resources demands just as serious attention and treatment as it
does in the development of hydro-electric or iron and steel re-
sources.Moreover its dimensions are a great deal more staggering.
In India, for example, the usual Himalayanstandards must be
applied. In the Second Plan, of 9.9 million children in Class I,
5.8 million went on to Class 11, out of which 4.7 million went on
to Class 111, ooly 4 million to Class IV and only 3.3 million to
Class V.Wastage of more than 65 per cent was thus recorded in
the primary school system during the Second Plan period. If the

79
Let m y country awake

loss due to repetition of classes were added,the over-allpercentage

figures would be even higher.
Investment in the middle and secondary school system is also
characterized by a serious wastage element. A n intake of 1.9 mil-
lion pupils in Class VI falls to an output of 1.3 million in Class IX,
involving a wastage rate of 30 per cent. Thus, out of the Class I
group in 1950,only 13.4per cent reached Class X and only 7.4 per
cent went on to Class XI in the following year. O n top of that,
university wastage, a subject to which I shall return in greater
detail, is estimated at 50 per cent, and the problem is further
compounded when account is taken not only of retardation and
failure rates at the higher education stages, but also of the subse-
quent mis-employmentof skills. And these are but a few worrisome
examples of the human resources wastage factor in India. Would
a 30-60 per cent wastage rate of this kind be tolerated in Indian
steel production?
In Asia, Africa and Latin America generally, the wastage rate
between primary and second-levelschooling ranges around 50 per
cent. In one of the African countries which I visited in 1961,the
Head of State quoted figures which showed that out of 120,000
pupils who entered the first year of primary school, only 12,000
completed their sixth year, and only 3,000 their eleventh year,
which was the terminal point of second-leveleducation.
Side by side with such wastage,unused educational facilities are
often to be found. At some levels, in fact, the facilities which are
not being used represent as much as 80per cent of current capacity.
For the economist and educator, there can be few more striking
illustrations of the tragic paradox and the vicious circle of
underdevelopment than this: illiterate adults and unschooled
children continuing in their age-old poverty alongside empty
class-rooms.
There are two basic causes for this kind of wastage. The first is
basic in the sense that it cannot be removed overnight;it is an
outgrowth of general poverty. In India, for example, the poorest
I O per cent of the households have z per cent of the national
income as their share, while the second poorest IO per cent have
4 per cent as theirs. So long as total national income is relatively
low, it will take a long time, at least until the end of the Fifth
Plan period, by which time the gross national product would
have to increase fourfold (an increase of 7 per cent per annum),
before this constant ratio will come to mean Rs.20 per capita for
the lowest strata of households. And until then, children from
80
 Education versus underdevelopment

the poorest 20 per cent of Indian households will continue to be

withdrawnfrom school as a means ofaugmenting the family budget.
A second basic source of wastage is the free choice on which
Indian society rests. Parents and children choose one type of
education or training rather than another, and often their choices
do not conform to the manpower needs of society as a whole, or
even, at times, meet their own individual desires. Miscalculation
will always exist, and must be allowed for, in the educational
enterprise. The choices facing Indian society today are large,
and in some sectors so unfamiliar, that the present wastage rates
arising from this factor will take some time to reach their normal
level.
I can recall making my own choice, at the end of m y pre-
university career, to train as an economist. No one in m y family,
no one in m y village of Ami,no one in m y small town of Vellore
where I completed m y intermediate pre-university course, could
tell me what it meant. Nor did I know. W e knew what it meant
to train in philosophy, or medicine, or engineering, or agronomy.
But economics had simply never been heard of in the rural area
where I grew up, not even in its schools and colleges. The results
of my gamble were perhaps more fortunate than the laws of
probability would lead one to expect, but this is surely an area
where the wider circulation and dissemination of knowledge can
do much to reduce wastage. What I have in mind in particular
is the expansion of vocational guidance services, which should
be an effective means of tackling the problem and which are still
in an embryonic stage in India. Surely their large potential should
be developed as quickly as possible.
I have said, however, that these two sources of wastage-
general poverty and free choice-must, for the time being at least,
be accepted as given. On the other hand, there are causes of the
appalling wastage rate in our educational and training systems
which are very definitely remediable and on which action can
and should be taken. These centre around the status and equip-
ment-mental, moral and material-of the teacher.

Teachers. The qualitative problems in this field were incisively

defined by the Regional Council of the World Confederation of
Organizations of the Teaching Profession, meeting in Kuala
Lumpur in 1960:
Poorly trained, poorly paid and overworked teachers, over-
crowded classes with a shortened school day: a very thin curriculum

81
Let m y country awake

that does not cover even the bare essentials of primary education:
make-shift class-rooms and school buildings: textbooks that are
far from attractive and even those available only in insufficient
quantities;and essential teaching aids that may be entirely absent
in the class-room-this is education in its most diluted form which
in some cases may be almost as bad as no education.
M a n is more than a production factor but even as such he has a
pretty poor deal in Asia, especially when he is called upon to
produce human resources. W h y is no other production agent
In our countries-not the barber,not the butcher, not the farmer-
thus required to make bricks without straw? Nine years have
passed since that picture of the Asian teacher was so tragically
and realistically painted. What has happened since? Not much,
I a m afraid-at least no more than a small beginning. And the
lot oftheAfrican and Latin American teacherisoftennotmuch better.
In India,for example, during the Third Plan period something
like 30-35 per cent of Indian teachers at all levels of education
were untrained for their jobs. Moreover, their status and salaries
did not even permit them to work full-time.W e do not use unre-
fined and original iron ore for railway tracks. W e do not then,
even so, put such material to further use, part-time,to serve as
fencing to keep cattle from straying into the adjoining rice fields.
W h y do we operate our education system as we would never
dream of operating our railways or our farms?

Educational Malthusianism. Another manageable cause of wastage

is the defective evaluation system which accounts for a great deal
of unnecessary scholastic retardation. I can still recall m y father
boasting that Madras University, in his student days, had the
lowest rate of educational output in the country. Only 28 per
cent of the student body graduated as matriculates, 18per cent
as F.A.s, and 13 per cent as B.A.s. The situation today is better,
but rates of failure at school certificate, degree and diploma
engineering level remain at 50, 20 and 40 per cent respectively.
The attitudes on which this evaluation system is based
constitute,indeed,a serious obstacle to the strengthening,adapta-
tion and expansion of the entire system of education,training and
research in India and many other developing countries. W e do
not accept Malthusianism in our social and economic life. W h y
should we accept and even preach it in our educational systems?
What I have in mind in particular is the view that quantitative
expansion is always obtained at the cost of qualitative excellence.

82
 Education versus underdevelopment

I believe that, at bottom, at least in India,this view derives frcm

the Brahmanical theory which considers knowledge to be valu-
able and therefore scarce, and which holds that it should be
owned by and passed on only to those at the top of the pyramid.
M y own father often lamented that not only were standards in
m y days falling, as compared to his days,but also that so many
who were not properly equipped to do so, were nevertheless
trying to gain knowledge. I note that many convocation addresses
and educational studiesin Indiacontinueto centrearound thistheme.
For m y part, I cannot believe that there is any contradiction
between expanding the educational base and maintaining the
high quality of the knowledge it provides. The history of educa-
tional expansion in the Soviet Union,Japan, Europe and North
America reveals, on the contrary, that the democratization of
education has in fact been accompanied by qualitative improve-
ments and high achievement. Indeed the recent Robbins Com-
mittee report in the United Kingdom represents the collapse,
I believe,of the last ramparts of this reactionary fortresstheoryof
knowledge. In any case, let us hope so.
I do not deny that the democratic spread of knowledge will
involve the withering away of certain aspects of the older system.
Personally, I feel that this is to be welcomed. Education is too
important for development to continue to be hindered and hob-
bled by useless, ill-adapted,antediluvian accretions. Our societies
can ill afford to continue paying indefinitely,in social and eco-
nomic terms the high price they have paid for past accretions.
The very growth and expansion of the educational system,properly
programmed and efficiently planned, has seeds within it which,as
they come to fruition,can not only prevent a decline in qualitative
standards, but also assure a steady growth of excellence. In the
interdependent world we inhabit, the science of comparative
education provides us with numerous tools by which quality can
be improved even as quantity is increased;and such improvement
is indeed necessary.

Content, methods and technology of education. Wastage is however not

only quantitative: it is also qualitative. Much of the curriculum
and teaching programmes in the schools of developing countries
is unrelated to their economies and even to the social and cultural
characteristics of their own communities.
M y school-days are happily part of history now. But I can
remember sitting in m y hot, humid village school in Vellore,
Let m y country awake

being questioned in my English class and trying to repeat as best

I could: Oh to be in England! N o w that Aprils there! I a m
afraid that m y success was not particularly overwhelming. April
is the hottest and most humid month in my part of South India
and I can still recall puzzling over the meaning of those curious
lines. Why, I thought to myself, would anyone want to be any-
where in April?
Nor have I quite forgotten the struggle I had trying to picture
a lark when learning to say: Hark,hark, the lark! I learned
how to say it, but it was not before I went to England to continue
m y studies that I learnt what it meant. W e have a large variety of
birds in South India,but no larks.
I have learned since that the situation in Africa was no different,
particularly from those African Members of Unescos Executive
Board who recall how the students in their countrys schools
learn by heart the sources of the Thames and the Seine but never
arrive at even the faintest notion of the sources of the Niger, the
Senegal or the Congo.
Have these days really gone? I a m afraid not. In spite of the fact
that over 60 per cent of the gross domestic production in most
developing countries derives from agriculture and that over 70 per
cent of the labour force is employed in that sector, their educa-
tional systems remain unrelated to the agricultural needs and
demands of their societies. The results of the present situation are
tragic. Those few who are completing primary and secondary
education in developing countries often do not possess the very
skills so desperately needed in their countries and join the dis-
turbing drift from the rural to the urban areas. Curriculum reform
and readjustment to educate people to respond to the pressing
economic and social needs of the country is thus urgent. In primary
schools, the teaching of elementary science,nature study together
with school gardens and livestock care, as well as craft education,
are needed to foster this adjustment process. At the second level,
the key to this kind of orientation is found in science,mathematics
and social studies. Secondary schools in predominantly agricultural
economies can use botany, biology and soil chemistry not only to
introduce students to science as participants in modern civilization,
but also as the entry point into their national cultures and eco-
nomic realities. In fact the aim of science teaching and the whole
of education generally should be to introduce students to that
innovation-mindednessand capacity for inventiveness and experi-
mentation, so urgently needed in our societies. In short, teaching

84
 Education versus underdevelopment

programmes need reform and adaptation. More particularly,

the use of the sciences in the teaching and learning process
must be ensured so that educational systems can indeed become
the real and effective training ground for the countryseconomic
agents.
The reform and adaptation of curricula and content form a
basic part of the effort to avoid waste. A no less basic, nor less
urgent part of that effort is what I would call the modernization of
educational technology.
This term may shock somewhat,particularly in Asia, where we
have all been brought up to believe that education,concerned as it
is with matters of the mind and flights of the spirit, must remain
far removed from such mundane pursuits as those of industrial
firms, electronics factories, agricultural holdings and the market
place in general. W e have all learned by heart,if not by rote,that
the school is not a factory. It is a temple dedicated to truth, and
temples are not always hygienic or functional. It is a garden where
the human personality grows and flowers, and gardens remain
gardens, whether they are well or ill kept.
Education however is more than that. It is also a vital instrument
to increase levels of living, it is also one of the driving forces of
economic growth. As such, it represents an extremely heavy
investment. As w e have seen,it averages today around 4 per cent
of the gross domestic product and 15-20 per cent of the national
budget in Unescos Member States.
Education is an industry. A college or school is a factory. It
uses a part of the countrys scarce land resources on which its
campus is located; it has invested in it a part of the countrys
scarce capital resources; the buildings, the libraries, laboratories
and workshops; and even more it is the largest consumer and
employer of the countrys even scarcer human capital. Indeed the
Ministry of Education or its equivalent is, in all Unescos Member
States, the largest employer of human skills. And so the question
should be asked and fearlessly answered-what return does the
country get from this enormous capital invested in its educational
industry? H o w does the return in this sector of industry compare
with that in others? I grant in advance that this is only one of the
issues and probably not the decisive one at that-which must
enter into the totality of decisions resulting in the level of educa-
tional investment. In industry, agriculture and trade, the com-
parable answer determines the level and trend of investment
in that sector and the resulting factor distribution,mobility and

85
Let m y country awake

substitution,and this cannot be the case for education. But even

for education the question must be squarely faced.
Looked at as a competitive business enterprise, the school and
the college present a woebegone spectacle. In the business world,
particularly the fast-movingone of today,we are aware of, accept
and use the concept of technological obsolescence. But it is not
even obsolescence in this sense or at this level, that w e find in the
educational systems of most developing countries.
What we find is rather an antediluvian technology which consists
of the most rusty, creaky and antiquated teaching and learning
methods, which perpetuates and sometimes even compounds
the errors of the past, which turns investment into disinvestment
and social waste, and which turns the awakening and spring-
time of the human mind into individual boredom, ignorance and
dissatisfaction. In the average developing country, if any other
business, firm or factory was run on the dilapidated,wasteful and
outdated technology that prevails in the educational enterprise,
it would long ago have gone into bankruptcy.
In all of Unescos Member States, the teacher-oral (pontifical)
method employed on a captive audience reigns solitary and su-
preme. With its potential values of personal confrontation and
mingling of minds, this method will always be the main one. But
the professor or teacher, untrained, unrefreshed or unrenewed,is
everywhere in danger of becoming merely the repeater of mean-
ingless words. H e is faced with an impossible workload in terms
of both the number of hours he has to teach and the number of
students he must cater to.
This problem of workload stems from two causes. First, the
universality of primary education and the democratization of
secondary and higher education have increased the number of
pupils. Second, the population explosion has added considerably
to the numbers who want education at all levels. The interaction
of these two forces increased world university enrolments from
6.4million to I 1.5million in the fifties, an increase of 80 per cent,
while the number of university staff increased by less than 60 per
cent. In Europe, the student increase has been 80 per cent, in
India 50 per cent,in Latin America 25 per cent. No country using
traditional methods alone can provide the number of qualified
teachers for this growing multitude,whatever the time period.
And despite all these changes, the learning techniques in our
schools and colleges remain the same: the rote method, the tech-
nique of cramming, of imbibing as fast as possible, at second or

86
 Education versus underdevelopment

third hand, bits and pieces of information and knowledge and,

once the examination menace is passed, of forgetting all this
acquired and quite useless impedimenta. The examination system
is not an evaluation of a students personality and intellectual
equipment, his powers of thinking for himself, reflection and
reasoning: it is a vast and inhuman meat-grinder which cuts up
and shelves into meaningless groups the ersatz foods which fall
under its teeth. It is a challenge to resourceful deception and
display of superficial cleverness-not, I repeat, a call to reflection
and expression of sober thought.
The disastrous impact such an examination system has in
quantitative terms is referred to earlier. If anything, its impact
on quality must be described as even more disastrous. In place of
books of reference and authorities on a subject, the student and
teacher have come to rely on summaries,summaries of summaries
and further summariesofsummariesofsummaries.In one Member
State, I found that the students who were specializing in inter-
national law were not reading for themselves the fairly short and
simple Charters of the United Nations and Unesco. O n their
shelves instead was the latest-what is called in India-bazaar
note,derived originally from an analysis of these Charters, pre-
pared by a Yale professor for a United Nations seminar;but it was
only the report of this seminar,not the analysis itself, which in turn
became the source-book for the bazaar note by the local pro-
fessor-and it was this that law students were studiously cramming.
I do not wish to portray the situation as hopeless, however.
There are technological answers to these technological problems,
if only they are recognized as such.
First, in everything which concerns the content of what is
taught in the primary, secondary, technical and agricultural
schools and colleges, the universities and institutions of higher
education have an obvious and irreplaceable function.The peda-
gogical research carried on in the colleges and universities must
flow down and help in the reform and adaptation of the school
curriculum.Among Unesco Member States,+e United Kingdom
and the United States devote large human and financial resources
to such pedagogic research. The Soviet Union,France,Switzerland
and Sweden have joined this movement in reforming the science
syllabus, producing new teaching and demonstration materials
and aids and thus making their universities and institutes of
higher education into centres for the qualitative improvement of
education. Unesco is now actively engaged in encouraging its

87
Let my country awake

Member States to aid their universities to become the fountain-

head, the inspiring source and the standard-setting focus for
adapting their educational systems-their technology, content,
and aims-to man and his development.
Secondly, improved teaching methods, such as the use of the
tutorial and seminar method,the resort to active practical methods
in the clinic, laboratory, workshop, factory, field or farm, open
new horizons to the university and the school. New teaching and
learning techniques can produce similar breakthroughs, and
Unesco is actively engaged in promoting the use of programmed
instruction, educational radio and television, which serve as
a means both of meeting the absolute shortage of teachers and
professors in all countries, and raising to the highest standard and
greatest precision the content of what is taught. Indeed, Unescos
General Conference has approved a plan of further study, and
feasibility work on the possible use of a communication satellite
over a country like India,through which literacy classes would be
beamed simultaneously in all its fourteen languages,and university
science lectures and demonstrations would be broadcast in some
of the most difficult and complex disciplines using the most up-to-
date knowledge and maintaining the highest standards of instruc-
tion. Indeed,it is not impossible that by 1970such a satellite may
be operating over India and possibly Indonesia,West Africa and
Brazil. The impact on the future of education,and indeed on the
whole development effort in these countries would be incalculable.
New methods and techniques such as these are particularly
effective in connexion with adult education and the diminution
of adult illiteracy, especially of the age group 15-40, i.e., the
working population.
The educational process, as we have seen,is a long-terminvest-
ment: its gestation period is six, twelve, fifteen or eighteen years.
Meanwhile,the need to increase productivity todg has to be faced,
and the new methods, techniques and instruments of teaching and
learning, can be used in mass adult education programmes with
visible, immediate effects on total production. The Radio Farm
Forum first developed by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
showed the way to reduce rural illiteracy and introduce the
farming population to new methods of cultivation,crop rotation,
fertilizer use, and insects and pests control. All-India Radio
adapted this technique to conditions in India, and helped in
reducing illiteracy by 40 per cent, and in raising agricultural
productivity by 50 per cent in the pilot areas where it operates.

88
 Education versus underdevelopment

Similar programmes are now being developed in Ghana and

Nigeria, adjusted in relation to their rural economies, with the
additional aim of expanding their monetary sectors.
Finally,an intensive examination of the unit costs of education,
which are among the highest conceivable from a business point of
view, can often lead not only to important savings to plough back
into the educational effort,but also to improvements which would
make educational systems more productive agents of development.
One starting-point for moving in this direction might well be a
thorough scrutiny of prevailing educational standards.
I do not mean to imply that standards should not always be
maintained at, or lifted to the highest possible level. O n the
contrary,education on the cheap,as I have tried to point out, cut-
rate, economized, antiquated education is what we already have
too much of. But educational standards are not universal. They are
interconnected and interact with the particular society in which
they develop. They can be neither high nor low in the void, for
their true purpose is to serve and inspire the society in which they
function.
In most developing countries, standards are not high in such
terms, that is in terms of local and national objectives and condi-
tions. Frequently they represent, instead, an imported version or
imitation of the traditions and practices to be found in developed
countries. The adaptation of educational systems to local and
national needs,conditions and mores can thus be one further way
of making them more viable economically.From the point of view
of the developed country whose educational standards are high in
terms of its own society, and which has exported them in good
faith, their subsequent modification, adaptation or abandonment
may seen a regression. In most cases,however, the opposite would
be the case.
I a m aware that what I have sketched out in these few pages is
an enormous, almost Herculean task, comparable perhaps to the
cleaning of the Augean stables. I a m also aware of the traditional
inertia of an age-old profession,honoured and practised from time
immemorial,of the slowness and heaviness which seems invariably
to characterize change in such a massive enterprise as education.
The kind of measures I have outlined take time and most of all
they need resources-resources for teachers and school buildings
and textbooks,for research and experimentation,for training and
re-training,for new materials, for new methods and techniques,
for new approaches and ideas.
Let m y country awake

Resources are indeed a necessary element for development.

But they are also an explosive element.For even as we discover that
it is human resources and the growth of those resource5 as develop-
ment potential which set the limits as to how far and how fast we
can go, w e must also come to learn that it is in our power to create
resources, to explode into growth and development.
The stakes are too great, the dimensions of underdevelopment
too staggering, the vicious circles it generates too implacable, for
further patience and forbearance. In the life and death struggle
against the interlocking stranglehold of ignorance and poverty, the
mission of education is clear. It is to awaken men and nations to
the infinitepossibilities ofgrowth and change that exist within them.
But education must itself grow and change to carry out that
mission. It must set its house in order.It must forge its ploughshares
into swords.
Annex to Chapter 4

A case study of unemployment of engineers

in India
The tragic paradox of engineering unemployment in India is both a
topical subject and an urgent socio-economic problem. As such, it
illustrates not only the need for integrating educational and economic
planning, but also the dramatic difficulties which such integration can
face.
As early as 1965,employment exchanges were sending up danger
signals resulting from sharp increases in the number of engineers on
their live registers. In the I 967 university convocations, there were
repeated demonstrations by engineering graduates: some refused to
attend the ceremonies and others staged walk-outs to emphasize their
demand for jobs and not speeches.United Nations meetings concerned
with development assistance to India have discussed the issue, albeit
discursively.The twenty-fifthsession of the Indian Labour Conference
discussed this questionwhen reviewing national employment policy.The
Lok Sabha,at its sessionof2 May 1967,spent halfthe questionperiod on
the problem,thereby reflectingthe deep concern of members over the
growing trend of unemployment among the educated classes. The
House was assured that when the present studies by the Planning
Commissionin consultationwith the employing ministries are completed,
a plan providing new and increased avenues ofengineering employment
would be chalked out.Apart from the individual human aspects of the
problem,its over-alleconomic aspects are perhaps equally serious.The
unit cost of engineering education is the third highest of that of any
educational speciality,and engineering unemployment thus represents
a considerable waste of scarce resources and priority investment. The
statistical picture with regard to unemployment among engineers in
India is not precise. (I use the term engineersto cover university
graduatesinengineeringand diplomaengineersor techniciansgraduating
from polytechnics.) Other figures are likewise marked by similar
imprecision. The governmental authorities are now in the process of
establishing an exact statistical map of the problem of engineering
unemployment in the country. The Ministry of Education and the
Department of Economic Affairs of the Ministry of Finance,estimate
that the number of unemployed university engineers and diploma
technicians was around 30,000 at June 1967. Further computations

9
Let m y country awake

based on interpretation of employment exchange records and live

register figures for the period 1962-67,place the figure at around 40,000
as at December 1967, consisting approximately of 6,500 graduate
engineers and 33,500diploma-holders.
In the next few weeks, some 14,800 engineering graduates and
24,500 diploma technicians were graduated from the corresponding
educational institutions,and a percentage of this output unfortunately
had to be added to the estimate ofengineering unemployment referred to
above. T w o of the fourteen states-Mysore and Kerala-announced
their current estimates of unemployed engineers at 3,000 each.
Studies by the Institute of Applied Manpower Research show that
there is no unemployment among the highest levelengineering graduates
coming out of the Indian Institutesof Technology.
In examining the causes of the situation as thus described, and in
planning remedial action, it is necessary to distinguish between the
short-and long-termfactors influencing it. I begin with the latter.

Built-in long-term causes

Unemployment and educated unemployment. Unemployment among engi-
neers is part of the wider problem of employment and educated un-
employment in India today. According to the draft Fourth Five Year
Plan,as previously noted,the total labour force in India in 1966stood at
around 205 million. The 1961census indicates that this included about
6.2 million having matriculation and higher education qualifications.
This then is the highly educated component of the labour force which is
commonly referred to in discussions of educated employment and intel-
lectual unemployment. At the same time the total unemployed was
estimated at about 9-10 million, of which the educated unemployed,
according to various studies, may be placed at between 870,000 and
930,000.The increase in unemployment from 7 million in 1961to 9-10
million in 1966 is attributed by the draft Fourth Plan to population
growth, urban migration and educational expansion. The 30,000-
40,000 unemployed engineers are thus part of the larger problem of
intellectual unemployment in India currently estimated to cover about
goo,ooo persons.In otherwords,educated unemploymentconstituted 14-
15per cent of the educated labour force and the age distribution of the
educated.unemployed shows the highest incidence,around 80 per cent,
in the age group 15-24.

Education and manpower. There has been so far little relation between the
educational system and manpower estimates. Although,as pointed out
in the previous chapter,the lesson has been learned,it will take time to
apply it. As the Education Commission states:Inthe present education
system there is no direct link between educationand employment and no
attempt is made even to establish an indirect link by relating the output
 Education versus underdevelopment

of the educational system closely with manpower needs or job oppor-

tunities.
Despite the forecasts attempted by the Planning Commission and its
committees,the situation with regard to engineering education is not
much better. The 1964 Estimates Committee of the Lok Sabha com-
mented that it was unfortunatethat engineering personnel plans have
been formulated on rough approximations,without taking into account
the actual requirements.Governmentshould pay immediateattention to
the questionofdevising a suitablemethodology offorecastingengineering
manpower requirements so that a realistic programme can be made.

Dramatic expansion of engineering education. Engineering education in India

has expanded at incredible speed. The output of degree-levelengineers
increased fivefold from Ig50/51 to 1965166, from 2,198to 10,282,
and the output of diploma-level engineers increased nearly eightfold,
from 2,478to 18,029.From 1960to 1965alone,the annual graduation of
mechanical engineersincreased from I ,3I I to 3,I 36,and that ofgraduate
electrical engineers from 923 to 2,320. Between 1960/61and 1965166
the total stocks of graduate engineers have increased from 58,000 to
93,000and diploma-holdersfrom 75,000 to I 36,000.O n the basis ofpres-
ent admission capacity,the rapid expansionin intakeduring the National
Emergency (1962-64),which will be felt in the next few years,and a 2
per cent attrition rate,by 1973the stocks will be 219,000and 316,000
and by 1978,rgg,ooo and 425,000,respectively.This rapid expansion is
an expression of the high priority that India, after independence,ac-
corded to the educationaltraining ofengineersin the face ofacute short-
ages. So successful has the expansion been that whereas in 1964 the
Estimates Committee notedits concern that there would be a sizeable
gap between demand and supply position of engineering personnel
during the Fourth Plan, the draft Fourth Plan forecast sufficiency and
some surplus and made no provision for increasing the number of
engineering graduates.

Parameters. The projection of future demand in IndiasFive Year Plan

was based on two premises: that engineering manpower,composed of
degree-holdersand diploma-holdersin engineering,would grow at the
same rate as the engineering-intensivesectorsofthe economy-that is, an
annual rate of 10.3 per cent (the over-allannual growth target was
assumed to be 5.5 per cent) and that a ratio of 3: I between diploma-
hodersand degree-holderscould,and should,be achieved by 1986.O n
the basis of these parameters,the draft Fourth Plan stated that degree-
level education required little expansion from 1966to 1971,only 1,300
seatswere needed to ensurethatengineers with certainnarrowspecialities
would be available to meet the demands of new industries and techno-
logical development.An increase of 14,700 seats in diploma-levelinsti-
tutionswas,however,foreseen to meet the requirementsofthe Fifth Plan.

93
Let m y country awake

In actual fact, the percentage increase of the National Net Product

during the period 1961/62to 1964165,according to the draft Fourth
Plan,was 4.2 per cent and according to the Central Statistics Organiza-
tion was 4.3 in 1961162,2.1 in 1962163, 5.4 in 1963164, 7.4 in
1964165,4.8 in 1965166 and 1.7 in 1966167. Using present trends
and an average growth rate of 5.5per cent,unemployed engineers may
increase in the future to 55,000 by 1968169, 69,000 by 1969/70and
112,000by 1973,declining after that. Another way of expressing this
trend is to compute on a purely statistical basis that full employment of
engineers during the period 1969-73 will require an over-all annual
growth rate of8 per cent and a rate ofgrowth of 16pei-cent per year of
the engineering-intensivesectors of the economy as from 1969.
Distribution of unemployment. There are shortages in the supply of engi-
neers in certain specialities and there are surpluses in others. As the
Education Commission Report points out,there are shortages in metal-
lurgy,chemical engineering,fuel technology,production engineering for
heavy machinery manufacture,machine tools,electric equipment,metal-
lurgical works, fertilizer chemical and other manufactured goods. O n
the other hand,therearesurplusesin civiland mechanical and,to a lesser
extent, in electrical engineering generally in the traditional type of
courses offered in the majority of institutions.The draft Fourth Plan
urges specialization in polytechnics,on the basis ofdemand,in refrigera-
tion engineering in place of mechanical engineering and highway in
place of civil engineering.
This paradoxical situation of surpluses and shortages is illustrated in
the following tables drawn from the 1966 Report of the Technical

Shortages in totals
Stock University Additional
Engineering manpower in output in demand
~~
1965166 1466-70 1966-70
Graduate engineers 93000 85500 86000
Diploma engineers 133 ooo 132 ooo 140ooo

Surpluses in broad engineering jelds

Stock University Additional
Engineering speciality in output in demand
1965166 1966-70 1q66-70
Graduate civil engineers 36 ooo 21 ooo 14 200
Graduate mechanical engineers 26000 30000 26000
Graduate electrical engineers 21 000 22000 1gooo
 Education versus underdevelopment

Surpluses and deJicits in one Jield-metallurgy

Year Qualifications Required Likely +Surplus

-Shortage

1970-7' Degree 2 649 4 776 +2 '27

Diploma 2 970 934 -2 036
-
TOTAL 5 6'9 5 7'0 + 9'
'975-76 Degree 4099 8 123 +4 024
Diploma -
4 657 I 716 -2 941
TOTAL 8 756 9 839 + I 083

Manpower Committee and more recent studies by the Directorate of

Scientific and Technical Personnel (Councilof Scientific and Industrial
Research) (CSIR).
Imbalance. There is also a general problem of under-employmentwhich
the draft Fourth Plan computes at some 16million.University engineers
are widely used in technician-levelemployment, indicating a serious
under-utilizationof degree engineers. Precise statistical information on
this imbalance is not available but there is clear evidence ofits existence,
Instead ofthe normal employment ratio ofthree technicians to one engi-
neer (3:I), the Indian ratio of employment of technician to engineer is
I :I in the Institute of Applied Manpower Research calculations and a
maximum of 1.43: I in more generous computations. This imbalanceis
an indicationofthe under-utilizationofengineers,and therefore ofwaste
of the extra investment in their education. Morale is low and diploma-
level engineers resent the fact that employment opportunities are closed
to them.
Lack of mobility. Programmes to increase and narrow engineering special-
izations and expand the number ofdiploma engineersrun up againstthe
lack of inter-and intra-stateand inter-industrymobility of engineering
personnel and the lag in regional,state and area developmentplanning
to accelerateemployment opportunities.CSIR studiesshowthatonly one
diploma engineer out ofsix moves out ofhis own state.Not only is inter-
statemovementvery low;so too is movement from one centre to another
within the samestate.This accountspartly for the curious co-existencein
the country as a whole and even within the same state of unemployed
engineers and vacanciesin posts for which they are qualified,a factwhich
is referred to later.In densely populated states like Kerala and Bengal,
development plans and policies are only now being adapted to the
increasing employment demands of the areas.

95
Let m y country awake

Vacancies. There are a largenumber ofunfilled vacanciesin posts for engi-

neers. According to Technical Manpower, published by CSIR,in the
Geological Survey of India,20 per cent of the approved staff positions
are vacant.According to the Education Commission,of the 4,800teach-
ing posts in the eighty-threeengineering colleges,1,900are still unfilled.
This represents a 40per cent vacancy.Out of5,500 teaching posts in 22 I
polytechnics,1,700or 31 per cent are vacant.
Macro-problems. In a vast country like India with a population of over
520 million, every problem has vast quantitative connotations.Even a
0.01per cent movement involves hundreds of thousands. Gandhiji de-
scribed this peculiarity as Himalayan.With the present state of our
knowledge or lack of knowledge in manpower forecasting and in tech-
niques for forecasting economic development a very small percentage
error in a country like India can produce an impact of Himalayan
proportions.

Short-term causes
India-Pakistan war. The war brought about a slow-down in industrial
development and, together with the earlier Chinese confrontation,di-
verted resources from industry and development to defence. According
to the 1967Reportofthe United Nations Secretary-Generalon the effects
of the possible use of nuclear weapons (document A/68583),India in
1965,with an annual defence budget of around $1,700 million, oc-
cupied the sixth highest place among forty-one Member States in the
magnitude of its defence expenditures. In this respect it followed the
United States,the U.S.S.R.,the United Kingdom,the Federal Republic
of Germany,and France.
Droughts. The two droughts in 1965166 and 1966167 led to further
decreases in agricultural production and the complete disappearance of
any surplusto support industrial development.The percentage decrease
in agricultural production as compared to 1964165 was 16.3and 16.5
for those two years.The result has been not only to decreasesavings but
also to force diversion ofinvestmentresources from manufacturing to the
agricultural sector. Total savings decreased from 9.6 per cent of GDP
in 1964/65,to 9.2 per cent and 8.8 per cent in 1965166 and 1966167.
Reduction in development investment. Investment in both the public and pri-
vate sector in large and medium industries, as a result of the above
causes,has over the last years been cut back. In 1965166 it amounted to
823 crores and is estimated at goo crores in 1966167 and 880 crores in
1967168.In the public sector there has been a sharp reduction in invest-
ment in manufacturing industries and particularly in the engineering
industries.
 Education versus underdevelopment

Non-synchronizationbetween the sates of growth and the rates of educational output.

As the Education Commission Report points out, the growth targets
established by the Government for the period 1961-66of 5 (not 6.6) per
cent per annum were not realized.In fact,during part of the period,as
seen earlier,the growth rate was nil or even a minus quantity.The man-
ufacturing and engineering industrieshave suffered three to four years of
recession.At the same time,however,the educationalenrolments,which
includeenrolment in the engineering institutions,have not and could not
be adjusted annually to coincide with the variations in growth rates and
the recessional phases of the economy but have continued on the pre-
vious assumptions made concerning over-allgrowth targets.
To paraphrase the conclusionofone ofthe studies,under more favour-
able economic circumstances,Indiasplanners could congratulatethem-
selves for having developed technical education facilities capable not
only of closing the once large supply-demand gap by 1966 but also,
without further expansion,of producing enough engineers to meet the
economic requirements during the Fourth Plan. But a succession of
events: two wars,two monsoon-lessyears,devaluation and its immediate
after-effects,diversion of highest investment priority and resources to
agriculture,the failure to conclude a Fourth Plan,postponement ofnew
projectsin the manufacturing sector,the short-fallin hydroelectric power
consequent on the droughts,the economic recession,the tight budgetary
position,the cut-backsin industrialand heavy machinery investment;all
these have conspired to stunt the growth of the industries normally
depending upon engineers. In one sense,the educational plan is suc-
ceeding far too well, actually exceeding its targets,while the productive
sectors lag behind theirs, resulting in many fewer employment oppor-
tunities than anticipated. No sooner did India attain quantitative
sufficiency of technical manpower,than it was confronted by the prob-
lem of surplus engineers.

Long-term remedial action

Long-termaction to respond to the problem of unemployed engineers in
Indiamust be conceived and carried out within the frameworkofgeneral
measures responding to the over-allproblem ofeducated unemployment
in the country.The Education Commission recommends two actions in
this regard.
Job-guarantee. First,it proposes a scheme under which every graduate
would be guaranteed a job. It states: W e might consider whether it
would be possible to establish a direct link between education and e m -
ployment. Under a good arrangement,every graduate should be given,
along with his degree or diploma,an offer of appointmentas well. This
offer need not be binding and it may be left open to the student,with the
approval of the Government, to accept another offer. Moreover, the

97
Let m y country awake

period of the offer may also be made brief-ne to three years-so as to

avoid any undue hardship.But a compulsion on the State to make such
an offer would be the surest guarantee that the output ofthe educational
system is closely linked with employment opportunities or manpower
needs.It will also improve the motivation of the students,give a purpose
to their education,and make them feel that the country needs them and
is waiting for them. In our opinion,this change could be an important
factor in raising standardsin higher education and in reducing the prob-
lems of discipline to the minimum.
In putting forward this proposal for consideration,the Education
Commission points to various counteracting problems which must be
taken into accountin theformulationofagraduated practicalplan.There
is also much to be learned from the experience of several countries in
both the socialist and non-socialistworld which operate such a system.
The experience ofthe United Arab Republic,in which every graduate is
guaranteed ajob,has been the subjectofan importantseminar organized
recently by its Institute of Planning to evaluate the results ofthis policy.
The conclusions of the seminar indicate further factors which must be
taken into account in job-guarantee programmes in a non-socialist
economy.

Integration of education with over-all development.The other long-termaction

suggested is precisely what has been argued for in the body ofthe present
chapter,i.e. the tying-inof the education system with the entire social
and economic planning of the country.The Education Commissionsets
forth such an action programme in these words: Significantproblems
of life cannot be solved in isolation. The planning of education is no
exception to this general rule and,in our opinion,it may not be possible
to find a satisfactory solution to it unless wider issues are solved. For
instance,ifmanpower planning is to be successfulin the sense that there
would be a trained man available for every job to be done and that an
appropriate job would be available for every educated person, it is
necessary to prepare an integrated plan of development-a plan which
will consist of three parts: family planning,economic development and
educational reconstruction.At present,the labour force cohort (i.e.the
boys and girls who attain the age of 16or over and enter the labour
force in a given year) suffers from several serious defects or difficulties
such as the following:
Its size is too large-about 2 per cent of the total population-owing
to the large birth-rate.
Its educational attainments are also very meagre-about 60 per cent
of the cohort is illiterate and about 40per centwould have completed
primary schooling and attained permanent literacy. Of the latter
40 per cent about 25 per cent would have received more than five
years of schooling and probably completed the primary school
course;about 8 per cent would have completed the secondary school;
 Education versus underdevelopment

and only about I or 2 per cent might be graduated. The proportion

of the educated persons in these cohorts is far too inadequate for the
creation of a modern social order.What is worse,the little education
that has been given is so predominantly academic that there are no
trained persons to man the key posts in certain sectors of industri-
alization now being developed.
The rate of economic development,especially in rural areas, is so slow
that there are not enough jobs for even half of this cohort.
Ifthis situationis to be improved it is necessary to prepare an integrated
plan of development with these objects:
T o reduce the birth-rate to about half in a planned programme of
ten to fifteen years.
To bring about a very rapid economic development in such a manner
that there would be a job for every young man or woman who enters
the labour force.
T o provide such education to the young boys and girls as will qualify
them,by having a specific job to do to participate effectively in the
national development programme.
Suchplans are needed at the national,state and even district levels.
Their preparation and implementation is the responsibility of the
Government+entral, state and local. It is only in the wider perspec-
tive of such plans that the problem of educational planning can be
successfully solved.
And so too, I would add,the intractable problem of unemployment
and intellectualunemployment.

Accelerated development.It is thus clear that,on a long-rangebasis,accele-

rated economic growth and the return of the industrial and agro-
industrial sector,and particularly the engineering-intensivegroup, to
the planned 10-1I per cent growth rate,will alone meet this problem
of surplus of educated and engineering manpower. Present indicators
in the agricultural and manufacturing sector seem to forecast beginnings
of an upward swing fi-omrecent recessionary trends. Such indicators
need to be nurtured and strengthened.
These long-termperspectives are sobering.For one,the perspectives
should not be too long run,because in the long run we are all dead and
there is no problem. For another, there are many constraints and
prospects that a plan must meet, and employment is only one. As the
draft Fourth Plan states: Ineach sector there are compelling require-
ments which have to be met,so that the scope for large changes in the
Plan from the angle of employment is somewhat limited.It is over a
long period of ten to fifteen years, that it is possible so to influence
development policies, investment priorities and resource allocations as
to meet and resolve the problems of employment and unemployment.
Nevertheless the problem is urgent and thus requires short-term
remedial measures, to which we now turn.

99
Let m y country awake

Short-term remedial action

Reduced enrolment. The most obvious remedial action suggested is to cut
the intake of engineering institutions. The Government has decided to
reduce planned enrolment in certain engineering institutions to achieve
an over-allreductionofsome35 per cent over theplanned intakefor the
academicyear 1968/69.Some state governments,such as Bihar,Orissa,
Jammu and Kashmir,announced reductions of up to 50 per cent.The
over-allcut of 35 per cent is not to be applied uniformly in all institutions
or in all specializations,since the aim essentiallyis to prune admissionsto
weak and inadequateinstitutionsand the traditionalfields ofengineering,
so that the technical competenceand employment potential of the quali-
fying students are improved in the process. The 35 per cent reduction
will be achieved by not starting new institutionswhich had been planned
for the next academic year, by severely cutting admissions in recently
established institutions where the necessary instructional facilities are
inadequate,by reducing admissionsin old but weak institutions,and by
reducing the intake in the generalized areas of civil and mechanical
engineering while continuing or expanding,as appropriate,the planned
enrolment in the specialized areas where there continue to be shortages.
For the future,it is essential that ad hoc unco-ordinated reductions
which could in a decade or less produce critical shortages be avoided
through a carefully considered policy based on studies of future engi-
neering demand. This is a function of such factors as the relationship
between economic growth and the demand for engineers,the different
levels of economic and technological development,changes in employ-
ment practices and staffing norms. These studies should be reinforced
and based on local employment market surveys and not on the false
assumption that there is a fully mobile national labour force.Agencies
such as the Institute of Applied Manpower Research and CSIR are
equipped to complete such studies in a year.
Reorientation of curricula. The strengthening and reorientation of the
curricula of the engineering institutions begun some years ago will be
further extended and speeded during thisperiod ofa pausein quantitative
expansion. Post-graduate instruction, a growing research programme
and closer relations with industry (including adequate specialized
industrial training) are the major features of this reform together with
a programme for the training of teachers in regional colleges. The
institutions aided by Unesco, under the United Nations Development
Programme, like other quality institutions, will also share in this
strengtheningoftheir curricula through post-graduatecourses,expanded
research and industrial counselling and closer ties with industry through
practical training.
In fact these measures could also include the study of the desirability
of upgrading some institutionswhich would also reduce undergraduate

IO0
 Education versus underdevelopment

capacity,the conversion of some degree into diploma institutions,the

closure of sub-standard institutes and sandwiching of degree and
diploma courses in some institutions.
Utilization. Reduction in enrolments and curricula changes will begin to
adjust the supply-demandrelations only after three years for diploma,
and after fiveyears for graduate engineers.But immediatemeasures must
be devised for reducing engineering unemployment. For this, a more
imaginative and fuller use of engineers for development purposes is
suggested. Currently, unemployed engineers can be put to work on
pre-planning investigations, documentation for future projects and
preliminary survey work.With the new teaching,practical training and
research orientation ofthe engineering institutions,graduating engineers
could be assisted along fresh employment avenues, in starting small
manufacturing units oftheir own or establishing small-scaleindustriesfor
or in rural areas,assisted by loan facilities.
Considerable preparatory work by engineers-degree- and diploma-
holders in equal numbers-in the way of surveys,studies, designs and
costing for the current Fourth and the future Fifth Plan is needed for
engineering projects in irrigationpower,flood control,supply ofdrinking
water,and road building,as well as for projectsin theindustrial,transport
and communicationsectors.In these pre-planning,design and feasibility
tasks, which normally cost about 3 per cent of their respective project
budgets,it has been computed that 5,000graduates and 5,000 diploma
engineers can be employed.In the small-scaleindustrial sector,particu-
larly for projects in plastics,chemicals,electronic goods,some electrical
appliancesand food processing,some 5,000engineerscould be employed
and thus bring to such projects the skills in innovation and adaptation,
cost control and market assessment that this sector needs. Financial aid
to engineers,at present a bottleneck for those entering the smallindustries
sector,could be assured byjointactionby the DevelopmentCommissioner
of Small-scale Industriesand the Ministry of Industrial Development,
working with the states and scheduled banks. Another employment
resource would be the use of the growing engineersco-operativesfor
public construction work and the re-direction of some unemployed
engineers into the growing area of agricultural engineering-a new
avenue now opening for the country.

Industrial service. Financial subventions from Government to the private

and public sector in order to provide the now graduated unemployed
engineer with adequate periods of practical industrial and specialized
training may also be envisaged.The Ministry of Educationsindustrial
training scheme could be expanded for 1968-69 from the present 800
graduates to the 5,000 recommended by the Education Commission,
concentrating the increase mainly on diploma-holders,whose un-
employment is five times that ofdegree engineers.The expanded training

IO1
Let m y country awake

scheme, for instance,could meet the need of thermal stations for some
2,000 engineers and that of the Development Commissioner of Small-
Scale Industries, who could also assist in their placement, guide their
training and arrange for management courses.
Promotion of mobilio. Specialization is, in a sense, inimical to mobility.
H o w then can the demand for narrow specializationsbe reconciled with
the objective of inter- and intra-state mobility, as well as mobility
between manufacturing industries?One way would be for all engineering
institutions-university and polytechnic level-to reserve a certain
proportion of their intake for students from other states. This would
contribute to mobility. Equally, the development of narrow specializa-
tions should be limited to those institutions which are located near large
urban and industrial centres which both produce a greater desire for
movement as between industries and states, and offer employment
opportunities for narrow specializations. Over-emphasis on narrow
specialization should be avoided, however, as it causes rigidity in
manpower supply and such rigidities act as fuel to unemployment in
view of the rapidly changing technologies which characterize the
engineering sector.What is needed is increasingly broad-based curricula
which promote flexibility,inventivenessand intuitive adaptability.
In particular,every effort should be made to promote inter-stateand
intra-statemobility of diploma engineers and technicians so that the
area and state development policies can be implemented and all em-
ployment opportunities fully and adequately used.
Filling vacancies.A greater effort should be made to fill existing vacancies
with more speed and to improve procedures for appointing engineersto
such vacancies.I have in mind in particular the unreal demand for the
highest qualificationsfor everyjob.Currently the averageperiod required
for such appointments is six months or more. Further,the salary levels
of engineers in the public sector,and particularly of teachers in en-
gineering institutionsneed to be raised,asrecommendedby theEducation
Commission.
Short-term planned brain drain. Finally,a somewhat painful suggestion:
some temporary migration of unemployed qualified engineers wherever
job opportunities await them might be desirable. This could be a short-
term, five-year,planned brain drain. Such action might also be a
contribution by India towards the industrial development of the other
developing countries.

I02
 Education versus underdevelopment

Some personal conclusions

A number of conclusions can be drawn from this paradoxical and tragic
case study.
First,the short-termremedial measures I have outlined are palliatives,
nothing more and nothing less. This may be an unpleasant truth, but
I believe w e must face unpleasant truths if we are to learn from the
past and try to master the future.
Second, the long-term measures suggested, and particularly the
integration of educational planning, manpower programming and eco-
nomic planning recommended by the Education Commission,can no
longer be considered as merely desirable improvements.They are imper-
atives.Yet even these imperativesare not enough.N o matter how wise
our planners,no matter how accurateour statistics,we cannotyet foresee
droughts,w e cannot yet forestallwars.
Third,the struggle between education and underdevelopmentis pre-
cisely that-a struggle. It requires that a11 our forces be marshalled and
thrown into the battle on all fronts.Just as development cannot occur
without education, education,at least in the shortrun,does not serve
non-development.In the long run, even in a momentarily non-devel-
oping economy,it creates the short-termpressures which prod the devel-
opment process back into movement. But those short-term pressures
can be costly,both in economic and human terms.
M y final conclusion involves the long-termand short-termperspec-
tives. India's national income for 1968/69is likely to rise from the lower
levels of the last two years to that of 1964/65.But given the population
increase of 7.5 per cent in the intervening three years,an improvement
in per capita income for 1973174 demands a larger size plan than the
draft Fourth Plan.This means five more years ofbelt-tightening.O n the
assumption of a larger effort than foreseen in the draft Fourth Plan,
1968169 could be the link year between the recent past of economic
stagnation and the future five-year development envisaged. This
demands a stepping-up of the annual plan figure for the link year
I 968169 and a directing of the increased investment to the engineering-
intensive sectors.
Chapter 5 Education for
development in the industrialized
countries

Perhaps because of the terminology we use in referring to devel-

opedcountries,perhaps because that terminology expresses a kind
of deep-rootedbelief that these societies have solved all their really
serious problems in becoming comparatively rich and in steadily
growing comparatively richer, we tend to discuss the role of their
educational systems almost exclusively in terms ofpast achievements
and historical models for others to follow.W e sometimes forget that
the process of development poses for the industrialized, highly
advanced third of our globe a whole new series of problems,no less
urgent because they are more complex and no less dramatic be-
cause the goals are more difficult to define.
Of the many facets of the development concept (of which I
attempted an over-alldefinition in Chapter 2), I would like now to
dwell on its growth and innovation aspect, which seems to m e
most germane to the problems of industrialized countries-
problems which are both economic and social,national and inter-
national.
The countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America-commonly
called the underdeveloped countries-are largely engaged in an all-
out effort to start their economic and social development. The coun-
tries of Europe and North America, as well asJapan,New Zealand
and Australia, commonly called the developed countries,are con-
cerned with continuing a high rate ofeconomic growth.The process
in which the first group ofcountries is engaged is like revving up the
engines of an aeroplane, moving it around the apron of the aero-
drome and bringing it to the runway in a state where it can take off.
The second group is working to achieve higher economic growth
targets,promote expanding welfare programmes,launch or develop
newer,technology-intensiveenterprises in a race with others oftheir
kind; what is involved is more like the speed and height at which
the aeroplane is flying, and the comfort inside it, in relation to
others which are also flying.
The twin sets ofproblems which higher-growth-ratesocieties face,
and to which education must now address itself, thus involve the
necessary struggle constantly to accelerate growth and the equally
 Education for development in the industrialized countries

difficult task of dealing with the disruptions and problems which

growth causes, and which seem, once a certain stage is passed, to
increase in direct proportion to the evolution of the development
process itself. These problems, the former of an economic nature,
the latter of a social nature, are both so inextricably linked that in
my mind they could simply be described as the price of a certain
stage of development.

Economic problems of growth

I deal first with the group of growth problems existing in an
industrialized country which are of an economic order.

High-level underdevelopment. Every industrialized country faces a ten-

dency to economic stagnation. A natural rate of growth exists
for such countries, which economists define in a variety of
ways, but which is most simply described as the rate at which
a countrys economy could develop as a function of technology,
i.e. the technically possible rate of growth, which is a function
of its labour force increases and the expansion of its per capita
output.
Whereas the poor countries are characterized by overly rapid
population growth and low rates of savings,in the richer countries
the propensity to invest is too weak. (For purposes of simplified
presentation,Ileave aside such situations as that ofthe United King-
dom spending annually $3,000million on Research and Develop-
ment,which is more than that spent by any other country in Western
Europe, while Japan, with the highest investment in growth, the
highest growth rate,spends the least on R.and D.)The result is alag
in industrializedcountriesbetween naturaland actualratesofgrowth,
which results in technological unemployment. In fact,in countries
which are achieving constant increases in productivity through the
competitive race between entrepreneurs and the industria1 adapta-
tion of scientific discoveries,the gap between the two rates tends to
increase. Thus the tendency to economic stagnation,the drift to a
kind of high-levelunderdevelopmentwhich faces an industrialized
country,is not due to the fact that there are no more new worlds to
conquer (althoughthis is geographically true), nor to the saturation
of all potential demand (which is susceptible of varying explana-
tions), but simply to the failure of industry to keep employment
opportunities, at certain levels of skills, expanding as fast as the
labour force.
Let my country awake

Technological unemployment. The second issue faced by an industrial-

ized society is technological obsolescence in the skills of its labour
force and the resulting unemployment and under-employment of
its working-age population. This is a complex matter comprising
two related but distinguishablefactors.
First,the technicalprogress characteristic ofan industrial country
today is fast diminishing the demand for unskilled or low-skilled
labour.O n the other hand,the demands for intermediate and high-
level skilled labour are increasing very quickly. The result is un-
employment in the mass of the labour force,and growing and criti-
cal shortages oflabour at the intermediate and highly skilled levels.
This means that the normal path of technical progress since the
dawn of the industrial revolution, through which labour simply
moves away from sectors of shrinking employment opportunities to
those that are expanding,is no longer open.
The other aspect of technical obsolescence in skills is the rapid
rate at which even highly skilled labour is becoming obsolescent.
N e w knowledgeis altering the content ofmany professional require-
ments. The breakthroughsin science and technology are drastically
altering the content ofmany disciplines and new technological find-
ings are changing the actual practice and work of many professions.
One has only to contemplate the content of present-day science
textbooks and compare them with those we used at school in my
day: todaysphysics (whichincludes nuclear physics,plasma phys-
ics, semi-conductorphysics),todaysbiology and molecular biology
and bio-chemistry and bio-physics;the interdisciplinary scientific
approach imposed by such new techniques as radio-isotopes;the
new therapeutic practices and processes of modern medicine;or the
computer revolution and its impact on a discipline so far apart from
it as jurisprudence-it is soon clear that the rate and quantity of
change is such that no specialist can keep pace with it. It is common
for those in these professions to have to spend 40 per cent of their
work-time in reading their literature in order to keep up with
developments.
The result is that in the higher skilled labour sector,the persons
who have developed their skills at great cost and large investment,
are fast becoming out of date in knowledge,procedures and prac-
tices. One consequence of this metamorphosis is the curious spec-
tacle offirms preferring young graduates,just out ofuniversities and
research institutions,to older and more experienced specialists,and
the narrowing ofthe gap between starting salaries and those earned
after years of experience.A San Francisco executive stated recently:

I 06
 Education for development in the industrialized countries

Thecrime of American business is that it pays more for a 25-year-

old than a 45-year-old.In fact,not one blue-chipcompany will ever
hire anyone over the age of 35.
Further, the great productivity advances of the past which are
continuing into the present and will gather further force in the
future, are placing the majority of the labour force of an industri-
alized country in service-producingrather than goods-producing
sectors.This involves a further expansion in the demand for highly
skilled labour.The question whoshould go to college?is gradually
becoming an attractive theme for theoretical academic research
into past trends. Equally, the problems of obsolescence in this
highly skilled group are intensified.

Migration of talent. A third issue facing industrialized countries is the

long-termor permanent migration of talent which has come to be
called braindrain.There is severe competition between the indus-
trialized countries for the limited number of highly trained and
skilled persons-particularly scientists,research workers,engineers,
technicians and doctors. Each industrialized country is engaged in
pushing forward its growth rate, in advancing its national welfare
programmes, in developing or initiating technologically viable
industry and agriculture,in moving from goods-producing to ser-
vice-producing sectors and in improving its armament and defence
stance. All these five national policy goals are directly dependent
on the amount of high-leveltalent and skills available and a coun-
trys own national stock is often inadequate to meet the full spec-
trum ofits demand.This is the case not only because ofthe economic
stagnation and technological obsolescence factorsreferred to earlier,
but even more because in some of the industrialized countries, the
defence and armament sectors are expanding so rapidly that their
demands for high-level skills and talent could not be foreseen in
terms of their educational and training systems. Of the $~OO,OOO
million being spent annually on armament, $40,000 million
are being regularly invested in development and research,
giving rise to an enormous and insatiable demand for skills, with
rewards offered at over-competitiverates.
The resulting international migration of skilled persons is a
cause of grave concern to both industrialized and poor countries.
All are agreed thattheproblem is complicated by lack of knowledge
of its exact magnitude. It is also agreed that the problem raises
moral issues of personal freedom and national loyalty and obliga-
tion. And, above all, the losing countries have not even begun
Let m y country awake

studying the pushfactorswhich are probably at the root of the

problem. For the receiving countries the pullfactorsare, I hope,
the starting-pointfor a greater national effort to respond to a fuller
extent both to their own national requirements, and to the need
to make some of their skilled talent available to the poor countries
in the common struggle for development.

Under-employed h u m a n resources. A fourth issue facing industrialized

countries is under-employmentof their human resources potential.
Past educational backwardness and neglect result in a small but
humanly important minority of functional illiterates in these
societies. This minority is computed at as high as 7 per cent of
the adult population in some of the most highly industrialized
countries. This residual of functional illiteracy is the result of
defective educational systems, low motivation for education at an
early age or inadequate school facilities.The result is that there is a
group of citizens in industrialized countries who do not possess the
equipment to exercise responsible citizenship.
Another category of wasted human resources is created by the
use, lack of use or misuse of what I would call woman-power in
industrial societies. W o m e n act as transmission belts and value
carriers at home and in society in the production-consumption
economy. New techniques for performing household tasks, the
pressure cooker,the washing machine, electric energy with its many
uses including running the deep freeze,are making women available
in large masses for active participation in the labour force. W o m e n
at present represent only 20-25 per cent of the labour force in
industrialized societies. Their further and fuller involvement
represents a vast competency potential, a readily available resource
which is still not fully used, and which can push forward growth
rates. Research in the United States shows that when the total
investment in primary schooling,which may also be viewed as a
major child care or baby-sitting organization, is offset against
earnings which would have been forgone by mothers if there
were no primary schools,a net return of 25 per cent on the invest-
ment is recorded. Again, the rising school enrolment and falling
teacher-pupil ratio in Europe traces back to women-power.
There is, of course, the problem of obsolescence of skills, when
women, after their children have grown up, return to the labour
market after a long absence. But this is our old demon-techno-
logical obsolescence-this time appearing with a certain
charm.

I 08
 Education for development in the industrialized countries

Social problems of growth

A second group of growth problems facing industrialized countries
is of a social nature and introduces various kinds of disequilibria
in the functioning of society.

Social wastes. First,there are the social effects ofmodern technology,

of which the tragedy of the tanker Torrey Canyon is an appropriate
parable. This 61,000-tontanker was recently responsible for the
fouling of two hundred square miles of Cornwallsmost celebrated
beaches and Brittanysfamed sea resorts. Allthe signs are,com-
mented the London Observer, that w e have moved into the age
of the giant oil tanker, without much consideration as to what
happens when one of them is wrecked-seabirds, marine fauna
and fish dying and dead, clothes smelling, stinking and stained
on the beaches. United States Secretary of the Interior, Stewart
Udal1 points out weare not even prepared to cope adequately
with those countless smaller oil pollution incidents that continue
to contaminate our rivers, lakes, estuaries and beaches. The
searing of the landscape by the refuse from mines, the fouling
of the air by the smoke-stacksof giant factories, and the rate at
which we are all aspiring to attain the per capita level ofdestruction
of natural resources of the most industrialized country, raise
grave questions of social values. Unescos recommendations con-
cerning the safeguarding of the beauty and character of landscapes
and sites against the devastations and inroads ofmodern technology
are an urgent cry to industrialized countries to halt this disastrous
devastation before it is too late.
I have already discussed in development terms the well-worn
doctrine of the optimum, of the preferred position, which each
individual and each society is always trying to attain-so that
at that position,the marginal utility of every one of his decisions to
consume, to work, to save, et al., is equal; so that at that point,
which is the summit of his hillof pleasure, he is better off, in
relation to the amount of goods and services he consumes, the
quantity and kinds of work he performs,and the savings he makes
for future consumption. But in industrialized societies, even with
the declining growth rates in population which accompany a high
standard of living, the development process seems to result in
people systematically destroying the amenities of life for each
other, cluttering up the countryside with their bodies and tran-
sistor radios, their houses and refuse, their motor-cars and their
Let m y country awake

never-ending exhaust fumes. Any of us who try to go out driving

into the countryside on weekends or holidays must realize that we
have now reached a stage where the external diseconomies of
consumption,of all our many products,our cars,our gasoline,our
rbidences secondaires, our radio and television are such as to make
of the doctrine of optimum a total wreck and leave the marginal
utility theory in complete ruin.
It may well be that in our affluent societies,the margin has lost
its magic;the optimum has become a mirage.No simple application
of the concept of opportunity cost (the opportunity cost of m y
drive for 50 kilometres on Whit Monday was either an air visit to
m y village home in Madras or making literate the 1,300functional
illiterates in m y village), or of the rule of equalization of the ratios
of marginal costs (applying this to one of m y friends who went out
that same fatal day, I a m still searching for the equalizing ratio of
his death in a car crash)-none of these provides a key to the
question of greater or lesser contributions to human welfare.
The question can be posed even more simply. The choice is
between a given unit of investment which produces knick-knacks
that have to be advertised garishly on billboards,through pages and
pagesofnewsprint or raucously proclaimed on radio and television in
order to be sold to a bewildered consuming population, and the
same unit of investment in the health services or leisure-time
activities of the people. When this question is put to me as an
economist, I a m compelled to turn away politely and pretend to
be hard of hearing.
Within this context ofsocial disequilibria faced by industrialized
societies, arises the problem of youth searching freely,even franti-
cally,for social meaning and personal direction,with its destructive
aspects of delinquency and drugs. Equally, the problems of the
dispossessed and discriminated, of racial and ethnic minorities,
introduce issues which are at once ethical-involving the funda-
mental dignity and equality of man-and social and economic,
involving a dispossession-disruption chain. The problems of the
physically handicapped and mentally retarded also raise similar
ethical and economic issues in these societies.

Fact of leisure. In industrialized societies, leisure has become a

fact of the present and a portent for the future. The conference
on this subject,organized in 1965by the Czechoslovak Commission
for Unesco in Prague,declared: Leisureis not a problem. It is an
achievement. In the past, those who had leisure enjoyed it at the

I IO
 Education for developmentin the industrialized countries

expense of the vast majority. Today,nearly everyone has a share

of it and a prospect of more. From the factory acts in which the
first limited work hours were legislated, separating working time
from the remainder of the day, to the combined results of tech-
nological advances and the growth of the labour movement, an
ever shortening working day is emerging. Leisure is not so much
the luncheon break, or after work hours, as the result of the force
of technology which in the future will shorten the working week
to 25 hours and the working year to 120 days.
The question industrializedsocieties must face is what to do with
this unprecedented social, moral and human fact. Can leisure
become a component of the standard of living in these countries?
Will industrial man be formed and his achievements be judged by
himself and others only by his work, or also by what he does or
does not do with his leisure? Leisure is a proud achievement but
its use involves issues and stakes which are weighty.
Reporting to the American Psychiatric Associations annual
meeting in Detroit in M a y 1967,Dr. Alexander Reid Martin
defined the issues posed by the use of leisure in an industrialized
society in these terms: After ages of orientation to a work culture,
the arrival of abundant free time has subjected us to the most sud-
den and radical change in our evolutionary history. The relatively
new phenomenon of mass tension and worry is a product of shorter
work days, longer vacations, and the huge number of retired
persons with too much time on their hands. This rapid transition
has created an adaptational crisis, seriously affecting every aspect
ofour times-social, economic,political,educational,psychological.
T o use free time in a healthy manner, people must be inner-
directed: their own master. But the work culture makes people
outer-directedand prevents them from developing their own
inner resources from early childhood onwards.

The contribution of education

These then,are the problems,as I see them,ofdevelopmentin indus-
trialized countries-they are the face of development itself, at this
stage in its history. What is the role which education is playing,
can and should play in working toward their solution?
The first answer to this question is that the development process
simply could not take place without education, that education is
directly relevant to all the aspects of growth plus innovationswhich
I11
Let m y country awake

I have just outlined. The various studies and approaches out-

lined in Chapter 3 indicate clearly that the educational factor is of
decisive importance in attaining economic and social development
goals in all countries-rich and poor, industrialized and under-
developed. Economic growth far exceeds returns obtained from
conventional types of investment and can onIy be explained
in terms of the investment which education represents. In other
words, major and sustained growth cannot take place without
educated people, and this is just as true in Scandinavia as in Indo-
nesia, in the United Kingdom as in Ethiopia,in the U.S.S.R. as
in Brazil.
W e have also seen that a further contribution which education
makes to growth is not as a production factor,as a producer of the
skills and attitudes on which modern technology rests. Education
is also, and simultaneously,an item of consumption,and in indus-
trialized countries, as a direct result of increasing material wealth,
the demand for education steadily rises. It is thus a part of the
nations standard of living. The growing number of university
colleges in these countries give their students a general education.
The graduate has no specialized training of any kind at the time
ofhis graduation. To practise a profession he has to go to a graduate
school to learn the skills in business, engineering, medicine, etc.
Thus education meets individual needs and aspirations and
contributes directly to the cultural standards of a nation. T o a
large extent,it is precisely this wealth,this abundance of education,
that makes industrialized countries seem-as in fact they are-
privileged in comparison to poorer countries.
The development of education in the world, compared with
Europe and North America, can be readily seen in the table
opposite.
This heavy investment in education in industrialized countries
means simply that education yields a high margin of indirect
as well as direct returns, since it is aimed at modifying peoples
attitudes,rather than just producing or embodying things. Educa-
tion can be seen as a producer ofthings like a machine,but unlike a
machine it can turn around and both consume what it has produced
and produce quite different things. Education acts to promote
self-discipline,to widen horizons, to open up fresh opportunities,
to stimulate initiative, as well as to impart the new knowledge
which our technically changing and technologically advancing
society creates and requires. It works to reorient and retrain the
labour force, to humanize leisure and make the culture of indus-

I I2
 Education for development in the industrialized countries

Total enrolment in the three levels of eduation and public expenditure thereon

Expenditure
Enrolment (millions) (thousand millions)

I950 1960 I965 I963 1965

World, total 221.5 323.6 411.1 90 "5

North America,
U.S.S.R.,Japan, * 146.4 182.3 212.1 82.0 104.9
Australia, and
New Zealand
Rest of world 75.1 141.3 199.0 8.0 10.1

World, total 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

North America,
U.S.S.R., Japan, * 66.1% 56.3% 51.6% 91.1% 91.2%
Australia,and
New Zealand

Rest of world 33.9% 43.7% 48.4% 8.9% 8.8%

I. Excluding: China (mainland), North Korea, North Viet-Nam.
Source :data derived from Unesco Statistical Yearbook 1967.

trial society 'inner directed'; it can strive to promote peace,friend-

ship and understanding and instil the qualities of sympathy,
compassion and charity. And so in industrialized countries,
consumption education can indeed be most productive, and no
real dilemma exists as between production and consumption
education.
I believe the contributionwhich education is making to develop-
ment in industrialized countries can and should be radically
increased-by a deliberate effort to respond more adequately to
the two sets of growth problems to which I have referred-the
Let m y country awake

economic problems of stagnation and underdevelopment,techno-

logical unemployment and under-employmentand skill shortages,
and the social problems of community wastes, use of leisure,
youth and special education.
Such an increased contribution imposes a number of constraints
on the educational systems of industrialized countries just as it
does on those of the developing countries. It is these constraints
and the adequacy of response to them that will determine the
perspectives of the future.

Planning education. The first imperative,following from the fact of

relative resource limitation, that the industrialized country faces,
is the planning of education. Too long, in these countries, has
planning been dismissed as a fantasy of socialism or something
smacking of underdevelopment, reserved for the exclusive use of
the underdeveloped countries. It has been held that unplanned
chaos is a mark of advancement,that the laissez-faire ostrich is
the lamp-post of development. These short-sighted ideas and
misleading slogans now belong, I hope, entirely to the past. One
cannot but take seriously the ominous paraphrase of Clemenceaus
memorable words heard repeatedly in these countries: Education
has become too important to be left to the Educator.Education
is going to be planned for a variety of reasons. If educators do
not plan education,it, willbeplanned by the technocrat and the
amateur.
Planning is not, however, a substitute for innovation-the
outpouring of the free human spirit. Nor does it mean that from
somewhere up top, decisions on education will be handed down.
Educational planning is a tool, not a master. It simply enables the
alternative educational paths consistent with national objectives
to be set forth clearly,and so provides a rational basis for decision
by the appropriate authorities.Its necessity is based on the premise
that in the complex demand and supply relationshipsthat comprise
education, the market mechanism is incapable of functioning
adequately and can provide no assurance that anything like
optimum investment will be reached. These demand and supply
relationships include technological unemployment, disguised un-
employment,skill shortages,bulging defence and service-producing
sector demands, and reconciliation of all these production con-
straints with the all-importantdemands of consumption education.
But this is not all.
In terms of policy, educational planning must also assist in
 Education for development in the industrialized countries

reconciling such contradictions as the objective of economic

growth with the principle of equalization of opportunity and the
increased pay-offs to educational investment in the developed
regions of an industrialized country with the need to develop the
backward areas and the nationspoverty pockets.
In determining educational objectives in an industrialized
country, policy-makers and planners must first establish the
nations social demand for education which is equal to the sum of
individual needs and related to its cultural and economic levels.
Once such a social demand has been determined,it has to be checked
against specific manpower needs which include not only the straight
forecasts,but also the needs emerging as a result of the four growth
problems of an economic order which I have outlined,in order to
adjust global national objectives to the particular objectives of
growth. This method reconciles manpower needs with social
demand,growth with broader national objectives. The educational
goals thus determined will still need to be reviewed in terms of the
financial and human resources necessary for their implementation,
a review which also allows for the establishment of an order of
priority for action.
But the fundamental question which confronts the educational
planner in theindustrializedcountryyearafteryear,and willcontinue
to do so as long as educational investment must compete with other
sectoral investments is the additional resources that this country
should spend on education. In answering this question,the planner
must start with the decisions on the countrys growth rate and
gross capital formation for the year, and arrange his budget
alternatives taking into account the population trend,the increase
in demand for consumption education, new trends in educational
policy, changes for the year in the educational mix and the ad-
ditional manpower needs both for the current year and for the
future.
Clearly educational planning in industrialized countries must
deal not only with the formal education system, but also with
manpower needs and the organization of scientific research. Cur-
rent governmental structures and administrative arrangements
in these three crucial areas are the result of past history and
political traditions and pressures. They do not seem to allow,
except in a very few countries,for the degree of decentralization
of control and administration to local and regional authorities
which is necessary in a field which involves the unique individ-
ual personality placed in a local and unique environment. In the
Let my country awake

fast-moving technological societies, these outworn administrative

structures need review,rationalization and integration;nor can I
help feeling that there is here an urgent task facing industrialized
countries. And unfortunately, but decidedly, this non-integrated,
separatist but centralist administrative approach is reflected
only too faithfully at the international level when the United
Nations family is called upon to deal with these subjects.
As regards the role of planning in combating the serious migra-
tion of talent and skill, the remarks made concerning the brain
drainfrom Britain to the United States (it is estimated that 20 per
cent of the annual output of 2,000 Ph.D.scientists so emigrate), by
Quintin Hogg,then Minister of Science in the British Government,
are pertinent. In a debate in the House of Commons he declared:
Our only prospect [to counter this outflow] is excellence in
everything, politically, socially, economically and technologically.
Three broad conditions are necessary for that. A first-classsystem
of primary education is the first. And that is where educational
planning begins.
In all educational planning there is a risk, however, which in
the absence of planning becomes a certainty, that a given strategy
with its priorities for action might sacrifice what is most fundamental
to all education-its content and quality. In the last resort,what
justifies the high investments in education prevalent in indus-
trialized countries and what makes education a dynamic factor of
growth and development is quality as well as quantity,the stand-
ards of education as well as the output in numbers.

Rgorming education. And the price of quality is eternal vigilance.

The continuing breakthroughs in content and methods in many
subjects make it vital to up-date teaching programmes in schools
and colleges.The methods oflearning and thetechniquesofinstruc-
tion are also undergoing rapid change and need similar evaluation
and up-dating.Referring to the use of new media by industrialized
countries, Wilbur Schramm describes these developments in
graphic terms: Italy uses them to make up for a shortage of second-
ary schools;Japan to provide further education for young people
who have full-timejobs; and Washington County (Maryland) in
the United States is using six channels of closed-circuittelevision
throughout the school day to make expert teachers available in the
class-roomswhere otherwise their specialities would not be taught.
A number of courses have always been considered necessary to
general education-such as mathematics, history and science-not

I 16
 Education for development in the industrialized countries

merely because of their practical value but also and primarily

because of their contribution to the individual student's culture
and mental discipline. This means that in contrast to m y own
school days, when language and literature were compulsory
and a choice had to be made between science and mathematics or
history and arts, there is need today for the educationist to re-
examine the content of general education. In view of the diversity of
life and complexity of problems confronting contemporary man,
why should not courses which have greater practical value and
increasing social meaning be evolved to deal with these problems
and likewise be considered compulsory? These matters have been
under discussion long enough, indeed for over a century and a
quarter now,for Grundtvig started the debate in 1840in Denmark.
Is it not time that these courses should pass from the desirable
to the necessary and finally to being considered compulsory,just
as elementary education itself has passed from being considered
desirable,to necessary and now compulsory?
More generally, curriculum reform and development require
the urgent attention of industrialized countries as part of their
educational policy and planning. The curriculum must be continu-
ously adjusted to meet the new and different interests represented
by their expanding school population. It must provide for the
incorporation of new knowledge and for reinterpretation and
reorientation of the existing corpus;it must enable the identification
and nurturing ofindividual and unusual talent;it must mobilize the
knowledge and experience of the teaching profession in the plan-
ning and execution of these tasks.
Indeed it is time for the very machinery for continuous reform,
revision and up-datingof the content,the teaching techniques and
the learning methods of education to be provided in every indus-
trialized country. Such machinery must rely for its substance and
technical guidance on the research work and potential of the
universities. The university tradition of being in the vanguard of
human knowledge,as well as an association and interaction between
different disciplines, places institutions of higher education in a
key position to lead the search for improved educational and
scientific content and methods. And as the university opens out to
the community on the one hand, and industry and governmental
research establishments on the other,the resulting cross fertilization
should enhance the service of the universities to the reform move-
ment in education.
The contribution of universities is part of a larger one that they
Let m y country awake

must make to growth in the industrialized countries. And that

contribution is to humanize technology, to ensure that growth
serves its objective,which is Man.

Continuing education. Technological obsolescence that has been

analysed earlier is in part responsible for wild-cat strikes, slow-
downs, working-to-rule,broken homes, various personal psycho-
logical disorders and much wasted money. The educational system
must meet the problem of technological obsolescence in a variety of
ways.
First, the education of the technologically displaced labour force
and the upgrading of the unskilled labour sector must help develop
individual abilities and raise the level of skills in general, for the
general trend towards higher technical and professional skills is
making the simple automatic re-employmentof unskilled workers
increasingly difficult. The raising of the individual workers work
capacity has thus become an educational problem, requiring
extensive new programmes for training adults in the skills needed
by the new occupations facing a shortage of labour supply. In the
Scandinavian countries,such retraining programmes for displaced
or unskilled workers already exist and under them allowances are
provided both for the trainee and his dependants, varying in
amount according to family sizeand housing costs.Suchprogrammes
should become a part of the educational systems of all indus-
trialized countries, and must aim at promoting both occupational
and geographical mobility.
T w o questions arise in connexion with the current educational
programmes for retraining and upgrading displaced and unskilled
workers in industrialized countries. The first is that these pro-
grammes are fragmentary,although they deal with what is clearly a
general problem of educational deficiency. The other is that they
tend in effect to treat the unskilled worker as a separate social
group and to perpetuate a social and economic malaise. O n the
face of this, there is a clear need for a comprehensive educational
programme for all persons of working age,which would be common
to all alike in the educational system, and which could encourage
educators to programme for it in the same effective and realistic
way they do for the rest.
The educational system must similarlybe geared to counteract the
obsolescence in skills which technological advances impose on the
most highly skilled sector of the labour force. Scientists,engineers,
research workers, doctors and the professionally trained women

I I8
 Education for development in the industrialized countries

returning to the labour force, face, as we have seen, great dis-

advantages because they have not been able to keep up with the
rapid changes in their disciplines and professions.At the same time,
the demand for and critical supply shortages of specialists with
up-to-datehigh-level skills are growing rapidly. Yet it is in this
area,that ofproviding education,training and research facilitiesfor
highly skilled workers, specialists and technicians, that the educa-
tional systems of the industrialized countries are most lacking.
There are, of course, short-term refresher courses, workshops
on specific subjects,university summer programmes and occasional
sabbatical study arrangements on a voluntary or ad hoc basis. But
if accelerated rates of growth are really the objective, then not to
provide systematically for education against obsolescence is a
fundamentally self-defeatingpolicy. The encouragement of migra-
tion of talent is no remedy;it is merely paying Peter by plundering
Paul.
What is needed instead is clear: it is an extension of the formal
educational system. Just as the system of compulsory education
allows no one to be illiterate, so through a regular educational
programme for adults, living and working in a changing scientific
and technological environment,no skilled person should be allowed
to become technologically obsolescent.A n extension ofthe tradition-
al educational system will also make possible the necessary educa-
tional programmes, research facilities and teaching and learning
materials and techniques which will have to be specially developed
and brought into use for this skilled adult group. Basically, they
would be like the special programmes and methods that have been
devised for primary, secondary,university and research personnel
in the existing system.
Such a proposal, which naturally has extensive implications,can
best be illustrated if the broad outlines are applied to a country
like Finland. Of the total 2 million persons who make up the
adult working population of that country, there are roughly half
a million in the age bracket of 40-50. As a start,each of these half-
million persons might be given one year off from work during his
forties in order to return to a college,university or research centre
to up-datehis skill.
The resulting expense will obviously prove to be a very heavy
burden on the country.For one thing, new and additional educa-
tional,training and research facilities amounting to the equivalent
of 5 per cent of the present school population of Finland would
have to be provided annually. It would also mean allowing for
Let m y country awake

direct costs in the form of allowances for the adult student,trainee

or researcher and his dependants, and opportunity costs of incomes
forgone.Forbidding as the scheme may seem, it should be recog-
nized that if the spectacular growth of an industrialized country
is to be maintained, a bold and imaginative scheme like this is
needed.As a means of introducing the scheme gradually,one might
begin exclusively with the high-skilled labour group, estimated
at from 7,000 to 10,000adults per year. In this way, the intake
and cost aspects would both be reduced.
T o finance this proposal,one method might be found in the form
of the social security systems of industrialized countries, which are
based on employer-employee-government sharing. Most social
security systems could, with some adjustments, carry the costs of
such a scheme, taking into account the direct pay-off in growth
resulting from the programme and the reduced call on unem-
ployment allowances and old age pensions.

Educationfor leisure. The new social phenomenon of leisure discussed

earlier presents the educational system in industrialized countries
with further challenges. In looking at the question it is not necessary
to enter into a discussion of the optimistic-pessimisticevaluations
or the catastrophe-dawn-of-a-new-era characterizations of leisure.
It is sufficient to point out that the era of leisure is here upon us-a
present fact and a future portent.
The Prague Conference defined four uses of leisure-rest,
recreation, personal development and social participation. The
educational systems of industrialized countries must address
themselves to the latter three of these four uses. W e are only at
the beginning, however, in glimpsing the perspectives of this
sector of education, in assessing its present and imponderable
future needs, in deciding on the optimum distribution between
general education and vocational training and in taking account
of the tremendous potential which the new media represent.
But there is already one general directive that clearly emerges in
the many-sided relationship of education and leisure. Whatever
the content of educational programmes which may be devised for
it, whatever the techniques ofparticipation and learning,whatever
the materials produced and the programmes broadcast,televised or
staged,all should be aimed atstrengtheningeach personsindividual
inner resources. If the freedom created by leisure demands educa-
tion, the challenge posed by leisure to education is to help man
develop,in all his dignity, his individual inner life.

I20
 Education for development in the industrialized countries

Education for youth. The estrangement and alienation of youth in

industrialized countries raise uncomfortable, even embarrassing
questions about their educational systems. While unquestionably
a part of the technological ferment of these countries, it also
traces back to the deficiencies in the school system and structure,
to gaps in family and local traditions,to social inadaptation and to
the search for new directions and meaning. The manifestations of
school disturbances,university strikes, youth violence and frustra-
tions expressed in recreation and leisure time activities, all hark
back at least in part to the educational system, school and out-of-
school.
The Unesco InternationalConference on Youth held in Grenoble
in 1964laid down important guide-lines on youth education. It
emphasized that the new patterns which are emerging cannot be
contained in traditional moulds. The school system must respond
to the world in which youth is living today. The opportunities
which sports and recreation afford have been only dimly glimpsed.
The desire to serve others,to fight for an ideal,to war against in-
equity, to respond to the imperative but daily denied need for
understanding and friendship in international as well as national
life-these are but some of the strands which must be interwoven
into the total educational fabric,if youth is to find in it a home-
a home where not only the traditional values and knowledge of the
past will be nurtured, but also the excitement and self-expression,
the sense of participation, the significance of personal fulfilment
which youth seeks.
It is here that w e touch upon what, in m y view, constitutes the
supreme constraint which educational systems face in all countries
and particularly the industrialized ones: education for international
equity and peace.
I do not wish, however, to include in m y thesis, at this stage,
these essentially ethical concerns. They are the most vital issues
facing humanity today and deserve more than summary treatment.
Although they form part of any effort to plan education and to
adapt and improve its content and methods; although they are
crucial to the development of all countries,in another sense,they
go beyond even these questions,for they pose an even more basic
one, that of the survival of the human race on this planet.
What I would wish is simply that the reader bear in mind the
promise of equity and peace, and the terrible menace which their
absence represents, as we turn to perhaps the most crucial and
certainly the most powerful force which the interrelation between

I21
Let m y country awake

development and the mind of man has unleashed. Science and

technology have created a new form of society in one part of the
world. They decided the outcome of the last world war. They have
made another such war inconceivable but unfortunately not
impossible. H o w can they best be thrown into the struggle against
underdevelopment? When? And with how much intensity? It is to
these questions that we will now turn.

I22
 Book Two

Development:
alpha and o m e g a
Chapter 6 The honoured servant
and fateful driving force: science
for development

If the role of education is to act as the instrument of diffusion, to

provide the broad development base, to enlist the massive forces of
infantry in the long struggle, surely the vocation of science is to
extend the frontiers of knowledge,to be the spearhead of advance,
to equip the common foot-soldier,to provide him with a strategy
and weapons for the battle.
Indeed the role of science and technology in economic growth is
so widely recognized today that it would seem hardly necessary to
elaborate it further. In our modern scientific-industrialsocieties it is
in many respects almost synonymous with the development process
itself. Yet until recently, when low-income countries were under
consideration, a curious curtain of incomprehension seemed to
interpose itself. Science was spoken of as a luxurywhich those
countries could not afford.It was suspected to involve prestige
expenditure rather than sound investment. The situation in which
we still find ourselves,with some go per cent of world scientific re-
search concentrated in some thirty countries, and the other coun-
tries, which account for two-thirds of the worlds population,
sharing the remaining IO per cent was oftenjustified on the grounds
of efficiency, economy and what was called a rational division of
labouron a world scale. The low-incomecountries,it was argued,
would profit more by sharing in the results of scientific research
carried out elsewhere, than in mounting their own costly research
machinery. Similarly,it was often held that it would be cheaper for
such countries to purchase patents from others than to engage in
their own technological research.
The United Nations system in general and Unesco in particular
have long argued against this view, and have indeed been assisting,
since the very beginning of their operational programmes for devel-
opment,in a number of practical training and research projects in
developing countriesin the fields ofapplied sciences and technology,
while at the same time pursuing an effort of reflection and debate on
the theoretical questionsposed. This gradual effort of exchange and
persuasion first came to a head at the United Nations Conference on
the Application of Science and Technology for the benefit of the
Let m y country awake

less-developed areas (Geneva, I963). That conference reviewed

the general problemsofdevelopmentand the broad technicalaspects
of scientific and technologicalactivities as the basis of economic and
social progress. It recognized that initiating and carrying forward
the process of autonomous development in any country requires the
mobilization of a nationsresources and the co-ordinationof activ-
ities in all the pure and applied sciences,whether natural,social or
human. There is also need for harmonious co-operationbetween
those responsible for preparing, adopting and implementing gov-
ernment policy in science and technology on the one hand, and in
the economic and social fields on the other.
Within this broad framework agreed upon at Geneva, Unesco
carried out the task of aiding the developing countries,through a
series of regional conferences,to put forward short-and medium-
term solutions to practical problems, and to elaborate long-term
plans for the development of scientific activity.
It was thus that the International Conference on the Organization
of Research and Training in Africa in Relation to the Study,Conser-
vation and Utilization of Natural Resources was convened in Lagos
in July-August1964,followed by the Conference on the Application
of Science and Technology to the Development of Latin America,
in Santiago (Chile) in September 1965,and subsequently by the first
intergovernmental conference on science to be held at the minis-
teriallevelin Asia, the Conference on the Application of Science and
Technology to the Development of Asia, in New Delhi in August
I 968.
Despite what would seem to be its all but tautological nature,it
may be useful to recount briefly the economic bases for the role of
science in the development process. The cultural climate of the
developing world is non-scientificor a-scientific,most of its cultures
being humanistic and literary. Development,if it is to be truly en-
dogenous and not a mere transfer of technology from outside,must
spring from science embedded in its native soil,from the scientific
spirit implanted in its own culture. This is the transformation in the
cultures of the developing world that development demands. This
is the attitudinal change in the individual that real and solid eco-
nomic growth calls for.
Modern technology, applied science, and developmental re-
search which have produced variously the computer revolution,the
vistas of unlimited water resources through desalinization and the
breakthroughs recently achieved in combatingworld food shortages,
all are an outgrowth of basic science studies, the pursuit of funda-

I 26
 Servant and driving force: science for development

mental research. The third OECD Ministerial Meeting on Science

noted:Inaddition to its intrinsic importance,fundamental research
is one of the keys to innovation in the research intensive indus-
tries. ... A short-sighted view of the significance of fundamental
research may endanger the future development of a host of other
activities of a more applied nature. In the United States, between
1958 and 1965, fundamental research increased at an annual
growth rate of 17 per cent which is twice the annual growth rate
of all R. and D.activity in the same period. For European
countries ... the annual growth rate of fundamental research is of
only the same magnitude as for R.and D.in general.
The transcendent importance of basic science for the developing
world is even greater.The confusion and debate which still charac-
terize urgently needed family-planning,contraceptive technology
and population control programmes,for example, trace back to a
lackofknowledgeand the necessary minimum research resultsin basic
biology. Here is a case where neglect of basic sciences may cause an
avoidable catastrophe. In contrast, the research in basic botany,
ecology, pedalogy and agricultural chemistry in Mexico and the
agricultural science research programme in Japan, the Philippines
and India,account for the breakthroughs in the production of new
strains of wheat,rice and millet in Mexico, Israel,Taiwan,Pakistan
and, more recently,India.
There is a close correlation between national research and devel-
opment (R.and D.)expenditure and GNP which has been demon-
strated by various studies. These indicate that this correlation can
be expressed as a I :3 ratio in rate-of-growthterms, and as a I :5
ratio in terms of absolute growth. In other words, an increase of I
per cent in R.and D.investment produces a 3 per cent increase in
the percentage rate ofgrowth (e.g.from 4per cent to 4.I 2 per cent)
while,in absolute terms, 20 per cent of total growth is attributable
to R.and D.
As for the operational role of basic science infrastructure,i.e. the
forces through which it produces economic growth, these may be
outlined briefly in terms of transfer oftechnology,new processes and
primary products, training of cadres,planning and modernization.
Current experience is increasingly confirming that the developing
countries are not able to apply existing knowledge,not to adapt re-
search results obtained elsewhere,without an infrastructureofindig-
enous basis science teaching and research. Such an infrastructureis
clearly required to absorb and master fundamental principles of
existing technology,adapt this technologyto their own purposes and
Let m y country awake

establish a corpus of knowledge related to their particular econo-

mies. Although its size and institutional nature may vary,a mini-
m u m platform ofsufficient quality is necessary for industrialization
and the modernization of agriculture.
Basic science teaching and research are required to foster the
creation of new processes suitable to indigenous conditions,leading
to the adoption of intermediate forms of technology,and to stimu-
late research on primary products which would decrease the need
for importation of synthetic products.
Higher scientific education and training is required not only to
train professionalscientists,but also to meet themanpowerneedsofthe
economyasawholeinfieldssuchasagriculture,medicine,engineering,
industry, administration and public service, which require basic
science background. Moreover, science teaching at the secondary
level is dependent upon the availability of well-qualified university
graduates to serve as teachers, and the supply of such graduates
depends in turn on the existence of a sufficient number of places in
university science departments and faculties to receive an adequate
proportion of the second-levelgraduates qualified to pursue their
studies.
Basic science is of fundamental importance in the planning pro-
cess,not only as a prerequisite for resource surveys,but also in order
to permit industriesto make the best choice ofavailable technologies
and forms of research. At the same time, it is an indispensable
modernizing factor improving the social and organizational basis of
developing societies by introducing what has come to be called
scientificliteracyand greater rationality in the climateof busi-
ness. In many developing countries investment in basic science
teaching and research would lead rapidly to improvements in the
organization of production, and extension of capital and human
resources.
This,then,isthepotentialroleofscienceinthe developmentprocess.
What are the measures required to make that role an actual one?
The question is not so simply answered as it may seem. For the
application of science and technology to development is a process
whose difficulty and complexity should not be underestimated.
Indeed,science and development,in one sense,have as much that
separates them as they have in common.
The fundamental criterion ofsuccessin research,whether pure or
applied, is intellectual. A nations economic and social develop-
ment, on the other hand, requires practical solutions to material
problems. The criteria of its success are essentially practical.

I 28
 Servant and driving force:science for development

In consideringthe application ofscience and technology to devel-

opment,therefore,we are placing ourselves at the cross-roadswhere
knowledge becomes action,where technical progress takes concrete
form in the operation offactories,in agricultural technology,means
of communication, and in the social and economic infrastructure.
In countries which have already reached a high level of techno-
logical and industrial development, it was technological progress
itself which established, spontaneously and irreversibly, a bridge
between science and economic and social development.
The situation is quite different in the developing countries.As we
have seen, science has developed outside of these countries for the
most part, even if they have contributed somewhat to it. With its
own inherent unity,science exists autonomously,grows irresistibly,
and opens up possibilities so great that the use which mankind may
make of them sometimes becomes a source of disquiet. But for the
low-income countries in general, there is no spontaneous conver-
gence between the possibilities which science offers and their strug-
gle to end poverty and achieve economic independence. This con-
vergence requires support and action by their governments to
create progressively the conditions under which scientific and tech-
nological progress specificallyadapted to their own particular needs
and drawing intellectually on their own special scientific gifts can
develop spontaneously and irreversibly.
To achieve this objective,not only must concrete scientific and
technologicalprogrammes be set forth;methods must also be found
to ensure that science and technology are made to have an increas-
ingly greater impact on development.
This search for action programmes and working methods has to
be looked at,in turn,from two different angles.
First, we must examine the role which science and technology
can play as a tool of development, as an instrument with which
political leaders and planners can obtain specific and practical
answers to the immediate development problems they are facing,to
questions concerning such matters as methods of producing known
products, possibilities of manufacturing new ones and ways of
improving agricultural techniques. This I will call the instrumen-
tality aspect of science, vis-&vis development.
Secondly,we must look at the broader and equally fundamental
role of science as a driving force of development, pushed on by
scientists,engineers and technicians who, by advancing knowledge,
inventing new processes and improving techniques, are creating
new possibilitiesand opening up new horizons.It is in this way that
Let m y country awake

science provides the intellectual bases of material progress and

shapes future economic and social structures. This I term the
causality aspect of science in relation to development.

Science as a tool of development

-as instrumentality
Every specific step taken to promote development involves the
results of scientific and technical research. Once a problem has
been resolved,those who put the final project into effect are not
always clearly aware of this complexity nor able to distinguish
what they owe to research. Some of the knowledge employed may
have been borrowed from a very old heritage, some from recent
scientific victories. Let us say,for example,that the construction ofa
d a m is planned for increasing a country's power potential. The
site must be chosen on the basis of geological data and prior
knowledge of meteorological conditions in the catchment basin,
the type of dam and the machines on the basis of technological
progress. The knowledge used may have been acquired recently or
long ago; but new and special studies will also be needed. The
results of a long process of technical progress in these different
fields will be brought into play when the d a m is built.
It is thus true that science and technology,when responding to
any development problem, have a unity of their own. It would be
artificial to distinguish between fundamental research, applied
research,studies and surveys in tackling these problems,just as it
would be unwise for the planner to pose separate questions to the
different disciplines involved (geology, hydrology, civil, electrical
or chemical engineering,etc.), or to try to distinguish, among the
various technical solutions, those which involve the application of
existing knowledge or those calling for new studies. Each solution
has a unity of its own. Equally, the process of development has
its own unity and every specific technological solution to a partic-
ular problem must be integrated with and adapted to considera-
tions which transcend science and technology.
This thesis is perhaps most clearly applicable when the question
of the technologies to be applied in industrialization is considered.
Whether one is concerned with industrial processes, extractive
industries, the production of consumer goods or foodstuffs, or the
use of agricultural raw materials, it is clear that the choice of an
industrial technology from the enormous store of old or new
techniques already developed in the economically advanced
 Servant and driving force: science for development

countries, its transfer and adaptation to the different operating

conditions of a low-incomecountry, call both for a high degree of
specialization in the techniques employed, and for the closest
possible collaboration between economists, economic planners,
scientists and technicians. These then are some of the practical
measures and policy considerations which would seem to emerge
from an examination of the interplay of science and economics
when the former is considered as an instrument of development,
as a tool for solving particular problems in particular fields. I will
deal with them ingreater detailin thefollowingchapterwith reference
to the economics of natural resources. Let us now turn to the other,
and in some ways even more crucial role that science plays in the
development process and the specific implications which that role
entails.

Science as the driving force in development

-as causality
In looking at science as a way of solving problems arising as a
result of development,we have been dealing,in fact, with only a
small part of the historical role which science has played in the
development of civilization, especially in recent years. As I have
pointed out, discovery, invention, technological progress and the
advancement of theoretical and applied knowledge are also the
driving force of economic and social development. Science and
technology must not only respond to the specific problems posed
by the process of growth and transformation; they must also,
through their own development, initiate and push forward this
process.
W e have seen that the low-income countries, owing to the
vicissitudes of history, have most often remained outside this
constant process ofscientificgrowth. The situation is more complex,
however,than this generalization would seem to imply. In African
countries generally, for example, the great question remains the
actual implantationofscience and technology,and in particular the
development of the manpower necessary for the growth of scientific
and technical activities: the shortage of scientific and technical
personnel is undoubtedly the main bottleneck holding back such
growth.
In the countries of Latin America on the other hand, with
their great and numerous universities, their eminent scientists and
acknowledged contributions to scientific progress,there is instead a

'3'
Let m y country awake

tendency for science to lead a kind of life of its own, to keep to the
traditional paths which were traced as a result of historical condi-
tions, and to allow technological progress to be introduced as
something quite separate from scientific activity,through methods
wholly evolved and perfected in other regions. There are many
renowned research institutions in Latin America, some of which,
in sciences such as astronomy and biophysics, are models of their
kind. What Latin America lacks is the unbroken line of research
workers and scientific bodies which,in a specifically Latin American
context,can be forged into work-a-daybut powerful instruments in
the fight against underdevelopment. It is rather a question of
restoring to Latin American science-as history has failed to do-its
normal social and economic role in triggering and driving forward
an irreversible process of growth and development. What are
some of the means by which this objective can be achieved?
First, w e should consider the role which the universities and
their interdependent teaching and research functions can play.
I would suggest that university research has notyet been sufficiently
concerned with development. This is a general trend in many
universities and in the majority of Unescos Member States.
This is probably largely due to the fact that basic science,like any
essentially creative activity when individual talent is the most
important factor, tends to isolate those engaged in it. There is a
recognized need to fight against this isolation, to extend the role
of university research to cover development and to consolidate
and simplify the university research network. Considerable effort is
called for by all concerned, the universities, the governments
and their Ministries of Education and Science and Finance and
their Planning Commissions, to find ways of making further and
better use of the immense intellectual resources which the uni-
versities represent, without affecting the principles of autonomy
and intellectual independence. Indeed, I believe that too much
stress has been laid on the divorcebetween governments and uni-
versities, between intellectual advance and the needs of develop-
ment. The question which needs asking now is not whether this
divorce exists, but whether the universities and the governments
are doing everything they can to make use of their rich develop-
ment resources.
Second, we must look at the key role of human resources in the
application of science and technology to development. Here too
universities have their part to play. Qualified scientists and tech-
nicians, middle-grade personnel, engineers and research workers,
 Servant and driving force: science for development

must be trained to meet current needs in a number ofclearly defined

and urgent disciplines and to prepare the ground for the more
distant future.
I have already referred to the tragic situation which Africa faces
in this connexion. According to the Lagos Conference, some
10,000scientists are working in Africa today. More than 49,000
are needed now and 70,000will be needed in ten years.
Latin America, on the other hand, faces a special situation as
regards the training of engineers, a situation which is an indirect
historical consequence of the early growth of science in Latin
American culture. A distinction at that crucial stage was not drawn
with sufficient force between the conditions and procedures govern-
ing the training of creative scientistsin the field of basic or oriented
research, and of those responsible for technical development and
production. Unesco and the United Nations Development Pro-
gramme are now concerned with engineering and technician
training at various levels and their special requirements,the diversi-
fication of training and the specialization of diplomas and insti-
tutions. Under the clear directives set forth by the Latin American
Conference on the Application of Science and Technology to
Development, they will continue assistance in this field.
The number of scientists and technicians trained in Latin
America today is somewhere in the region of 130,000:a figure
which is not reassuring and indeed is somewhat alarming because
it reveals a distribution which has more in common with the
structures of the past than with the needs of the present and
future. Technology must permeate everywhere, and preference
must be accorded to agriculture.
Another major area is the role and status of science in society.
If the maximum effectiveness is to be derived from what already
exists, for example in Latin America, where the present network
of research in institutions and facilities is, indeed, considerable,
and if science and technology are to be able to provide the answers
to the questions put to them, in the countries in which those ques-
tions arise, the scientific communities in those countries and their
development authorities must become conscious of the fundamen-
tal role of science. The existing situation in this respect gives cause
for concern. The exodus to the already industrialized countries of
scientists produced by the scientific culture of Latin America is
one side of a coin, of which the other is that only recently has
recognition been given to certain professions, e.g. geological
engineering.

'33
Let m y country awake

It is therefore necessary to reconsider the material conditions

provided for research workers and technicians, the status of the
professions which they exercise and their corresponding rights and
duties,consonant,of course,with the rules of public administration,
employment policy and salary levels in each country.

Making science work

The organization of science and the planning of development. The orga-
nizational measures which must be taken at governmental level to
enable science to discharge its twofold vocation-as an instrument
and cause of development-require careful consideration.
A distinction should be made in this connexion between the
question of organizing the machinery of scientific production,
where the scientist bears the main responsibility,and the role of
science in the more general body responsible for over-alldevelop-
ment,which is rightly a matter for the highest political authorities
of each country.When these two questions are considered together,
they constitute what is known as science policy.
Unesco has progressively developed certain principles in the
field of science policy. W e have learned that inventories of research
facilities must be available for the information of science policy
makers; that the infrastructural network of research facilities must
be balanced to comprise not only inter-linked laboratories and
institutes in the various domains of science but also the necessary
auxiliary services-laboratory instrument services, libraries and
experimental stations. W e have further learned that although full
play must be left to the initiative and creative imagination of
researchers, there must be appropriate proportions in numbers
between those devoting themselves to basic research, applied re-
search and technological development work. Finally, Unesco has
begun to identify the successive stages of the growth of a national
research policy, which must be geared to the governmental struc-
ture and related to the institutions of higher education in each
country.
These general principles are only our point of departure; two
basic issues remain to be settled.
The first is the influence of science on development. H o w can
nationally organized science carry out its double function of
delimiting the technical details of research programmes and
integrating such programmes within the existing efforts of institu-
tions ranging from the university laboratory to the experimental
 Servant and driving force:science for development

farm or factory-and, at the same time,ensure that future scientists

and technicians are trained in the proportions dictated by future
needs? The central research organizations responsible for scien-
tific policy can really succeed in thisonly ifa relatively new concept is
accepted and applied-that of scientific and technological plan-
ning. The essential purpose of such planning is to anticipate and
guide the growth of the primary scientific production machinery;
it will have to ensure that the infrastructure of material facilities
necessary for research, increasingly diversified and costly,matches
the human potential available;it will have to decide the number
and qualifications of the researchers and engineers necessary for
the scientific programmes to be undertaken. The term planning,
of course,implies no preconceptions as to the nature of the inter-
ventions required,and more particularly does not imply any form
of authoritarian dirigisme. O n the contrary, if science is a tree
with its own form of growth and its own fruits,we must, while not
interfering with the complex mechanisms by which it grows, see
to it that no part of it withers, that the sap reaches all the many
branches so that the final harvest shall be the best and most plenti-
ful possible.
But now a second basic issue must be solved.For it is quite clear
that this scientific planning cannot, of itself, drive development
forward and respond to its needs unless the organization of science
is integrated with general development policy. In a word, scientific
affairs must be raised to the highest level of government.
There is a vital need, particularly in Latin America but also in
Africa and Asia, both to associate as closely as possible in the
claboration of the plan all those who will have to implement it,
and to make further progress in the developmentofspecificprojects
to carry out its various sections. Present arrangementscontinue to
be inadequate for associating scientists,engineers and technicians,
within the limits of their competence,with the preparation of the
plan. Perhaps the most appropriate solution would be to set up
within the national planning bodies themselves a scientific research
committee which would bring together those responsible for
national economic and social development and leadingofficialsofthe
countrys central scientific organization. Such an arrangement
would also have the advantage of enabling science on the one
hand to make a more direct contribution as regards the develop-
ment of new projects, and planning bodies on the other to deter-
mine the scale and type of national investment in science.
In any case, whatever the institutional formula adopted, a
Let m y country awake

dialogue must be established between those responsible for over-all

development,and thus for defining economic and social objectives
and the contributions which technical progress must make to
their fulfilment,and members of the scientific community who
must work out the actual programmes to ensure that technical
progress achieves its expected goals.
Such a dialogue is not a simple one, nor are the problems of its
establishment easy to resolve. I need hardly recall that Ministers
of Planning and of Finance must respond, often very quickly,not
merely to one or two but to a host of imperious needs. They need
data immediately to inform their decisions on such matters as
production, welfare and land planning, and being responsible for
over-alldevelopmentmust decide how much that the economy,with
its present limited resources, can afford to invest in developing
them. Scientists, on the other hand, may tend to explore the
possibilitiesofa more distant futureand to multiply types ofresearch
and the fields or areas studied. Scientists alone can estimate the
chances that a given research programme may have for success or
failure, or venture to predict the next breakthrough in technical
progress and its meaning for the national economy.
The formulationofdraft projects,as Ihave indicated,also assumes
considerable importance in the process ofplanning. Putting forward
a project, to establish an industry,set up a hydroelectric thermal
station, bring hitherto unused land into production, prepare
irrigation plans, or improve a mining industry,is often a question
of imagination and the result of detailed technical studies. This
means detailed projects must be put forward in increasing numbers
by scientists and technologists.
Scale of investment in science. Scientific research committees within
national planning bodies could help governments in connexion
with their investments in science and technology which, as the
Ecosoc [Economic and Social Council of the United Nations]
Advisory Committee on the Application of Science and Technology
has repeatedly stressed, has been generally inadequate in most
developing countries. Whether considered as the instrument of or
driving force for development, science and technology provide
results that profoundly influence choice of material investments,and
define the investments required. The inventory of mining resources
makes possible the decision to invest in the opening of a mine;
the invention of processing procedures for a vegetal raw material
(wood, cellulose) makes possible the setting-up of a factory to
 Servant and driving force: science for development

produce construction materials or consumer goods. And even if a

process is imported from abroad for the purposes of the new
investment,scientific work at home may help to economize on the
capital necessary. Scientific and technical work on problems of
application, and particularly in relation to specific individual
projects, therefore, involves expenditure which should be related
to the investment expenditure itself. It is therefore logical, in
assessing financial allocations for the short-term research needed
in planning, to aim at a justifiable proportion between such
expenditure and the actual expenditure on investment. Moreover,
considering the unity of science and the fact that applied research
must be based on fundamental research, expenditure on scientific
and technological research for development should, as we have
seen, be considered as an investment,provided it is realized that
its maturation is long and hard to define,though recent experience
is reducing even this hazard.
In practice, such an approach would enable the economic and
social planning bodies in each country to establish the dimensions
of its research effort in proportion to its investment effort. It might
even be possible to make a breakdown of block expenditure,with
a major investment effort in the field of industry matched by a
major effort in technological research, or with an investment
effort in respect of agricultural development matched by a pro-
portionate effort of agricultural research. Similarly, the develop-
ment of carefully worked out technical projects, calling for specific
investments and aimed at calculated economic results, should
facilitate the decisions to be made on targets and investments.

Regional and international co-operation. In discussing methods to be

employed for setting development requirements against the
possibilities of science, I have so far referred only to the problems
arising in each sovereign country.Economic and social development
policy and planning targets are matters for each nation to decide.
T o some degree,both the organization of science and the integra-
tion of science policy in development policy raise problems specific
to each country, even if those countries meeting together at the
regional conferences organized by Unesco have formulated
jointly the general principles to be applied. To particular questions
relating,for example,to increase in a specific branch of production
under given conditions,reduction of production cost, or develop-
ment of a geographical area or region, science can reply only in
particular terms.
Let m y country awake

As an instrument of development, therefore, science must pri-

marily concern itself with national requirements.
But while science as an instrument is bound to follow the dictates
of development,science as a driving force must obey its own laws.
Science by its very nature looks beyond the frontiers ofindividual
countries; knowledge is flowing freely and increasingly actively
between neighbouring and distant countries;competitionin scienceis
competition for the advancement of knowledge alone. For science
is science, whether it be practised in France or the Philippines.
Scientific teaching and research,its methodology and tools,require
little adaptation, whether it be in North America or South Asia.
And surely there would seem to be a kind of magic power in the
very terms-science, technology and their application to develop-
ment-a power to bring men and nations together, to cross fron-
tiers, to encourage common efforts and to foster the solidarity of
man.
The African countries,meeting at Lagos,decided on a number
of inter-Africanmeasures to promote and develop regional scientific
activities,and in particular:
The establishment of an African scientific natural resources
committee by the Organization of African Unity;
The revision of the Inter-African Convention on Natural
Resources;
The throwing open of national institutes to inter-African
participation;and
The establishment of inter-Africaninternationalinstitutes covering
some twenty-threefields of natural resources.
The Asian countries, meeting at New Delhi, similarly decided on
an inter-Asianprogramme of science co-operationinvolving:
Nine priority areas for science activity in Asia;
The setting up of inter-Asian technology transfer and information
centres; and
The establishment of permanent Asian machinery to review,
stimulate and facilitate Asian co-operation in the follow-up
of the conference recommendations.
The recent establishment in Singapore of the Regional Institute
of Higher Education and Development,which is embarking on an
innovative methodology of harnessing Asian university research
resources to the demands of Asian development, may have wider
lessons for all countries.
The long-standingdesire of the scientific communities in Latin
America for more active scientific interchange has given guidance
 Servant and driving force: science for development

in the search for solutions to the problem of applying science and

technology to development at the regional level in Latin America.
At the insistence of the governments and distinguished economists
and planners of Latin America, this trend has been developing for
a considerable time among the institutions responsiblefor economic
planning and development,necessitating a far-reachingrevision of
each individual nations ideas concerning economic development.
It was then that the Conference on the Application of Science
and Technology to the Development of Latin America not only
brought science and technology to bear on development in nationaI
terms, and formulated ways in which they could contribute to it
through definite institutional machinery, but also paved the way,
in regional terms, for enabling the whole apparatus of scientific and
technologicalproduction ofall countries,enriched by the experience
ofeach individualcountry,to contribute to advancing the concerted
economic development of Latin America.
The first recommendation-modest in appearance but important
for the future-was to bring certain technical working methods
used in scientific,technical and technological research into line,to
permit a comparison of the results obtained in the various countries,
even though concerted research programmes may not be carried
out by regional institutions. The questions of standards and met-
rology,and of terminology and nomenclature in the earth sciences,
meteorological sciences and life sciences and,still more,in the num-
erous and varied branches of engineering,are to be the objectof such
standardization and unification. The International Hydrological
Decade,organized under Unescos auspices,provides an opportunity
for standardization of this sort in one particular sphere.Similar work
is being done in other fields within the purview of various United
Nations Specialized Agencies,but a detailed general effort needed
to be made to provide necessary conditions for subsequent establish-
ment of concrete scientific programmes at the regional level. A
first step was the recommendation to establish a Latin American
Centre for the Application of Science and Technology to Develop-
ment,which,working through existing Latin American institutions,
would promote surveys and studies, train research staff and
promote research in certain technologies for the region. This
institute, CECTAL,has been founded in Sao Paolo (Brazil), and
has embarked on the recommended programme.
The second recommendation emerged from the need to find
some way to define, on a continuing basis and in the light of the
development needs of the whole region, those groups of problems

39
Let m y country awake

whose scientific and technical unity deserve a special effort by

each Latin American country, or a combined effort by all the
countries. It was thus, the Conference felt, that on the one hand
the already closely linked scientificcommunities of Latin American
countries would be able to acquire a better knowledge of the duties
in regard to development, and of the directions in which their
efforts should be concentrated;and,on the other,Latin American
governments could be better informed of the possibilities offered
by science and technology in their efforts towards harmonization
of development plans in the interest of the whole region.
Such a task could only be carried out by scientists from the
Latin American countries themselves. They must to some extent
retain the independence of mind characteristic of scholars and
scientists,particularly as regards political and economic problems,
which they, more than anyone, know to be beyond their powers.
What the Conference recommended was less a college ofresponsible
administrators or a new institution inserted in the existing institu-
tional systems, than a Latin American council for science and
technology, a committee of wise men whose mission would be
more modest, and at the same time wider in scope. More modest
because its functions could only be advisory;wider in scope because
it would be placed deliberately at the crossroads where science
and development meet and where authentic regional institutions
and programmes are not yet in operation-and will not be until
co-operation between the national scientific organizations and
bodies responsiblefor economic development has been strengthened
and given final shape,at the national level,by each Latin American
country.
This then, is the scope of the regional dimension of co-operation
and collaboration among the nations in the field of science and
technology and their application to development.Surely,however,
another dimension suggests itselfjust as readily. I have in mind co-
operation and collaboration between the developed and the
developing countries, between the economies of which science is
such an integral and crucial part that they have come to be char-
acterized as the scientific-industrialsociety, and the low-income
countries where the absence of science makes the development
struggle so much more tragic, its outcome so much less certain.
Speaking at the opening meeting of the Lagos Conference, I
addressed myself particularly to those of the participants who, in
studying the documents before them and the charts and figures
they contained, had coldly measured the distance to travel, the
 Servant and driving force: science for development

multiplicity of efforts required,the weight of expenditure,the gaps

to be filled,the severe questions ofpriority to be settled. I addressed
myself to those who may have hesitated, if only for a moment,
before the long and difficult road which lay before them. And I
stressed that what was needed above all was their action, their
decisions, their will and determination to go forward.
The development of science,like all development, must be first
and foremost the effort of the countries concerned;it cannot exist
unless they will it to exist; it cannot be imported or transferred. It
must grow in their minds and hearts,and through their reason and
clarity and devotion. When speaking at Santiago, I stressed once
again this same theme. And I could think of no better invitation to
the Conference to begin its deliberations than the haunting words
of the Cuban thinker, JosC Marti, published in 1883 under the
title ScientiJic Education, and which might well have been written
especially for that Latin American Conference convened more
than eighty years later:
Newcomersdo not fight well in battles against weathered old
campaigners,JosCMarti writes. H e who has to fight,has to learn
first, and very early, and with high perfection, how to use his
weapons.
(To divorce man from the earth is a monstrous and merely
scholastic endeavour. For the birds, wings. For the fish, fins. For
the men who live in nature,the knowledge of nature;such are their
wings.
And the only way to provide them with those wings is to ensure
that the scientific element becomes the backbone of the public
education system.
Letscience education go like the sap in the trees from the root
to the top of public education. Let elementary education be
elementarily scientific. Let the history of the formation of the
earth be taught. ...
Thisis the cry of man: weapons for the battle!
But science is infinitely more busy today in the effort to produce
quite other weapons than thoseJosC Marti had in mind. Indeed the
measures I have been outlining,the broad efforts to be made, the
results which science can produce, all these are but the tip of the
iceberg.The hidden bulk ofthat iceberg,sinister,secret,enormously
dangerous, is beyond Unescos purview, is still beyond the realm
of any form of international co-operation. I refer to big science
and the great programmes of scientific development research
which are carried out in the advanced countries and which have
Let m y country awake

their origin in military, defence and security considerations.

Of the $200,000 million being spent annually on armaments,
about one-fifthis invested in bigscienceresearch and development
-around $40,000million-mainly in nuclear,rocket and spatial
research.
This is a form of human folly: there is no other way to describe
it.Just how much folly is involved was underlined by the Unesco
Round Table I mentioned earlier,which stated that a war in which
the weapons now in existence were used would destroy our whole
civilization and might lead to the annihilation of the human
race.Those words adopted by the Round Table in November I 966
are a sad understatement today. By the time the words I a m writing
now are published, more than I 20,000 million additional dollars
will have been spent on devising newer forms of destruction, more
deadly weapons, more effective ways for the human race to
commit suicide.
Is there a way out of this tragic situation? I a m aware that it is
not often by reason that folly can be converted. Yet I cannot help
but raise the question. For what these staggering expenditure
figures show is that the weapons of which Jose Marti spoke,the
weapons which the developing countries really need, are indeed
within their reach. The cry of man which he expressed so fervently
can be answered.
What is required is simply co-operationand solidarity. What is
required is simply that science be tamed, that it be made to serve
man instead of to destroy him.
Chapter 7 Creating resources

What are natural resources? What are their scientific content and
technical composition?H o w should they be defined and constituted?
What contribution does resource availability make to economic
development? Is there a relationship between the volume ofavail-
able resources and economic growth? What of under-utilized,un-
utilized and mis-utilizedresources?What kind ofnational policy with
regard to resource management and resource research does an
animation of resource availability and utilization suggest?
The general concept of natural resources is easy to define, for it
is all-embracing.Everything in the universe that can be utilized by
man, including man himself,is a natural resource.
Within this comprehensive definition, the traditional scientific
classification establishes five categories: (a) the land surface,rocks
and air,including the endless vistas ofresources which may become
available from outer space; (b) water and soils; (c) wild plants,
forest and arable agriculture; (d) wild and domestic animals,
insects, fish and marine resources; and (e) man. In addition,
a further distinction is normally drawn between renewable and
non-renewable resources, with the first group comprising land,
rocks, air and space described as non-renewable, and the other
four referred to as renewable. But when we pass from this kind of
comprehensive description to attempts at quantification of any
particular resources, complex problems of definition arise.
India,for example, has a total geographical land area of 326.3
million hectares, of which the reporting area is 291.8 million
hectares. The net area sown in 1965 was estimated at 135million
hectares, which represents an increase of some 5 per cent in the
last decade. But if to this total is added the area sown more than
once, which has increased by more than 50 per cent during the
same period, the gross area amounts to 162 million hectares.
H o w then are we to define Indian land resources? And what
significance is there in the fact that while the net area sown has
increased by only 5 per cent, the rate of increase of the area sown
more than once has been ten times faster?
Indias surface water resources are estimated at 3,000 million

43
Let m y country awake

acre feet of water. Allowing for losses due to evaporation and

transpiration, estimated at I ,700 million acre feet, and losses into
subsoil due to topography, flow characteristics,climate and soil
conditions,which account for another 850 million acre feet, there
are 450 million acre feet available for industrial, agricultural and
human consumption. At present, only about one-third of this
resource-I 50 million acre feet-is being utilized. Even so, this
represents a 331/3 per cent increase over the past decade.
Tagoresgreat poem which is today IndiasNational Anthem and
the venerable Vedic hymns remind us that Indiasnatural resources,
like the worlds,are the gifts ofnature. But they are not all used,and
they are not simply gifts. For they become resources only as a func-
tion of current technology-the level and stage of our scientific
knowledge and technical know-how.What makes a plot ofland,for
example, arable and not waste, is first and foremost the state of
mans knowledge.
In Africa,for example,the task African countries face is to eval-
uate natureselements such as they are,even though they may seem
at present to be unproductive or even unfavourable.The full wealth
hidden in these elements cannot be uncovered through a mere
transfer of existing techniques;it will not suffice merely to prepare
inventoriesonly of those which are now considered to be resources,
simply because convenient processes already exist for their exploi-
tation. The cataloguing of such resources must be supplemented by
a continuous effort of innovation. Indeed,it is only by introducing
new and economically valid techniques that new elements of the
environment may be utilized, that new natural resources,in the
full sense of the words, may be created.
This principle may be seen repeated again and again throughout
the history ofscience and technology. It is not the elements ofmans
environment which change, but mans knowledge of, and mastery
over them. The progress of scientific and technical knowledge has
so vastly enlarged the scope of what we consider to be natural re-
sources,that some ofwhat were once considered naturesmost blind
and hostileforces,the energy produced by waterfalls,even the heat
of volcanoes, have been harnessed in our service by the most
varied scientific and technological methods.
Within m y lifetime, dramatic transformations have taken place,
transformations often invisible to the naked eye. I think of the
change that has come about in the alluring sands and the hardy,
black rocks on the beach of a lovely South Indian locale in which I
used to spend so much of m y time as a boy, with m y parents and
 Creating resources

friends, running m y fingers through the soft sands, building sand

huts and carving figures of men and animals on the rocks. During
the last fifteen years, this area has developed into an important
source of minerals for nuclear industry. The sands with which w e
used to build our beautiful huts,and the rocks we threw at each other
orintothesea,still sand and rock,areno longerjust that.Becauseofthe
development and application of the corresponding metallurgy and
technology,they have become a valuable resource. Such transfor-
mations are less and less extraordinary. They are indeed a funda-
mental element of this concept and, as such, have far-reaching
implications which have not yet been sufficiently taken into account
in economic thought or the practice of planning.
In fact,if the amount of the net sown area and particularly the
amount of the area sown more than once,is a function of the state
of a countrys agricultural technology,then the traditional distinc-
tion between renewable and non-renewable resources becomes
impossible jto apply. Indeed, there are really no non-renewable
resources in the absolute sense of the term, for our fast developing
scientific and technical knowledge makes it possible either to
increase every resource,or to find or create a substitute for it.
In the United States,the PresidentsMaterials Policy Commis-
sion addressed itselfin 1952to one major aspect of this question,and
the exhaustive studies undertaken by the Commission provide the
final answer to this basic issue: what is a resource,bearing in mind
its supply and demand function? It was an urgent question for the
United States,not only because of the deep-rooted emotional fer-
vour evoked for more than half a century by the conservationist
movement in both the United States and Canada,but also because
the United States was, and is, the largest consumer of what are
called non-renewableresources-consuming over 50 per cent of the
total world supply of petrol,rubber,iron ore,manganese, zinc,etc.,
contrasted to the 5 per cent which the developing countries taken
together consume. Indeed, during the thirty-five years between
I915 and 1950, the United States consumed more minerals and
metals than all the rest of the world had consumed throughout all
human history previous to 19I 5.
I shall not attempt to summarize here the basic assumptions,the
impressive statistical and scientific analysis, and the wide-ranging
forecasts and conclusions contained in the five volumes ofthe report
of the Materials Policy Commission. Its broad conclusion is that,
because of the progress of technology and know-how,there is no
general problem of scarcity of non-renewable resources for the
Let m y country awake

following reasons: (a) the constantly expanding resource base; (b)

the factor of substitutability; (c) the multiple use of each resource;
(d) the import possibilities for any particular country,particularly
the United States with its world-wide trade network; and (e) the
programme of resource research leading to development and
better management of resources.
This far-reachingconclusion that knowledge and technology are
themselves the primary resource has important consequences for
the developing countries.The study ofnatural resourcesis a field in
which existing knowledge is inadequate and where this inadequacy
constitutes a definite bottleneck to development.H o w can a sound
choice be made between the possible locationsof a power network if
there is insufficient knowledge of the river basins and their geology?
H o w can we seek to diversify agricultural or live-stockproduction
if we do not know the ecological conditions which will permit the
acclimatization of new, or the wider distribution of known species?
H o w are we to break away from dependence on a single traditional
resource-mineral or agricultural-if we do not collect data on
sources of wealth which have not yet been exploited but which
nevertheless exist?
In some countries,and notably in Latin America, national ser-
vices in large numbers are carrying out long-termtasks,particularly
in the field of geology,while international institutions like Unesco
have over the last decade contributed to the collection ofcontinent-
wide data in such fields as marine biology, tropical ecology, geo-
logical mapping,and flora and fauna. The over-alltask, however,
has never been tackled as an interconnected whole and hence lacks
homogeneity.The outline of a general analytical and critical inven-
tory prepared by Unesco shows the imperfections and the gaps
which must be filled in such fields as hydrology, geology, soils,
meteorology, and geomorphology, and that the data must be ex-
tended geographically to cover those zones which at present are
relatively inaccessible. The first type of homogeneity is a scientific
necessity, because the study of natural resources requires a multi-
disciplinary approach. The second is a necessity for development.
For at both the national and sub-continentallevels,the inequalities
of wealth between different zones and countries must be levelled
out, because the less-developed areas are holding back the devel-
opment of the whole.
I should add that here, to an even greater extent than elsewhere,
long-term descriptive investigation of the environment-which
itself relies on accumulated basic scientific knowledge-cannot be
 Creating resources

separated from evaluation of exploitation methods. Research on

natural resources,scattered and varied as these resources may be, is
very much one and indivisible, scientifically and technically
speaking, especially as modern methods of exploration are inte-
grated methods, to which Unesco has been giving attention for
years past and to which it has imparted new impetus.
A second determinant emerges through the expansion of the area
sown more than once in India,which has increased by 50 per cent
over the past decade, and of water utilization in the agricultural
parts of the country,which has increased by 33l/3 per cent over the
same period. This determinant is the cultural-economic state of
wants in the country and their market expression.
The demand for agricultural products generally,and for food in
particular,is rising steeply in India for a variety ofreasons: the rate
of population increase which is currently over 2 per cent,the rising
tempo of industrialization,creating a growing demand for food for
the population employed in secondary and tertiary occupations,
which has increased by over 200 per cent during the last decade and
a half, and the structure offood habits of the people,the vegetarian
sector,the rice-as distinctfrom the wheat-consuminggroup,the toll
of the numerous festive occasions,sacred and secular, etc. (For the
purpose of this analysis,the additional and tragic short-termpres-
sure caused by droughts,is not taken into account.) This increasing
demand for food-with its characteristic high income elasticity of
demand-accounts, in part, for land previously reported as waste,
water-logged or barren, becoming culturable and for the increases
reported in the double or triple crop area. It also brings into being
water-utilization schemes previously classed as uneconomical or
unnecessary. Because of such demand, water, for example in the
Ganges-Brahmaputra basin, is no longer just flowing freely and
wastefully into the Bay of Bengal; it is now a resource both for
generating electricity and increasing food production.

Economic interpretation of the availability

and use of natural resources
In some developing countries, and particularly in India,a not un-
satisfactory rate ofprogress has been recorded in the purely scientific
and technical aspects of natural resources analysis. It contrasts
sharply,however,with the state ofknowledgein the economic inter-
pretation of our natural resources. There is no generally accepted

47
Let m y country awake

method ofevaluating the economic availability of natural resources.

Indeed,economics textbooks are silent on this subject. Economists
have always been concerned,ofcourse,with the resource called land
from the very infancy of their discipline,but there is a large gap be-
tween even the widest possible definition ofland and what today we
call the natural resource base.
This comparative neglect of the place of natural resources in
growth economics is no accident,and is generally true everywhere.
I have already referred to the report of the Materials Policy Com-
mission in the United States. I would add that all subsequent
studies,research,analysis and conclusionson natural resourceshave
taken that report as their starting-point,and in particular its con-
clusion that while there may be particular bottlenecks in this or
that resource,and while there may be short-termcritical shortages
in certain specific areas, there is no problem of general scarcity or
over-alllimitation with regard to natural resources.
In Western economic literature,natural resources are therefore
treated simply as one more input factor in any given line ofproduc-
tion, and not a key or crucial factor at that. As a consequence,re-
source development has not been considered to be a necessary and
sufficient condition to economic development. The fear that eco-
nomic growth is or will be inhibited by a lack of natural resources
is held to be a deep-rootedtautology,stemming from the dominant
preoccupation of all economics-the process of economizing.There
have been lone voices raised in protest against this general opti-
mistic position, but even these dissents are based on such external
factors as the population explosion, the expending of the nations
capital, or human gluttony in the novel forms which seem to be
found in affluent societies.They lead more to policy admonitions as
to population control,living on onesincome instead of consuming
capital and the combating of selectivemyopia,than to economic
analysis of resources.
It is thus held that the supplies or supply prices of natural re-
sources as input items need not now or in the future constitute a
bottleneck to growth in the West, for the Western world has met its
expanding resource demands with expanding supplies, without a
rise in their costs. Since the turn of the century,their real costs have
in fact been falling-calling for fewer hours of work and smaller
amounts of capital per unit of materials. Even in the dim, distant
future,if there is to be a rise in costs,this rise will take place slowly
and gradually.Why? When a particular resource bottleneck arises,
technology and substitutability go to work as correctives. Under this
 Creating resources

analysis,as we have seen,the primary resource is clearly technology

itself, and behind it, the people, their values and behaviour pat-
terns. Labour too is a produced rather than original factor of pro-
duction for development theory and growth policy. The state of
knowledge, know-how and technology, on the other hand, is a
highly dynamic element. It is this which has increased output and
which accounts, for the most part, for the spectacular rate of
increase in the gross national product which has come to be called
the modern miracle.
If a resource,it is held,cannot come into being without the prior
evaluation of an art or technology to exploit it, then it is clear that
the study offluctuationsin the supply ofresources or resource avail-
ability must in fact concentrate upon a study of the changes in the
state of knowledge which determine what is profitable and not
profitable in resource investments. The result of this approach is
that the relationship between the volume of natural resources and
growth,between resource availability and development,remains an
unknown quantity. Nothing more than a vague presumption is left,
that despite the example ofJapan,Sweden, the United Kingdom,
Switzerland and other Western European nations with high per
capita income and narrow resource base, a relationship does
exist between natural resources use and economic growth. Even
this rather vague presumption is further confused where growth
analysis for developing countries is involved, by the on-going
chicken-and-egg controversy. Which must come first, the big
push in agriculture or large-scaleinvestments in heavy and medium
industries, as the pre-condition to take-off , to self-sustaining
growth? For the economist in India and other developing countries
today, what exists then is an unproved sixth sense that a country
having a large backlog of under-utilizedand un-inventoriednatural
resources has an advantage in the growth race.

Criteria for investment in natural resources. Given the assured and

expanding resource base, full employment and factor mobility
that characterize the developed economies of the West, the basic
criteria which they apply for investment in natural resources is
and has to be efficiency. This gospel of efficiency started as an
engineering approach to resource utilization,emphasizing multiple
use, highest use and efficient use. Today, the economic model for
investment in natural resources employed in the United States
and Europe, as it is expounded by their economists, is no different
from that employed for all types of factor use and investment.
Let my country awake

In these societies,where the marginal propensities to save and to

invest are high, investments in any resource are carried to the
point where the marginal rates of substitution among resources
and other input factors are directly equal to the ratio of their
prices. Under these conditions, changes in resource investments
result in redistribution of incomes rather than increases in the
gross domestic product.Even such redistributioneffects are minimal
because, in contrast to countries like India, where the ratio of
natural resources to all resources employed in income production
is 25 per cent,in the United States and other high-incomecountries,
it is as low as 5 per cent.Further,while the United States per capita
incomerose by I50per cent between I goo and I 950,its consumption
of raw materials was rising by only 25 per cent, and in the case of
food,the rate is actually declining. It is no wonder then that for
the professional economist in the West, the role of natural resources
in the process of economic development has not been worth much
attention. To him, the role of resources in relation to economic
growth is a passive function, the object of improvement rather
than the driving force of development.

Economic interpretation of natural resources. While the danger of

absolute limitation or complete scarcity of natural resources is no
more a problem for India or any of the developing countries than
it is for the developed ones, it is nevertheless urgent for us to fill
the economic void left in the whole area of the economics ofnatural
resource availability and utilization.
Surely we have a long road to travel before attaining that stage
of an assured and expanding resource base with its characteristics
of substitutability,transformability, transportability and multiple
use, which would justify our treating resources as a minimal
factor in national income production. Nor is the efficiency criteria
based on full employment, factor mobility and high propensity
to save, in and by itself, relevant to an underdeveloped economy.
The constraintsin India,and in the low-incomecountries generally,
are not simply efficiency and its accompanying reallocations of
incomes. Our overriding concerns for the present must be towards
reducing the growing unemployment backlog,including its under-
employment and disguised unemployment components, to meet
the growing food deficit of our expanding population, including the
large numbers employed in secondary and tertiary industries and
occupations,and to expand the export sector as a means of further-
ing our industrialization programme. In this effort, we have little
 Creating resources

to draw upon from the study of resource economics, as it has been

practised in the developed countries.
The handicaps imposed by this discontinuity in the exchange of
knowledge and experience are apparent, resulting from the fact
that the pre-conditionsand processes of resource development are
largely unknown, and by the further complexity and number of
supply and demand factors involved, which make it difficult,
at present, to use in this area the usual mathematical tools.
Attempts at using statistical evidence and aggregate and sector
models of production in resource analysis are hampered by the
fact that they can refer only to patterns of production and irnport-
export trends of countries at different stages of development.
There are two obvious limits to these first attempts at mathematical
analysis of the past history of resource use: first, they do not deal
with the key question of how resources contribute to growth;
secondly, both past and current production patterns and foreign
trade trends in most developing countries are more the result of
their past colonial relationships than of any determined and
economically rational policy of resource use. Despite these limita-
tions, I a m inclined to start with the common-senseposition that a
nations resources are a measure of its potential welfare.
Historical evidence is cited by such economists as M.Boserup in
order to demonstrate that the rhythm of Indiaseconomic develop-
ment from 1880onwards was considerably retarded by the fact that
the agricultural resource sector did not back up the lead given by
the urban sector. The transport and communication explosion,the
growth of urban agglomerations and the developing capital and
entrepreneurial supply in the country did not lead to growth
because of the low supply elasticity of agricultural resources. While
not being able to accept this analysis completely, I do believe
that, on the basis of general historical evidence, a countrys re-
source endowment influences the form and pace ofits development.
I will go even further and hazard an intuitive guess that resource
planning, development and management, as part of its industrial
and agricultural growth,is for India,at its present stage of develop-
ment, the necessary and sufficient condition for its economic
development and one of the two pre-conditions for its sustained
growth (the other being the development of its human resources).
For India the take-offwill be a consequence,not of sustained or
uniform growth rates in all sectors, but of intensified efforts in
certain strategic areas, and particularly in the leading resource
sectors (whichin m y opinion are water and energy), sectors from
Let m y country awake

which efforts will spread out to other related industrial areas,

where these resources are input items.
What does this view of resources as an essential factor of growth
mean in practical terms? What policy conclusions follow?
First, current programmes of gathering, interpreting and ana-
lysing the facts and phenomena of all natural resources should be
intensified in a more systematic and continuous manner. Only
such analytical investigations will reveal the fundamentalproblems
of natural resources development.The establishment of a complete
analytical inventory of all of a countrys resources is thus the first
major task awaiting its scientific and technical institutions.
A secondimperativeis the use ofa balance sheetmethodology,i.e.
one whichjuxtaposesthe supply sideofnaturalresourcesasregistered
in inventories,and the demands for their use, taking into account
the trends of population growth, production techniques, con-
sumption patterns and internal and international trade indicators,
as appropriate, the latter to be continually reviewed on a case-
by-case basis. In addition, policy objectives such as self-sufficiency
in certain sectors, defence needs, industrialization goals, etc.,
must also be taken into account. It is a complex and comprehensive
task which is both inter- and multi-disciplinary,and which should
be made the joint responsibility of scientific institutions and
university departments of economics. However difficult it may be,
it is nevertheless vitally necessary if we are to avoid the danger of
considering the mere listing of resources as sufficientin itself to the
process of growth and development.
A third imperative, particularly as regards the resource eco-
nomics picture of countries such as India, Brazil and those in
East Africa, is the further emphasis which should be placed on
comprehensive regional and area planning and development.
Such a regional and area approach is an essential complement to
the reconnaissance and surveyofparticular resourcesat the national
level.
A fourth area which requires attention is the relationship be-
tween the availability and utilization of resources and the long
process they go through in being turned into consumer satisfaction.
Built into these studies and research should be the welfare criteria of
the optimum use of resources, both from the supply and demand
side, involving public investment, a system of subsidies and other
incentive measures, I should add that it is m y hope that such
studies on the welfare aspects of resource development and con-
sumption will no longer be inhibited by out-dated concepts of
 Creating resources

ethical neutralism (concepts on which I was nurtured in m y

student days). In its modern disguise, this posture is found in the
sharp and absolute distinction drawn between endogenous and
exogenous factors in development. The serious work on the welfare
implicationsof resource analysis that is incumbenton the economist
will be of help to the policy maker in the country. It will provide
him with a limited number of alternatives on the basis of which
rational decisions can be made for successive incremental improve-
ments in the welfare of the people. I a m led by these considerations
to suggest, in view of the fundamental importance of this field,
that universities in India and other developing countries might
give consideration to the development of resource economics as a
sectoral discipline,within the broader studies involved in develop-
ment economics.
Fifth, what of investments in natural resources development?
The effective development of natural resources in India, as in
other developing countries, requires large amounts of capital and
labour. In general, capital is perennially in short supply in our
countries,along with skilled labour. Capital investments in resource
projects are usually lumpy and require some imports of machinery
and equipment from abroad, at least in the initial years. Further,
the period of gestation of such investment is long and there is a
scattering of benefits accruing from the investment beyond the
group-public or private-directly responsible for it. Hence it is
important that capital which is in such short supply should be so
invested as to bring maximum benefit in terms of the defined
objective-whether that objective be a real increase in the gross
national product, a rise in living levels, or an increase in economic
and social security.
Judged by these broad considerations, the investment policy
recommended by the Committee on India's Energy Resources
provides one of the few sound long-termprojections in this field.
Similar investment analyses and forecasts need to be undertaken
for every major resource deployment in the country. There are
no macro-economic criteria for investment in natural resources
but only micro-economic ones. And here again these analyses must
be made urgently to inspire policy and inform needed action.
In addition, the question may be posed whether long-term
investments in some natural resources development sectors should
be exempted from interest charges. This was the case with nine-
teenth-centuryEuropean investment in forests and is the case today
with investment in the development of human resources. I would

'53
Let m y country awake

suggest that the particular resource sectors which might be so

exempted should be the subject of study and investigation in the
developing countries.
A sixth requirement is the organization of research and investi-
gation. In the organization of production and the economy gen-
erally, research enterprise may now take the place formerly
reserved for entrepreneur-enterprise.For it is research which now
embodies the traditional entrepreneurial qualities of innovation,
invention and discovery, working out new resource combinations,
adjustments and allocations. The days of the entrepreneur-the
grand master of strategy, the reformer and revolutionary, the
predatory giant-who brought his superior knowledge,forecasting
ability and talents into play, have given way to the era of system-
atically organized research and investigation,which involves meth-
odic exploration into the known and the unknown, the imperfect
and the imbalanced. For the developing countries where there is,
in general, a scarcity of skilled manpower, including in particular
a scarcity of this unusual and outdated factor-the innovation-
producing entrepreneur-organized research must be the answer.
The institutionalization of research, at the national and sub-
national levels, at the disciplinary, interdisciplinary and multi-
disciplinary levels,is a direct consequence of this development.
In India, there are fourteen well-established and functioning
scientific and research organs. These institutions must survey,iden-
tify and investigate resource availability and utilization. They
urgently require adequate manning and financing for the vital and
important tasks assigned to them,tasks which take on new dimen-
sions in view of the long road which lies ahead before the goal of
an assured and expanding resource base can be reached. (The
scientific and technical manpower need for resource management
is another area requiring further research, in particular as it
relates to the general educational framework.) Whether and
when India will in fact reach this goal, depends first and foremost
on the work ofthese institutions and of the Indian universities.
Finally,a seventh requirement is Government action in promot-
ing and financing organized research of both the scientific and
development types. In Western countries,such research and devel-
opment expenditures are financed from both private and public
sources. Where market structures are imperfect,of the Chamberlin
or Robinson type, participation by private business firms in the
financing of research is clearly indicated. In India, where market
structures are still undeveloped and large individual private

'54
 Creating resources

business units are few, the financing of research is a governmental

responsibility.In the United States,United Kingdom and France,
40 per cent of the total research and development expenditure, and
in other Western European countries 60-70 per cent of such
expenditure,is financed by the private business sector.
In the developed countries belonging to the market-economy
group at the micro-economiclevel,the funds for research allocated
by monopolistic or oligopolistic firms-whether it be ITT, IBM,
Bull, Philips or Shell-are determined as a function of their
projects, their scale of operations and share of the market. This
generalization allows for the fact small business units have often a
more favourable attitude towards research and are more research-
intensive than the large ones, since it is the sources of financing
which are in question and not investment attitudes. In this sector
in the West, account must also be taken of the extraordinary and
expanding infusion of American research into Europe.
For India and the developing countries, allowing for detailed
calculations of the needs of each research project and established
research institutions, only a macro-economic approach to the
financing of research is generally possible. Thus, for India, at this
stage,the level of research expenditure has to be judged as a func-
tion of its gross domestic production. From this point of view,
the level of Indian expenditure on scientific research is far from
satisfactory. In the developed countries somewhere around I .25 to
3 per cent of the gross domestic product is being used (as at 1962)
for research expenditures: U.S.S.R. 3, United States 3.1, United
Kingdom 2.2, France 1.5, Japan 1.3, Germany (Federal Republic)
I .3,Belgium I .o, Netherlands I .8 per cent,with particularly steep
increases all round being registered during the past decade. If
about 30-50 per centofthefiguresfor the SovietUnion,UnitedStates,
United Kingdom and France is assumed to be military research
expenditure,thenorm ofcivilianresearch expenditure which emerges
rangesfrom I to 2 per cent of the gross domestic product.In Indiafor
the same year, 0.2 per cent of the gross domestic product under
one calculation, and 0.32 per cent under another, is being used
for scientific research. There are some obvious limitations to
these calculations, due to differing definitions of research, salary
levels,costs ofequipment,etc. And ofcourse we are here comparing
the results of the micro-economic approach of the developed
economies (the total research expenditure being the sum ofseparate
decisions) with the macro-economic approach of the developing
ones. Continuing this analysis,if the civilian research expenditures
Let m y country awake

in 1960 are computed in relation to per capita GNP at market

price, India occupies the second lowest position among some
sixteen selected countries: United States (~.g),U.S.S.R., United
Kingdom and Sweden (I.8),Japan (I .7),Germany (FederalRepub-
lic) and Netherlands (1.5),France (1.3)~ Canada and Norway (0.8),
Australia (0.6),Iceland and Finland (0.3)~Ghana (0.22), India
(0.2) and the Philippines (0.15).
For Indian natural resources development and utilization, a
clear need is thus indicated to provide a more adequate infrastruc-
tural base of oriented and applied research, by increasing the
percentage allocation of the gross domestic product earmarked
for scientific research. This increase should be, at a minimum,
a quadrupling of the percentage if the 0.2 per cent base is taken
or a more than doubling if the 0.32 per cent base is taken, to
0.8 per cent during the Fourth Plan period, and it should also
include an appropriate share of foreign exchange resources, so
essential to all scientific research everywhere and in all countries.
I should add in this connexion that the Asian Conference of Min-
isters of Science,to which I referred in the previous chapter,recom-
mended that Governmentsof the Asian countries aim at reaching a
minimum level of total national expenditure on research develop-
ment of I per cent of their GNP as soon as possible, and hopefully
not later than 1980.
Chapter 8 A glimpse of the n e w
culture perhaps :
learning to live, living to learn

The economics of culture

H o w should we define culture? As the way of life of a people,
as the flowering of the free human spirit, as the external mani-
festation of mans inner life, as the individual response to the
pressures of the new leisure, as the spiritual tie which binds men
and peoples? However defined,it has always been a magic word. It
has evoked and continues to evoke unending verbal support. It
inspires oratory at all times and in all places.
But what culture needs today, much more than praise and
admiration, are the financial resources without which it cannot
thrive, and an institutional frame without which it cannot receive
them. What it needs is to be conceived within and fostered by a
financial and institutional policy similar to that which exists in
the primary and secondary economic sectors, and which is being
developed for educational and science systems.
H o w can such a cultural policy be developed? One certain
means is to insert culture into the development machine. Unescos
insistence that cultural development must accompany and even
crown economic and social development, that culture has a bene-
ficial effect on man and on the available means of production,gains
its basic strength from the re-discovery of the role of education in
economic development.As we have seen in Chapter 3,the concept
of regarding education as a mere social expenditure has given
way to the theory and practice of education as an essential invest-
ment in the process of development. So too, the link between
economics and culture is born of the interaction between the
need for full development of all aspects of human resources and
their effective use in economic development.
It is often said that culture,in its modern form,is an initiation
into the art of living,taking as its starting-pointthe real conditions
of life and aiming at enabling each individual to live as fully and
richly as possible. But culture also contributes to development by
fostering changes in attitudes: attitudes toward work (sustained
effort,conscientiousness,adaptability) toward innovations,toward

57
Let m y country awake

capital formation (propensity to save and use of savings), toward

other human beings who may seem different (through eradication
of some prejudices, for example those resulting from tribalism,
caste and religion).
Waste exists everywhere but the underdeveloped economy
cannot afford it now; corruption is universal but the developing
country cannot support this ill today; laziness and anti-social be-
haviour is human but currently costs the poor country too much. A
soundly conceived cultural policy, executed through legislation,
through the creation of development-oriented institutions and
through the persuasive influence of mass media can directly,
immediately and forcefully act on this infrastructure and transform
it into a vital force for development.
Moreover,the impact ofculturaltourism on a countryseconomic
development and in particular on its balance ofpayments should not
be neglected. Although the essential ingredientsof tourism are still
sun,sea,mountain air,winter and summer sports,a good proportion
ofthe billionsof dollars being spent every year by the worldstourists
is attributable to what has come to be called culturaltourism.
Cultural activities could well be analysed in purely economic
terms. Like all other economic factors, they involve costs and
returns; they are affected by supply and demand; they require
expenditure,by the individual and the community; they compete
for limited resources with other needs; they create their own
employment and industry;they could be considered a commodity
which is produced, distributed and consumed. Nor would such an
analysis be without value. Applying the notion of supply and
demand to the cultural sector would make possible a better know-
ledge of the diversity and requirements of the public, and a much
closer analysis of existing structures.Applying the categoriesofpro-
duction,distribution and consumption would bring out more clearly
the points at which the efforts ofpublic authoritiescould be applied.
As w e have seen, economists have already endeavoured to set
out direct relationships between the cost and benefit of each level
and type of education. To extend this narrow economic analysis to
the field of culture, however, may well restrict support to those
cultural activities which are subject to economic quantification,
thus depriving those where value judgement is the determining
factor. For culture, like education, is both an investment and
consumption item at the same time,and the personal satisfaction
which it brings about must be given equal, if not greater weight
in the elaboration of any policy concerning it.
 The new culture:learning to live, living to learn

Because economic growth is not an end in itself but a means of

improving well-being,culture cannot be evaluated exclusively in
terms of its economic returns. Its contribution to over-alldevelop-
ment in its largest sense, to human enlightenment and progress,
must also be thrown on the scales. In any case,it is extremely diffi-
cult to determine even the amount of work required to produce a
particular cultural activity,to say nothing ofits objective value and
price. It may well be that the price of a cultural product is deter-
mined by supply and demand at the moment of exchange. But the
interrelationship between culture and the economic system also
involves the terms and relative ease or difficulty of acquiring finan-
cial support,the interplay between quality and economic response,
and the degree to which the economic system as well as the national
audience welcomes,acceptsor merely toleratesfree,experimentalart.
Culture need not be economically justifiable;on the contrary,it
justifies itself.Nor should it be evaluated in terms of the interaction
of supply and demand. The work of an artist is more than a
production factor. The cultural needs of an individual are more
than consumer goods which he must decide whether or not to
purchase on the basis of maximum returns. T o reduce culture to a
mere supply and demand function is to ignore its spiritual and
aesthetic values and neglect the notion offree choice and the claims
of the mind which are so important for individual equilibrium and
well-being.
This notwithstanding,however,there is an economics of culture.
It is the economics ofman himself,body and spirit.It is an economy
which no longer deals with objects, no matter how necessary for
life. It is an economy in which life itself occupies the central
position. And culture so conceived raises a number ofcomplex and
difficult issues. It raises them now and will do so more and more
frequently in the future. For the dramatic emergence of the
scientific-industrialsociety, of what might be called the culture of
science,together with the struggle to extend its benefits throughout
the world through the process of development, pose, in their turn,
disturbing questions about our educational systems and their
legacy.

The child at home. From the time w e blink open our eyes on the
strange,real,disturbing life around us,until around five or six years
of age, we are consumed by an insatiable thirst for knowledge:
feeling,seeing, touching, sensing,smelling, tasting, and above all
asking, to such a degree that our thirst drives our parents and the

'59
Let m y country awake

elders around us to the point of nervous exhaustion and mental

fatigue. (Even in m y days an oft-repeated cry was Oh! stop
asking and shut UP, which was as often as not accompanied by a
slap of the ears.) But after that period, there seems to take place a
gradual deadening, a transformation toward quiescence, confor-
mity and passivity in the child; a kind of anti-learning attitude
takes hold, a sort of anti-education ambiance. The children in our
families and societies who sit quietly with folded hands and im-
passive countenance,asking nothing in the presence of their elders,
learning nothing from their peers, who in other words are growing
up as silent, statuesque morons, are held up as the ideal. The
highest praise a parent wishes to earn is the comment: Lookhow
nice, quiet and well-behaved those children are. The thirst for
knowledge becomes romantic mouthing. Whatever it may have
originally meant, it has been slowly and surely killed.

The child at school. Against this social and familial setting,it is not
surprising that we have developed an educational system in which
compulsion and not freedom is the hallmark, where conformity and
not spontaneity is dominant. The child (over w h o m stands the
truant officer) or the student (over whom stands the credit system)
is compelled to go to school. H e is forced to choose a particular
subject and read a particular textbook and usually not one he
might like and choose by himself. H e is forced to listen to what he
is being taught, delivered ex cathedra. Conformity insidiously
becomes his way of life; he must accept one optic, one vocabulary,
and one corpus of facts.H e is then required to repeat what he
has been taught and what he has been asked to read during one
whole year and in some cases as many as three years,in the course
of six or seven three-hour sessions called examinations. Having
been forced to work for grades and not in order to learn,heis then
given a piece of paper, called a certificate,a diploma or a degree.
If he is among the more fortunate ones, this paper gives him
access to one kind of employment in society rather than what he
would or could choose for himself. In brief, it opens a single
window on to our wonderful world out of which he must peer all
his life. If the turns away from this system,either because he or his
parents are too poor or are the wrong colour, caste or political
grouping or because he is bored unto death or outraged with its
irrelevance, he is termed a student drop-out, contributing to
social wastage, for whom adult literacy or head-start programmes
have to be devised as a rescue operation, or is called a student-in-

I 60
 The new culture: learning to live, living to learn

revolt who has to be jailed. If he fails in his exams, he is called a

repeater or calls himself a failed SSLC, inter, or B.A., and we
run tutorial and evening classes to recuperatehim.
There is an element of exaggeration in m y portrayal. But does
not some exaggeration, some caricaturing furnish a useful instru-
ment, similar to that of photographic or microscopic enlargements
by which we can observe one particular aspect of reality which
otherwise would have been invisible to us? Of course, it is not all
of reality that we can observe in this manner: it is the tree and not
the forest. As adults we know that all rights carry obligations and
that the compulsory nature of schooling and the free and universal
dissemination of knowledge, which is its purpose, is basic to the
growth of man and to his free,full and equal development.

The learning process. Whether or not one agrees with my portrayal

of the learning process as simplistic or irrelevant, the question
remains as to whether all the elaborate apparatus that we have
inherited in the form and by means of the school system is right or
necessary. At this stage of history it already seems mere chance
that our educational legacy is erected on the school, which derives
from the Greek word skhole,meaning leisure.Igrow old learning
some new thing each day, declared Solon in the fifth century
B.C. It is a far cry from this concept to our present-day class-
rooms.
In school,we first learn facts: as a little boy in school, I heard a
certain discordant metallic noise and learned that it was the bell
ringing. Second, we learn to relate facts through a process of
association. When the bell rang,it meant the period or torture of
compulsive concentration had ended,and I could go streaming out
of the class moving m y hands and legs freely at last, asking the
real questions that were bubbling in m y mind and jumping around
generally in the freedom and spontaneity of life outside the class-
room. The third stage of learning was the study of alternative
relations between facts and it is on this that most of the learning
process is concentrated. This purveying of various alternative
combinations and permutationslinking facts,with some clear biases
directed at me so that I could choose one relationship rather than
another-such had become my education. It was not until much
later as an adult that I realized that what must be learned is the
nature and structure,the why and wherefore of the facts surround-
ing me-man, nature, environment, community-and the ability
to discover for myself possible relationships.

161
Let m y country awake

This learningprocess also includeslearning the ability to reconcile

the irreconcilable. M y father, a man of discipline and routine,
associated I p.m. of every day of his life with his lunch. As soon as
he heard the clock in the drawing-roomstrike one,terrible pangs of
hunger would overcome him and m y mother had to serve lunch
promptly. Hence, at m y home in Vellore and Pallavaram, one
oclock meant lunch, never one minute earlier or later. But when
m y father came to Paris, m y wife was caught in a real conflict,
leading to a near crisis. I could never come home from Unesco
promptly at one oclock. By the time I completed m y morning
appointments, cleared m y desk and came home it was around
1.30 p.m. So m y wife, after study of her environment and the
nature of the persons involved, established a new harmonious
relationshipby simply putting the clock back in m y Paris drawing-
room by half an hour every morning-and voila! everyone was
happy-
The timing of learning. Probably the most serious problem in our
educational legacy is the distortion introduced in it by the time
element. At the simplest level we think of the learning process
as being related to a given time period in our lives. Back of this
tradition is our inherited pedagogy and psychology, now outmoded
and proved false, telling us that the capacity to learn is limited to
our youth,that old horses can only be put out to pasture. Astride
this antiquated pedagogic doctrine,time enters learning.
To be a literate farmer,you must have four years of primary
schooling;to be a skilled industrial worker you must have seven or
eight years of learning;to become a teacher or technician, ten or
twelve years ofeducation is necessary;and to belong to the scientific
or liberal professions, fifteen or eighteen years of successful study
are needed. Education is thus equated with intensive intellectual
work for a specific period of time, after which there need be no
more education. H o w many of us have joyfully walked out of the
last day of the examination hall, promising ourselves a prolonged
holiday during which we will never have to open a book? H o w
many ofus define rest or leisure as a time period when we will do no
thinking? H o w many of us leave the Convocation Hall with a
diploma in our hands and the conviction in our hearts that we
have now completed our education and must turn to something
else, work, marriage, raising a family. In fact, this stages-of-life
theory on which we have been reared-as learner, earner, head of
the family and eventually,at least in the Hindu tradition, retiring
I 62
 The new culture: learning to live, living to learn

ascetic, nourishes the false notion that it is possible to be spoon-fed

enough education at one time to last a lifetime. So we educate the
child and deny education to the adult. The fact is that we may
and do complete successive stages of life but never the process of
learning. T o cease learning when we leave school is to die at the
age of seven or fourteen,or eighteen or twenty-two.

Dated learning. But the intervention of the time element in the

educational system is even more serious. Normally the time spent
therein runs from seven to fifteen or even eighteen years. The
average expectation of life in m y own country today is 55 years,and
the age of retirement, so-called,ranges from 58 for civil servants
and teachers to 70 or 80 for business men, farmers and politicians.
This means that the educational equipment that the average
Indian receives during his first seven to fifteen or eighteen years
must serve him for the remaining thirty to fifty years of his adult
life. But the content of knowledge and information purveyed and
the methods of instruction and techniques of learning used are
derived from the current seven- to fifteen-year society and not
from the future thirty-to fifty-yearworld. And in fact the situation
is even worse,for the students of today are being taught by teachers
who can speak only of and from a world they knew and under-
stood,that is a world which existed at least twenty years before their
period of active teaching and thus sometimes seventy years before.
I need hardly add that the world they knew is going: it has gone,
that society is changing: it has changed. And what is more, the
passing of the past and the changing of the present are complete,
inexorable and unpredictable. And so our educational legacy has
built a system which can only interpret the present in terms of
the past, and visualize the future perspectives in terms of the
current scene. Our educational system imparts knowledge and
information which is dated at the very moment of its birth. The
student seems then to be sent to school to strengthen his shoulders
and broaden his back so that he can carry this archaic impedimenta,
this antediluvian baggage into a totally new society.
What is this society and its evolutionary process that the student
in school today and the adult at work faces? There are many
ways of presenting the perspective evolution of our society.

the point of view of economic growth

Structural evolution. From
and structure we can distinguish three types of society in our
economic history. In the pre-industrial society which still exists
Let my country awake

and which is called the underdeveloped or developing part of the

world, 80-90 per cent of the work force is engaged in primary
(agricultural), 8-15 per cent in secondary (manufacturing) and
2-5 per cent in tertiary (service) industry. In the industrial society
that is Europe, 20-30 per cent is engaged in primary, 40-60 per
cent in secondary, 15-25 per cent in tertiary industry and some
5-15 per cent in a new sector which emerges in this society and
which may be called the quarternary (science and technology)
sector. The post-industrial society, of which the prototypes are
emerging in the United States and the Soviet Union is one in which
6-10 per cent are engaged in the primary sector (by A.D. 2000, this
should fall to 2.5 per cent in the United States), 20-30 per cent
in the secondary sector, 40-60 per cent in the tertiary sector and
20-25 per cent in the quarternary sector. In the United States,
labour in the industrial sector declined from 30.4 per cent in
1950 to 27.2 per cent in 1960 and will be 20 per cent by 2000.
The shift of labour from the production sector (primary and
secondary) to non-production sector (tertiary and quarternary) is
seen in the following figures: in the United States from 59 :41 in
1940to 47 :53 in 1964;in the Soviet Union from 82 :I 2 in 1940to
76 :24 in 1964;in Canada from 61 :39 in 1940to 54 :46 in 1960.
India is somewhere between the pre-industrial and industrial
stage, and on the basis of the current and perspective plans will
move into the stage of the industrial society towards the last
decade of the present century.

Labour force distribution (percentages)

Primary Secondary Tertiary

India in 1961 70 '4 16

Model based on developed countries 35 30 35
Planning Commission model for 1986 49 25 26

Constituents of change. Whatever the age and stage of society, how-

ever, the one overriding feature common to all today is change.
Unesco's World Conference on Adult Education meeting in
Montreal in 1960described the seven changes marking our decade:
technological development, acculturation, status of women,
 The new culture:learning to live, living to learn

nationalism and the new States, power blocs, unity and inter-
dependence, and the population explosion. Change in society
is precipitated by several factors-affluence, automation, cyber-
netics, urbanization, communication, break-throughs in biology,
breakdowns in religious, ethical and moral values. In terms of
individual human identity, change comes about through the
struggle to remain an individual,the war on poverty,the changing
balance of work and leisure time, and the many forms and faces
of rebellion and protest. And in terms of the universal community
the constituent elements are: the threat of nuclear warfare, the
emergence of many new nations, the determination of the non-
white races to achieve a just and dignified standing, the
ever-increasing and more visible disparity between the have and
have-not nations, the struggle between the socialist and non-
socialist societies and the imperatives of international co-operation.

Rate ofchange. In its forms and expressions,it is the unpredictability

and speed with which change occurs which is decisive. It used to
take an average of 37 years between a discovery and its use in
production. N o w the time interval is g to 14years. That is, in the
lifetime of the boys and girls now at school, there will be at least
three or four startling changes.It took m y father allhis working life
of 30 years to increase his real income and consumption to a level
which is now reached by his children and his childrenschildren in
less than I O years.Thismeans thattodaysstudents willincrease their
incomes three or four times more than w e did. Employment and
occupations which are still largely determined by circumstances
of birth and level of parental earnings will for them depend on
skills and education. Similar ineluctable and rapid changes have
occurred in travel on which 5 per cent of the worlds GNP is
being expended. In 1966, 130 million persons travelled over the
globe,in a kind of neo-nomadism,spending some $50,000 million.
And there is the rapid increase in the conglomerate corporation
process, that is one company,such as ITT,operates telecommuni-
cations, manages mutual funds, bakes bread, manufactures glass,
builds houses and rents automobiles. In just one country in one
year (1968)mergers took place of $12,000 million of capital.
And meanwhile,the cumulative driving force of change accelerates
constantly: the number of scientists doubles every ten years; over
half the totality of scientific findings was obtained during the last
fifteen years; go per cent of all scientists in the worlds history are
living today.
Let m y country awake

Consequences of change. Another way of looking at the change which

development builds into our societies is to look beyond the present
production and consumption stage, wherein the major part of the
family budget is spent on the necessities of life, on meeting what
the economist calls elementary wants. This stage will continue for
a long time in the low-incomecountries as they will have to move
into the mass-consumption cycle with all its attendant joys-of
physical and spiritual satisfactions and egalitarian variety, and
its evils-of senseless, fictitious and spurious wants. But once
elementary wants are met, a whole new world of further wants
is opened up, particularly in the post-industrialsociety,for creative
work, lifelong education, development of all-round abilities and
self-realization,complete mobility and information, free physical
activity, enjoyment of beauty and freedom and the demand
for living in tolerance, compassion, fraternity and truth.
This does not mean that in the future all will be honey and roses.
Far from it. The fast-moving,fast-changing,post-industrialworld
oftomorrow will have more conflict built into it,not less. Romantic
appeals to the sturdiness of common sense,the natural harmony of
socialist societies or the moral certainties of other societies will not
help. For that society will be marked by constant shifts and move-
ments, rather than stability. It will be characterized by frictions
arising from work-content and ideas of life, differences in self-
realization, continued polarization between youth and adults,
teacher and student, parent and child, progressives and conser-
vatives. But here again, it would seem that we are being slowly
prepared for this kind of society of conflict, through the medium
of the dialogue rather than consensus, the use of debate and strife
rather than passive acceptance and unintelligent agreement as our
way of life for tomorrow?

Society, education and change. I would like to pose again the question:
how is our society reacting to this fact of change, to its extra-
ordinary rate and pace, to its multiconsequence? W e should begin
perhaps with a certain sense of humility and realism by recalling
Toynbeeswarning that,historically,culturestend to be increasingly
and rigidly coherent and stable and to resist strongly and violently
any change. The Goths at the gates of Rome, Galileo facing the
Ecclesiastical Council, Dreyfus before the French Tribunal,
Gandhiji confronting a nation and a world of violence, all bear
testimonyto the truth ofToynbeeswords;the resultis the continuing
and periodic collapseofcivilizationsand self-destructionofcultures.

I 66
 The new culture:learning to live, living to learn

But thereis insocietytoday anew element,an elementbornperhaps

out ofour instinct for self-preservation.Thisinstinct has helped trans-
mute greed into thrift, violence into argument, murder into litiga-
tion,suicide into philosophy, and has forced the strong to consent
to eat the weak by the due process of law. And today,instinctively
our societies know that if they resist change and attempt to block
off or destroy the fresh winds as they did in the past, either in
defence of xenophobic nationalism, the sacred sovereignty of
the nation state or in propagation of high-soundingideology with
its dogmas of liberty, free enterprise, revisionism,reformism,left
or right deviationism, it will be not one society or culture but all
of human existence which will be destroyed.
Indeed there can hardly be a doubt left that we are inexorably
moving into a world of interdependence and mutuality. One
example should suffice. The braindrain,for example, has a double
ramification. It means that the education and science systems of
Europe and the Third World are,in one sense,appendages to the
United States research enterprise. But in another it means that
United States research is dependent intellectually on all these
countries: the Kumba rocket station in Kerala is one example;
the Indian programmer I met in Washington who earns $60,000a
year working for the Rand Corporation is another. What is taking
place,in fact, seems to be a Pareto-like,indifference curve distribu-
tion in the spectrum of world research projects.
Today, every society is, in greater or lesser measure, happily or
sadly,willingly or resignedly,planning for change, examining the
nature and source of its culture and how the change which must
take place can be harnessed for the common good. But this move-
ment today is no more than a beginning, an intention, a resolve,
a rendezvous with destiny. For it to be turned into a programme,
there is only one way, that of education.
This strategic,monopolistic position of education in relation to
the future of man and his culture underlines the serious questions
posed earlier in connexion with our educational legacy. The
school system is reacting to change, albeit slowly, by emphasizing
mathematics and science, by aiming at comprehensiveness and
vocationalization,by beginning to be conscious of the twin pheno-
mena of the student and information explosion. The issues at stake
for education and society are serious. The change means concretely
that a technician graduating from one of Indiastechnical institutes
in Kanpur or Calcutta loses his skill in twelve years through new
developments in engineering. Twenty-fiveyears is all that is needed
Let m y country awake

for our science graduates from Madras or Madurai to find that

all that they have learnt as students is outdated. Science teachers
who are teaching the pupils today what they themselves learnt
when they were themselves pupils are merely handing on useless
baggage. Eric Ashbys comment, that every science Ph.D. should
be annulled every ten years and its holder required to take the
course again,may be more than an off-handremark.
It is not surprising therefore that society today involves education
in a profound crisis-both in concepts and systems.
In conceptual terms, education is not conformity but learning
how to think; its basis is divergence and dialogue. In terms of
systems,its inherited assumption that life can be divided into two
stages-that of acquiring knowledge (as in filling a storage tank)
and that ofgiving it out (aswhen the storage tank taps are opened),
must now be recognized as false.
Education is no longer preparation for life: it is part of life.
Education is no longer the gateway to society: it is in the centre of
society. Education cannot be grounded in national realities only,
if they are nostalgic rather than prospective. Education and work
are no longer in conflict: work and life no longer devour each
other. All work and no play does not make Jack a dull boy. Edu-
cation is work:it is part of working time and production. Education
is play: it is the coming life of leisure.

Adult education-its contribution

Such, anyway, are the bases and conviction of what has been
called adult education. Adult educators always knew this small
but terrible secret. They knew that education is not a one-shot
affair, that it cannot be forced down like castor oil, that one can
bring the buffalo to the water tank but only the buffalo can
decide whether or not it will drink and when. But adult educators
also have their share of the blame for the current crisis of:society
and education;they have tucked this precious jewel very carefully
and very far out of sight in their poor, torn, swaddling rags.
And that is how adult education finds itselftoday in the world-
in rags. It is the poverty pocket in every educational system.
(There have been or are notable exceptions, especially the Scan-
dinavian countries, but industrialized countries generally are now
awakening to this treasure.) It is the poor relation in India, where
the country spent in 1963-64 over 200 crores rupees on primary
and secondary education, and only about half a crore rupees on

I 68
 The new culture: learning to live,living to learn

adult education (I crore = IO,OOO,OOO; I lac = IOO,OOO; $I =

7.50 rupees). W e enrolled over 2.5 crores of children in primary
and 1.5 crores in secondary,but only 369,000 in adult education
courses. There is a slight improvement in the private and business
sector which enrolled 1.7 crores pupils in primary and secondary
schools and 13 lacs in adult courses. Has there been a slackening
off in interest in adult education in the country since independence,
as suggested by Gunnar Myrdal in Asian Drama? H o w else can one
explain that there was no known allocationmade to adult education
in the First Plan, that only 1.9per cent of total educational ex-
penditures were allocated to it in the Second Plan and an even
more piteous 1.5 per cent in the Third Plan?
The reasons for this sad and dangerous neglect of this phase of
education are many. For one thing, its own basic doctrine having
been hidden away,adult educations functional relation to life has
been overlooked. For another,while school education is institution-
alized, concrete and definite,adult education is a large,higgledy-
piggledy, amorphous morass. There is a Minister of Education
for schools in every country. In no country is there a Minister of
Adult Education, nor should there be one. Adult education is
functional and must be integrated in several government depart-
ments. Equally it must also be free, voluntary, spontaneous, like
the wind blowing where it listeth, meeting needs as they arise,
using a myriad of methods and instruments from newspapers to
radio, from institutes to annual meetings of the All India Feder-
ation of Chamber of Commerce, the Trade Union Congresses
or the Conventions of the Association of Nagasuram players. But
then like so many noble ideas and sentiments, everyone is for
it in a vague, sentimental and platform-oratorykind of way, but
no one is really prepared to do anything about it.
India of course has the added problem of her size,her priorities
for development and the struggle for survival. Which comes first,
more food or more reading material,better clothing and housing or
adult education?In the long pull the relationshipis reversed and the
priorities establish themselves. For today one should be guarded
in making easy generalizations or resounding exhortations about
the imperatives of adult education to a people whose vast majority
are still struggling with the subsistence demands of life. This being
said, aduIt education is the tool for the farmer and the countrys
rural masses to raise their sub-subsistencestandards.
But how I wish this was all that was involved in explaining the
depressed position of adult education. At the bottom, whether it be
Let m y country awake

India or the United States, the Soviet Union or the Congo, the
relative neglect of adult education and the fact that it has not yet
come into its own is due to the whole system and conceptual legacy
of education itself. That legacy makes adult education an irrele-
vance. It gives adult education the semblance ofa luxury,something
one can afford when all other wants have been met. It relegates
such activity either to the idealistic poverty-ridden voluntary
agencies and their devoted but penniless leaders or to government
agencies seemingly concerned with such highly uneducational
matters as agriculture, health, industry and labour.
It is against this background and faced with the crises in society
and education that adult education seems at last to be waking up
and coming into its own, not so much by becoming a great super-
sector of education or society,with crores ofrupees at its command,
a busy department of government, a minister, imposing buildings,
equipment and staff-for that would be a betrayal of its mission
and denial of its vocation, but through the birth of an idea which
it has known and cherished and which is now sweeping men and
societies everywhere: the idea that education is a way of life, that
education is a lifelong process. In the process of giving birth to this
idea, adult education as a separate educational stage, as a distinct
educational method, as a unique educational experience, may
wither and merge itself in the greater truth-lifelong education.
If it does, and when it does, education will have recovered its
mission.

Lifelong education. The power of this new truth lies in its simplicity:
education is life long. It corrects the time distortions of our current
educational heritage. There is no temporal division of life into
youth and age, school, work and retirement, learning, child-
bearing and rearing and grass widowhood. Every year, every
month, every day from the cradle to the grave, step by step a
person learns,is open to learning and is given the opportunity to
learn. W e are entering a world where no one knows what the
morrow will bring. And so we must equip every m a n every day,in
every way and in fact in every moment of his life to be the master
of his fate,for he too is changing and must change,not simply the
society around him.
Lifelong education reaches out to all life because it is all of life.
There is no sector of life-whether it be the family,the school,the
university, the business, the ofice, the club, the farm,the factory,
the temple, mosque or church, the hospital, the cinema, or the
 The new culture:learning to live, living to learn

recreation hall-where the effort to learn and train and develop

the part of the individual involved in that sector is not possible.
For all around us everywhere are lessons to be learned, knowledge
to be garnered, information to be culled and opportunities to be
seized for the personality to be developed in some subtle or obvious
way.
This idea has far-reaching and wide-ranging implications for all
of education, in all countries, as Unescos General Conference
declared at its fifteenth session in late 1968:Inindustrialized and
developing regions alike, the basic concept should be that of life-
long education embracing all levels of the educational systems, all
forms of out-of-schooleducation,and even all policies for cultural
development. Unesco should help Member States,particularly by
pedagogical research,especially in the fields of methods and curri-
cula, and by perfecting educational structures and administration,
in improving the quality of education so as to obtain the best
possible yield from available resources. Lifelong education, the
planning of which should be integrated into over-alleconomic and
socialplanning and which should be inspired by a spirit ofparticipa-
tion should contribute to the implementation of the Declaration
of the Principles of International Cultural Co-operation.

Educational objectives. The concept of lifelong education forces a

redefinition of educational objectives and requires us to focus all
education solely and singly on man and his growth and develop-
ment. In primary and secondary education, the purpose will not
be the passing of exams but the capacity of each pupil to learn
and grow. In universities it will not be getting a degree and the
wild scramble for grades which will predominate, but the ability
of the undergraduate to know where to seek information and how
to use it. In the libraries so filled today with books that there is no
place within them to study, the user will once more find simply
one more source of information. In the business firm, co-operative
and trade union, in the farm and factory,repetitive work and ir-
relevant leisure will gradually cease to be an oppressive drag in the
workers daily monotonous existence; they will become part of a
continuous process of living and learning. Thus the centre of all
education,of all teaching and training,of all learning will become
man-man as child, as youth, as worker, as farmer, as head of
family,as businessman, as administrator, as scientist,as teacher,as
politician. Our concern will be more with individual abilities than
with increasing production, more with blazing new trails for

7
Let m y country awake

civilization than treading wearily the old beaten paths, more with
knowing oneself than with cheating others, more with satisfying
the continuing,consuming curiosity of man, than with asking him
to over-specializeon one narrow and monotonous task.

Educational organization. Lifelong education is introducing profound

changes into the organization of education. The planning of edu-
cation has been hitherto and traditionally restricted to school
education. This sector of education,being susceptible to quanti-
fication, dealt with target figures of future or enrolled students,
future or serving teachers,school building costs, books and equip-
ment estimates. These quantitative parameters for educational
plans were derived from manpower estimates to which were
added a certain dosage of what is called consumption education.
This was basically the approach of the educational chapters of
Indias first three Five Year Plans and the draft Fourth Plan.
It is unfortunate that the planners were defining education in
terms of school education at a time when media were blowing the
educational doors wide open. The comparative pedagogic effect of
all their teachers on primary-school children in Madras City as
against that of just two actors, M.G.R. and Shivaji Ganesan,
doubtless gave the educational planner in the state of Madras
much food for thought.
Educators were ofcourse disturbed at what they called the quanti-
tative approach to education and its planning. Many kept insisting
that it was quality of education which was decisive for society and
that behind all this fasade of figures, parameters, manpower
estimates and opportunitycosts,lurked the individual,the pupil,the
child,in short man himselfwhose spirit cannot be quantified,whose
mind cannot be measured and whose conscience is beyond mathe-
matical equations. This ofcourse does not mean that quality cannot
be quantified, as otherwise quality becomes synonymous with
vagueness.
Equally, for quite other reasons,the economist was aware of the
partial nature of the planning of school education. For one thing,
the opportunity cost concept forced the economist to avoid the
temptation of the educational planner, to restrict his vision to
school education. From Adam Smithscutting comment on literacy
in T h e Wealth of Nations: the most essential parts of education
to read, write and account, can be acquired at so early a period
of life that the greater part even of those who are to be bred to the
lowest occupations have time to acquire them before they can be
 The new culture:learning to live, living to learn

employed in occupations; to Strumilins careful computation of

the comparative costs of adult and school education and their
effects on workersproductivity;on to more recent computations of
the pay-offs of school education and adult literacy in Venezuela,
the economist has always approached schools as institutions
specializing in the production of training. H e has distinguished
them from firmswhich are engaged in production,whether or not
accompanied by training,because they only produce one particular
skill, like that of the barber or dressmaker,or a diverse set of skills,
like those of a university graduate.Thus,for the economist,schools,
firms and farms can be seen as substitute sources for particular
skills, and the substitution involved takes place through shifts over
time.
The American sociologist Arnold Anderson pleaded with the
educators at the International Conference on Educational Plan-
ning,held in Paris in August 1968,to count the opportunity cost of
appointing guidance specialists in schools,and to examine a more
economical alternative to that of creating,in some poor African
countries,a new cadre of educational planners. For the economist,
learning and working, teaching and time, have complementary
elements and relations. Further,in developing tools for measuring
the internal and external productivity of education,the economist
has had to treat the whole ofeducation-school and out-of-school-
as a continuum.
The economists universe of discourse carries him even further.
H e knows that in the pre-industrialand industrial system,there is
necessarily a decreasing investment in education relative to growth
in GNP.The demand in industry and agriculture for educated
personnel is less than the graduation of the schools. In technology,
university enrolments are lower than demand. There is declining
interest in part-time studies and further education. There is little
demand for in-servicetraining or the technical updating ofworkers,
farmers and those employed in the services. But he also knows
from his analysis that the key factor of economic growth under the
coming post-industrial society will not be capital and labour but
mass culture and education,consumption and services,health care,
trade and human contacts, recreation, leisure and co-operation.
This means that in the society of the future,all our current dreary
controversies as to whether investmentin man is a concept virtually
empty of theoretical content,whether it is capital saving or capital
consuming,whether or not it is really consumption expenditure,will
be a matter of interest only to the archivist.
Let m y country awake

Investment in man will be at the heart of economic growth. The

development of man will become an independent factor, not a
residual factor of economic progress. There will be no over-invest-
ment in human resources. All growth will depend essentially on
the human factor-inventiveness, teaching, information, social
participation,human welfare, and cultural creation. So a universal
and modern educational system will acquire an independent role
of its own with no subordination to the gods of production. Neces-
sity will no longer be the mother of invention; invention will be
the mother of necessity. Mans existence will depend on his own
decision.H e will be master of his fate and lord ofhis universe.
If this is our future,then educational planning must break at
once from its traditional quantified school frame and cover all of
education. The new definition of educational planning which
emerged from the Paris Conference (InternationalConference on
Educational Planning, August I968) represents an important
step forward for educational planners and administrators. The
ninety-six governments represented there declared: Educational
planning can only be an effective instrument of comprehensive
development if it contributes, through the choices which it makes
possible,to a renewal of the education process. The latter should be
conceived as a permanent-lifelong-process, and the confusion
arising out of traditional identifications between education and
school education, between school and presence of the teacher,
between teacher and salaried official should be resolved. Thus,for
instance, participation in non-school education tends to increase,
both in developing countries where certain types of community
action can profitably replace formal education and in developed
countries where the potentialities of individualized education-
particularly programme learning-are being offered to increasing
numbers. Further, education shall be comprehensive reflecting the
many aspects of development which it is called upon to serve.
UnescosGeneral Conference subsequently adopted this declara-
tion thereby making it a directive for the future.
Ones imagination boggles at the effect of this concept and
directive on the entire educational structure. Primary schools will
become schools for the local community; second-level schools,
general, technical and agricultural, will function for twenty-four
hours each day staying open for in-service education of workers,
farmers and those in the services. The universities will offer a
year-roundprogramme so that all can go to college,full time,part
time or by correspondence.

74
 The new culture:learning to live, living to learn

Adult literacy. Thus, the concept of lifelong education breaks

through the established compartmentalization of the educational
system. There can no longer be the familiar antinomy between
science and arts, the humanities and technology, general and
vocational learning, utilitarian and non-utilitarian education,
primary versus secondary?schoolversus adult literacy.Each country
and each society will have to apply the concept to the totality of
its educational legacy and learning needs. For India, there is a
ten-pointcanvas of its educational legacy set forth in Asian D r a m a
and an even more moving and arresting picture in the report of
the Education Commission published in I 966 under the title
Education and National Development. Its tragic reminder that India in
1961was more illiterate than in 1951,and even more so in 1966,
is matched by its three-stageliteracy programme:ofliteracy instruc-
tion, teaching of knowledge and skills to solve daily problems and
continuing education. H o w can one speak of lifelong education
when there is lifelong illiteracy, of continuing education when
there is continuing mis-education,of never-endinglearning when,
as the Report on Literacy A m o n g Industrial Workers, published in 1964
reveals, 67.4 per cent of the countryswork force,82-87 per cent of
jute and mining workers,81 per cent ofplantation personnel,have
only non-education?It is here that the three-pointprogramme put
forward by the Education Commission to arrest the growth of
illiteracy in ten to fifteen years calls for full and immediate action:
a five-yearprimary school for all, part-time education for the I I
to I 4-year-oldswho have not gone beyond primary school and
vocational education for young adults of 15 to 30 years.
As a beacon light to this programme, a selective approach is
being planned which will concentrate on large industrial and
commercial concerns, public sector undertakings, intensive agri-
cultural and other development projects and social welfare pro-
grammes with a built-inliteracy element as well as a mass approach
still using the concept of literacy derived from the idea of lifelong
learning. The mass approach involves education in agriculture,
health and civics. It uses traditional media such as dance, drama,
song and puppet theatre,and mass media such as radio,films and,
eventually television.Through these media, change can be induced
in three ways. The illiterate masses can be informed about the
desired changes,the means of achieving them and their relation to
each persons needs and aspirations. In the ensuing dialogue,
alternative means can be freely discussed, popular participation
assured and literacy gradually built in. Here there is a continuing

75
Let m y country awake

educational tool to teach people to read and write, to instruct

children and adults in farming,industrial and service sectors,and
to train all those who desire and need special formation.
The sorryrecord ofearlier literacy programmes,based on romantic
and abstract concepts of rights and justice and unrelated to mans
real concerns,is known only too well:continuing strife and factions
in the community,radio sets lying unused, the locked dust-laden
village library and the almost complete lack of mobility of the
people.
Indias population problem is a further functional urgency
which risks miring all its best efforts and hard-won achievements.
Normally the effect of economic development is first to reduce
mortality rates and second,after a certain time lag,fertility rates,so
that a demographic equilibrium is reached. In India, medical
technology rather than economic development has sharply reduced
mortality rates,leaving fertility rates untouched. The government
seeks to reduce birth rates through a planned and directed family
planning programme. The fertility rate depends on millions of
personal decisions and hoary cultural traditions. The family
planning scheme will thus succeed only in so far as it is part of the
functional education of the adult. H o w can he or she be brought to
understand for example that a small postponement (by two years)
of the female age of marriage to 19years will reduce the birth rate
by 20 points in the next twenty-fiveyears,and g points in the first
five years?
When the idea of literacy is placed squarely before man, relating
itself by its nature and content to whether he is an urban or rural
dweller,when it speaks to him as a producer or consumer,involving
him in the change of his conditions and his modes of life, when it is
part of the global development of society, thereby enabling him
to participate in the community and control his life, it becomes
what Unesco has come to call functional literacy. In brief, literacy
instruction becomes functional when it is concerned and carried
out as part of lifelong education.

Content of education. The general acceptance of the concept of life-

long education will call for drastic reform and restructuration in
the curricula and programmes of study and training at all levels
and in all forms of education. All areas of knowledge are changing
and transforming themselves with such rapidity that the content of
education can no longer even attempt to be encyclopaedic.It cannot
aim at covering or providing a ready-madesystem of knowledge,
 The new culture:learning to live, living to learn

for todayssystem will be tomorrowsdebris.Education and training

programmes based on acquiring pieces of knowledge will be self-
defeating. The jack of all trades will not only be master of none;
he will be a walking menace. Research on the frontiers of human
intellect shows that while mans capabilities can be expanded
indefinitely,he has quantitative limits to his retention of facts. Is
there no place for knowledge and informationin a lifelong learning
process? Yes-and they must provided, but along with them
must be taught the ability to retain and use that knowledge and
information,as well as the ability to acquire fresh information and
use it purposefully. So the educational curricula should cover the
structure of a subject,involving the transfer of the stiidentsskills
and creative abilities to ever newer spheres.
The implications for higher education as the domain no longer
of an elective Clite but the home of the masses, are even more far-
reaching. Its programmes content should revolve around the
cultivation of abstract thinking attuned to various levels of reality,
understanding of logical systems and cultivation of systems ap-
proaches and analysis. As scienceis the leading force in our civiliza-
tion today, the scientific mind and scientific modes of thinking are
more important than memorizing the findings of science. As
science will be the leading force in the future, education is the
crucial variable of the present. Because the scientific and techno-
logical world of tomorrow will be ushered in by the pupils now in
school,their education today is decisive. It is on their preparedness,
their creative abilities and mental dynamism manifested not in
three gruelling hours in the examination hall but throughout their
lives, that the progress of society will depend. In fact, it is already
clear that the society with the best scientific, educational and
cultural system will in future occupy the position in the world once
held by societies with the greatest natural wealth and more recently
by those with the highest industrial potential.

Methods of education. The concept of lifelong learning responds

to the explosion of knowledge and the deluge of information by
making education provide not a fixed sum of knowledge, but
a basis and technique for lifelong understanding and creation. The
school and the training institute will have to turn the object of
education into the subject of and for his own education. Education
must at all stages become self-education,so that with the tools
acquired in school the adult will continue his education through
life as teacher,worker,family and businessman through all possible

77
Let m y country awake

means-the library,mass media, camps, seminars, training insti-

tutes,etc.
This means that our normal teacher-student relationship must
become a thing of the past. No longer should the teacher, through
his cour magistral, pour forth vials of ersatz wisdom. No longer
should the student remain a passive and immobile receptacle.All
educational methodology must draw from the secret of success
of adult education with its true pedagogic-andragogic tradition.
All education must become a dialogue, all teaching a contest.All
learning must become seeking and strife; all will become simul-
taneously teachers and students.
And when this system of management and learning techniques
spreads over our entire educational and training system, the
school will no longer be the present austere, forbidding walled-in
emptiness which stands unused for fifteen hours each day, while
the masses cry outside for the chance to learn. If the school and the
university are compared to the temple, the cafe, the restaurant or
even the average home one is compelled to admit that the day is not
far off when they must become a fully equipped, intellectually
alive and spiritually bustling home for all men and women, who
will all have to learn all the time.
The school of the future will be attractive to look at and to be
in, equipped with teaching machines, electronic language labora-
tories,trainers and automatic testers,information storage machines,
computers, closed circuit radio and television with instructional
films and transparencies, tape recordings, video tapes, earphones
and optophonic apparatus and zenographs. It will be a multiple
internal information and communication system linked up with
monster computer and central television centres outside, relieving
the teacher of monotonous and routine tasks and enabling him
and the students to use individual and differentiated approaches,
which will call allthe human senses and sensibilities into play.
The epicentre: man. Concluding this glimpse of the new culture
which development is bringing, I must confess that it is one thing,
a rather facile thing, to sketch the implications of a revolutionary
idea, that of lifelong education. It is quite another to turn it into a
practical programme.The elaborationofsuch a programme requires
sustained interdisciplinary action and research. It will need the
collaboration of pedagogues,economists,sociologists,psychologists,
philosophers, administrators,scientists, engineers, architects, com-
munication and management specialists. It will face the inertia of
 The new culture:learning to live, living to learn

society and the legacy of seemingly coherent cultures. In the end,it

will depend on mans inventiveness and decision to save and serve
man.
For the epicentre ofthis idea to which adult education gave birth
is man. And if mans purpose,as I believe,is to extend the limitless
horizons of his mind and soul, to move forward from man the
animal to man the divine, then there can be no interregnum,no
hiatus in his upward, onward march. That march, slow, steep
and tortuous,leads slowly but surely to the spiritual and intellectual
immortality which is his destiny. The importance of his life is not
measured by his successes and failures but by his constancy to
truth which is the search,to compassion which is the source and to
charity which is the secret. He struggles to add time to his life, but
it is in adding as much life as he can to the time he has on earth
that he will find the key to his happiness.
I have spoken of continuing, lifelong education as the centre of
the new society, the heartbeat of the new culture, the leaf, the
blossom and the bole of a new world which development could
bring if it were placed in the service of man. W ill we live to see
this world? W i
ll any of us, will any of our children live to see it?
Is it a dream image which,though it may persist in bewildering us
or still haunt briefly our waking hours, we will never touch with
our hands, never see with our wide open eyes? O r is it in fact a
glimpse of a real but future world on which we cannot yet quite
focus?
Which will it be?
W e stand at the cross-roads.
Book Three

The cross-roads
Chapter g The crisis of man

Between the idea and the reality

falls the shadow.(T. S. Eliot.)
Too long a sacrifice can make a
stone of the heart. (W.B. Yeats.)

The crisis is all around us.

It exists in all countries.Ifwe turn to the West or the East,it is in
the West or the East that we shall find it. Ifw e travel to the North or
the South,it will be waiting there for us.
W e read of it every day in our newspapers.W e hear it on our
radios. W e watch it on our television screens.None of us seems fully
to understand it, to master its keys,to hold its levers of control.
In the surface rush of events and change w e seem to lose our
direction whichever way we turn, even if w e stand still. For the
crisis is all-encompassing.Just as the problem of development is
global, so the crisis of non-development,of conflict between the
races and classes and castes and generations,is global too.
There is no escaping it. There is no place to stand aside.Ifwe close
our eyes for an instant and look within, we will find it there too.
If we look to democracy,the wisdom of the people, the voice of
the common man, we find it dwindling everywhere. In Africa,
seventeen military takeovers in six years;in Asia, half the govern-
ments overthrown by their military leaders since independence;
in Latin America, a similar tale; in Europe and North America
democratic institutions, where they still exist, questioned and
derided on every side.
If we look to the university, where in other ages of mans long
history it would have seemed the desire to understand, to tolerate,
to accept, to guide, to link all creative forces in the struggle for
the future would have always predominated,if we look to higher
education as the traditional source both of continuity and the
rejuvenation of society, the traditional meeting-place of the dis-
ciplines and the generations, we find today only the grim battle-
field of change.
Let m y country awake

If we look to development,as ten years ago the United Nations,

on the initiative of the late PresidentJohn Kennedy,looked to the
Decade for Development for the answers, what do we find?
The development decade has been an expression of faith, not
a programme of action. It has been a plethora of inoperative
recommendations, not a framework for commitments. It has
provided seemingly simple targets, not a system of reference for
consistent programming. Even the few simplistic targets that it
set for itself have not been attained. Instead of the minimum
annual rate of economic growth for the developing countries of
5 per cent at the end of the decade, the record of the first half of
the decade shows a 4.5 per cent growth rate (the fifties without the
stimulus of the decade registered a 4.8 per cent growth). In place
of the transfer of I per cent of the combined national income of the
developed countries as development assistance to the developing
countries, the actual transfer in 1965 stands at 0.63. In response
to the appeal for general and complete disarmament voted by the
United Nations in 1960 and reiterated by Unescos General
Conference in I 962, armament expenditures have increased from
$120,000 million in 1960 to around $200,000 million in 1968.
Against this picture, and as a result, the gap between the stand-
ards of living of the developed and developing countries has
widened instead of narrowed. In 1960,the average gross domestic
product (GDP)per capita of the developed countries was $1,407
and in 1965 $1,607.In 1960,the average GDP per capita of the
developing countrieswas $I 3 I and in I 965 $145.(In I 960 constant
prices.) While the GDP per capita during this period for developed
countriesincreased by $200 (2.8per cent annually), for the develop-
ing world the increase was $14 (2 per cent annually). The gap is
widening. The difference between the two worlds in GDP per
capita, which was ten and a half times at the beginning of the
decade, is now more than eleven times. Projecting these trends
into the future, per capita income for developed countries will
be $1,844in 1970 and $2,400 in 1980,while for developing coun-
tries,it will be $161 in 1970 and $198in 1980,a ratio of 12:I.
The situation can, in fact, be summed up in three rather self-
evident comments.
The low-income countries are not adjusting and changing their
socio-culturalframework to permit development, whereby every
citizen has an equal and full opportunity of growth and service,
where present-dayinequalities in wealth and status have ceased to
be, where communalism,separatism,isolation,bigotry, corruption
 The crisis of man

and exploitation of man by man will have no place in the national

life (to quoteJawaharlal Nehru,addressing the University ofAlla-
habad in March I94.7).
The advanced countries are not promoting the development
ofthe underdeveloped majority ofour world. Their aid is notforeign,
as the World Bank has pointed out, for seven-eighths of it goes
back to the donors. It is not enough, because it has not met even
the minimum targets which the countries concerned subscribed
to at the start of the decade. And it is more than cancelled out by
the deterioration in the terms of trade and by the debt servicing of
previous quantities of such aid.
The rich nations-poor nations relationship is directly related to
the question of peace. Poverty has always been one of the root
causes of violence. A double-edgedweapon,it invites exploitation,
takeover,and the conquest of the weaker. It is the story of the lion
and lamb being asked to drink ofthe same river.Poverty confronting
the riches of the few sparks off revolt and violence.
Peace is also threatened by the arms race. Accidents in human
affairs can never be ruled out. According to the Unesco Round
Table referred to previously, we are today-at best-financing
the guarantee of an accidental world explosion. U Thant has
declared that the initial phase of the third world war may have
already started. God grant that he is wrong! The red light has,
however,gone up. W e are at the brink,at the edge ofthe abyss.
Surely these three interrelated problems are the heart of the
matter. Is it not at least in part because of the short-fallin inter-
national assistance that low-income countries have remained in
the doldrums? Is it not also because of their own development
problems, those of growth and change, of youth and university
crisis,of racism and international misunderstanding,of armaments
and war,that the advanced countries are not helping them enough?
And is not this failure, on both sides, to act decisively on these
problems making it more and more difficult for either ever to act?
For the world order based on self-determination and democratic
principles which came into being gradually following the Second
World War, and of which the United Nations and its Specialized
Agencies are the principal embodiment,depends on development for
its very existence.Without development,it becomeslargely irrelevant;
it collapses of its own weight. And behind it, waiting to re-emerge,
there is no other world order.There is only disorder,war,destruction,
ignorance and poverty. There is only the gradual stifling of human
freedoms and human rights. There is only the dance of death.
Let m y country awake

Is there something we can still salvage from the development

struggle of the last ten years? Are there lessons to be learned,
pointers for the future to be found? In an attempt to answer
these questions, I shall examine in some detail the performance
of the various agricultural and industrial sectors, as well as the
over-all effects of population growth and the specific problems it
poses with regard to manpower and employment, savings and
investment, export earnings, and the crucial sector of education,
science and culture.Finally,I shall look at the general situation of
international aid, trade and debt servicing,and internal problems
to be faced, which the struggle for development is also revealing.

Agriculture
Agricultural output has increased at an average annual rate of
3 per cent in the developing countries during the first half of the
decade,as against the target of4 to 4.5 per cent,a situation charac-
terized by the United Nations as disappointing.
In general, the investment targets in agriculture have not been
fulfilled, largely because of non-execution of the agricultural
policies embodied in plans and the obstacles encountered in
investment projects. For the most part, agriculture has remained of
the traditional type, with few gains in productivity. A growing
imbalance has become evident both between food production
and food requirements, and between industrial capacity and the
domestic production of agricultural inputs for industry. Paradoxi-
cally, the developing countries, which had traditionally been
exporters offood and agricultural materials for industry,have now
reversed roles and become importers of both. During the decade,
forty out ofsome ninety developing countries became net importers
offood,and are now spending more than $4,500 million on food im-
ports. The ECAFE region (Asia and the Far East), as a whole,has
turned from a net exporter to a net importer of rice since 1964.
As for diversification, some limited success was recorded in
expanding production for the domestic market of commercial
food crops such as sugar-cane,cotton and vegetable-oilcrops, and
some emphasis was placed on fruits,vegetables, spices and textile
fibres as a means of export diversification. But these improvements
are just starting and remain limited.
Here then, as the United Nations points out, is a major cause
for the present faltering growth rates of the low-incomecountries:
the lagging agricultural and agro-industrialsector.
I 86
 The crisis of m a n

The output of the agricultural sector in developing countries

generally represents around 50 per cent of their gross domestic
product and engages more than half of their labour force.Providing
food for the rapidly increasing populations, it also consumes a
large part of the finished and other goods produced by the manu-
facturing sector. Its performance and productivity thus play
multiple roles in growth and development.
Farm surpluses are needed to feed the increase in the industrial
labour force and in urbanization, as well as in the population
generally. They should not be hoarded in land rents or sterilized in
the subsistence farm; instead they should be ploughed into social
overheads, productive agricultural inputs and industrial invest-
ment needs. Even more, increased agricultural productivity
provides the basis for increased per capita income, the foundation
for the enlarging home consumer-goodsmarket and for expanding
the tax base. Moreover, agriculture provides the main export base
for the low-income countries (with the exception of those, like
India, which are large and heavily populated); some 50 per cent
of the worlds primary exports come from these countries.
Probably, therefore, there is no more urgent issue in growth
economics today than the problem ofenabling the agricultural sector
to shed its present sluggishness to become an agent and a contrib-
utory force in development.
In considering how a more satisfactory growth rate in the
agricultural sector could be attained,the basic situation to bear in
mind is that the agricultural area in Asia is 1.5 acres per person;
in Latin America, 6.9 acres per person; and in Africa, 10.6acres
per person. For Asian countries with a heavy rural population den-
sity,the main method for expanding agricultural production must
be to increase agricultural productivity, through appropriate
changes in agricultural techniques and organization, through
improvements in irrigation, transport, credit facilities, extension
services, fertilizers, improved and new seeds, and even more
urgently, through wisely and widely expanded education and
training facilities.
For countries at the other end of the rural-population density
scale,such as those in Africa, and to some extent in Latin America,
expansion of agricultural productivity can be achieved to some
degree by the normal market incentives, i.e. an adequate price
structure, leading to an increasing flow of consumer goods to the
farming population, as well as by land reform and the other
measures. The land-tenureproblem, however,is in as urgent need
Let m y country awake

of a solution in Latin America as it is in Asia, where surveys show

that go per cent of first-qualityland is in the hands of IO per cent
of the owners, with accompanying under- or mal-utilizationof the
best land. And for all regions, agricultural wastages resulting from
outmoded technology have more than their rightful share in
slowing down agricultural growth and expansion. Poor technology
in storage, processing and transportation leads to a loss of about
I O per cent of the annual agricultural production of the developing
countries,reaching as much as 20 per cent for some countries.
Action to rejuvenate agriculture has been, however, slow or
non-existent in most developing countries. The case of India is
particularly illuminating in this respect because,with its vast land
mass, it includes areas or regions of both high and low population
density and thus needs to put into effect both the methods I have
mentioned of increasing agricultural productivity.
In India, where the lag in agriculture was dramatized by an
annual food deficit of IO to 14 million tons, the problem is the
subject of considerable attention but sometimes of incorrect
analysis. It is wrongly ascribed to adversities of nature, to bad
monsoons. But drought passes, and above all, it can be planned
and provided for. In any case, the elements of Indias poor agri-
cultural performance with which we are here concerned have
little to do with nature. Nor can low agricultural productivity be
attributed to the stubbornness and ignorance of the farmer.
Although illiterate, he is a wise and experienced worker, not an
obstinate and crass individual;despite lack of educational facilities,
he is a patient and far-sightedentrepreneur,not a lazy and shiftless
person. In fact,given the constraints under which he is placed, his
performance to date has been heartening, for he is after all like
every other citizen, who bleeds when he is pricked, who laughs
when he is tickled and who responds to the right kind ofincentives.
Agrarian reform does not need to choose between economic
efficiency and social justice,as argued by some senior agricultural
officials in Delhi in 1962, when they said: Withknown techniques
and available and purchasable inputs, we can raise agricultural
output by g per cent instead of the current 2.5 per cent to 3 per
cent as from next year. But dontalso ask us to take on the socialistic
pattern of society.Agrarian reform is badly needed as a structural
revolution leading in its turn to a whole series of social and cultural
changes and productive activities. But such reform can take any
one of several forms, as is demonstrated by the State farms in
Mexico, the Kibbutzim in Israel, the co-operatives in China

I 88
 The crisis of man

(Taiwan), the auto-gestion farms of Yugoslavia. And it might well

involve a combination of all these forms in a vast country like
India, with varying lands and population densities.
Specific policy changes are needed, particularly a system of
efficient and equitable prices for the agricultural sector. The
present price policy provides little incentive to farm efficiency and
productivity. Though agricultural prices have risen over the years,
inconsistent policies tend to depress and distort them: by cheap
food policies in years of good harvests,anti-inflationprice controls,
export taxes on farm products and import of foreign farm products.
The wrong kind of industrialization policy leads also to cheap
food policies: farm prices are kept down to keep down the con-
sumer price index (as a guide to the consumer, this is like giving a
man who is looking for a street the wrong directions). Regional
food rationing which keeps prices low in surplus areas simply
prolongs the adverse production effects of the bad monsoons.
Here it is not the monsoon,but man who does the mischief. O n the
other hand, the results of the Agricultural Prices Commission and
the proposed price supports through the building of buffer stocks
could provide useful correctives.
Prices of agricultural inputs, of fertilizers, insecticides, tools,
equipment, machines and fuel, on which modernization of agri-
culture really depends, are both high and distorted in relation to
one another. Monopoly in production of some of the inputs leads
to further price distortions. Fertilizers are crucial to increased
agricultural production, and their world price is at an all-time
low. Pakistan has started on nitrogen; China (Taiwan) on all
types of commercial fertilizers;but India is one of their last users.
Then there are the prices of consumer goods which the farmer
must buy. Here, too, the domestic rural-urbanterms of trade are
stacked against him, both in terms of relative prices and the
quality of goods offered to him. These three sets of farm prices
are the key to the regeneration of agriculture,to organizing it to
play its role in national growth.
If, in addition to helping establish such an efficient prices and
distribution policy, the State also assisted in seeking out really
profitable farm opportunities and capital investments;if it could
provide the farmer with functional literacy and other educational
facilities to which he has a right, and which would initiate him
in modern techniques and new technologies,all of which he lacks
today, and more generally reform the defective agricultural edu-
cational system which simply drives the young farmer away from
Let my country awake

his land; if it could harness the impressive mass of agricultural

knowledge and techniques available to the world community
today,in particular through directed and oriented research which
is required to put such knowledge into practice; if it could bring
to the farm the results of the laboratory through a network running
through the agricultural universities;if it could take all or even
some of these measures, then I believe agriculture would begin
very rapidly to make the contribution to growth and development
that all of us wish and demand.
During India's first two plan periods, for instance,the 5 per cent
growth rate averaged in the primary sector was the combined
result of land reform instituted by the fourteen state governments
and the first tentative application of many of the measures just
referred to, alongside a serious lag in the provision of adequate
education and training opportunities. I believe some part of the
falling-offof the productivity curve of this sector during the third
plan period may be ascribed to the insufficient investment in edu-
cation and training in the earlier plan periods. The table below,
indicating the number of agricultural-sciencestudents by continent
in relation to (a) the total number of students enrolled in all facul-
ties of universities and colleges,and (b) the total population,shows
how far India lags behind in agricultural education and training.
The relative ratios show India to be lagging behind all the other
groups both in terms of the ratios of agricultural-studentenrolment
to total students and agricultural students to total population.

Agricul- Number of
Total Agricul-
tvra1 tural-
science agricul-
Region students as tural-science
number of science
students students percent- students
millionper
~~~~~~~' population

Africa 12gg00 7 IO0 5-4 50

Latin America 490 IOO 9800 7.0 55
Asia (excluding
India and
China) 632 600 25200 4.0 66
India 833400 g 600 1.1 24
Europe (IOStates) 706 100 14700 2 72
 The crisis of m a n

(This lag is even more serious if it is noted that the group called
Europe covers Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Fed-
eral Republic of Germany,Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland and
the United Kingdom-countries which are among the most
industrialized in the world.)

Industry
The performance of the agricultural sector is not the only cause
for concern in the present development picture,however. The per-
formance of industry in the developing countries has been mixed
at best throughout the decade.There has been no general tendency
to improved performance, and relatively few countries have
achieved their planned rates of growth. Many register, in fact, a
decline in growth due to lagging investment in this sector,under-
utilization of industrial capacity,exhaustion of capacity for import
substitutions,particularly where domestic markets are limited,and
unsound fiscal and monetary policies.
In India, for example, industry is stagnant today and this
slackening goes back to I 963.The units concerned with engineering
industry have been hard hit, and one ofthe results is the paradoxical
and tragic situation with regard to unemploymentwhich is analysed
in the case study appearing as the annex to Chapter 4.The gap
between capacity and output has increased to 6 per cent. Produc-
tion in most major lines, ranging from cotton textiles and steel
products to cement and electricals,has continued to fall;the govern-
ments sharp cut back of development expenditures, as an anti-
inflation measure, has hurt capital goods production. As a sector,
industrys contribution to GDP which was 19.9per cent at the
beginning of the decade, has remained around that level.
Reflections on this situation begin with m y belief that the
industrial sector is the lead sector in any programme of take-off
and self-sustained growth.This seemingly ex cathedra reminder may
be useful at a time when there is not only industrial slackening,but
a certain disillusion about the heavy investments in this sector in
the first three plan periods, with their lack of immediate pay-
offs and the multiple problems of the agricultural lag and growing
unemployment backlog with which the economy is beset.
Ifthere is no industrialgrowth,there is no economicdevelopment.
The spreading, multiplying, diffusing effects of any growing unit
of industry, its backward, forward, lateral and link effects with
other units, sub-sectorsand sectors of the economy can be seen in
Let m y country awake

the relatively brief industrial history of India and of those coun-

tries that have just passed the take-off stage, namely China
(Taiwan), Mexico, Israel and Yugoslavia. Steel and cement in
Mexico, building and nitrogen in Israel, electricals and chemicals
in Yugoslavia are clear pointers.
World economic development today bears out the primacy of
industrial growth as the major instrument, the busy bearer of
economic development. But for such surges in industrial units and
sub-sectorsto lead to sustained growth and not result in a series of
abortive spurts, certain pre-conditionsand accompanying features
must be met.The first constraint is the continuing emergence of
new units and sub-industrialsectors as the processes of run-down,
deceleration and growth stabilization set into existing and older
ones. This continuing,innovating,renovating and profit-prodding
process is essential if industry is to become, as it should,the major
contributor to national income and the largest employer of the
countryslabour force.

Population, manpower and employment

Population growth,which continued to increase during the decade,
has come to be viewed as a major obstacle to development. Indeed
our epoch has come to be characterized by the phenomena of the
demographic gap created by the spectacular decline in death
rates, which is due largely to our amazing medical advances,
accompanied by much more slowly declining birth rates.
Certain misleading notions on this subject do need to be cleared
out of the way, however. The population explosion is not simply
the result of importing a modernized death rate into regions where
a primitive birth rate still obtains. In India,for example,the birth
rate has steadily gone down, but not fast enough to compensatefor
the sharper decline in the death rate. In 191I, the two rates stood
at 48 and 47 per thousand respectively. Today the birth rate is
39 but the death rate only 16per thousand.Nor as explained earlier,
can one invoke a simplistic Malthusian juxtaposition of population
and the exhaustion of natural resources as the main offender. O n
the contrary,it is men who create resources,not nature alone,and
more men,under certain conditions,create more resources.
Nevertheless there is no question that unseasonable population
growth does have economic effects. The faster the growth in
numbers, the slower the growth of income per head. The great
potentialitiesofscience to feed double or treble our present numbers
 The crisis of man

are beside the point at issue in the immediate future,which is not

output per acre but output per man. The extent to which each
agriculturist-and not each acre-produces an increasing surplus
over his own consumption, and the relation of that surplus to the
per capita consumption of the rest of the population, define the
proportion of the labour force which can be allocated to investment.
As we have seen,increasing agricultural productivityis dependent
first on providing the farmer with the inputs of equipment and
education. Where the mass of rural workers are illiterate and
mis-employed or under-employed,equipping and training them
demand large resources. As their numbers increase, the time
necessary to equip and educate them is lengthened and agricultural
breakthrough and increasing productivity are still further post-
poned.
Thus population growth creates powerful internal pressures
within the low-income countries. Five-sixths of our population
growth is occurring in the third world. Of the 60 million children
born in 1967,50 million were born in the poor countries. Latin
America is experiencing the fastest population increase, at a rate
of 2.4per cent. Africa and Asia are rapidly reaching the 2 per cent
mark.
Population growth is also responsible for declining living stand-
ards and overwhelming food problems. Most of the 2,000 million
people living in the poor world are hungry most of the time.
The average calorie intake of this vast population mass is less
than 2,000 calories a day-an intake found in Europe immediately
after the Second World W a r and which was portrayed in that conti-
nent as being at faminelevel or faminecondition.
For developing countries generally,overt urban unemployment
and rural under-employment,whether open or disguised,are also
in part consequences of population growth. The need to deal with
overt unemployment presents a clearer choice than that involved
in disguised rural unemployment, where economic and non-
economic considerations may conflict. Under the extended family
system, many persons whose marginal productivity on the land is
lower than their subsistencerequirement are sustained because the
family shares out the total output among its members. This means
that a subsistence economy can, under certain conditions of
resource endowment, carry a larger population than a wage
economy. To characterize this disguised unemployment backlog as
potential capital and a hidden resource for expanding production
is not valid, however, unless those concerned can be employed
Let m y country awake

elsewhere at more productive work in accordance with the general

principle, considered earlier, which requires the transfer of any
factor, labour included, from less to more productive work, and
in that manner increasing benefits in relation to costs. But it is
economic development and growth which would provide more
productive employment and the movement from a subsistence to a
money and wage economy,and hence the dismantling of a kind of
family security system seems a pre-conditionfor economic develop-
ment and growth. In addition,such a movement also adds to the
total population pressure. The country concerned now has to
deal not only with the net rate of population expansion but also
with the rural exodus, i.e. the large mass of individuals who leave
the shelter of the family in search of employment.
Beside these issues, the moral and spiritual dimensions of the
problem posed by present demographic trends perhaps cause the
greatest anxiety. For all other aspects of the problem can be solved
by resolute action and through todays scientific and technological
advances. The demographic gap can be closed. The food problem
can be solved-the recent breakthrough in food proteins, to which
the United Nations Advisory Committee on the Application of
Science and Technology to Development has called our attention,
is but a pointer. The rich-richer/poor-poorerantithesis can be
reversed by steadfast and far-sighted decisions.
What w ill remain and what must be faced is the political problem
of governing double our present population; the ethical problem
of maintaining and enlarging freedom for this growing mass; the
moral problem of more people having to learn discipline, more
people having to be loved and accepted with tolerance and com-
passion and more people having to live morally.
The question frequently asked by those concerned about the
situation is: why this indifference,why this resistance, not only on
the part ofindividuals and institutions,but also of governments,to
combat these problems? Of the many reasons, one which demands
attention is the popular prevailing myth which supports non-
intervention on the population problem on the grounds that a high
birth rate in a country bears testimony to its vitality and virility,
and ensures in a society where death comes early that there will be
plenty ofchildren to care for one in onesold age. Conversely,a low
or falling birth rate has been held to be a sign of decadence, some-
times of irresponsibility, and brings with it a supposed loss of
national pride, prestige, and even military power. And of course
there are the social attitudes, traditional mores and the whole
 The crisis of man

miasma of history. The only means to dissipate these are through

extensive education in all its possible forms.
A more serious,if insidious,danger we face is an almost Wilful
ignorance of the issues and a somewhat shamefaced silence about
the morass into which we are slowly slipping. T o combat these
invisible and unintentional conspiracies,I look again to education.
The teaching of demography in schools and colleges, together
with the inclusion of elements for an understanding of the grave
issues involved in programmes of adult and youth education and
functional literacy, is one way of exploding the myths and con-
spiracy of silence surrounding demographic problems.
W e know that education can contribute to the decrease in the
rate of expansion of a countrys population, by enlarging the
individuals social and economic understanding of existing condi-
tions. At the United Nations World Population Conference held
in Belgrade in 1965,it was observed that in India,women who had
terminated their secondary education were 30 per cent less fertile
than those who were illiterate,and that when both partners had
reached this educational level the couple was up to 40 per cent less
fertile. The significant factor here is the importance of womens
education in the developing countries. Indeed,it has been shown
that the longer men and women remain in school, the later they
marry, and the less children they have.
But more is involved than the simplistic equation of education
and demography. Indeed, the postulates and applications of the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights are ultimately at stake.
President Habib Bourguiba of Tunisia put it simply when re-
cognizing that his three-year programme for development, inaug-
urated in his country in 1962,could only succeed if the women of
Tunisia stop producing children faster than we can provide for
them.Stressing the need for family planning,he concluded: What
is really needed is education. The people must become aware of the
problem.
Finally,if I have been speaking as if development were simply a
function of demography,I must now stress that demography is also
a function of development. The population explosion and under-
development are interrelated, being both cause and effect. Ac-
cording to the newspapers on g August 1966,the hospitals in New
York State reported that the number of babies born that day was
more than double the average of previous years; the day was
exactly nine months after the great power failure in the New York
State area. This report was later challenged, but the point still

95
Let m y country awake

stands. The third world lives for the most part with no power that
can fail,in perennial darkness. The President of the World Bank,
addressing the Banks annual meeting a month later, summed up
this truth in a memorable manner: the world is not going to be
saved by the pill. There is no alternative to over-all economic
development.

Savings and investment

High rates of saving and investment are a further pre-conditionfor
moving into a period of sustained growth. Growth theory calls
inexorably for countries which are 5 per cent savers to move into
the I O per cent category,for those who are in the I O per cent class to
move to 15 per cent,for those in the 15 per cent category to move
to 20 per cent. This is not to deny the evidence of economic history
that rates of savings and capital formation also follow high growth
rates. A high savings ratio following the take-offinto sustained
growth does not mean that it is not also a pre-condition. The
optimum rate for an economy will also depend on its capital
output ratio.
The familiar formula g = s/v is appropriate here, i.e. that the
rate of annual income growth is equal to the proportion of income
saved, divided by the ratio of capital to annual income. Where
the government plans or directs economic development, as in
most developing countries,it is the government which is the main
decision-maker with regard to investment. It decides what the
growth rate should be and what capital-savingtype of investment
will be made. The rate of growth then depends on the ratio of
investment to consumption. To return to our formula,given U, a
higher value ofg requires a higher value of s. Thus,to raise growth
rates,there must be an over-allrise in the ratio ofsavings to income.
Given the fact that the mass of the people are living at or below
the subsistence level, the developing countries have shown an
impressive record in their savings-investmentperformance. Fixed
capital formation has been maintained at 16per cent of GDP in
Mexico, and at 27 per cent in Yugoslavia. In 1965,in Pakistan,
Sudan, United Arab Republic and Venezuela,it was 18per cent,
in China (Taiwan) and Malaysia, 19per cent, and in Tunisia,
25 per cent. The Indian record is an equally proud one. In the
first four years of the decade, it has moved from 1 1 per cent to
14 per cent,registering an annual increase of 7.5 per cent. During
this period, domestic savings have increased from g per cent
 The crisis of man

to I I per cent of national income,with household savings account-

ing for 67 per cent and corporate savings 33 per cent of the total.
Thus, about one-quarter of the additions to national income has
been saved. But experience has again demonstrated the difficulty of
making accurate estimates of the investment required to attain a
projected rate of increase in output. In the United Arab Republic
and Venezuela, for instance,while investment has increased faster
than planned, over-allgrowth has fallen short of the target,owing
to the poor performance of the agricultural sector.
Coming nearer home,several questions face developing countries
with low agricultural performance and standards of living,which
aim at high rates of investment. The first is that under such con-
ditions, the increased investments become inflationary and set in
motion the usual vicious spirals in the economy. To put it more
bluntly, investments seem to be taking place with the wrong kind
ofrestraints on consumption.Increased savingsin our societies bring
out the need to increase necessary consumption and restrain
unnecessary and luxury consumption. The over-all savings ratio
(s in the formula) distracts attention from the fact that distribution
ofincome between persons is unequal. It camouflages the awkward
problem of the growth of the 6 sector and swelling of the U
sector.That is, private wealth in a few hands is swollen by the
overflow from public and corporate investment.
And here, we meet the other problem-the peculiar form which
peoples liquidity preference takes in our day in our economy
(added to the uniquely Indian preference to adorn its women with
3,000 crores of rupees in gold ornaments), the preference of the
group belonging to the U and 6 sector. I believe that this is a very
serious problem, calling for economic advice and State action. I
calculate that on the basis of periodic currency statements issued
by the Reserve Bank of India and other evidence, there are today
over 400 crores of rupees held by the U and 6 group in liquid
cash and that this sum is rapidly increasing every day. One means
of dealing with this grave problem in a democratic society such as
Indiasis not only through tax, interest-rateincentives and penal
legislation, but also through currency-form and format controls
and devices, so that these resources may be forced out and used
for productive investment.
I have in mind two specific measures. The first would be a
cure for the future and relates to the means of payments. The
government and the public sector would make all their payments
above 50 rupees to firms and contractors in cheques.

97
Let m y country awake

The second would be a corrective to the past and relates to

measures that will force the unused resources out of their present
private hoards and make them available for productive investment.
To this end, certain forms of demonetization,such as have been
put into effect in France, could be used. Such measures require
time, and must not shake the confidence of the rural masses in the
rupee. But then they are not the people involved.
International experience indicates that controls which do not
stem from a consistent frame of policies and objectives,and those of
the multiple ad hoc kind,not only invite corruption,but also channel
investment into the luxury-goods sector, whose increasing gains
decrease total savings and permit monopoly.

Export earnings
International trade is a decisive element in the development and
growth of low-income countries. Yet two major and interrelated
imbalances in such trade have characterized the decade. The
first is that the rich one-third of the world accounts for 80 per
cent of international trade. The other two-thirds with the
remaining 20 per cent is necessarily placed in a weak bargaining
position.
The second imbalance is the worsening of the terms of trade for
the developing countries and the widening trade gap. Several
factors have been at work in this area. World prices for primary
products have been falling because of the growth of synthetics and
other substitutes,involving a fall in export incomes. O n the other
hand,technologicaland mass-mediaadvances have setup increasing
demand in the developing countries for capital and consumer-
goods imports from the developed countries and their services,
pushing up import prices. The result is high demand elasticity for
the exports of the developing countries and falling elasticity for
imports, of goods and services, from developed countries. The
resulting inverse rates of increase of the exports from and imports
into developing countries can be expressed in various forms.
The terms of trade have worsened from I :I to 1.1 :I. To this
must be added the further imbalance caused by transportation and
insurance services, all supplied by developed countries. If the
developing countries had been able merely to maintain their
proportional share of the worlds trade, instead of declining, they
would have earned over $I,OOO million more in foreign exchange
in 1966.
 The crisis .ofm a n

As the first decade comes to its end,the hopes of an improvement

in primary or semi-manufactured exports from the developing
countries are, at present, not very bright. The President of the
World Bank has reported that unless the pace of activity of the
industrial countries increases, the prospect for the remainder of
the sixties seems to be slower growth in the export earnings of the
developing countries. Meanwhile, there are various negative
restrictions, such as tariffs, quotas, preferences, etc. The Kennedy
Round has had no direct effect on the trade of the developing
countries so far, but it may be of indirect benefit,if, as the World
Bank report suggests,it improves further the economic outlook and
activity of the industrialized countries. It is true that six developed
countries-Denmark, Finland, Japan, Norway, Sweden and the
United States decided to implement at one stroke on I January 1968
the Kennedy cuts,but they benefited all countries and not only the
developing ones.

Education, science and culture

In the field of education, the decade has registered a number of
positive achievements, yet the crisis noted in other development
areas is no less severe in this key sector.
The first positive element is the universal, nearly unanimous
recognition of the role of education in development. Toward the
start of the decade (Karachi,1960) the Asian Ministers of Edu-
cation and Economic Affairs expressed this achievement in the
following terms: Anew horizon has been opened to us at this
meeting. As an Asian intergovernmental meeting, we have seen for
the first time that education is not only the right of our peoples,not
only a never-ending source of individual satisfaction,it is equally a
factor which contributes directly to the economic growth of our
individual countries.In a sense, Unesco and the education sector
were in advance of the Development Decade decision of the United
Nations. The Karachi Plan for Asian education was adopted in
January 1960,the Arab States Educational Programme in Beirut
in March 1960, the Bellagio Projections for Europe and North
America in July 1960,the Addis Ababa Plan for African education
in M a y I 961,the Santiago Plan for Latin American education in
March 1962,while the Development Decade was proclaimed only
in November I 96I.
The prise de conscience about educations role in development led
to a re-dedicationof all countries to the ends of education and a

99
Let m y country awake

recognition of this fact by the banking and financial circles of the

world. The World Bank,followed by the Regional Banks of Latin
America, Africa and Asia, declared that education is credit-worthy
and that educational projects and investments are bankable. If
anyone had told m e in the thirties and forties when I was studying
economics at Madras and later professing it in Calcutta and
Madras,that banks would one day invest in education as they do in
steel, power, shipping and commerce,I would have dismissed him
as a visionary. Yet during the decade it was not only the Director-
General of Unesco who led the international educational crusade,
but also the successive presidents of the World Bank: Eugene Black,
George Woods and Robert McNamara.
Together with this prise de conscience, the decade has been marked
by a spectacularexpansion ofeducation.Enrolments and education-
al expenditures have doubled over the past fifteen years and in-
creased by over a quarter in the first half of the decade. In 1960,
there were 324 million students;in 1965 there were 411 million.
During this period, 200 million adults were made literate. World
educational expenditures increased from $go,ooo million in I 963
to $I 15,000million in 1965.International education and science
assistance increased from $300 million in 1960 to $700 million in
I 965. Educational planning mechanisms and educational plans
have been established in seventy-three out of ninety-one Unesco
member countries concerned,representing a trebling of this crucial
educational instrument during this period.
Beyond the recognition of the role of education in development
and the acceptance of the concept and machinery of planning,
there is another gain which has not always been recognized-
the fact that the Karachi,Addis Ababa and Santiago plans embod-
ied the first attempt at assessing long-rangetargets and objectives
expressed in terms of ends and finalities rather than in terms of
means. Educational targets in these plans were conceived as
results to be achieved, levels of satisfaction to be attained, rather
than as an appraisal of the size and timing of programmes to be
implemented by each member country. This is the essential feature
of programme planning today and Unescos attempt to apply its
spirit in the over-allconception of the development decade made
it a kind of precursor of modern Planning Programming Bud-
geting techniques.Thisadvance was in contradictionwith traditional
programming and led to some misunderstanding. It was the first
step in the planning stage and it opened the way to a constant feed-
back effect on the actual programmes and budgets in member

200
 The crisis of man

countries, a kind of prefiguration of the loop procedures now

being widely acclaimed and accepted.
A further gain has been the cultural breakthrough represented
by the emergence of the revolutionary concept of education as a
lifelong, permanent, learning process, which I have elaborated in
Chapter 8. Nascent at best, little understood,mistrusted by many,
and eliciting limited operational interest, this invaluable cultural
jewel of the industrialized society is the discovery of the decade. Its
implications,diffusion and application in all ofsocial and individual
life have yet to be worked out.
Again, there is the emerging consciousness of science as the key
to industrialprogress and rising living levels today.In the developed
countries,where go per cent of all scientists in our worlds history
are living today,science is the dominant factor. It is moving these
societies into the post-industrial scientific stage of tomorrow. The
computer revolution, the nuclear power resources, the break-
through in space research, are merely the obvious expression of the
place which science occupies in society and of the conviction that
there is no material obstacle to mans forward march that science
cannot overcome. For the developing countries, the challenge and
call of science to their lives and culture are now clear and demand-
ing. Unescosconferences on science and its application to develop-
ment in Africa (Lagos, 1964), in Latin America (CASTALA,
Santiago, 1965),in Asia (CASTASIA,New Delhi, 1968),have set
the stage for a science policy for these vast regions which will enable
both the implantation of science in their native cultures and its
application to their dramatic development needs.
But the gains from science are wider. Is there not in the recog-
nition of its power the beginning of a world appreciation of the
role of reason and rational method as a necessary approach to
the solution of human problems? Education,science and planning
seen as a whole may be viewed as the triumph of reason over
ignorance, superstition and stupidity.
Yet these positive achievements in education,science and culture
have given birth to problems of a crisis nature.
Despite the spectacular expansion of education, there remain
more children out of school than in school. The demographic ex-
plosion, responsible for this fact,has also increased the dimensions
of world illiteracy. The number of adult illiterates in Unescos
Member States in Africa, Asia and Latin America has increased
from 425 million in 1950 to 445 million in 1960 and to more than
460 million in 1965.These illiterate adults represent almost 60 per

20 I
Let m y country awake

cent of the population available for productive work. Education is

losing the race against time. It is losing the fight against under-
development.
Those of the corresponding ages who are able to attend schools
and universities are in one form or another rejecting the sort of
education offered to them. The content of what is taught has little
relation to the world oftodaysyouth and the traditional fascination
with teaching, rather than learning, adds to the irrelevancy. The
wastage rate in all forms and levels of education averages over
50 per cent. The unit costs of education are rising with the increas-
ing demand for specialization, while the rate of increase of its
resources is diminishing-a process which is clearly inflationary in
nature. The lack of flexibility in the supply of education produces
disastrous distortions and bottlenecks.
Graduates from school arrive on a labour market which has no
employment for them. Middle- and high-leveltechnical vacancies
continue to cry aloud for qualified persons. In the 1970s there
will be 300 million young people entering the labour market
with some educational qualifications. For two-thirdsof these new
entrants,jobs do not exist and will have to be created in the devel-
oping countries;in the developed countries the same proportion will
be merely replacing retiring workers. W e will thus be ending the
decade with a truly explosive educational situation.
Science, technology and their use in the developing countries
have not even made a start during the decade.This lag is traceable
to cultural traditions and resource limitations, but even more to
the lack offorethought and planning. Thanks to todaysinformation
circuits, what science research there is in the developing countries
arises from the scientific work and interests of the developed
countries. Men and societies live on both native and borrowed
resources,but the borrowing in science, as in time, has low limits
oftolerance.I believe that limithas now been reached,ifnot passed,
in the decade. The science lag in the developing world makes its
crisis in education a crisis of civilization.

International aid
Against the development decade target of I per cent of the com-
bined national incomes of the developed countries the flow of
international capital to developing countries through the various
channels has declined, as we have seen,both in absolute terms and
as a percehtage of combined national incomes (see table opposite).

202
 The crisis of man

Net ou@ow of long-term capital to developing countries

1961 1962 1963 1964 1965

Total (in thousand million

dollars) 8.0 7.4 7-4 7.7 8.0
Percentage of GNP of
the developed countries 0.82 0.71 0.66 0.63 0.63

Former World Bank President George Woods expressed these re-

corded facts simply:Sixyears ago, the official net flow of financial
resources from the industrialized countries reached a level of about
$6 billion [thousand million] a year.The figures in the table include
official and private flow. Today,after five years of unprecedented
prosperity in the donor countries,the figureis about the same. Ofthe
$200 billion [thousand million] by which the production of the
industrialized countries has grown in that interval, none has been
put at the disposal of the developing countries through the pro-
grammes of assistance.
The current flow, he points out, which is overvalued by the
donors by $1,000million compared to market prices, is less than
one-hundredth of the gross national production of the industrial
countries, but one-fifth of what the developing countries have for
investment. The World Bank computes that development needs
require a minimum additional flow of $3,000to $4,000million per
annum.O n the other hand,to reach the I per cent target,there will
have to be a 50 per cent increase at least in the official flow.
In its annual report for 1966-67,the World Bank also expresses
serious concern over the debt-servicing burden of the developing
countries. Slow-growingexports,larger loans, smaller grants and
difficulties in financing import requirements have increased the
debt-service obligations of the developing countries. As against a
normal use of IO to I 2 per cent ofexport earnings for debt-servicing,
the developing countries are now using 20 to 30 per cent of such
earnings. Between I962 and I 966, payments of amortization and
interest on external public debt grew at an average annual rate of
I O per cent, which was considerably faster than their rate of ex-
pansion of exports.During this period,the total outstanding debt of
the developing countries grew even more rapidly-at a rate of
about 16per cent.
Let m y country awake

In addition, the reverse flow of capital from developing to

developed countries must also be taken into account,together with
interest and dividend payments.

The struggle against underdevelopment

I have said that the low-income countries are not changing fast
enough for real development. Did they have a choice in the matter?
Did each developing Member State, the government and its people,
have a real choice?
I do not know. I have constantly faced this question when
visiting Member States, working on their rural programmes,
helping them in the planning of a training activity or in designing a
research project. O n one such occasion, at the end of a long and
weary day, when the people and the United Nations team had
worked on the modalities of a tightly scheduled renovation pro-
gramme, the village leader asked m e how he could help explain
and reconcile this proposed action to his fairly happy and con-
tented fellow villagers. In India, Gandhiji expressed a similar
thought even more brutally: Ourpeasant earns his bread honestly,
he wrote. H e knows fairly well how he should behave towards his
parents, his children and his fellow villagers. H e understands the
rules of morality. But he cannot write his own name. What do you
propose to do by giving him a knowledge of letters? W ill you add
one inch to his happiness?
I was again involved in a discussion of this fundamental option
in an Arab country, whose people have maintained their basic
features of fierce pride and passionate loyalty,unforgetting hostility
and confident trust, wide inequalities and an abiding religious
faith. W e were drawing up a detailed plan to train their own
geologists to take over responsibility for exploiting the mineral-
laden countryside. The social change and cultural disruption being
brought about by this and other programmes were fully and freely
debated and the conclusion to which all in the group agreed was:
Developmentis here to stay;it is on us and around us; we have to
live with it and accept the changes in our society and culture that it
brings; we have no choice in the matter.
And this conclusion, I a m afraid, is a representative sample
of what is a common response to the development option of the
underdeveloped world: resigned and passive acceptance of change.
Yet development requires more than this,much more. It requires
will and determination,not resignation and acceptance.It requires
 The crisis of man

planned and induced change, change that is mastered, that is

placed in the service of man and used to better his life.
And for a developing economy and growth-consciouscommunity,
there can be no either-ors,no sacred cows. The public sector has its
infrastructure, heavy industry and agricultural-renovation tasks.
The private sector,which includes the farmer,has its responsibility
for pushing and probing at all opportunities of profitable invest-
ment, for seeking and searching out new techniques and avenues
that promote innovation and change, for being societys entre-
preneur and imaginative manager. Similarly,there is no choice be-
tween technology and technical processes, between heavy industry
and light industry,between production of wage goods and produc-
tion ofcapital goods,between manufacturing inputs and agricultural
inputs, between capital-consumingsocial overheads and income-
producing resource investments. Development needs both. It
needs all. W e should not listen to anyone who says that we must
merely stop, wait and choose. W e should set ourselves to labour
on the details at all levels-micro, macro and micro-macro- in that
faith and knowledge.
That is one of the lessons which I bring back with me from m y
visits to a number of States who have entered the stage of self-
sustained growth. In one of those countries, I found that every
truth, every doctrine, every assumption and practice, however
dearly cherished, orthodox or heterodox, was being ruthlessly
questioned-questioned not only by the economists and intellectual
tlite, but by the seasoned administrators and trusted members of
the ruling Communist party. When asked the reason for this wild
orgy of question, debate and discussion, I was told: Itis only by
such ruthless questioning that we can respond positively and
meaningfully to our fast-movingworld. It is only by adopting this
kind of open-minded,open-ended, inquiring spirit and attitude
that each country in Asia, Africa and Latin America can and will
respond to its own imperativedemands and make a place for itselfin
the sun ofthe fiercely competitiveworld in which we are living. Itis
by a response such as this that shewill take her place intheworld com-
munity for whom all things are always possible.So far,however,that
responsehas not comedecisively enoughin most developingcountries.

A world balance sheet

Such is the world-development balance sheet for the first half of
this decade. The Third Worldsgrowth ratesin terms of production
Let m y country awake

and per capita income have been well below the modest targets;
the industrial sector has performed poorly; the agricultural sector
has lagged behind projected rates and h7.,,not met domestic food
requirements; the savings-investment equation has been below
optimum; its share in world trade has declined, worsening the
terms of trade and widening the trade gap;and the rate ofnet flow
of capital has fallen. This picture led the Secretary-General
of UNCTAD to portray, to his governing body, the Decade for
Development as the Decade for Frustration.
I must not, however, leave you with a picture of unrelieved
gloom. That is not the United Nations posture. Rather this sober
assessment is a call for reflection, revision and renewed action.
Besides, important gains have been registered in the first half of
the decade and many valuable lessons learned. While the trends
that I have summarily stated apply generally to the developing
countries, the performance of the economies of China (Taiwan),
Israel,Mexico and Yugoslavia during the same period demonstrate
that, given a favourable constellation of circumstances, effective
policies and national determination, an adequate pace of economic
growth can be achieved. For these four countries, the decade
represented the take-off into a period of self-sustained growth,
and a study ofthe performance and achievementsoftheir economies
provides useful guidelines for others.
Another gain registered during this period is that public policies
and programmes are no longer being established on an ad hoc and
isolated basis,in response to momentary whims,short-runproblems
and pressures of prestige. They increasingly flow from a common
purpose, embodied in the concept and technique of planning.
National planning, as a tool of integrated and ordered national
development, has gained universal acceptance, although there
remain serious problems about plan formulation and, even more,
plan implementation.It is to these aspects that the United Nations,
through its Committee for Development Planning,is now turning.
One of the brighter features of this part ofthe decade, as we have
seen, has been the remarkable progress in educational expansion,
which has laid the basis for attaining,within the next three decades,
the basic minimum of educational and scientific infrastructure
necessary for self-sustaininggrowth.
Further, the development decade must be judged as an instru-
ment of persuasion rather than as a framework of decision. The
United Nations is not a decision-making body. Where decisions
are made in the few selected areas of security and finance in the

206
 The crisis of man

United Nations system,a built-inveto or weighted-votingoperates.

And so, to some extent, the balance sheet that I have presented
begs this basic question.The decade has been,in effect, an organiz-
ing principle for the development activities of the United Nations
system and for national governments,both developed and develop-
ing, in their separate and independent actions. This organizing
principle, this principle of harmonization under the aegis of the
United Nations and the Specialized Agencies, works to programme
all development activity.It is embodied,in part,in agreed sectoral,
national, regional and international goals and targets, and it is
backed by an increasing readiness of the United Nations structure
to take on the consequent responsibilities.
The development decade has also seen the birth, as part of the
organizing principle, of seven major development instruments:
the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development; the
United Nations Industrial Development Organization; the United
Nations Development Programme;the International Development
Association;the Regional DevelopmentBanks; the Special Drawing
Rights;and the Advisory Committee on the Application of Science
and Technology to Development.
This then is the balance sheet for the world economy at present;
it shows major disappointments but offers some reasons to hope for
improvements.The question that faces us now,in all its magnitude
and urgency-I say urgency because time is clearly running out
on the development effort-is basically a simple one, that of
putting teeth into the organizing principle and of committing our
new and newer development weapons into the battle so that w e
can have a Second Development Decade that works.
Chapter I o A second development
decade: one that works

In planning for the Second Development Decade the first fact that
must be faced is that, as I pointed out in Chapter 3, no concept
or doctrine of development was officially established or accepted
during the first decade. I have in that chapter tried to bring
together various disparate decisions and declarations in a com-
prehensive statement on the United Nations idea of development.
But the decade started without a definition of aims and goals, has
continued without an agreed framework of policies and is ending
with divergent rather than convergent national and international
purposes and actions. However the First Development Decade,like
nature, did not long live in a vacuum. What was implicit in the
few targets of the decade soon became transformed into an econ-
omic growth concept of development which has produced its own
structural distortions and social and international upheaval.
Acting under the impetus of this partial view, the countries which
have registered the highest growth rates have found themselves
with increased economic inequalitiesand social costs.Internationally
the imbalances have led to some return to mercantalist doctrines
and responses.
The decade has also registered an uninterrupted series of wars,
the continuous violation of human rights, the growth and spread
of neo-colonialism,the overthrow of democratic governments and
the generalization of violence as a way of life. When the current
cultural-policy vacuum with which the developing world will be
ending the decade is added to the explosion of education and the
lag in science,referred to in previous chapters, then the challenge
for the future takes on a truly moral dimension. The traditional
values of tolerance, courage, brotherhood and charity are being
eroded by the little economic growth to which the developing
countries are parties. The price of such growth is irresponsible
population expansion,urban drift, rural degeneration,inequitable
agrarian, fiscal and social institutions, accompanied by egotism,
corruption and moral verbalism: collectively they constitute the
most powerful mixture ever brewed by the forces of darkness
which are also,alas, the forces of man. I trace the basic reason for
208
 A second development decade

this explosive situation with which we are ending the development

decade to the absence of an agreed and comprehensive doctrine,a
definition of aims and a convergent agreement on strategy with
regard to development.
Now, as we prepare for and enter the 1970s which have
been proclaimed as the Second Development Decade by the
General Assembly of the United Nations (Resolution 241I
(XXIII)), and in which once more the General Conference at its
fifteenth session has decided that Unesco shall participate fully
(Resolution 5.531) our first task and, I believe, a task in a sense
uniquely incumbent upon Unesco, is to define development,
clearly, simply and unequivocally. Such a definition will give us
new methodologies in problem identification and new tools for
development planning. In reality, it is not a definition that I a m
pleading for but a framework ofthought,a moment for reflection.

Definition of development
With this aim in view, I would first like to advance a negative
definition of development in stating what it is not. It is not economic
growth. It is not economic growth plus social questions. It is not
economic growth which must overcome social and non-economic
obstacles.
Development is not economic growth expressed as attainment
of a minimal 5, 6 or 7 per cent rate of growth of GNP. Nor can
it be seen as a mere reflection of the production pattern of major
economic sectors conceived as a logarithmic function of population
size,per capita income or per capita gross domestic product. GNP
and GDP,as we have seen,are simply highly generalized accounting
devices covering all the individual,social and community actions
in a country that can be brought under the measuring rod ofmoney.
The General Assembly used it as a rough guess for theFirstDevelop-
ment Decade. It should not be equated with development. It is a
target indicator to economic growth, and only one element in the
development equation.
Development is not economic growth which also takes into
account social factors as embodied in various econometric models.
The earliest United Nations and Unesco development legislation
referred in this regard to the need to promote the economic
development of underdeveloped countries,paying due attention to
questions of a social nature which directly condition economic
development.In Chapter 3,I used one model which is commonly
Let m y country awake

known as the Cobb-Douglasor Harrod-Domarproduction function

or model together with related strategiesofthe low-levelequilibrium
trap, the big push, the absorption of surplus labour, the levels of
foreign trade and capital imports, and investment allocation
criteria. But all these formulations,as Perroux points out,relate to
the function or strategy ofeconomic growth and not ofdevelopment
(see authors note below). And to the Harrod-Domar model
social and other factors are added as in the model:

where total output Y,during a period of time t, result from labour

L,capital K, technical knowledge T,natural resources R and all
social, educational,cultural and political factors lumped in S.
Apart from the fact that this and other such refinements on the
original model are not a theory of production but a mere listing
offactors which determine output,such formulations end by taking
us back to our starting-pointindefining developmentastotal output.
They are still subject to the temptation of all such models in over-
looking the interdependence of factors and promoting the use of
simple regression techniques. Again, international cross-country
regression equations must ignore the variables between countries
and statistical imperfections. In fact, development cannot be
expressed in models.
Development is not economic growth which looks at non-
economic factors,including education,as obstacles to growth,to be
jumped or given attention at a later stage as a means of planning
countervailing action. Such is to confuse means with ends and
not even to take adequate account of available means in order

Authors note. Cobb and Douglas, these two well-known pillars of economic
statics w h o set out the production function that bears their name, were concerned
with the maximization of physical output at any given time-a worthy enough
cause. T h e Harrod-Domar model was the first successful attempt-like many
scientific inventionsdiscovered at the same time by two scientistsindependently-
to create a dynamic model of steady economic growth, taking in wages, popula-
tion, the rate of interest and the basic issues of saving and inflation still troubling
the Western world. It was left to Perroux, some few years after their model
appeared, to define very clearly something that many had reflected on earlier,
namely the difference between economic growth and economic development.
H e explained the amount of structural change required for development as
distinct from mere growth, and his ideas perhaps more than anyones were
responsiblefor the emphasis in the first decade proposals on the fact that develop-
ment is growth plus change.

210
 A second development decade

to achieve defined ends. In fact,the growing use of systems analysis

shows up the limitations of traditional economic analysis in this
respect.
The facile but inaccurate equation ofdevelopment with economic
growth is simultaneously the responsibility of everyone and no one.
The developed countries in their public and private co-operation
with developing countries were concerned with productive invest-
ments and bankable projects. Energy, water and transportation
were the areas of government-to-governmentaid, while oil, steel,
shipping and consumer goods assemblage were the co-operative
domain of the private sector. Education, health, land reform and
an equitable social and economic order were termed social-
impact projects,on which it was not possible to compute profits or
returns. While technical assistance could be offered in these
areas, no financial and investment outlays could be contemplated.
Thus development came to be equated with the commerce among
nations in economic growth.
Equally, in the developing countries the pressure for economic
growth originated from a tiny segment of the population,the small
middle and the smaller upper classes. Whether in Brazil, India,
Nigeria or the United Arab Republic, development came to be
equated with the country producing or assembling its own motor-
cars, air-conditioners, electric goods, soap, toothpaste, etc., in
which the growth-conscious minority had a heavy stake. This
group had littlerelationto progressive tax reforms,raising the produc-
tivity of agriculture,mass education, health services and the general
renovationofthe rural countryside in which the masses ofthe people
lived. Even the drive for expanded exports often resulted in the use
of foreign exchange earnings to import consumer or capital goods
for luxury products in demand by the privileged minority, with
little or no relation to land reform,rural education and sanitation
and the cultural life of the masses generally. In this situation,
economic-growththeoriesand models have become widely accepted
in the developing countries as the beginning and the end, the
standard and the finality of development.
I believe that, with this concentration on economic growth and
the growing number and variety ofmodels which we are developing,
we have now reached the point of diminishing returns. Their
various and varying variations and refinements may pander to
our proclivity for intellectual conundrums,but they come to repre-
sent a not very responsible attitude. It is a little like the Neros of
today fiddling while the Rome of tomorrow is burning.

21 I
Let m y country awake

In spite of my somewhat harsh critique,I must admit that I have

always accepted the basic truth embodied in the heavy emphasis
on economic growth. In my papers on development presented to
African, Asian and Latin American educators and scientists, I
have deliberately devoted exclusive attention to this aspect of
development,both to harness the energies of this key group in an
effort which is vital to their countries, and to ensure a wide and
popular base for it. Economic growth is the basis for development
in underdeveloped countries. It is a pre-conditionto their develop-
ment. But in this discussion of a world development strategy,it is
essential not to equate the base with the edifice,nor the pre-condition
with the finality.
The great economists have always themselves stressed these
limitations and no one put the point more succinctly than Keynes
when, raising his glass to toast the Royal Economic Society,just
before his death,he said:Igive you the toast ofthe Royal Economic
Society,of economics and economists, who are the trustees not of
civilization but of the possiblity of civilization.
Development is man-man who is the beginning, the end, the
objective and finality of all development. That is Unescosdoctrine
of development. The concept of development should include
economic and social factors, as well as the moral and cultural
values on which depend the full development of the human per-
sonality and the dignity of man in society(Resolution 8.1 adopted
by the General Conference at its twelfth session). Robert McNamara,
the President of the World Bank, speaking to the Economic
and Social Council in December 1968,defined development very
simply as our common endeavour to drive back poverty, to lift
living standards, and to enhance the dignity of man. Man and
the full life ofman constitute the ultimate purpose ofdevelopment,
declared Unescos International Conference on Educational
Planning, meeting in Paris in 1968: The Second Development
Decade must lay stress on the needs for comprehensivedevelopment
on a world-wide basis embracing economic,social,cultural,civic,
political and educational development affecting groups and indi-
viduals.
Indeed, development might be defined as the movement of a
social system cemented by technology, economics,social and polit-
ical structure,religion, languages and values, of which the change
induced by economic growth is only one sub-system.And develop-
ment viewed as a system calls for the use of systems analysis and an
integrated programming approach in problem identification and

212
 A second development decade

in planning the various elements of the system and its related sub-
systems,i.e. it calls for an approach almost diametrically opposed
to the present techniques of starting with economic-growthmodels
and then trying to accommodate the other,non-economicvariables
of development. Again, such an approach to development does
not allow us to accept the pursuit of wealth or the increasing of
profit as a given element,an automatic and decisive standard-setter
to which educational instruction, family obligations and social
values must conform. Rather,it demonstrates vividly the fact that,
in order to make people seek an increased quantity of goods and
services,such values as power, respect, rectitude, affection, well-
being and enlightenment must be reshaped and reshared.
During a visit to a Member State,one ofits development planners
recounted a recent experience that is relevant to this issue. H e was
on a visit to a pleasant and somewhat remote part of the lake
region of his country. Walking along the lake front he came on a
fisherman stretched out happily in the warm sun by the lake,
and the following conversation ensued:
Whyare you not out on the lake fishing?
Oh,I caught a big haul yesterday which brought me enough in
sales to last me for three days,so why should I fish today?
Becauseif you fish today, you can have more money than you
have today.
Thatis true. But why should I have more money than I have
today?
Because with more money you can buy a large mechanized
fishing boat.
Thatis true. But why should I have a large mechanized fishing
boat?
Becausewith it you can catch ten times more fish and have ten
times more money.
Thatis true. But why should I catch ten times more fish and
have ten times more money?
Becausewith that money you can build yourselfa large palatial
house and a swimming pool.
Thatis true. But why should I have large palatial house and a
swimming pool?
Becauseyou can then enjoy life and lie in the sun lazily all day.
Thatis true.Ah,but that is what I a m doing now,a m I not?
At this point m y friend the planner stopped and admitted
defeat for the values that could make this man seek an increased
catch of fish.
Let my country awake

I should add as a footnote that a fellow economist commented

to the planner that he should have told the fisherman that if he did
not follow the suggested programme, the planner would buy up
all that land and the fishing rights in the lake. That would have
provided the motivation to the fisherman.
Thus economic behaviour, so called, is a function of the total
behaviour pattern established by an individual and society and
not the other way around. Quantitative changes (all economic
changes are quantitative or they are not economic) become valid for
development only in so far as they work through and involve
structural changes.
So defined, development is a function of a series of variables,
not just of the economic variables of industrialization,urbanization
and national income level,but also of the enlightenment variables
of schooling,literacy and media exposure, the power variables of
participation, party membership and voting, the personality
variables of motivation, need-achievement and empathy, the
diverse cultural variables of the local, temporal aspects of social
and cultural behaviour, and the ecology variables of population,
organization, environment and technology together with the
principles of interdependence,differentiation, dominance and key
function.Development must thus be conceived in a holistic,organic,
dynamic, valuational manner. Its planning requires a human-
centred approach.
From this socio-scientific approach, there emerges the doctrine
of development as people. Development is by and for people.
Its alpha and omega, its beginning and end, are human values
and goals, human feelings and emotions. Such is the Unesco
position: Notonly is man at the origin of development,not only is
he its instrumentand beneficiary,but above all he must be regarded
as itsjustification and end. It is in this light that Unescosparticipa-
tion in the Second Development Decade must be planned (Res-
olution 8 adopted by the General Conference at its fifteenth ses-
sion). Against this perspectiveand directive we can ask,development
for what? For a peaceful and growing world economy.

Goals. I will try to sketch an outline of the goals for the Second
Development Decade in the context of development as defined
above, as I see them.
For the continuing need to safeguard and build peace, one
simple target could be that which in a sense is negative: a small
annual, say 2 per cent, reduction of the armaments and defence
 A second development decade

budgets by each of the thirty-six countries which currently spend

over $I00 million annually for this purpose.
T o extend freedom to all sections of the people of each country
and to strengthen the institutions of political democracy, one
instrument on human rights could be ratified each year and its
observance ensured through appropriate national legislation.
Attention should be concentrated on raising the levels of living
of the poorest 50 per cent of each country with appropriate pro-
gramme targets to be fixed in tax reform at all levels,in agrarian
and land-tenure legislation, in housing, health and employment;
in the gradual extension of social security to the rural countryside;
in education and science; in population control; in culture and
youth and leisure-timeactivity; in nutrition and calorie intake;in
investmentinsocialcosts and environmentalsafeguards;in economic
growth with the target of 3 to 4per cent per capita growth requiring
4 to 5 per cent GNP growth in developed and 6 to 7 per cent
growth in developing countries;and in international co-operation,
with appropriate targets for aid, trade and debt; in international
trade with targets set by UNCTAD involving an increase in the
volume oftrade ofthe developing countriesand improvementin their
terms of trade. The aid target of I per cent GNP of the developed
countries will involve the annual transfer to developing countries
of $25,000 million by 1980 instead of the current total of $8,000
million to $IO,OOO million,with a noticeable expansion in soft loans.

A strategy for education, science, culture and

communication in the Second Development Decade
The basis of the strategy for the sector of education, science,
culture and communication in the Second Development Decade is
a double one. O n the one hand, the sector contributes to develop-
ment: education,through changing the socio-culturalinfrastructure
and providing needed skills, as set forth in Chapter 3; science,
through innovation and research which create resources, as
analysed in Chapters 6 and 7; communication, as an efficient
diffusion instrument; and culture through making development
serve its finality,man, as suggested in Chapter 8.Thus education,
science, communication and culture are key input factors in
development and must be fashioned so as to promote development.
Equally,education,science,communicationand cultureconstitute
a sector of development on their own, to which other sectors-
industry,agriculture and services-must contribute.Inother words,
Let m y country awake

gross national product, gross capital formation and investments

must also be directed to contribute to the growth and flowering
of education,science,communication and culture as a key develop-
ment segment with its own organic life and consistency.
O n this basis,it is possible to develop a strategy for this develop-
ment sector of the second decade as a framework of consistent
policies which are at once national,in the sense that they arise out
of each countrys needs and decisions, and international, in the
sense that they could be advanced as binding commitmentsfor the
comity of nations, rich and poor, developed and underdeveloped.
These consistent and convergingpolicies have fourfoci.Thefirstis the
expansion and improvementofeducation.Thesecondis the implant-
ation of science in national culture and its application for national
development.The third is the financing of culture and the creation
of viable institutions for its growth and diffusion. The fourth is the
evolution of a communication infrastructure that development
demands.

Targets and programming. Such a strategy of education, science,

culture and communication must be translated into programming
techniques, of which targets are a simple and normal expression.
At this point, it is necessary to define the nature and meaning of
targets and indicate the change and evolution in their use as be-
tween the two decades.
When,at the start ofthe decade,Unesco initiated the technique of
target-settingfor this sector, there was some understandable fear
and opposition. But targets are merely quantitative expressions of a
coherent strategy. Of course, quantifications must not precede
conceptualization and there was some of this in the first decade. If
the strategy is accepted, however, then targets follow as a con-
sequence;thus it is the strategy which merits close examination and
the targets which make such an examination possible.
Like all quantifications in a dynamic and fast-movingsituation,
targets are a first approximation,subject to continuous review and
appropriate revision. When the African ministers set up the Addis
Ababa targets, they also set up machinery for their annual review,
which, however, after two such conference reviews fell into disuse.
There is never any absolutism about targets. Rather they are an
indispensable tool in the programme planning approach which
takes account of and permits the required flexibility. In Unesco
practice, targets are used at the initial planning stage and never
as a tool to freezethe future.

216
 A second development decade

In my view, targets as indicators of development strategy are

of value only in so far as they are also indicators of structural
change. Further, they should indicate desirablelevels ofattainment
or activity and not represent mere projections from the past or
simple forecasts on the basis ofpresent quantities.Again, targets are
a design for consistent performance because, in the complex
systemof development, one sector or group of variables will in
all probability at any given time move faster or slower or out of
step vis-&vis the others. Such unbalanced moves may be needed but
they must also be known and planned for.The casestudy ofengineer-
ing unemployment in India (Annex to Chapter 4,page 91)high-
lights this function oftargets as a design for consistent performance.
In the second decade, targets as a programming tool should take
us a stage further. Instead of the use of fixed-term plans with their
target approach as in the first decade, we are now able to use the
integrated approach of programme planning, programming by
objectives. Using such a system,the targets that I will be proposing
later for the second decade present a threefold flexibility.They can
be achieved by several alternative systems of means so that alter-
native programmes can be matched against targets and compared
as appropriate in terms of cost effectiveness. Equally the process of
continuous target revision applies to the whole approach,the choice
of objectives, systems and programmes. And above all, decisions
should be made only to the extent that they are necessary at some
particular point in time, and not in such a manner as to mortgage
the future.
In the end, and in this sense, targets are and must be country-
oriented. The targets which act as signposts of development are
country targets because it is only the country which can exercise
the three sets of flexibilities in establishing and using targets, i.e. in
deciding between alternative systems of resources, in choosing
alternative programmes and in reviewing goals and limiting
decisions to the needed time period.
With these further perspectives of programming, there are for
Unesco three relevant sets of targets: those which are quantitative;
those which are qualitative; and those which combine the two.

Quantitative targets for 1980. In the sector of education, science,

culture, and communication,we start with assumed intergovern-
mental target decisions (see table overleaf) for the Second Develop-
ment Decade. These targets are in the process of periodic review
and revision by the conferences of ministers, which will further
Let m y country awake

examine and adjust them in the light of the over-alland sectoral

targets established for the Second Development Decade and, it is
my hope,the further programming methodologiesindicated earlier.

Targets for 1980

Africa Asia Latin America

Percentage of population age

group enrolled in education
at primary level IO0 IO0 IO0
Percentage of population age
group enrolled in education
at secondary level 23 36 46
Percentage of population age
group enrolled in education
at tertiary level 1.51 5 6.4
Adult literacy Increaseof50 to I00 per cent over the
first-decadeattainments.
Research and Development
scientistsper IOO,OOO
population 200 379 400
Educational investment as
percentage ofgross
national product with
6-7per cent growth
rate 6-7 4-5 4-5
Research and Development
investment as percentage
of gross national product 0.5 I I
15 per cent of foreign aid to support
Research and Development.
I per cent of Research and Develop-
ment programmes in developed coun-
tries to be used for adapting their
results to conditions in developing
countries.
Culture T o be established by the World
Conference of Ministers of Culture
scheduled for 1970.
Communication (for every IO copiesofdaily newspapers,5 radio
IOO persons) receivers and 2 cinema seats.

218
 A second development decade

Qualitative targets for 1980. Apart from the above targets for the
quantitative expansion of education, science and culture, work is
progressing on qualitative and performance targets in this sector
for the Second Development Decade.
Fourteen indicators of human resources development and
utilization involving all skill,educational, cultural and attitudinal
components likely to contribute to development are under study
by the Unesco Secretariat.They are:
I. Percentage of literates among the population of age 15 plus.
(Asthe best approximation of this literacy level, the percent-
age of those having completed the equivalent of four grades at
primary level is taken.)
2. The retention rate from the first to the sixth grade.
3. The number ofgraduatesfrom the sixth grade as a percentage of
the appropriate age specific group for that school year.
4. Percentage of females among students enrolled in the first,
second and third level.
5. Percentage of teaching time devoted to mathematics, natural
sciences and technology at first and second levels.
6. Percentage of third-levelstudents in science and technology.
7. Percentage of students in agriculture at second and third
levels.
8. The number of qualified teachers per school-agepopulation.
9. The number of Research and Development workers per popu-
lation.
IO. The number of medical doctors per population.
I I. The number of radio sets per population.
12. The number of television sets per population.
I 3. Daily newspaper circulation per population.
I 4. Proportion of economically active population to working-age
population.
The International Conference on Educational Planning (ICEP)
requested Unesco to developindicators to evaluate the functioning
of the educational system and the short-termand long-termeffects
of measures adopted and investments in the educational sector
upon economic, social, cultural and political developments.
Indicators should be developed for:
I. The satisfaction of needs and social and cultural aspirations.
2. Educational attainments and fitness of curricula.
3. Wastage through drop-outsand repeaters.
4. unit costs.
5. Utilization of manpower.
Let m y country awake

6. External assistance and internationalco-operation.

7. Reforms and innovations.
8. Structures and administration.
I would add a ninth indicator:
9. Educated unemployment.
I attempt later a first tentative chart of these indicators.
A common feature of the human resources and ICEP indicators
is that they are heavily concentrated on the improved performance
during the Second Development Decade of the education, science,
communication and culture sector as a contributor to development
and as a development sector itself.

Programmes
Education, science, communication and culture as contribuants. An over-all
programme of education as a contributor to development should
involve infusing into all parts of the system the conceptofeducation
as a permanent, lifelong learning process at every stage and age
of life and society, in school and out of school. To break the back-
bone of skilled manpower shortages, it should place stress on the
development of skill-building programmes, using the present mix
and streams of the education system through massive in-service
training, functional literacy, rural development, family planning
and mass media. It will call for the diversion to science specializa-
tions of the current educational inputs which are so heavily weight-
ed in favour of non-science,as well as for vocational training in
plants and some reorientation and reorganization of the present
technical and technological education streams,such aswere carried
out in Europe and North America during the war years,and in
India and Pakistan during the recent emergency they faced.It will
also call for new curricular developments in science learning and
education for family planning. Finally, the educational system
will have to adapt itself to meet the urgent development demands
that the second decade will make upon it, in particular through a
system ofprogressivespecialization by which,after a certain number
of years at school,say five,six or seven,each additional year could
constitute, as appropriate, both a terminal year preparing the
student for a certain level and type of employment,and a prepara-
tory year for the next yearscourse. Such integration with develop-
ment efforts would be the education systems response to the
demands of increased agricultural output, higher rates of GNP
growth, increased gross capital formation, rising investments,

220
 A second development decade

expansion of exports,import substitution,etc.,objectives which are

at present under discussion with a view to the definition of goals
for the Second Development Decade. This process of definition
requires a dialogue with the educator,
For science to contribute to development, it must be integrated
into the production machine of the developing countries so that
they can enter the scientific society of tomorrow. The World Plan
ofAction for the Application ofScience and Technology to Develop-
ment, which is now under consideration by the United Nations
Economic and Social Council,and which calls for the identification
ofa few crucial areas such as proteins,population,natural resources
and disease on which international scientific resources should be
concentrated, is one element in a broad programme of science
implantation and application required during the decade. The
latter should involve applying existing knowledge and research
results to the optimal use of local resources and to problems of
production,human welfare and natural resources such as river and
ground water and tropical soils,as well as the adaptation of inter-
mediate or specific latest technology to local physical, social and
economic conditions and defined social goals regarding diet,
housing, clothing and health. It demands new biological research
on human fertility and fecundity. It callsfor the reform,moderniza-
tion and upgrading of scientific institutions at present working at
inappropriate or low efficiency levels and, in the case of the social
sciences, the urgent establishment of new applied-researchinstitu-
tions. Such reform will also act as one counter to the undesirable
and wasteful aspects of the internal and external brain drain
witnessed during the first decade. (The internalbrain drainis the
large-scalemovement of a countrysscientific workers to non-scien-
tific professions and occupations within its economy.)
This broad science programme also requires an inventory of
local scientific documentation and research facilities so that they
may be effectively harnessed for the purposes of the decade. It will
call for the establishment of human-resourcesand natural-resources
policies and the development of institutions scientifically staffed
and equipped to deal with the natural resources and human
problems facing the country-those involving water, oceans,
soils,forests,fossilfuels and the wealth ofunexplored minerals on the
one hand, and the peaceful resolution of conflicts and the achieve-
ment of national cohesion in multi-ethnic societies on the other.
It involves the wider dissemination of the benefits of modern com-
munication and transportation systems to rural areas. It includes

22 I
Let my country awake

the designing of growth patterns, the promotion of structural

changes as indicatorsand consequences. It will chart the individual
and human costs which may be inevitable in certain forms of
economic growth and indicate investments needed to cover these
costs.
A programme for culture to contribute more fully to develop-
ment will require the active promotion ofinnovation in the develop-
ment process, of cultural tourism, and the cultivation of the arts
and crafts of each country. It will require the practical application
of the conceptoflifelong learning in the home,school,factory,club,
cultural centre,theatre,and youth and womens centres,so that the
cultural input in the development process can result in a heavy pay-
off.It also involves for the newly independent countries the preser-
vation and study of their cultural heritage with a view to adapting
and enriching the content of their educational systems.
Communication inputs (computer networks, news agencies, radio,
television,books and journals) will be used fully and immediatelyin
all development plans and programmes. Data banks for scientific
and technologicalforecasting will be developed as arms of develop-
ment planning. Communication components will be introduced
and strengthened in the renovation and modernizing of education,
instruction and training in all forms and at all levels. They will
also be in use in forming and instructing the specialized audiences
involved in helping to meet the targets for agriculturalproduction,
intensive farming,population control,savings,and export-oriented
manufactures. Some of this will call for integrating media and
communication use into the sectoral plans ofthe different ministries.

Education, science, culture and communication as a development sector.

Education, science, culture and communication are also a major
development sector with its o w n organic needs and laws of growth.
In a sense all development begins with the development of edu-
cation. This is the truth behind the widely accepted view that
education is the pre-condition to economic growth, that it is
pre-investmentfor all productive investment. Education as a devel-
opment sector will call for three types of planned programmes
in the second decade. The expansion of education must be planned:
through the massive creation of what I would call innovation
schools, that is, institutions which use selective innovation pro-
grammes in all types oflearning and training;throughprogramming
the hours of study and the distribution of teachers, students and
training materials so that the traditional number of years of study

222
 A second development decade

may be shortened, and through a return to the purpose of all

education-the pupil and his various and varying needs. In fact,
encouraging innovations and increasing the internal output of
schools simply involve a return during the second decade to the
basic truth, which we seem to have lost sight of, that the purpose
of education is not teaching,but learning.The youth outburst is a
cumulative process,sincetheyouth who rightlyinsiston participation
in the affairs of today will not be able to deny it to their children of
tomorrow. Like the accelerator in economic theory, there is today
a sharp diminution of the innovation lag which in the past has been
due to generation differences.
The area of innovation is particularly suited to educational
co-operationand assistance because technological forecasting is an
expensive game, and innovation involves propagation of techno-
logical change in the local environment. Innovation must not only
be accepted by the educator, scientist and economist; it must also
be pushed forward by them;it must be built into the very structures
and systems which they operate. Because of lack of incentives and
limited resources, innovations encounter particular difficulties in
developing countries. Educational co-operation and science aid
should therefore concentrate on selected innovation programmes
which have massive diffusion potential through television and
mass-communicationsystems. Such concentration can often make
innovationsself-propagating,as for example with television learning
which could precede and pave the way for computer-assisted
programmed learning.
Planning the productivity of education (as indicated in annual,
targeted reductions in the current heavy wastage rates) will require
that learning and evaluation methods be adjusted to meet the
differing levels of the students;it will also require that the right of
equality of educational opportunity be transformed to the extent
possible from a slogan to a reality,that new teaching techniques be
developed,adapted and used and that the training and retraining
of teachers be expanded and improved,for it is around the teacher
that all productivity revolves. Finally, the content of educational
programmes must be plannedso that they are integrated with the
employment profile ofeach country,its social,cultural and political
life, the promotion of peace, human rights, international under-
standing and co-operation,and especially the development of the
personal qualitiesof integrity,tolerance,courage and charity. The
content of all learning must be functional to these individual,
national and international imperatives.
Let my country awake

The planning of science, which is the acquisition of utilizable

knowledge as a pre-investmentor pre-conditionand as part of this
indigenous, autonomous development sector, involves first of all
the establishment of a science policy,and science-policymachinery
to nurture and guide the growth of science as a native plant, and
to design development as an interrelationship between science,
technology and innovation. During the second decade, science
policy in industrialized countries will be devoted either to guiding
the directions of scientific activity or to increasing the rate of its
inevitable growth, for indeed science will grow in these countries
even if deprived of a policy. In the developing countries,however,
such a policy is a matter of scientific survival. Each developing
country must either develop a national science plan or accept
scientific underdevelopment as a law of life.
Parallel to the universalization of educational planning during
the First Development Decade, it is urgent that science policy
organs be developed in all Member States during the second
decade.
But, as one science minister commented, ascience policy organ
must first have some science for it to develop a policy about.The
active promotion of modernized science teaching at all levels and
forms of education is thus a first imperative. The development
ofa wide network offundamental and oriented research is another.
Should universities and centres of excellence constitute this net-
work, and if so on what basis? The African Conference of Ministers
decided that their universities should concentrate on applied re-
search in both natural and social sciences. The Asian and Latin
American Conferences of Ministers have, on the other hand,
mapped a programme of fundamental and oriented research in
the natural and social sciences for their universities in the second
decade.The latter have also decided on a programme of separated
applied-research institutes, in both the natural and social
sciences.
A further call on every science policy organ is to promote the
active and speedy growth of the scientific and technical potential
of the country-including all cadres of natural scientists, social
scientists, technicians and engineers that are in urgent demand.
What is needed in the developing countries during the second
decade is a flexible policy which is adapted to the scientific needs
and potential in each country,and which can make possible sound
choices for science in terms of both immediate requirements and
long-term perspectives. Such a science policy must face and allow
 A second development decade

for the special difficulties of one part of its constituents-the social

sciences and their inevitable involvement in value judgements, a
problem which is on all fours with the involvement of the natural
sciences in the war machine. What is needed above all, however,
is a policy. The resulting national plans for science will then provide
a solid base for international scientific assistance and co-operation
during the second decade. (The World Plan for Science which
I mentioned previously is a good short-termapplied-researchplan,
but it is not based, as it should be, on national science plans, for
these are non-existent.)
As a development sector, there is need for decisions as to the
investments needed to create or renovate the minimum communi-
cation infrastructure for the country (computers, books, news
agencies,radio, television,Telex and telephone). Experimentation
in multi-media use (closed-circuit television, local radio, small
newspapers,correspondence teaching and programmed instruction)
in new areas like family planning,the new agriculturaltechnology
and the fight against protein deficiency must be undertaken and
the results diffused. Further,a long-rangeprogramme ofin-service
training and university teaching in communication sciences must
be established. A continuing programme of research and feedback
in this area is needed in the interests of efficiency and public partici-
pation in the entire development endeavour.
Cultural programmes, as part of this development sector, will
involve the assessment of cultural needs, and the planning of
institutional, legislative and financial frameworks and policies to
meet these needs. They will call for structures and conditions
promoting the arts and letters of each country and implementing
the right to cultural creation and participation of the masses
living in the neglected rural countrysides. They will require the
building and staffingof culturalcentres,theatres,libraries,museums,
art galleries and exhibitionsin these areas,and the establishment of
appropriate conditions of life and work for creative artists,writers,
musicians, and other workers in the cultural field. They will also
call for the study of historical and current cultures, both those
which are well and widely known, and those which are little
known and about to be lost, so that man may maintain or regain
his memory and be a good neighbour. Finally,they will involve the
safeguarding and preservation of the many glorious but fast-
deteriorating monuments to mans cultural history which are
found in every country and which are the heritage of all man-
kind.
Let m y country awake

Quantitativelqualitative targets
It is against this kind ofeducation,science,culture and communica-
tion programme for the Second Development Decade that I would
tentatively advance, as a basis for reflection and dialogue,a further
set oftargets (see table,pages 228-9)forthe nextdecade.These targets,
which are both quantitative and qualitative, suggest: (a) the
desirable level of an appropriately expanding system based on
innovations (the first two targets); (b) a measurable indicator of a
literate work force (the third target); (c) an attainment level of
internal productivity of the system (the fourth and fifth targets);
and (d) the minimum levels for science implantation and appli-
cation (the sixth and seventh targets).
I recognize that this first tentativemapping-present and future-
of the education, science, culture and communication sector is
incomplete,somewhat sketchy and not wholly consistent. It is in-
complete because I have not been able to include more than
about 70 to 80 per centofthe total population of each region, and in
certain cases even less. Statistics are only available for the countries
in which this group lives. Further, on wastage and teacher quali-
fications,I have had to restrict myself to the first level,the only one
for which at least some statistics are available, although these two
key indicators are significant for the entire sector. The map is
sketchy because the statisticsof the base year 1965are a summation
of official reports from Member States as published in the Unesco
Statistical Yearbook, and the degree of accuracy of these national
returns varies with the level of statistical education and machinery
of each country.Specific targets for culture and the communication
infrastructure are not given and are necessarily implicit.
The charts consistency leaves much to be desired. I have been
able to check only very roughly the internal consistency of the 1980
targets, which include such relationships as those obtaining be-
tween the literacy, educational wastage and untrained-teacher
quantities and educational costs, and between scientist stock and
flow and Research and Development magnitudes. The external
consistency of the proposed targets is even more uncertain. I have
assumed a 6 to 7 per cent GNP growth rate and the United Na-
tions population projectionsfor the seventies.I have not been able to
relate these targetsto the GNPgrowth rate that will be established for
the second decade.Above all,Ihave not been ableto test them against
the employment map of each region and the crucial consequent
target of the educated employment profile of each country.

226
 A second development decade

Probably the most serious lacuna in the table is the absence of

any specific indicators with regard to innovations in the education,
science, culture and communication sector. Only indirectly do
the targets for educational costs and R.and D.reflect this indicator.
Targets with regard to innovations are implicit in the programme
proposed earlier in this chapter: they should cover, inter alia, new
teaching media and modern learning techniques, the whole area
of educational technology,curricular reform, modernized evalua-
tion systems, science inputs, communication infrastructure, cul-
tural activities and social science designs. A productivity target to
test the working efficiency of the system is also lacking. All these
qualitative factors can be quantitatively measured, and it is not so
much the nature of the subject as the absence of an agreed method-
ology and relevant data at the international level which has acted
as a limiting factor. However, this is the most important set of
targets that will have to be worked out nationally. It is also an area
in which Unesco will be actively engaged during the first half of
the second decade, through both the development of methodology
and the collection of the necessary statistics in order to help build
these targets.
In this first attempt, I have used two sets of indicators. I have
used the normal quantitative indicator with regard to enrolment.
But the other six targets are a mixture of quantity and quality with
the usual systems relationship. The educational-cost target is a
first reflection of an expanding and reforming educational system.
The literacy target refers to the lifelong learning imperative and to
the educated manpower available for employment at various
levels of skills. The targets for a small reduction in unqualified
teachers and wastage at the first level are a first insistent call for
that qualitative improvement of the education,science,culture and
communication sector which is the urgent task of the second
decade. The targets concerning stock and flow of scientists and
Research and Development are a pointer to the innovation-
mindedness and cultural and technological breakthroughs on
which the future of the masses of the peoples in the developing
countries depends.
The 1980 targets are established at a level which takes into
account as far as possible what is practical,possible and consistent.
They are based on the decisions of the regional conferences of
ministers and regional economic commissions, and those of the
international intergovernmental conferences on education,science
culture and communication, all adjusted to fit the not always
 Let my country awake

Targetsfor education, science and culture in 1980,compared with base 1965,by level

Educational costs2 Educational enrolment

1.965
Region1 ($million) As % of GNP (actual, in millions)
1965 (actual) 1980 1965 1980 1st 2nd 3rd

Africa 1000 2593 4.7 6.0 18.5 1.9 0.1

Latin America 3 737 9298 4.2 4.7 34.7 6.7 0.9

Arab States - - - - 10.5 2.5 0.3
Asia 3'00 9373 3.1 4.3 110.8 29.9 3.6

Literacy, 15years and over4 Qualified 1st-

level teachers5
Region' Literates (millions) Literacy (%)
(%I
I 960 1980 1960 1980 I965 I 980

Africa 20.5 34 18.3 27 45 80

Latin America 80.4 190 66.1 87 63 90
Arab States 10.3 34 '9.5 37
Asia 435.7 965 45.0 64 70 90

I. The number of countries in each region is limited to the number included in a similar
breakdown in Chapter 3 (Table I, pages 54-6).
2. This target refers to the desirable level of educational costs at a gross national product
(GNP)growth rate of 5 to 6 per cent.
3. This target refers to desirable unadjusted enrolment rates for the Second Develop-
ment Decade which correspond to the targets in the table on page 218 transformed
to permit comparison with factual situation in 1965.
4.This target refers to literates in the age group 15years and above and is based on an
increased effort in the Second Development Decade as compared to 1950-60.

Sources
Educational costs. Columns I and 3: Conference of Ministers of Education, Addis Ababa,
Santiago and Bangkok. Columns 2 and 4:derived from enrolment projections, using
unit costs.
Educational enrolment. Columns I, 2 and 3: questionnairesand publications from Member
States. Columns 4, 5 and 6: Addis Ababa, Santiago and Bangkok Conferences and
the forthcoming conference in Marrakesh.
Enrolment ratios. Columns 1-6: derived from enrolment data and projections (see
educational enrolment above). Population based on United Nations Population
Division estimates.

228
 A second development decade

Educational enrolment3 Enrolment ratios by levels3

1980
(millions) 1965 (actual) I 980

1st 2nd 3rd 1st 2nd 3rd 1st 2nd 3rd

52.I 9.4 0-4 30.8 7.9 0.5 60 28 1.4

57.5 21.3 1.7 55.3 27-9 4.3 60 55 5
26.3 7.5 0.6 37.5 21.7 3.0 60 43 4
224.5 49.8 5.2 43.3 29.7 4.' 63 33 4

Crude 1st-level Scientists and engineers7 Expenditure on R.and D.

retention (per IOO,OOO population) as yo of GNP (also,for
rates (%) 1980,in $ mi1lion)B
Stock Graduating
1965 1980 1965 1980 1965 1980

32 47 42 - 2.1 6.9
26 4' 208 - 12.1 18.0
- - I93 - 12.8 20.0 - - -
43 58 181 380 15.3 20.9 0.6 1.0 (2 230)

5.This target,constructed on a very limited base, refers to the percentage of adequately

trained teachers.
6.This target represents the crude retention rate at the first level and is built on a
desirable minimum reduction of the crude drop-out rate by I per cent per annum.
7. This target, constructed on a very limited base, refers to (a) the stock of scientists
and engineers, and (b)graduating scientists and engineers,per IOO,OOO of population
in both cases.
8.This target,constructed on a very limited base, refers to the desirable level of R.and
D.expenditure.

Literacy. Columns I and 3: censuses and surveys of Member States. Columns 2 and 4:
projections based on 50 per cent increased effort in the Second Development Decade
over the first assuming same progress as 1950-60.
Qualijied teachers. Columns I and 2: surveys for ministerial conferences (see above).
Retention rates. Column I: survey for ministerial conferences in Nairobi, Santiago, and
Unesco Seminar on Wastage, in Bangkok, 1966.Column 2: projections for an assum-
ed 15 per cent improvement.
Scientists and engineers. Column I : questionnaires. Column 3: questionnaires and publi-
cations of Member States. Columns 2 and 4:projections, Office of Statistics.
Expenditure on R. and D. Column I: questionnaires and United Nations publications:
estimates. Column 2: ministerial conferences, CASTALA, CASTASIA and Lagos.
Let m y country awake

complete base-year data. They are rough approximations of

desirable levels of attainments which make possible flexible pro-
gramming by objectives.
It is for all these reasons that I must once more reiterate that
target-setting is the task for each country. These regional global
targets are no more than stimulatorsofnational action and pointers
to the methodology and coverage of the indicators required to
measure such action.They have no validity or status in themselves.
The choices and alternatives that lead to their establishment and
review are national. Hence the only valid targets are those set by
each Member State. If I have done no more than provoke thought,
discussion and action on the part of member governments of Asia,
Africa, the Arab States and Latin America, if I have encouraged,
in brief, each country to set for itself a wide and flexible range of
consistent national targets of attainment and performances, I will
have achieved what I set out to do.

The challenge
The education, science, culture and communication programme
I have just outlined for the Second Development Decade poses a
serious call and challenge first of all to Unescos Member States
and also to the Organization itself.
First,it is a call to all member countries to act both individually
and together in establishing their own norms and targets in the
form of national plans of education, science, culture and com-
munication. It is even more a call to action, execution and per-
formance at the national and international levels, so that the
hopes of the peoples of the world embodied in the decade may
be fulfilled.
Second,it is a call to the developing member countries to engage
themselvesfully in this decade dedicated once more to development.
W e have seenthat developmentis global,thatit means the concurrent
though uneven forward march of all sectors,educational, cultural,
social, moral, political and economic. All barriers, whether they
be behavioural, attitudinal or institutional, must be frankly and
fearlessly faced, examined and overcome. For development must
reach out to all sections ofsociety equitably,and promote individual
well-being and social progress.
Third, it is a call to the developed member countries to plan
and push forward their own global development alongside of the
development of the underdeveloped world so that, while the gap
 A second development decade

between the two groups cannot be closed by the end of the second
decade,it will at least not continue to widen. If I per cent of their
GNP amounts by 1980to $25,000 million, and if three-fourthsof
this is to be intergovernmental assistance, then the total public-
development aid from the developed to the developing countries
will be around $~g,ooo million. The current educational and
scientific assistance is I O per cent of total intergovernmental
development assistance, that is around $700 million annually.
I suggestin Chapter 1 2 that by 1975 the total educational,scientific,
cultural and communication assistance double to $I ,400million
and reach $2,000 million by 1980.This will amount to the normal
7 to I O per cent of the educational, scientific and cultural ex-
penditures of the developing member countries, which is also
the traditional foreign-exchange requirement of this segment.
During the second decade, I believe this assistance and co-
operation should be geared to aid and to encourage innovation.
This development sector needs it and the claims of equity
demand it.
Fourth,it is a call for a united approach to a universal problem.
The double programme of the sector stems from the twin aspects
of education, science, culture and communication,as both a con-
tribuant to development and as a developmentsector in itself.These
two aspects are not and cannot be rigidly compartmentalized in
theory or practice.They are interconnected and interdependent in a
complementary and competitive relationship. On the one hand,
the contribution of the sector depends on its very existence. If
there is no education sector,there can be no skilled manpower that
it can contribute to development. O n the other hand, the more
resources that are put into applied research, as for example the
African ministers have decided, the less will remain for the im-
plantation and growth of science as an indigenous force through
fundamental research. The communication infrastructure is of
course basic to development.Further,the harnessing of culture for
development must be accomplished without endangering the
future of the cultural life of the community.
Planning, national and international, is the instrument of re-
conciliation of this complementary and competitive dilemma.
It is at this point that the simple division of Unesco Member
States into the developed and developing breaks down and is
replaced by the fact of a single community that has to engage in
unified,concomitant and convergent action.It is not enough for the
developing countries to give priority in their national-resources
Let my country awake

allocation to one or another facet of the education,science,commu-

nication and culturesector.They must ofcoursedothis,but they must
also concentrateon performance and attainment through program-
ming techniques,and be enabled to do this,in the light ofpolicies
agreed upon byallcountries.In the context ofsuch agreedpolicies,it is
not enough for the developed countries to assist the developing
ones. They must re-examinetheir own national goals and priorities
and assist the developing countries in the contribuant aspects ofthe
sector in order to free localresources to meet demandsfor the growth
of education, science, communication and culture as a flourishing
development force. Such a policy is more than a decision by the
developing countries to invest 5 to 6 per cent of GNP in education,
science,communication and culture;it is more than a decision by
the developed countries to provide I per cent of their GNP as aid,
with the sub-targetof IOper cent ofthat I per cent for theeducation,
science,culture and communication sector. It calls first of all for
agreement on the goals of the decade-on all objectives-security,
political,economic,social and moral. Such an agreement will make
further agreement possible upon the convergent policies which
would involve, for every country, the planning of its education,
science,communication and culture sector as a function both of its
own needs and perspectives and those of other countries.
Fifth, the regular budgetary resources of Unesco are the major,
and, for me, the only guarantee that the Second Development
Decade will not concentrate, at the international level, on just
economic growth, with its untold social costs, inequalities and
moral regressions. The General Conference recognized this fact in
1962, at its twelfth session, though somewhat modestly, when it
decided: Withthis object in view, provision should be made, with
due regard to quantitative and qualitative factors, for a gradual
expansion of Unescos programmes over the next few years,
through the employment both of the Organizations budgetary
resources and of the extra-budgetary resources derived,in parti-
cular, from the Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance and
the Special Fund with a view to the attainment of the over-all
objectives for the Decade. H o w this decision was carried out can
be seen from the table opposite, showing the budget increases
during the decade.
Along with these resources, there should be borne in mind the
educational credits of the World Bank, amounting to $352.6 mil-
lion for the decade,the educational assistance of Unicef amounting
to $54.2 million, the educational aid of the World Food Pro-
 A second development decade

gramme amounting to $223.4 million and other funds for devel-

opment, including Trust Funds donated to Unesco by member
countries and totalling $I 05.9 million.

Increase of
All Regular programmes
Years resources Increase budget Increase in regular
($million) (%) ($million) (%I budget
(%I
1961-62 53.6 ... 34.0 ... ...
1 963-64 75.3 40.5 41 .o 20.6 22.9
I 965-66 94.0 24.8 50.9 24.I I 7.6
I 967-68 I 18.4 26.0 63.5 24.8 21.5
'969-70 '37.2 '5.9 77.4 21.9 '9.4

It will be noted that the rates of increase of the total resour-

ces of Unesco began falling sharply during the second half of the
decade. The marked reduction in the rate of increase of the pro-
gramme part of the regular budgetary resources during 1969-70
also stands out.
It is m y hope that member countries and Unesco will make
every effort during the second decade to double the current
allocation of the United Nations Development Programme resour-
ces to education, science, communicationand culture up to the 16
to 20 per cent norm, and co-operate with the World Bank,
Unicef and the World Food Programme so that they may double
their educational aid by the mid-seventies.
It is with regard to the regular budgetary resources of the
Organization during the Second Development Decade that I wish
to make a specific and pointed appeal.For it is these resources and
these resources alone which will bring three essential development
factors into play during the second decade. They are education for
human rights,international understanding and peace,social science
and culture. It is pointless to expect any other source offinance for
these three key areas. Resources for Unesco work in the firstarea will
have to be increased nearly tenfold during the Second Development
Decade to honour the Organization's peace-building mandate for
development.
For the time has come to harness the fertile and unending re-
sources of social science into the development process. During the

233
Let m y country awake

first decade the social sciences in Unescosdevelopment effort have

seemed but a weak and squeaky mouse. Just as the Economic
Analysis Office was set up in the Department of Social Sciences to
help with the economics of education,science,communication and
culture in the first decade,an interdisciplinary development office,
an office of social analysis, needs to be established in the social
sciences programme during the second decade. Such an office will
help ensure that developmentis integral and global and not partial
and fragmented and will help mobilize, and itself to some extent
provide, the United Nations family and Member States with the
resources and insight of social science in the planning and opera-
tion ofdevelopmentprogrammes. Unescossocialscienceprogramme
should now be made into an independentmajor area,with its own
structure, headed by an Assistant Director-General for Social
Science,who will help mobilize all the resourcesofthe socialsciences
for the Second Development Decade.
Similarly,now that the culture sector has had the necessary time
for reflection on its role and the clarification of its objectives and
purpose in development,its resources need to be doubled by the
mid-seventies and trebled by the end of the decade. It is for these
reasons that I fervently appeal to all member countries to ensure a
steady and unswerving IO per cent annual increase in the pro-
gramme during the Second Development Decade with an average
IO to 15per cent increase in the three areas of education for peace
and human rights, social sciences and culture.
In addition, much as I dislike adding to the plethora of Special
Funds, particularly those that die at the moment of their birth, I
believe that for the Second Development Decade,Unesco must set
up an internationalfund with an annual contribution of $ I O mil-
lion for the protection and conservation of the monuments of
history which are the monuments of man. There are imaginative
ways of feeding this fund into the growing tourist traffic of today,
ways which Unesco and its many devoted cultural leaders and
financial advisers must explore.
This,in outline form,is the kind ofapproach I a m advocating for
the Second Development Decade. Can we make it work? Can
we give this co-operativeeffort a truly human face?
I do not know.In opting for developmentand growth,we are opt-
ing for change-changewhich is all-embracing,all-penetratingand
all-moving. If we were permitted by some scientific or magical
process to visit the world a hundred or fifty or perhaps even
twenty-five years from now, I a m sure that w e would hardly be

234
 A second development decade

able to find our way. I a m thinking in particular ofm y own country,

India, and I know that it will be different, completely different.
What we are passing through now is but a half-way house that
must vanish.
Thejet airplane flying overhead is as much a part of the land-
scape as the bullock cart, carrying produce from village to town,
P.Pant has written in Scientijic American. The thatched huts of
villages in the Punjab surround the modern capital at Chandigarh
designed by the French architect,Le Corbusier. While the atom is
being harnessed to supply energy from a reactor of advanced
design at Tarapur, cow dung will continue to be burned as the
primary source of fuel in millions of Indian homes. ...
This is the India we know. But it is only an idyllic mid-pointin
our history. Already it is being swept away. I have visited almost
all the Member States of Unesco and have seen for myself what I
a m talking about. The change that development represents is an
irreversible thrust with a sweep which is autonomous and com-
prehensive. It is like air-once you let it in, it is all-pervasive,
everywhere. Whether it be the chasing of the almighty dollar,
rouble, pound, rupee or franc, whether it be the moving, restless
masses involved in a bandh or gherao, whether it be the Red Guards
on the rampage,or the youth who as hippies and flower children or
revolutionaries and civil-rights workers find society meaningless
and invent their own meaningful groups; all these are also the
meaning and manifestations of change.
And as we turn in the next chapter to the role of the university
and the crisis of youth and between the generations, as we turn to
the problems of growth and change which all countries everywhere
are facing, and particularly the most advanced societies, it would
be well to bear in mind certain fundamental questions. Was
Gandhiji right in regarding the machine as ofthe devil,take-offas
the straight road to self-destructionand industrializationas satanic?
Is Unesco also right in its faith and action directed at humanizing
development?D o we know yet in our innermostbeing-which, inthe
end, is where we live-whether this Asura-cum-Rakshasawill add,
as Gandhiji persistently asked, cone inch to our happiness? D o
we know yet whether it can be tamed by man to save man?
Surely the call of the Second Development Decade is the call
of man to man, of mans unending quest for a fuller, freer and
better life. Each decade in this quest is not only a step on which he
climbs the altar of life, but also a renewed and even more fervent
call to unrelenting toil and unceasing action by all men for all men.

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Let m y country awake

Can the InternationalEducation Year,which is the threshold to the

Second Development Decade, be made the occasion for the
democratization of planning for development? Is it not through the
education, science, communication and culture sector that the
second decade can ensure the general and complete involvement
of all people in its conception,planning and execution? And would
not such involvement be a guarantee that development will be-
come,at last,a true expressionofmanstimeless hope and striving?
Chapter II The role of the university

Perhaps it is in looking to the universities-not to the ideal university

ofwhich Cardinal Newman wrote so eloquently,but to our own pre-
sent-daycrisis-tornuniversities,become the battle-groundof the gen-
erations,the no-mans-landofchange,at fever pitch of development
-that we may find tentative answers, the first few halting steps on
the long road toward planning development at the service of men.
For the university is by origin and nature a universal institution.
Its origin is pluri-national-tracing back to the tai-shoa of China,
the gurukala and ashrama of India,the academies of ancient Greece,
the qarwiyin of Fez, the al-azhar of Cairo,the mediaeval universities
of Bologna and Paris. The nature of all these institutions was
supranational; indeed they pre-dated the nation-state. Their
frontiers were simply the frontiers of knowledge, the boundaries
coterminous with the boundaries of the civilized world. To be a
student was to belong to an international fraternity. One recalls
the wandering historian Fa-Hien travelling from Chang-an to
Nalanda, the migrating mathematician Alberuni trekking from
Qarawiuin to AI-Azhar.Indeed,the very origin of the word uni-
versity in ancient Bologna denotes the association of foreign
studentswho banded themselves into nations-Roman, Lombardi,
Tuscan, and those from Germany, Scandinavia and Scotland
which had no universities of their own until the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries. This tradition continues. (As is recorded in
Unescos World Survey of Education, Volume IVYHigher Education,
wherein a chapter is devoted to each of eighty-one countries and
territories which have no universities but which send their students
to universities in other countries.) The birth-markof the university
is its cosmopolitanism.
This international character is not, however,simply historical or
geographic. It is the expression of higher educations inherent
nature and its solemn vocation. University education is concerned
with the things of the mind and matters of the spirit. The hall-
mark ofits calling is universality:its demand is a rigorous adherence
to truth: its expression is objectivity and the readiness to give and
take blame or praise, through the instrumentality of the dialogue.

237
Let m y country awake

In so defining the international role and nature of the university

and looking at its initiatives and responses today, I would like to
address myself to what for m e are three university imperatives:
its pursuit of truth; its promotion of development; its purchase of
peace.

The pursuit of truth

In its pursuit oftruth (whichis for m e simplyany kind ofseeking and
searching), the university is in crisis in the developed world. This
crisis is epitomized in two of todays simple and familiar slogans:
studentsin revoltand studentpower.I borrow familiar models in
picturing these two basic and separate manifestations of the search
for truth with which the university is confronting our society.

If you want to analyse and synthesize studentsin

Students in revolt.
revoltin your laboratory, proceed as follows. Take several thou-
sand students of sociology and make them attend lectures in a hall
that holds a hundred. Tell them that even if they pass their exam-
inations there will probably be no jobs for them. Surround them
with a society that does not practise what it preaches and is run by
political parties that do not represent student ideas.
Tell them to think about what is wrong with society and how
to put it right. As soon as they become actively interested in the
subject,send in the police to beat them up. Then stand well clear
of the bang and affect an attitude of confused surprise.

Student power. A day will come-more or less soon-when teaching

will resume in the faculties,when examinationswill be held,lecture
theatres released,the red flags hauled down. One thing, however,
is sure: orderwill not be completely restored in the university.
The wind which swept through it is far from spent and a long
period of instability is upon us.
Reforming the structuresofthe university will not end the unrest.
Here changes are indispensable.But university autonomy,student
participation in university management and an overhaul of
curricula, assuming these three to be feasible aims-none of these
will basically alter the fundamental problem. Solutions needed in
the university cannot mask the other aspect of the crisis, which is
political. Here the main issues of student challenge are known:
denunciation of the university, as serving capitalist society; the
class character of the culture it fosters;the questioning of consumer
 The role of the university

society;the demand for self-managementin the factories;the need

to intensify the anti-imperialisticstruggle and solidarity with the
Third World.. .. Such are the topics on the programme of the
critical university which the revolutionary students have begun
to organize. The university has set out to question the entire social
and political system.
Perspective requires that we note that these two ideas, thus
portrayed,are originated by a minority, in most cases a very small
minority, of the university community.I say university community
advisedly because, though I have used the familiar terms student
revolt and student power, they are being adumbrated by uni-
versity staff (aminority) as well as students.The vast majority of the
university community is concerned with its more immediate
problems-of pursuing theirresearch and grinding out their lectures,
or of hurriedly preparing to pass their exams, nervously looking
around for a fit and worthy spouse,and anxiously brooding over
job prospects. But we should not be misled by these facts, unless
w e are confounding greatness with bigness. A prophet, minor or
major, is always in a minority, a herald is always lonely and
apart. A martyr is always a confused Athenian, a Jewish car-
penter, a simple Indian bun&, a unique American Negro pastor
or even a youthful Bostonian. And a pragmatic test of the validity
or otherwise of the truths that todays university is throwing
up as initiatives is the extent to which they find a response in the
hearts and minds, and hence a mass following, of the university
community in Prague and Belgrade,in Paris and Essex, in Rome
and Madrid, in Stockholm and Berlin, in Geneva and New Yorks
Columbia, in Ankara and Amsterdam.

Quantitative expansion. The university crisis w e are all facing today

can be traced back to three basic causes,which are simultaneously
material,intellectual and moral.
The university world is undergoing a quantitative expansion,
unknown in its long history. Unesco has over the past ten years
repeatedly called attention to this implacabledemographic phenom-
enon and has simultaneously sent up urgent warning signals calling
for considered and early action. During the last decade and a half,
in the developed world, there has been an annual average 6.6 per
cent rate of increase of students in universities,ranging from a high
3.8 per cent in the United Kingdom to a very high IO per cent in
Sweden (see Annex,Table I, page 256). In Europe alone, excluding
the U.S.S.R., enrolments in higher education have more than

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Let m y country awake

doubled, increasing by about 2 million in this period (see Annex,

Table 2, page 258). The number of teachers,university buildings,
books and teaching material,laboratory and workshop equipment,
the examination system and teaching methods and conditions of
university life and work generally have not kept pace with this
expansion. One index of this maladjustment is the staff/student
ratio which ranges from I :I O to I :22. (Such a ratio must be used
with extreme care,however,owing to the absence of international
comparability in defining university staff.)
This quantitative expansion in the university stems from three
causes: the population explosion that has sent world population
from nearly 3 to over 3.5 thousand million during the same period;
the sharp trends toward the democratization of education; and
the lengthening of the period of schooling in the developed
world.
The demographic trend has involved a sharp upswing in the
university age cohort of the increasing population, which probably
accounts for one-third of the student-enrolmentbulge. The increas-
ed access to the universities is due to economic affluence and new
socio-cultural demands and standards, making higher education
no longer a privilege but a normal natural adolescent right in the
affluent society. There are those who do not share this view. George
Kennan, speaking at the 1968 anniversary celebrations of the
Virginia Convention, Williamsburg,stated: Itis the student who
is under obligation to theuniversity,not vice versa.Higher education
is not an absolute right, nor is the enjoyment of it devoid of re-
sponsibilities.In I968,Enoch Powell declared to the Conservative
National Advisory Committeein London:Thebeliefthat education
is an indispensable ingredient of growth has altered the relationship
between the recipient of education and the community. Instead
of being the beneficiary of a personal advantage, the student
[thinks he] is now conferring a benefit on the community by furnish-
ing the means of future economic growth. This growth theory of
education is bunkum. T o suppose that an advanced industrial
economy has any relation to the volume and content of its edu-
cation system, from sociology to assyriology, from Greek to pure
mathematics is preposterous.But the theory accountsfor the flightof
the Vice-Chancellors and the panic of the Proctors.
The lengthening of the studentsor adults stay in the university
is due to financial feasibility and the need to stave off technological
obsolescence of acquired knowledge. These two socio-educational
trends explain the other two-thirdsof the enrolment increase. The
 The role of the university

convergence of these three forces can be illumined by a simple

statistic.While world population has increased annually during the
last decade and a half by 1.85per cent, student enrolment at all
levels has increased by 4.22 per cent. In Europe, excluding the
U.S.S.R.,the annual rate of population increase has been 0.85 per
cent,while third-level increase has been 6.19 per cent (see Annex,
Table 2, page 258). But little has been done to prepare for and
respond to this ballooning of the student population and its educa-
tional impact on the university. Rather, one reaction has been to
neglect the large mass of undergraduates and concentrate on
prestige graduate courses and financially rewarding business and
government work under contract or financial grants. This situation
is literallylike sitting on a powder-keg with a lighted candle. It was
bound to blow up; and it has.
I cannot help but place, if briefly, this university enrolment
bulge in the larger context of the quantitative predominance of
youth in our world today. Youth,in the age group up to 24, is in an
absolute majority,constituting 54 per cent of the world population
and 60 per cent of the peoples of all of Africa, Asia and Latin
America (see Annex,Table 3,page 259). Apart from the challenge
to even the simplistic doctrines of democracy that this statistic
imposes,a vast array ofunresolved socio-culturaland moral issues is
also raised-issues within which the university crisis must be sited.
The temporal transition to adulthood, for example, the so-
called ageofdiscretion,is an unholy mess. The legal age for leaving
school is 14 to 15, the age for driving a car 16 to 18,the age for
military service and statutory rape 17 to 18and the age for voting
or marrying without parental consent 2 I. Unemployment among
youth is twice as high as among adults, and work satisfaction
seems even more unattainable than work opportunity. Youth find
that they have more people to be honest to,more people to please,
more to be sincere with,and more people to love,with an equipment
composed of boredom and routine.
But this quantitative, material factor is only one and a re-
mediable one at that. Even on this material plane, if it is remem-
bered that students and youth have never hadit so goodand that
their material demand can be met by making what is good, better,
the real issue is posed. The deeper issues are those of the mind and
the spirit, these are raised by thesilver-plattergenerationoftoday.
A second cause, therefore, of the shattering
Intellectual challenge.
truths thrown up by the university crisis is the intellectual challenge
Let m y country awake

that the university community facesboth within itselfand in society.

The pace and rhythm at which knowledgeis increasing today is such
that the phrases, informationexplosion,and explosionof know-
ledge have become part of our daily jargon. This explosion is
first quantitative. In the scientific world alone, new ideas, as
embodied in new documents, are being produced at the rate of
15 million pages annually. T o keep up with the evolution of m y
own field, economics, I would have to spend about half of each
24-hourday reading,which ofcourse I cannot do, as I have to eat,
sleep, talk to m y wife, go to receptions and dinners, take my dog
out for a walk and work for Unesco.
If to this quantitative explosion in knowledge and information is
added the fact that the means of transmitting this information and
this knowledge and their content are undergoing a second revolu-
tion, we can begin to see the dimensions of the problem. The first
such revolution occurred five centuries ago,with the invention of
the printing press, which afforded new means of communicating
ideas and ofchanging radically the concept ofman and his relations
to fellow man. Its culmination was the Renaissance. Today,
once again with the completely new information system, at whose
heart stands the computer and the card selector, the basic issue
posed is, who is to communicate,what to communicate,to whom
and how. The poor teacher with his textbook and his laboratory
is no longer in the position I was in at the University of Madras
twenty-fiveyears ago. H e can no longer stand apart and alone
on his Olympian heights and pour forth precious words of wisdom
in solitary splendour. H is books, his sources of reference, and his
instruments of research are fast outdated and outdistanced and he
probably has the queasy feeling that, despite all his conscientious
sweat and toil,he is not getting through. But the real issue is more
deep-rooted-the university in its teaching function is a transmitter
of knowledge: through its research function it constantly challenges
that knowledge, including the knowledge that research throws
up. Is the university intellectuallyadapted to meet this duality,this
continuous challenge to knowledge, this contestation permanante?
Once again, the intellectual dilemma faced by the university
community must be situated within the intellectualquestioning and
confusion of society and youth,who form such a large part of that
society today. O n the one hand, we are getting used to Texas teen-
agers sharing with the Smithsonian Lowell observatories the dis-
covery of the second new comet of 1968.Once I spent an evening
with a family in Washington,and I found that neither the parents
 The role of the university

nor I could answer or comment on any one of a volley of questions

and comments which the I I- and I 3-year-oldswere addressing to
us on microbiology, and the permutations of the speed of light and
space-ships,all derived from what w e adults dismiss as comics and
television science fiction. O n the other hand, the established order
provokes in youth scepticism, bafflement and confusion. The
estrangement and alienation of youth in industrialized societies
trace back to the intellectual backwater of the educational system
and what is frequently the mental void of the family.

Moral dilemma. The third cause of the university crisis is to be found

in the moral dilemma that the institution faces. The university
exists to teach and pursue truth. It faces untruths all around it and
within it. The student is told that he must seek truth and finds
around him the denial of the truth of life and liberty of the masses
of people within his country and outside. H e imbibes doctrines of
equality and human rights and sees around him racism,discrimina-
tion and the incessant violation of these rights. H e is told that the
basis of scholarship is objectivity and finds that his life and that of
his parents and society is based on personal pursuits and impersonal
egotism. H e is exhorted to use his imagination as an instrument of
progress and sees its methodical abuse in the ingenuous transforma-
tion of sense into nonsense and nonsense into sense. He is told that
all true knowledge contributes to peace, international understand-
ing and human well-being,and he finds that this knowledge has led
him to live under the giant mushroom of the nuclear stalemate,on
which over IO per cent of his countrys national income is being
expended and over which broods a conspiracy of silence.H e is
exhorted to bring the spirit of tolerance and charity to his work and
to his fellow men and he finds all around him,in Asia,in the Middle
East, in Africa and in Europe, minor wars raging, in which thou-
sands of innocent men, women and infants are being slaughtered or
maimed.
This moral vacuum created on the one hand by the rejection of
historical religious faiths,and on the other by the hypocrisy,lies and
deceits with which the student and youth feels himself surrounded,
is the unhappy reality. Whether it be in personal matters, such as
sex and religion,in economic matters,such as investment deals and
contracts, in social matters, such as relations with the underprivi-
leged and disinherited,and above all in the moral realm where he
sees unfolding before his eyes the ugly story of mans inhumanity to
man, youth seem to shrink back and cry out to us adults: Sirs,this

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Let m y country awake

is a bloody business or How come this sorry scheme of things

entire?Such reaction naturally flows from youth,which is the most
sensitive, enthusiastic and idealistic sector of society, and from the
educated Clite, which is its vocal expression. For all education is
always a ceaseless quest and a continuing strife. It generates its own
crisis.
In face of the convergence of these threefold forces on the uni-
versity, and on youth more generally, it is not surprising that a
number of basic issues are being raised.

L u c k of confidence. The first issue posed is that of lack of confidence

-flowing from the complexset offactors which I havejust outlined.
One very practical aspect of this lack of confidence is to be found
in the swing away in British universities from the study of science
and technology to arts and social sciences,that was first reported by
the Dainton Committee in January 1968.In the universities, ad-
missions into science and technology have declined from 45.9 per
cent of the total in 1962 to 40.6 per cent in 1966,while the rapid
growth in the social studies was marked by the upswing from I 1.9
to 22.5 per cent.This swing away from science and technology to the
humanities and social studies is international,as the report points
out, and is to be found in other European, Australian and United
States universities admission records.
There are specific educational reasons for this declining confi-
dence in science,for example,the too narrow and too early special-
ization base in the secondary stream, the poor teaching methods
and materials in science and its late generalized start in the school
system. But the non-educationalcauses are probably more basic,
decisive and serious. Science has produced the computer,the laser,
nuclear fission and its use for bigger and better nuc1ea.rweapons and
cleaner and neater atomic triggers and arms, the faster-than-sound
jet, the missile, the rocket and exploration of space. Meanwhile,all
around us in our poor planet there continues, and with growing
impact,the sadness,the sickness,the wastage,the muddle,the pov-
erty and inequality and injustice, crying aloud for remedy as they
unfold and having little or no relevance to the marvels of science.
The social sciencesand humanities at least point up the dangers and
are engaged in their diagnosis.
Is it surprising then that the finest and most alert minds in our
universities are turning away from natural science? And one by-
product of this move away from science and technology in the rich
West may well be that it contributes to the brain drain from the

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 The role of the university

poor countries. If the universities in the West have to recruitrather

than select for science,then the recruitment net will indeed be cast
wide-world wide. If the staffs of Western hospitals,research lab-
oratories and defence establishments are increasingly stocked by
Indian scientists,Pakistani doctors,Argentine and Colombian com-
puter programmers, and African engineers,it might be that this is
one means of correcting the results of the declining science gradua-
tion of the developed world.
The lack of confidence, of which the decline in the sway of
science is but a symptom is, however,more pervasive. There is lack
of confidence between teachers and students, between university
and public authorities, between parents and children, between
adults and youth. Although it is a fact that parents have become
permissive,I do not have in mind such old war horses as: sparethe
rod and spoil the child,theColt on the campus,aswiftkick in the
pants,etc. What has happened is that the adult has abdicated his
position of responsibility. The teacher no longer necessarily knows
more or knows enough or knows how to teach his class. Neither the
teacher nor the parent is any longer, as in m y youth, the focus of
knowledge or the fountain of wisdom. Thus there is no basis for
conversation,no dialogue,no communication, no intellectual give
and take.
Even the urgent need for a dialogue has itselfbecome a confused
and controversialissue.Jean-JacquesServan-Schreiber,in Le Rheil
de la France, poses the question with clarity and pungency: Whenin
the name ofa proper respectfor order a government sends the police
into the Sorbonne to open up the dialogue; when thousands of
young people mount an assault on the institutions,led on by those
among them who denounced the dialogue as a trap;when assent to
the dialogue becomes the slogan of the conservatives and no dia-
logues the cry of the rebels; when the very idea of dialogue is thus
become a frontier between those who are satisfied with the status quo
and those who are still intent on change-then the problem is gone
beyond it. Dialogue is obviously indispensable but implies trust.
And trust no longer exists.

Negation. The second issue posed is the apparent negativism which

flows from absence of confidence. Today, those in authority are
rejected not because they are irresponsible but because they are
authorities. A very sober youth journal (Fer de Lance), published
before the current wave,asks whether w e are living in a sick society
and whether our first task is to engage intensely in political action

245
Let m y country awake

to kill off this dying relic of the past and build anew.There is a kind
of negation of society,government,political parties (right,left and
centre), parents and in the case of students the university and edu-
cational authorities.But this negativism is negative in its protest and
positive in its values.It is a curious amalgam ofanarchism,pacifism,
socialism, existentialism, mysticism, libertarianism and nihilism,
mixed in with honesty, sincerity,seriousness,inner discipline-but
with no clear definition of means to achieve such a heterogeneous
series of ends.
W e have been aware for some time of this withdrawal of a section
of youth from society-a growing section,starting with the angry
young man, the mods and rockers,the teddy boys, the provos and
Hells Angels. W e have given them many labels-avant-gardists,
beatniks, yeh-yehs,hippies, yippies, flower children, and allowed
them to live and rest on the banks of a river, a corner of the park or
a niche in the city.W e have made them a part ofthe tourist itinerary
of our affluent cities, so that anyone visiting San Francisco is taken
to Luna Park for two dollars;in London the tourist sightseeing bus
passes by Carnaby Street for an extra five bob; and in Paris a visit
to the Sorbonne and the OdCon is a must for every transient.But no
longer is this sector ofour affluent society-youth in general and the
university community in particular-shut off in a ghetto. They are
now we,a vocal, demanding and disturbing we; and one does
not need to go on the tourist trail to see them or sleep in near-by
hotels to hear them. They are in our midst. They are us.

Violence. The third question posed is related to the fact and function
of violence. Is Marcuse right that a non-violentprotest against the
evils of society is really unavailing? Is it true that only through
violence and the manifestation of violence by socialoutsiders,i.e.
the students,these ills will be set right? Violence of course calls forth
counter-violence and the basic issue becomes diverted into discus-
sions of who started what first and who was more brutal. But the
dilemma does not stop there. For example, while foreigners must
always observe the usual guest code, are not the expulsion and
repatriation of the more alert among them, which always seem to
accompany these events, both eating into the international fibre
which is the university and reviving some kind ofxenophobia in our
shrinking planet?
O r is George Kennan right instead when he said at Williamsburg
that he objected not to the use of police by the university but to the
universitysfailure to use them more promptly? Was the late Chief
 The role of the university

Minister of my state of Tamil Nadu, C.Annadurai, right when, in

talking to Rend Maheu and myself in 1968,he said that when he
was faced with rioting students and youth a fortnight earlier, he
found he could no more call in the police to quell and punish them
than invite the police into his home when his children were on the
rampage? The Chief Minister and I were of course nurtured on the
Gandhian milk of truth and non-violence.But is that doctrine of
non-violence only a university collectors item today? W a s the
British National Union of Students right then in pointing out that
the recent backing down by authorities in the face of mass action
means that democratically elected student leaders have no function
in the university? In any case,the past university system,which was
based on an unspoken social contract by which the community of
scholars lived and functioned,has lost its meaning. Have we yet the
time-that most scarce and precious resource of our times-to seek
and search for a new meaning?

Towards a new construction

For with the university crisis that is on us now and in the midst of
which we are living,one can do no more than attempt a first very
tentative diagnostic.The answers to these questions posed to society,
the finality of the truths that are convulsing the university world
will require time, some years, some decades. For one thing,beyond
influencing of elections by energetic door-to-doorcanvassing,the
ending of the disenfranchisement,the grant of the right to vote of
youth and studentsis raised,because in current society,elections are
decided by the un-poor,un-youth and un-student.For another,
the demand for new structures and systems will grow in number,
voracity and volume,and no society in our world will be spared the
threat of the angry alternative.
But what is in question in the last analysis is the doctrine of man
-his nature and destiny. And this is a question which is particu-
larly appropriate to the university,and above all to Unesco,for both
are established fundamentally in service of the human spirit, and
they have no mission other than this spiritual one. All else is
consequential and subsidiary.

A new concept of teaching and learning. Abstracting from these larger

social and humanistic issues and looking solely at the university, it
seems to me clear that the university response has to develop along
two broad lines.

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Let m y country awake

There must in the first place emerge a new concept of teaching

and learning,involving a new relationship between the teacher and
the student.The one-sided,one-wayconcept of teaching and learn-
ing is both distorted and antediluvian. It is distorted because the
disproportion of the teacher/pupil ratio noted earlier is likely to
worsen in the future. This worsening and imbalanced teacherlpupil
ratio means that the teaching function and learning task will be
increasing intra-student,through student workshops and rkunions des
rkJExi0n-s. The one-wayconcept is antediluvian, because the teacher
can no longer assume that his pupil is a blank clean slate on which
he can write what he wills and how he wills;he can no longer believe
that his pupil is an ignoramus to be talked down to from great
heights of wisdom and learning. No more is the student simply at
the receiving end,a passive agent. H e has his own knowledge which
can, as we saw,outdistance that of his teacher in some matters; he
has his tastes, his aptitudes and above all his person. Teaching
therefore must become a common action and learning a joint func-
tion. Teaching is for the edification of the student and teacher and
not for the glorification of either. Learning is for the widening of the
horizons of both, not for clever use against either, the student
teaches through the questions he poses and the answers he develops
and learns from the dialogue with his teacher. The teacher teaches
what he knows and what he has discovered and learns by the action
of the student, who adds some new facts and in any case a new
dimension and wider optic to what he already knows. Teaching is
transmitting knowledge and information: learning requires con-
stant questioning of that knowledge and information. The teacher-
student relationship is the basic relationship of education. For all
education is a relationship, a quality. All monologues and solilo-
quies may have mystical values or artistic merit, but they are anti-
education,and in the educational context die at birth. The teacher
and student are two different functions,not two distinct persons.
And of course,here we have a come-backto sound and traditional
pedagogic theory. There is nothing new under the sun;what is new
is its rediscovery and application. In this reaffirmation of the con-
cept of education as a relationship we return to the Aristotelean
wisdom that all education is a communal act of the teacher and
the taught.
A new concept of university institutions and governance. The application of
the new educational concept will require, as we have seen, pro-
foundly new institutional structures;let us hope that they are born
 The role of the university

at something more than the traditionally glacial speed of university

change.Essentially,two types ofchangemust develop.Firstthe devis-
ing ofeducationalinstitutionswhere the teacher-studentrelationship
can become a reality,where there can be a real education.T o deter-
mine how this democratic decentralization can be nurtured without
the dangers of a new tribalism,how the small,living, educational
institution can survive in our mass-production society and inter-
dependentworld,is a challengeposed to university men and women.
The other necessary change toward participatory democracy is
easier and is in fact being realized. The New York University Law
School document on student rights now being widely discussed in
United States universities is a comprehensive effort to democratize
the governance ofuniversities.Vice-ChancellorEric Ashby,getting
in first, announced a first committee,composed of seven under-
graduates and two graduates, to deal with student affairs in
Cambridge. In France,Italy and other European countriesvarious
proposals have been developed forjoint staff-studentcommittees on
the basis ofparity,to decide on all matters concerning the university,
including, inter alia, university finance, administration, appoint-
ments, admission and selection, curriculum and teaching pro-
grammes and methods, examinations,diplomas,studentand teacher
salary and welfare, employment opportunities and guidance, run-
ning through all levels-departments, faculties, schools and uni-
versities. But the fundamental principle is clear, that students
together with professors must be made basically responsible for the
governance of the university.

Promotion of development
The universityspursuit of developmentis a relatively recent role;it
is carried out most completely in the underdeveloped world. The
Unesco/IAUstudy on South-EastAsian universitiesmakes the start-
ling declaration that human-resourcedevelopmentis a natural and
traditional function of the universities: their responsibility to recog-
nize consciously and deliberately national needs in the planning of
their activities is clear. Whence this natural function and wherefore
this recognition of national needs? The traditional function of the
university was topromote scholarship,tobe character-building,
to be the teachers of youth,to be the finishing school for gentle-
men,toensure that the administration ofhuman affairs was in the
hands of educated men,tobe the training ground for Waterloo
and tobe wholly dedicated to Wissenschaft.
Let m y country awake

University and human capital formation. The Land Grant colleges

founded by an act of the United States Congress in 1862broke new
ground. The traditionalists were of course provoked: wewant no
fancy farmers,sneered a senator; we can learn good farming as
apprentices on the farm, not by going to a cow college,said
another. Nevertheless, these colleges laid the long trail which now
leads to education being regarded as investment, and higher edu-
cation as investment in human capital.

The university initiative. In the underdeveloped worlds,the university

is a major instrument of development. This means matching the
growth and development of universities with the growth and devel-
opment of the country-in terms of the type and magnitude of the
high- and middle-level manpower needed, the appropriate cur-
ricula and teaching programme, teaching and learning techniques,
textbooks and the necessary guidance and counselling services.
Nowhere is the university student burdened with a heavier responsi-
bility than in a developing country,in preparing himselffor the vital
part he must play as a teacher,technician, scientist,administrator,
engineer, agronomist, doctor,jurist, legislator and a host of other
positions which he alone can fill and on which depend the future
and well-being of the 3,500 million peoples oftoday and the 4,500
million of tomorrow.
In saying this, I do not mean that he must return to the intense
and dogmatic student of m y days,whose mind was stocked with no
more than footnotes. The student of today must, on the one hand,
reflect over,seek and discover for himselfthe ideas by which he will
live and help others to live. H e must, on the other, develop the
attitudes and capacity for experimentation and innovationwhich he
and his society so urgently require. H e must also acquire the quali-
fications needed for membership in the international community,
to which his part ofthe world,the Third World, contributes two out
of every three persons living on this planet. H e must test out in the
field and the factory,in the village and the urban slums,in service
to his even less privileged fellow men, the theories, doctrines and
concepts that he has been privileged to learn for himself and make
his own.
The stalemate. Such being the wide and astonishing spectrum of the
studentsrole in his society,such being the stakes that the university
holds in the life and misery of its peoples and the development of
the country,the current university situation in the underdeveloped
 The role of the university

world can only be described as bleak. The prevailing syndrome of

wastage, drop-outs,inefficiencies, repetitions,uninspired teaching,
prescription of pre-digested and erroneous bazaarnotesas texts,
overcrowded class-rooms,lack of time for reflection and research,
examination systems-all these inhibit thought and act as superficial
classification machines. One university professor in the Middle East
told m e that no student who ever tries to think can complete his
examination paper. Add to this the lack of relation between e m -
ployment opportunities and development demands for skills on the
one hand,and the streams and specializationsoffered in the colleges
and universities on the other. Crown it with the moral confusion and
material corruption creeping into university administrations and
stafflife, the atmosphere of terrible boredom and shiftless unreality,
and one then sees the whole sad picture. This bleak situation,which
should be transitional, is a threat to the relationship of trust,
confidence,respect and friendship between staff and students,the
sense of intellectual adventure and joyous discovery that ought to
imbue a students life, as he pursues ideas,discovers concepts and
makes his own, the knowledge that comes his way.

T h e renovation response. In the developing world, the time has there-

fore come to clear the university decks. Many countries are begin-
ning to engage in precisely this renovating process, starting with
their societies and going on to the entire educational system at every
level. The pace, however, is slow and the will lagging. But in this
hard and uphill task of creation and re-creation,the university
community,staff and students,have a vital role. And in turn the
university as an international institution has resources beyond those
that exist in the country or even in the underdeveloped world.
Addressing the European Ministers of Education at Vienna, Rend
Maheu declared: Theconstruction of universal community repre-
sents for each a radical advance and an absolute gain, which, as it
can be achieved only by the efforts of all, is properly and directly
of concern to one and all. The renovation of the university in the
developing world is a part of the universal community now being
built and so it commands resources from the whole world of univer-
sities. One of the French economic institutions sets forth this imper-
ative ofinternational solidarity along similar lines: the university in
the developed world has as its vocation to contribute to the fight of
the countries which are exploited and disinherited, so that they
may accede to full political, economic and cultural independence.
To make this contribution we must not allow our technocratic
Let m y country awake

preoccupations with econometrics, sociology and mathematical

models to blur our vision. The internationaluniversity community is
holding out its hand to assist the developing world in the planning
of its higher education in consonance with its economic,social and
cultural goals,in establishing its universities as centres of academic
excellence, and as storehouses of research, so that its staff and
students can join in climbing the steep but invigorating slope to
development.

Purchase of peace
The university is one bulwark of peace. It is our universities and
schools which can and must build its stable defences. Yet,if this is
the case,w e are compelled to recognize that we are back to where
we started, the heart of the crisis that the university faces-the
contradiction between the verbalism of peace declamations and the
stark reality of raging wars.
For history tells us, particularly the history which w e have lived
through,that there is nothing automatic about peace. One cannot
simply wish it and have it, or proclaim it and make it come true.
One can only debase it by using empty words. One can cry peace,
peace,when there is no peace. Probably there has been no other era
in human history when so many individuals so ardently wished for
peace. Equally,there has been no other period in history when not
for one single day has the world been free from war. Every night
w e send up a prayer for peace and every day there is war and strife
in Viet-Nam,in South Asia, in the Middle East, in West and
South Africa.
That is why peace to be realized must be invented. Peace, if
willed,has to be purchased. The invention that peace calls for is the
creation of conditions wherein international co-operationin all its
forms, and national action in all spheres in which we live our
daily lives, will promote respect instead of indifference, tolerance
instead of fear, understanding instead of misunderstanding and
above all charity instead of hatred. W h o can ht-lp create these
positive conditions and banish the negative ones but university
men and women, who are the inventive sector of human society
everywhere?
Peace,ifit is to be attained,must also be purchased.W e are,after
all,purchasing war at the price of unaccounted billions ofdollars of
our study,research and development in so far as we remain indiffer-
ent to the use of their results.W e are paying for war-preparedness,
 The role of the university

whatever that may mean, at a further annual additional colos-

sal average of $200,000 million. Are we willing to pay the price
to purchase peace-the price of giving up that part of our national
pride and sensitivity, our theoretical, overvalued and overpriced
sovereignty, our insistence on our hopelessly ungeographical but
inviolable frontiers,our rationalizations and false gods, which call
us to take up arms at the slightest provocation against our fellow
men? Even more,are we willing to assume responsibility for the use
to which our knowledge,our inventions and discoveries, are put,
and help forge the necessary instruments of control over their use?
O n the one hand, the price is high in current and accepted values,
and one call to the university community is to demonstrate that this
price is a worth-while investment. That demonstration must be
addressed to the unconvinced,not to the committed: the proof that
we develop must be for those who believe in just wars and aggres-
siveness, not the convinced. O n the other hand, the price w e must
pay does not cost a sou. It is personal and spiritual and is therefore
without cost, but is all value.
In this context there is an urgent and entirely practical call to our
universities and educational systems in general to instil in the hearts
and minds of their youth and men and women certain values and
some insights.There is need for some sense ofshame and a modicum
of regret for the technological brutalities of the present and past,
suffered both by industrialized countries and imposed on the poor
nations. This, I know from personal experience, is a necessary,
though not sufficient, starting-point.Every Indian is taught in
school to feel a deep sense of shame at certain chapters of the all-
too-briefhistory of his country since independence. Starting from
there, the educational system should engender in its teachers and
students a sense of a social sympathy and compassion, a passionate
sense of indignation against inequity and injustice.
It is men and women educated in this tradition who can go out
as healers and fighters in the war against ignorance and poverty.
It is such persons who can become a revolutionary resource and a
catalytic agent for equalizing economic and social opportunity,
starting with a determined effort to stop the widening of the present
gap between the rich and poor nations.It is they who can make the
fairer decisions of tomorrow on trade and aid, and break through
the trade-aid-debttriangle. It is these persons who will see devel-
opment as the right of all peoples,and the development of the low-
income countries as the national responsibility of every industrial-
ized country. It is they who will see that such development of the

253
Let m y country awake

poor world must be conceived as a world social-security system by

the rich nations,must be financed in the same way as social policy,
housing and housing policy,social expenditure,accident insurance,
invalid relief, old-ageand disability pensions and family allowances
are financed today within their own national boundaries by grad-
uated tax revenues from every section of the nation.
For only our universities and schools can instil in all their pupils
the spirit of understanding,co-operation and charity. It is the men
and women emerging from those educational systems who may
arrest,if anyone can,our foolish descent into the abyss of war and
conflict. Trained in equity and charity,they could bring to bear on
our world the courage which will fashion the spears and swords of
today into the pruning hooks and ploughshares of tomorrow. It is
to educational systems that I look for those men and women who
will bring our world back to tread the paths of peace and friend-
ship, to which all people everywhere have the right, which every
man, woman and child longs for and which all of us wish so
ardently to find.
It is for the realization of such a world that the Round Table of
thirty wise men to which I have so often in these pages had occasion
to refer, addressed, through the General Conference of Unesco, a
solemn appeal to all peoples and to all governments:

To reject war once and for all as an instrument of their interna-

tional policy;
To renounce all recourse to violence in the settlement of their
differences;
To respect the right of all peoples to self-determination and
independence;
To ensure that all peoples are free to choose their political, eco-
nomic, social and cultural systems;
To condemn all forms of direct or indirect aggression or of inter-
ference in the domestic affairs of States;
To take all necessary action to give effect to the United Nations
resolutions on general and complete disarmament under inter-
national control;
Toassociate themselves more closely than ever with the construc-
tive work for peace through education,science,culture and mass
communication with which Unesco is directly charged;
And,finally,to undertake a broad review of their attitude towards
all international problems on the basis of respect for human
dignity,justice,reason and the brotherhood of man.

254
 The role of the university

H e r e is the agenda for action for our governments and peoples; here
is the curriculum for peace for our schools and colleges.
Will we accept it?
Will w e adopt it?

255
Annex to Chapter II

Comparative data for educational enrolment and

population
Table I. Expansion of education at the third level in selected countries,
1950-65
Increase
dents Average
?f--stu
Staff/ 111 llfteen annual
rate of
years, increase of
Country Year Teaching
staff
Students
Pupil
ratio
(latest k!xz
yIv-.u
students,
I950 to
year) 'g65 around
(number

Czechoslovakia 1950 - 43 809

1965 18576 141687 I :8 3.2 8.14
France1 '950 - I39 593
1965 18538 412 070 I :22 3.0 7.49
Federal Republic
of Germany 1950 - I34 700
1960 23666 291226
I965 - 372 929 I :1 2 2.8 7.02
Eastern Germany 1951 I 395 27 822
1965 - 74 4'8 I :20 2.7 7.28
West Berlin I950 - 12 032
I964 - 26 37' - 2.2 5-76
Italy I950 9 665 '45 170
I965 26053 300940 I :I2 2.1 4.98
Japan 1950 52 102 390817
1965106412 I 116430 I :I O 2.9 7.25
Poland '950 - I 17506
1965 22960 251864 I :I 1 2.1 5.22
Spain '950 3 928 55 272
1965 7824 131 766 I :17 2.4 5.95
Sweden '950 - 16887
1960 I 838 36909
I965 - 7' 4'3 I :zo 4.2 10.09
 The role of the university

Increase
of students ,=
Staff/ in fifteen 1
:
:$
!
~~~~~

IaLL wf
Year Teaching Students increase of
Country
Country "+,,!z
staff &..APrntS
students, >
(latest around 1950to 3
year) 1965
(number around
of times) 1965 (%)

Turkey 1950 I 258 24815

1964 5618 91 198 I :16 3.7 9-74
U.S.S.R. 1950 80 772 I 247 382
1965 201 ooo 3 860 600 I : 19 3.1 7.82
United Kingdom '950 1 1 229 '33 756
1964 25 875 225960 I :g 1.7 3.8 I
United States
of America 1950 - 2 296592
1965429 ooo 5 526 325 I :13 2.4 6.03
Brazil '950 9 '79 5' '00
1964 30872 142386
'965 - 155 781 I :5 3.0 7.70
China (Rep.of) 1950 672 6665
'965 957' 85346 I :g 12.8 18-53
Colombia 1950 I 751 10632
I964 6049 37462 I :6 3.5 9.4'
India '950 24453 404019
1963 80247 I 310000 I :16 3.2 9.47
Indonesia '950 - 6 183
'961 3940 65635
I963 - 94 586 I :1 7 15.3 23.35
Mexico '950 - 35 240
I965 '7 170 '33 374 I :8 3.8 9.28
Nigeria 1950 - 327
1965 '344 9 378 I :7 28.7 25.06
Peru 1950 2 147 16082
'955 2 225 16 789
I963 - 46 334 I :8 2.9 8.47
Uganda '950 35 231
I965 '47 1237 I :8 5.4 10.02
United Arab
Republic '950 - 33 595
I964 '0 406 '44 4996
1965 - 177 123 I :14 5.3 '1.73
I. Universities only.
Source. Data derived from Unesco Statirtual Yearbook 1967,Paris,Unesco, 1968.

257
Let my country awake

Table 2

A. Estimates for totalschool enrolment and total world population

(excluding China (mainland), North Korea, and North Viet-Nam)

Total school
Year all World population Enrolment as %of
levels (millions) (millions) total population

'950-51 222 1 970 11.2

I 9 6 ~ I~ 6 325 2 319 14.0
I 965-66 413 2 595 '5.9
B. Percentage increases in school enrolment and world population
(derived from A above)

Total school enrolment

(all levels) Population
Year
Average annual Average annual
Increase rateof increase Increase rate of increase
~~

1950-65 86.0 4.22 31.7 I .85

1950-60 46.4 3.88 '7.7 I .64
1960-65 27.I 4-91 11.9 2.27
C. School enrolment as percentage of world population (excluding
China (mainland), North Korea and North Viet-Nam)

Year All 3 levels 1st level 2nd level 3rd level

1950-51 11.2 9.0 1.9 0.32

I 960-6I 14.0 10.7 2.8 0.48
1965-66 '5.9 I 1.7 3.5 0.69
D. Estimates of enrolment at third level and total population increases
in Europe (excluding U.S.S.R.)as percentage

Enrolment at 3rd level Total population

Year Average annual Average annual
Increase rate of increase Increase rate of increase

1950-65 147.0 6.19 '3.5 0.85

I 950-60 61.0 4.86 8.4 0.8 I
I 960-65 53.4 8.92 4.7 0.92
Source. Data derived from Unesco Statistical Yearbook 1967,Paris, Unesco, 1968.
 The role of the university

Table 3

A. Estimated population 0-24 years old

1960 I965 '970 1980 2000

Absolute figures (millions)

World total I 610 I 768 I 954 2347 3 "4
Africa 170 '9' 2 16 282 475
Latin America 1 I 28 148 172 231 369
North America 90 IO0 I 08 123 I 66
Asia 942 1042 1 156 1 393 1 746
Europe '7' 176 181 '83 I97
Oceania 7 8 9 I1 16
U.S.S.R. IO1 703 I I2 I21 151

A s percentage of total population

World total 53.7 53.9 54.4 54.2 50.8
Africa 62.4 62.5 62.5 62.7 61.8
Latin America 60.2 60.6 60.8 61.1 57.8
North America 45.0 46.8 47.4 47.' 46.9
Asia 56.8 57.0 57-3 56.6 50.5
Europe 40.2 40.0 39.9 38.2 37.4
Oceania 46.4 47.7 48.2 47.6 48.7
U.S.S.R. 47.0 44.7 45.5 43.5 42.9

B. Estimated population 15-24 years old

I 960 I965 I970 1980 2000

Absolute figures (millions)

World total 5'9 564 647 797 1 128
Africa 53 59 67 86 150
Latin America1 39 45 52 72 I 26
North America 27 34 39 45 61
Asia 300 327 373 468 657
Europe 62 66 71 73 76
Oceania 2 3 3 4 5
U.S.S.R. 35 32 41 48 56
I. Including Central America. Continued overleaf

259
Let m y country awake

B. Estimated population I5-24years old -continued

As percentage of total population

World total 17.3 I 7.2 18.0 18.4 18.4
Africa '9.3 19.4 '9.3 19.1 '9.5
Latin America 18.5 18.3 18.4 19.0 19.8
North America '3.7 15.8 17.4 17.2 17.1
Asia 18.1 17.9 18.5 19.0 19.0
Europe '4.5 '4.9 15.6 15.2 '4.5
Oceania '4.7 16.5 17.4 I6.8 17.1
U.S.S.R. 16.2 13.8 16.5 17.4 15.8

C. Ratio of 20-34 age group to population aged 20 and over (1960)

Population 20-34 years old

Population 20
years old and Absolutefigure Percentage of
over (millions) (millions) population aged
20 and over

World total I 646 690 41.9

Africa '27 63 49.6
Latin America1 1 03 48 46.6
North America I22 38 31.1
Asia 863 387 44.8
Europe 285 93 32.6
Oceania IO 3 30.0
U.S.S.R. I37 57 41.6
I. Including Central America.

Source. The estimates presented in parts A and B of this table are based on the
United Nations population projections set out in the United Nations publica-
tion: World Population Prospects as Assessed in 1963.The basis of the United
Nations projection was the results of censuses taken in 1960and 1961.
The figures in part C are based on the results of the censuses around 1960
used for the United Nations population projection.

260
 Book Four

Unesco at work:
three places, three functions
and a state of mind
Chapter I2 Even a blade ofgrass

But what of Unesco? What is its role in the fight for peace and devel-
opment? What has it done thus far? What are the problems and
challenges it will face in the next decade?

A word of explanation
Before beginning to respond to these questions, I should explain the
title of this fourth and final section. Unesco does not exist only in
three places. The Organizationsheadquarters are in Paris,where
the General Conference and Executive Board meet periodically and
its general directorate and the directors of the thirty-five depart-
ments,bureaux and services have their offices.Yet a larger propor-
tion of the Secretariat is not stationed in Paris: it is at work in I 13
countries. Unesco National Commissions are functioning in I I 7
Member States.Like Ariel in ShakespearesThe Ternfiestit ,is every-
where, and nowhere. Essentially,despite impressive growth in re-
cent years, despite the formidable bureaucratic machinery, the
Organization remains a state of mind, a promise, a symbol, an
enigma.
I have seen that state ofmind embodied and incarnated in all six
Directors-General,in a host of devoted staff members, in the gov-
ernment delegates, educators, scientists, communicators, cultural
workers (sometimes all in a single person), in the men and women
from almost all the countries of the world who come there to vote
on the Organizations programme and budget, to advise on the
great issues facing the world,to work for education,science,culture
and communication, to labour for peace and development and
human rights.
For many of them,Unesco must be a disappointment.
Some come expecting to find a beacon light oftruth,a translucent
monument to the universal heights which the human spirit could
reach. They often find instead a sometimes cheerful, sometimes
gloomy reality:the search for truth mixed with politics, the struggle
forjustice mingled with compromise,fervour with pettiness,intellect
with intrigue, clarity with obfuscation, ideals with technicalities.
Let m y country awake

Some come seeking a concrete reality,a force in history,a means

of massive action: they find instead a symbol, a Persian miniature,
a little Santa Maria in a hurricane.
If they come expecting to find in Unesco the transfigured man,
the human race approaching its true horizons,moving onward and
upward toward the divine, they find instead only the human,only
themselves.
For Unesco is nothing more than the sum ofmen and women who
believe in it,who work for it. It is nothing less than what they bring
to it-their experience and talent and ambition and devotion.It is
nothing more than what they take from it-bewilderment, disap-
pointment, wisdom,renewed resolve,uncertainty,any of these, but
always some idea they did not have before.
I have worked for Unesco for more than two decades in a variety
ofpositions. I will,by the end of m y term, have spent almost seven
years as its Deputy Director-General.Yet I could no more define it
than count the starsin our galaxy,no more comprehend it in its end-
less multiplicity than countthe number ofgrains ofsand in the desert.
All I can contribute to an understanding of the Organization,to
placing it in what I believe is its proper perspective,past and future,
is what others too can and do and will contribute,that is, a personal
testimony of m y own experience. I do so with hesitation, with
caution, with respect and also some embarrassment,yes, but also
with conviction and faith, for Unesco demands all of these from
those who would serve her.
Perhaps the best way to begin upon and to delimit such an
inexhaustible subject would be to deal with what the General Con-
ference has described as Unescosthree great and inseparable func-
tions-the operational, the intellectual, and the ethical-to see
how they evolved,what we have done about them in the past, and
what in m y opinion some of the major problems are which face us
in the future.
Interwoven in a thousand images and myriad colours,the opera-
tional, intellectual and ethical strands of our activities form the
fabric which is Unesco. This fabric may seem devoid of an over-all
pattern to the cursory observer, but this is not so.
In the first place, Unesco has evolved in accordance with the
assumptions and aspirations, priorities and possibilities of its
Member States. As an instrument of intergovernmental co-opera-
tion it is, in a certain measure,equivalent to the sum ofall its parts.
Yet, the Organization is more than that. Of all the agencies in the
United Nations system, Unesco alone is devoted to the idea of
 Even a blade of grass

humanism,to man in his entirety.The French philosopher,Etienne

Gilson,ventured to call it thesoulof the United Nations body.
Secondly,Unesco is constantly obliged to strike a balance between
its all-encompassing mandate and immediate utility, between
the needs of tomorrow and the demands of today. Now, however,
our programme seems primarily operational, and is essentially
preoccupied with the present. Indeed,all of us in the Secretariat,
including myself and the Director-General himself, occasionally
lose sight of the intellectual and ethical tasks in the whirl of our
daily operations.
Underlying the apparent confusion of Unescosmultiplicity,and
joining together all the seemingly loose ends,are the Organizations
basic purpose and long-termpromise. It is natural that by seeking,
as the Preamble to the Constitution puts it, the intellectual and
moral solidarity ofmankind,by experimenting with and practising
the alchemy necessary to catalyse thedefences of peace in mens
minds, in short, by reflecting man himself, Unesco is at once a
paragon of clarity and the epitome of enigma.
Indeed,we have come to view this seemingly inextricable mixture
of fervent idealism and practical reality, of broad principles and
hard facts,of the Ideal Unesco and the Actual Unesco,of Unesco in
contemplation and Unesco on-the-move,as simply typical of the
Organization. None the less, although our three tasks are insepa-
rable in carrying out our mandate,they are what define Unesco,so
I will discuss them individually and in separate sections,beginning
first with our operational task because of its obvious prominence.

The growth of operational assistance

Unescosoperational functions are the ones on which it is most often
judged,and ofwhich the greater part ofour programme and budget
is composed.Indeed they claim some three-quartersof the time and
energy of the General Conference and Secretariat.They are the ones
that have witnessed and indeed required a nearly sixfold increase in
the budget from $7 million for the year 1947to $77.5 million for the
present biennium (1969-70), and the more than thirtyfold increasein
staff,which jumped from 130 posts lin 1946 with all but eight at
Headquarters, to more than 4,100 deployed all over the world
today.
It is a somewhat startling thought to recall a Director-Generalin
1952 feeling forced to resign because he asked for $8.9 million for
the following year but was only given $8.5 million. In the same
Let m y country awake

vein, another Director-Generalwas obliged by the General Confer-

ence,four years later, to add a million dollars to his budget which
he had not even requested. And only five years ago the Director-
General and the General Conference were debating with consider-
able ardour whether the budget should be $49.3million or $49.9
million.
Although our operational action involves the Organization in
very practical, humble tasks, largely of a technical nature, it is
nevertheless a test of the Unesco idea in practice, of the Unesco
image to the common man,ofUnesco at thecross-roadsinhistory.A n
afternoon spent in Bolivia some eighteen years ago has remained
vivid in m y memory as a kind of microcosm of Unesco in the world.
I was driven up to Warisata,situated at a height of 16,000feet,
accompanied by the Minister of Education and his officials, to
discuss the programme ofeducational reform with the village people
and leaders. They received m e with great hospitality as the repre-
sentative of Unesco. I spoke no Spanish at that time and thus
translators had also come with us. The translators who knew
English did not know Quecha, the language of the village,and the
translator who knew Quecha did not know English.
In two hours, I was able to say only a few words about Unesco
and what we were trying to do, each word being translated from
English into Spanish and from Spanish into Quecha. Back through
the converse process,it was explained to m e that for as long as any-
one could remember, the village had never had a school; but that
now they saw that a school was needed, and although it was too late
for the old people, they had resolved to build several schools for
their children so that they at least would not be uneducated.
Unescos help in providing a teacher-trainer would be just right,
they said,and welcome. And then the old man who was the village
elder concluded with a proverb which came to m e slowly and
laboriously through the three languages.Ten thousand miles away
from this Bolivian mountain-top,in m y own village in South India,
I had heard this same proverb in m y own language,Tamil,again
and again throughout m y childhood:For the strong man, even a blade
of grass is a sword.
Eighteen years have passed since that day, eighteen years which
have seen a prodigious expansion of Unescoswork in almost every
field but particularly in its operational activities. W e have sixteen
approved operational priorities today. They are: Educational plan-
ning; Teacher training, including new methods and techniques;
Functional literacy, rural education and adult education; Youth

266
 Even a blade of grass

education;Promotion of women; Mass communication techniques;

Library and museum development; Cultural development and
tourism; Science policy and planning; Basic science teaching and
research; M a n and his environment; Natural resources research;
Hydrology; Oceanography; Agricultural education and sciences;
Technical and technological education and research.
The Organizationsaction on these priorities nevertheless remains
so woefully inadequate in view of the enormity of the problems and
needs ofour Member States that for me personally the real meaning
and intention of Unescos operational role has always remained
locked up in that Indian proverb.
Yet the first, most basic, rather simple and obviously operational
problem remains today what it was eighteen years ago;it is still the
problem of expansion.The number of Member States,now I 25,has
quadrupled in twenty years. The sixteen operational priorities to
which I have just referred have evolved from experience, are well
tried and tested, and have General Conference approval. The
Secretariat, the administrative mechanism, is a compact, well-
trained and effective professional instrument at the service of the
Organization. Three-fourthsof the professional staff are at work in
Asia, Africa, Latin America and southern Europe.
In order to improve the Secretariatsperformance,increasing its
efficiency and diminishing such wastage as may exist,a regular and
systematic programme of general and technical inspection has been
instituted by theDirector-General, atfirstunder my personal direction
and later extended and multiplied under m y general supervision.
Further, in order to ensure that Unescos programmes conform
both to the broad policy, the specific technical purposes, of the
Organization and the stated objectives of the countries develop-
ment plans, a system of scientific evaluation has been built into the
programme which will eventually cover all the major projects, and
on which I w ill dwell in detail in the next chapter. I can therefore
attest to the high quality of the staffwhich Unesco is placing at the
service of Member States. They stand ready to move into large-
scale operation at low cost. Indeed, we are now prepared and
equipped to carry on a low-cost fight against underdevelopment,
at the scale and with the dimensions commensurate with the over-
all attack I have suggested in Chapter IO,in discussing the Second
Development Decade.
The stage is therefore set for the question that Unesco will face
again in the next two decades. W ill we have the resources to meet
the needs of the Member States?
Let my country awake

A correspondent from the Swedish newspaper Suenska Dagbladet

summed up this problem with a question: Youknow the budget of
your Organization is less than that of the University College of
Utah,not to mention that of Berkeley or Michigan. When are your
Member States going to give you the funds necessary to be the
World Education and Science Agency that you are fitted and
needed to be?
Another operational problem with which we must contend is that
of amateurism,a problem arising from the very subject-matterwith
which w e deal. I have met virtually no one who does not have very
definite views on education. Even the more cautious ones who pre-
face their remarks with the words, I a m not an educator but. ..,
have complete national and international programmes of educa-
tional reform up their sleeves. Unescoswork attracts a great many
cooks and the strings attached to the growing financialcontribution,
sometimes entirely unselfish, can spoil the broth.
I can recall a visit to a Member State in 1952 when the President
explained to m e his doctrine of education,while his wife took m e
around to what I thought was a modern chfiteau,but which turned
out to be a primary school on the outskirts of the capital.The wast-
ages of building and staff and the misdirected curriculum that they
represented are something that the national educational council of
that country is still trying to correct.
I remember asking m y secondary-school English teacher in
Vellore why w e were learning certain parts ofliterature by rote. H
is
reply was in the form of a quote from the Law Member in 1853,
Lord Macaulay, who had laid down the main lines of the educa-
tional programme for India.
At the national conference ofone ofour National Commissions an
eminent financier gave the keynote address on the educational
problems and priorities ofthe developing countries.I recently heard
a highly placed banker express his grave misgivings about the edu-
cational and social advisability of Unescos experimental literacy
programme. A team of economists was sent by the Economic and
Social Council to evaluate the impact of ten years of technical
assistance by the United Nations family on the development of one
ofour Asian Member States.Their conclusion was that the Karachi
Plan, by means of which the Asian countries decided to reach the
goal of universal primary education by 1980,was the wrong objec-
tive for that country.
Probably more serious for the future is the problem of techno-
cracy.Here we are on difficult ground.As we have seen,the question

268
 Even a blade of grass

of how much education and science is not a matter purely for the
educatorsand scientists;the economists and planners must also have
their say.
What education and what science,on the other hand, as opposed
to how much, are the sole concern of the educator and the scientist,
and here the dangers of technocracy enter the picture. Indeed,it
seems particularly tempting for some economists and planners to
slip from deciding how much education and science to deciding its
nature and content.Here again,there is an ambiguity. I accept the
fact that no one should be asked to buy a pig in a poke, that the
man who pays the piper also calls the tune.I a m not suggesting that
the educator and scientist should receive millions on the basis of
blind trust. I would go further. In our kind of atomized and over-
specialized world, I believe it is both necessary and desirable for the
specialist-the educator and the scientist-to explain and justify the
nature and content of his programme to the non-specialist.But the
latter should not decide their nature and content, and this is a
present and future danger.
Recently,for example,Thailand was worried about the wastage
rate of its primary and secondary school system and decided to set
up an educationalresearch office to study the problem. It submitted
a request for Special Fund assistance from the United Nations
Development Programme. The reply was a proposal to turn this
basic and much-needed educational reform programme into a
series of manpower studies.
Another Member State,Jordan, wished to make science part of
its national thought and culture. It decided to open its first faculty
of science in its only and newly established university, and to this
end requested aid. This aid was promised on condition that the
faculty of science be transformed into a faculty of education for
training secondary-schoolscience teachers.
Only a few years ago, the chairman of the UNDP Governing
Council, in introducing that counciis report to the Economic
and Social Council, said that his council may formulate, in the
future, recommendations, if not directives, to the Specialized
Agencies, and thus become the central directing organ of all
the technical-assistance activities of the United Nations system.
Does such a proposal mean that a non-educational and non-
scientific organ would decide on matters completely outside
its competence, such as the number, location and type of pro-
grammes of our educational-planninginstitutes,the content of our
science-teaching activities and the validity of our hydrological
Let m y country awake

and oceanographic projects? It would also prevent Unesco from

executing the mandate given to it in Article 26 of the Universal
Declaration to determine what education is and what science is.
Unescos response to this double threat of amateurism and
technocracy is to integrate all resources and programmes relating
to education and science at both the international and national
levels. The General Conference,at its thirteenth session,established
in Resolution 6.I clear directives and criteria for Unesco to become
the international focal point and integrating force for all resources
and programmes which are or will be devoted to education and
science. In the years ahead, these criteria and directives must be
put into force faithfully without fear or favour.
At the national level,however, there is often no such integrating
force, and there, Unesco National Commissions can and must
take on a new urgent task: the integration at the national level of
all resources available for education and science. The Indian
Educational Commission, after years of work and reflection
calling upon the most eminent educators,scientists and intellectual
figures in India and abroad,has defined a philosophy of education
for that vast subcontinent and recommended a twenty-year
education and science plan. Responsibility for the external ex-
ecution of the plan is entrusted to the Indian National Commission
for Unesco.
In m y view, this pioneering effort provides an example which
I would hope could be followed in due course by other National
Commissions, taking into account of course their particular
characteristics and circumstances. The responsibility of the United
Nations Development Programme at the international level, and
that of the Ministry of Planning at the national level,to co-ordinate
successfully all development resources requires that the Unesco
General Conference and each National Commission first carry
out their integration task.
A present ancillary concern of Unesco which will be vital in
the future is to harmonize bilateral aid programmes in the edu-
cation and science fields. The General Conference called attention
to the need for further exploration of this subject. To m y mind
there is no question but that multilateral co-operationis the wave
of the future;however, I personally do not share the belief that
there is some kind of duality between bilateral and multilateral
programmes. At this time it is evident that both types are needed
and Member States should not be required to make a choice
between them.
 Even a blade of grass

I also accept for obvious political reasons that, for some

time to come, bilateral resources will greatly exceed multilateral
ones. O n the other hand, the present disproportion, 16 to I, is
an invitation to wastage and abuse and stands in need of correc-
tion.
The issue of increased co-operation between multilateral and
bilateral programmes has repeatedly been raised in Unesco, with
some results. Some Unesco projects, such as the Latin American
Educational Planning Centre at Santiago de Chile,have functioned
because of fellowships or consultants made available to the govern-
ments by the United States bilateral programme. More recently,
the Indonesian and Ivory Coast governments established machinery
under their Ministers of Education to integrate the aid to their
education and science systems being provided by five United
Nations programmes and eleven bilateral, governmental and
private agencies. But all these pilot experiences are still inadequate
to correct the wastage due to rivalry and competition,the confusion
due to the absence of an approved doctrine and the dispersion
due to disagreement on priority areas.
Several ways of remedying this situation are open to the General
Conference and Member States. One would be the contribution of
resources, on a voluntary basis, for Unescos programme in each
country as worked out with the government concerned. This, I
believe, is the wave of the future. The United States has done this
with the media programme of the International Institute of Edu-
cational Planning, as France has with the regional planning team
in Dakar and the Soviet Union with the Somalia textbooks pro-
gramme. Sweden has done the same thing for our African womens
programme, and the Swedish government has recently concluded
an agreement with Unesco under which, every year,a number of
country projects requested by governments will be financed by a
trust fund made available to the Organization. Another possibility
is for donor governments to join in Unesco planned and operated
projects, as is already the case with a number of UNDP (Special
Fund) projects like the Federal Teachers Training College in
Lagos and the Instituteof Technology in Bombay. Finally Unescos
Literacy Fund, established by the trail-blazingcontribution of the
Shah of Iran,consisting of one day of the military budget of that
country, and followed by the President of Mali, remains open to
further contributions. Unfortunately this initiative has not yet
been followed by others,in particular those governments with the
heaviest military budgets.
Let m y country awake

Unescos harmonizing action, however, means that it aids the

Member State concerned in planning its educational and scientific
sectors,in defining its priorities and in developing the resulting
projects. These projects then constitute the subject of negotiation
and action between bilateral financial and technical authorities,
Unesco and the Member States concerned. Such harmonizing
action with various Asian, African and Latin American Member
Stateshasbeen undertakenwith thebilateral programmesofCanada,
Denmark, Finland, Federal Republic of Germany, Netherlands,
New Zealand, Norway, Sweden,and on a large scale and in a sys-
tematic manner with those of Mexico and Spain.For the next few
years,asbilateral programmes continueto play a major part in devel-
opment aid this type of relationship requires particular attention.
These, then, are the major general problems facing Unescos
operational action in the next decade: the severe limitations
imposed upon its resources; the encroachment of technocracy;
and the need for greater harmonization with the much more massive
but never the less inadequate bilateral programmes of assistance.
I would like now to turn to a task more difficult than that of
identifying general problems, and in doing so will limit myself
to educational and scientific assistance, which remains Unescos
major operational priority. Looking at the growing, complex and
fascinating international programme of educational and science
assistancewhich has been carried out over the past decade,a balance
sheet can be established. Can w e proceed from such a reckoning to
the elaboration of a philosophy offuture educational assistance?

A balance sheet of a decade

of educational assistance
The first entry shown on the balance sheet is that international
educational assistance is both old and new. In the case of private
agencies, particularly the religious and charitable foundations,it
has a long history. In Asia, for example, Asokas educational
missions to Ceylon and South-East Asia in the third century,
Fa-Hiensassistance to Nalanda in the seventh century,the training
and education in Al-Azhar, dating back to the tenth century,
of students from the Arab countries,the Indian subcontinent, Iran
and Afghanistan, Indonesia and Malaysia, on to the massive
educational assistance made available not only to Asian countries
and peoples, but also to those of Africa and Latin America by the
Catholic and Protestant churches of the West since the seventeenth
 Even a blade of grass

century,are all reminders of the hoary and continuous tradition of

private educational assistance. It is in the area of government-to-
government educational assistance and in the intergovernmental
co-operation represented by Unesco and the United Nations
family of agencies that there is something in the nature of a new
dimension in educational assistance-a dimension whose horizons
are only a decade and a half old.
A second feature of this programme is its universality and
comprehensiveness. The universality of educational assistance
is evidenced by the fact that all 125 Member States are involved
through Unesco and that forty-seven governments and agencies
are engaged in a major way in this traffic. Even more, it is the
subject-matter of the assistance which is universal in nature.
Knowledge is universal;education is global;science is our common
heritage. Being comprehensive, educational assistance operates
at all levels,in all forms and fields of education.If no part of edu-
cation is outside its scope or reach, it is because as a system all
parts of education are interrelated.
A third entry is that educational assistance has made the start
of a real contribution to educational development, particularly
in the fields of teacher education,technical and vocational training
and in the common acceptance ofthe educational planning tool. The
startthusmade by educational assistancehighlights the vast area still
tobe charted.These are the areasof educational reform and research
where, in some cases,assistance has yet to make a real beginning.
A fourth impression is that Unesco is emerging not only as the
international standard-setter and clearing-house of educational
information and scientific advice, but more important as an
increasingly accepted international framework. Within such a
framework, countries, international governmental and non-
governmental agencies,private bodies,teachers and students,adults
and youth, can co-operate to turn that framework into specific
educational and scientific programmes which they can execute.
A fifth feature is that this programme is essentially one of mutu-
ality and co-operation:in a basic sense there is no giver and no
receiver. The giver receives; the receiver gives. There is not one
Member State of Unesco which is so poor that it cannot contribute
at least one educator or one training place to assist another country,
and in fact all countries do make this contribution. Through
Unesco, Asian countries,for example, receive around 200 experts
annually from other countries and send out about sixty-five of
their experts to other regions. Through the Colombo Plan in

273
Let m y country awake

I 967, Asian countries provided 434 training places and sent

5,385 of their trainees abroad. There is no person working for
whatever agency who has gone out to work and help in the edu-
cational programme of another country who was not himself
educated. Educational assistance is not unilinear: it is a two-
way mutuality; and its moral and educational nature has a lesson
and value for all development assistance.
The balance sheet is not,however,all credit. In the debit column,
we see that programmes of educational assistance have been too
little and too late.The educationalscene is vast and the educational
needs of the countries and their corresponding efforts to meet them
are impressive. Unescos annual per capita educational aid to
Asian countries over the past decade as a whole, for example, has
ranged from a minuscule $0.003to $0.008 per person. Its assistance
in percentage of the national educational budgets ranged from
0.01 to a maximum of 1.2 (with the exceptions of Afghanistan
which reached 3.0 in 1965-66 and Laos where in one crisis year
the percentage went up to 5.8). For all developing countries,
educational assistance rarely goes beyond 4 per cent of the total
educational expenditure, which in turn is about 13 per cent of
the national budget, itself a mere 4 per cent of total national
income. Educational assistance is thus a small fraction of a small
fraction of a small fraction.This is due,in part at least,to the fact
that we are at the beginning of this new process of government-to-
government co-operation.In the meantime we must keep a sense
of proportion about educational assistance and not allow the small
assistance tail to wag the big education dog. Further, educational
assistance seems to arrive too late on the scene. It is not till a war,
a threat of war, civil strife or famine, drought or flood occurs that
educational assistance seems to take on important dimensions.
Educational assistance under these circumstances is nothing more
than disaster relief.
Another debit entry:programmes of educational assistance form
too small a proportion ofover-alldevelopment assistance,including
financial aid. World educational assistance represents somewhere
around IO per cent of total development assistance. For Asian
countriesit is around 3 per cent:in 1967,out of a total $4,500 mil-
lion ofdevelopmentaid to Asia,all educational assistance amounted
to $150million. This also means that the engines of Asian develop-
ment are in danger of grinding to a halt for lack of lubricants.
A third entry shows that programmes of educational assistance
seem to contain a built-in imbalance as between the technical

274
 Even a blade of grass

assistance component and their financial aid content. In the United

Nations context this imbalanceis particularly striking.In the decade
I 959-68,United Nations technical and pre-investment assistance
amounted to $120 million and financial assistance to $40 million.
And within the technical and pre-investment assistance, the
share of expert costs ranges from 75 to 85 per cent of the total.
In the educational assistancefrom governments and private sources
there is a little more flexibility,but the ratio of expert to equipment
is still round 70:30. As a result, there is a tendency in some cases
to request expert assistance where it is not needed in order to stay
in the picture, and in others to request expert aid as a means of
obtaining the accompanying equipment. The educational expert
then becomes a beast ofburden.
Fourth, there is no known means of relating the volume and
scope of educational assistance to any rational or understandable
criteria. There is no correlation between rates of educational
assistance and rates of growth of GNP or per capita income;
no correlation between educational aid and trade balances; nor
between per capita educational aid and educational performance
asjudged by any criteria,whether it be the strength of the receiving
countries planning mechanisms, the ability of countries to take
decisions on the hard and serious educational options confronting
them, the relation between their educational output and market
demand or other such indicators.This gap gives rise to complaints
of strings being attached to some aid programmes and suspicions
about political and military alliances. Whether or not these com-
plaints are true it is a fact that educational assistance is requested
and provided in a higgledy-piggledy way. This shot-gun pattern
of action will certainly result in precisely what is complained about
the most, namely that educational assistance tends to change
country priorities. Unesco and United Nations Agencies are
criticized at best for applying international priorities blindly to
national programmes and at worst for selling their projects to a
country regardless of its wishes.
Following from the above, a fifth debit entry reveals that there
is too much that is ad hoc in educational assistance, both in the
country and the assisting agency. This is one area where reason
does not seem to operate. Even the criterion of high-priorityedu-
cational projects, which is a kind of magic dust strewn around to
blind legislatures, remains an illusion. If all assisting agencies
have picked the educational priority projects, then it must be the
marginal ones that never had a chance of even being planned

275
Let m y country awake

which are being executed with the national resources thus released.
It is common sense that priority projects have a first call on national
resources and will be executed in any case. What international aid
has really assisted is the birth of projects at the lowest rung of
the educational ladder. The ad hoc approach in educational assis-
tance is for the most part due to the large number of separate,
autonomous and competing aid-giving agencies, all pushing and
pulling in different directions. The countries in turn find this chaos
a paradise, where, like Narada, they play off one god against
another in wasteful and uneconomic games.Whether in smallor in
large countries, the several and competing programmes of edu-
cational assistance with their differing criteria and conditions ofaid
continue to be both a source of confusion to the government and
the fountain-head of ad hoc programming, planning and edu-
cational wastes. They have not contributed to the discipline which
development demands.
A final entry in the balance sheet is that programmes of edu-
cational assistance are too often high-cost programmes. I can
recall m y discussion with one Minister of Education in Asia about
the establishment in his country of a fundamental-education
training centre. Looking at the final project frame which set forth
what the country must provide as a counterpart to Unescos
assistance,the Minister said in a tragi-comicwhisper, I a m sorry,
I cannot afford your assistance. Counterpart contributions to
educational assistance projects, particularly those provided by
Unesco and also those by some governments, make such heavy
calls on national financialresources and scarce national talent that
many programmes are either languishing like plants in an arid
desert or are stillborn. O n the other hand, costs can also be too
light;when projects are unasked gifts,they become white elephants.
Our balance sheet, thus drawn up, shows solid gains together
with some drawbacks which clearly stand out. This sketch of a de-
cade of educational assistance does,however, suggest certain clear
and firm guide-lines which might serve for improving our per-
formance in the next decade.

Philosophy of educational assistance

-a decalogue
With considerable trepidation and fully aware of the pitfalls, I
would like therefore to advance a ten-point guide-linefor future
international educational assistance.
 Even a blade of grass

First,all educational assistance will contribute to development if

it is part of the countrys development plan and is.built into its
strategy for human-resources development. T o paraphrase the
American saying, Moneymay not be everything but its sure way
ahead of whatever is in second place, economic growth is not
everything in the wide spectrum of our national or individual life;
but given the abysmal poverty and serious educational lag of the
low-income countries, it is almost everything. All educational
assistance set within this context contributes to economic growth
and national development.
There are, for me, no other pre-conditions for educational
assistance,such as a soundly rounded and comprehensive national
plan, a detailed manpower budget, ability of forecasting correctly,
modern management, absence of corruption, et al. Such pre-
conditions are normally derived from a modelapproach, that is,
by defining development in terms of the European and North
American systems and then identifying the qualities which those
systems possess and which the systemsofAsia,Africa or Latin America
do not. It is thus that w e run the risk of falling into the errors of
what Gunnar Myrdal in Asian D r a m a calls the modernapproach,
which in ordinary parlance means being a copy-cator repeating
conditions which exist in the developed regions. (Some ofthese pre-
conditions, like precise manpower budgeting, for example, while
desirable,do not exist even there.) Surely some parts ofdevelopment
in general, and educational development in particular, can be
triggered or fostered or assisted from without;yet to be worthy of
the name, to be lasting, such development must come from within.
Moreover, if the pre-conditions mentioned were present in low-
income countries,then they would not need educational assistance,
or would need just as much as the United States, France and the
Soviet Union request of Unesco, i.e. an annual average of some
$10,000.
I a m not saying that there are not in the low-incomecountries
serious, very serious,obstacles to educational development. There
are, and one way to overcome them is to build up a parallel edu-
cational pressure. That was the Napoleonic way to overcome
obstacles: on sengage; puis on voit.
Second, all educational aid is a call to the receiving country to
demonstrate its capacity to use the international resources made
available to it in the most effective and economic way.In its nega-
tive aspects this means ruling out prestige projects,which involve a
vast array of fast-deteriorating,highly sophisticated and usually

277
Let m y country awake

unneeded equipment,half-bakedplans which are used for platform

oratory purposes and improvised programmes which have no roots
in the native soil. Positively, it means that the receiving country
must be ready, willing and able to assume the discipline which
development demands, to act through legislation, education and
information to remove and transform those social and cultural
institutions and attitudes that impede development and to promote
those which assure its people a little more equality, equity and
social justice,in short aninch of happiness. It must face squarely
its over-allpriorities,particularly its current expenditures on arms,
which average more than 50 per cent of the national budget in
some countries. It also means that the country must never bite
off more educational assistance than it can chew. But having once
taken on the obligationsinvolved,it must respect them scrupulously
in its own interest. Given the massive national expenditures on
education,it is perhaps true that educational assistance will always
be quantitatively marginal. Nevertheless, forethought, care and
good husbandry on the part of each country can ensure that such
assistance, although marginal to its total resource situation, is
decisive in its effects on teachers or educational reform or research
or educational planning.
Third, all educational assistance is the cheapest form of develop-
ment-cheapest in financial terms, though dear in spiritual terms.
The foreign-exchange component of the educational system falls
between 5 and 7 per cent. Expending no more than 4 per cent of
GNP and aiming ultimately at deploying no more than 6 per cent,
education is the largest industry with the biggest pay-rollin almost
every country. Educational assistance in this context is seed money.
One of its chief merits is that it does not demand scarce resources
ofany country.And for large countrieslike Brazil, India,Indonesia,
Nigeria, Pakistan and the United Arab Republic the role of
international aid is to enable and embolden the government to
embark on the path oftemporary but necessary unbalanced growth.
At a certain mass, it has tremendous multiplier effects and growing
economies of scale. A lot will go a much longer way than other
forms of development assistance.
Fourth, educational assistance is a two-way proposition and is
mutually beneficial. The theory of international trade in physical
goods is applicable to international commerce in human skills and
training facilities. The doctrine of comparative cost, international
specialization as between countries and institutions,the terms of
trade,the infantindustry argument;all these have their counterpart
 Even a blade of grass

application in the international movements of educational inputs.

Such movements are exports or inputs of human capital in the
form of experts used in the development process, or of resources
(teachers and managers) to strengtheninstitutions which produce
human capital. They may also be movements of students for the
acquisition of appropriate skills and qualifications.
This two-way proposition is unique to educational assistance.
It demands that low-income countries provide educational as-
sistance not only to other developing regions but also to Europe
and North America. The Secretary of a European Ministry of
Education told m e recently that he had learned to plan his countrys
educational system not from his European work and North Amer-
ican study, but through his observation of similar efforts in
Colombia, India and Tanzania, whose governments cannot
afford the luxury of educational Zuissezz-faire;he stated, moreover,
that his government had used the Asian Model methodology
deveIoped by Unesco or the Asian region, and approved by the
Bangkok Conference of Asian Ministers in 1965,to justify its in-
creased education budget request to Parliament. Last month a
European country asked Unesco for ten educational advisers to
help plan its educational-reformprogramme, specifying that four
should be from Asia, Africa and Latin America as they have actual
experience in planning and reform.Unesco sent experts from Brazil,
Colombia, India and the United Arab Republic and the results
were a comprehensive and practical reform programme, which
was officially launched in March 1969.
Thus, educational assistance is reciprocal, just as education
itself is reciprocal. The lesson learned by post Second World War
Europe was that the absence or destruction of physical capital is
secondary to the existence of human capital. And human capital
which flows in the form of educational assistance has this further
reciprocal quality: to be possessed, it must be given away. It is the
one piece of cake which lasts the more one eats.
Fifth,all educational assistance must in the future treat the
country and the countrys whole educational system as the
project. I hope we can leave behind the barren chicken-and-egg
controversy as to whether only a precise educational plan must
receive assistance (as is insisted by some donor countries and
agencies), or whether an assurance as to the volume, content and
time period of educational assistance must be given prior to the
development of the plan itself (as insisted by some receiving
countries). What is clear is that the time is now ripe to leave

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Let m y country awake

behind the seemingly attractive project-by-projectapproach. This

may have been a good way to start, but the pitfalls in terms of
partial viewing, illusory optimism and the ad hoc are now clear.
With our growing acquaintance and operation of systems analysis,
we have in a countrys education a system par excellence. Edu-
cational assistance should therefore treat it as a system and become
part of it.
Sixth, all educational assistance with its multitudinous sources
must be co-ordinatedthrough periodic consultation or consortium
arrangements for each country. I do not believe that low-income
countries should be asked to choose between multilateralor bilateral
sources. Whatever may be their balance or imbalance,there is no
call for an either/orchoice. For one thing, the multilateral role
and share in educational assistance is larger than in other forms of
development aid. For another, our primordial objective is to
increase the volume of aid, not to divert attention from that objec-
tive by purist proposals. The provision of educational assistance
from many sources need not be a drawback. What is needed to
avoid waste, inefficiency and confusion in and to the country is
simply a periodic meeting,under the receiving countryschairman-
ship, of all those involved in assisting it, together with joint and
mutual planning and pledging of educational assistance as a means
of reinforcing the system and its development performance.
Seventh, educational assistance must concentrate during the
coming decade much more than hitherto on the neglected areas of
educational reform and research development, embracing mod-
ernization of educational inputs, correction of educational im-
balances (in the area of agricultural, adult and youth education
and middle-level training) and promotion of science as part of
national cultures and scientific research as the motor force of
development. In such concentration, educational assistance should
aid manpower stock (through its out-of-school training pro-
grammes), manpower flow (through education) and institution
building (through managerial and financial help), provided in a
flexible manner. There are no preordained percentages or ratios of
assistance to stock, flow and institution building. There are no
universal optima for the provision of grants, loans and services.
In fact the mix, level and form of educational assistance can help
a countrys educational system develop its growth capacity in
such a manner as to determine the time element for its dependence
on foreign aid in general, and can enable it to make the most
effective use of the domestic and foreign resources available to it.

280
 Even a blade of grass

Eighth, all educational aid must be related to the stage of a

countrys development. In the United Nations there is general
agreement that the least developed countries need the largest
measure of educational assistance, provided for the most part
on a grant basis with little counterpart financial or personnel
demands during the next decade. The other low-incomecountries
which must be given sizeable educational assistance are those
whose performance demands it, as evidenced by their facing and
deciding on the hard options forced on them, and those where
a big educational push now could bring them close to the stage
next to that of take-off.
Moreover,in almost all low-incomecountries,salaries and wages,
relatively, absolutely or both, are a snare and a scandal,and defeat
development. One Asian minister, pointing to the growing salary
gap between the public and private sectors in all Asian countries,
said that soon only the feeble-minded will enter government
service,including the teaching profession. (I have in Madras two
cousins who are brothers with identical academic and professional
qualifications.One entered public service and is the state director
of agriculture.The other entered the private sector and is executive
director of a metallurgical firm. The latters emoluments are three
times those of the former.) Another minister referred to countries
like his own, whose fiscal policy, established on international
advice, has frozen salaries to the point where a person has to
scramble around getting five or six jobs to earn a sub-livingwage.
Educational assistance can contribute to the establishment of a
rational salary structure,which should first assure a living and later
a competitive wage. Each government should work out such a
system (the army often has such a system in developing countries),
and establish a date for it to go into effect (say the year after the
current plan period). Within such an agreed framework,the edu-
cational aid agencies should provide the appropriate interim salary
supplements to the national staff working on programmes that
they are aiding, so that such staff may earn immediately what
others will earn at the end of the plan period, and therefore may
work on a full-timebasis. I know that salary supplementsto national
staff are taboo in the United Nations system, but unless these are
faced and accepted,we will be running round in frustrated circles,
tearing our legislative hair and bemoaning in our councils and
conferences the so-called lack of counterparts and counterpart
funds in the development projects w e are associated with. For me,
the system of salary supplements, as one means of reforming our
28 I
Let m y country awake

inequitous wage structure, is part of this eighth commandment

of adaptive and adaptable educational assistance.
Ninth, all educational assistance to low-incomecountries must be
expanded. The present annual level of some $700 million must be
doubled within the next quinquennium and trebled by the end of
the Second Development Decade. There is no obstacle in the
receiving countries which would block this necessary upward
movement. The absorptive capacity of the low-incomecountries is
daily growing,with theeducational-resourcesgap widening as a result
of the demands of economic growth,the social aspirations of the
people, the political pressures for education and the desert areas of
educational reform and scientific research crying aloud for action.
Further, educational assistance has an additional urgent call in
developing countries today. Help is needed for the low-income
countries to regain their youth and students who are repudiating
the education which is to serve them, challenging the society which
nourishes them and wandering afar from their homes which
cherish them. This upsurge of youth is no short-term,one-shot
revolution. It cannot be met by repeating consoling words that we
were all revolutionaries once, or by rattling jingoist slogans and
sending in the police. The youth situation is related to much larger
issues than these and particularly to that of social change. Each
country and society must face in its own context this call of youth.
It must seek the answers which will enable youth to participate in
and contribute to their countryslife and be responsible for their
own destinies.
Tenth, all educational assistance must serve the subject and
object of all development and the finality of all education-man.
It must assure his inherent human rights and so affirm the equal
rights of every man, woman and child. It must promote under-
standing, co-operation,tolerance and charity. It must serve the
imperatives of peace and dampen the fires of war and violence.
Educational assistance has in this respect both a negative and a
positive function. It must not stir the flames of local wars and
tensions and must help in reducing heavily wasteful defence
budgets. It also has the even more decisive task of promoting a
spirit of understanding and an alignment of peace.
And here I must turn particularly to the teachers of our world,
of the developing world and the developed world. I must write
for those who are giving and receiving educational assistance,in its
most direct form.It is they who are at the heart ofevery educational

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 Even a blade of grass

system. It is they who make it good, bad or indifferent,who make

it into something living and unforgettable, or let it die in routine
and boredom. If there is to be a future,it lies with them: it is they
who are working with the boys and girls of today, who are forming
the men and women of tomorrow.It is to them I turn.
For often in their inmost hearts they must have felt a terrible
discouragement and helplessness. Often they must have despaired
of changing their condition and the condition of their societies
and the world. Often they must have wondered how they, in
their tiny, poorly equipped class-rooms,could stand against the
enormous, seemingly blind and hostile forces which are driving
our planet to the very brink. They must have wondered how the
small,patient voices with which they speak to their pupils could be
heard against the clamour ofhatred and the lust for power and the
clash of great nations, how the love in their hearts and the light in
their minds could clothe the poor, could give the thirsty to drink,
or the hungry to eat.
They might recall that proverb which I heard so often in m y
childhood in India and again, perhaps thirty years later, through
three languages all of which were foreign to me, high on a Bolivian
mountain peak 16,000miles away. It is a proverb which I will
always believe. I will say it at the end of my life as I heard it at the
beginning: (For the strong man, even a blade of grass is a sword.
And I ask them to recallwith m e the Gandhian truth which is also
the doctrine of Unesco, that all men are brothers.
I ask them to remember that only in brotherhood are we strong.
Chapter I 3 Towards
a community of thought

What has been called Unescos intellectual function,the promotion

of international co-operationamong specialists,is the oldest of the
Organizations tasks. Although inherited most directly from the
League of Nations Commission on Intellectual Co-operation,it
reaches back to far more ancient sources-to the first European
and Arab and even earlier Chinese and Hindu universities, and
in a sense even further back into the past to the earliest known
philosophers who held that there could be no truth that was not
universal.The word universityitself, as we have seen,although it
is used today in a very different sense, has part of its origin in this
concept-that knowledge is the possession not of any particular
city or State or nation,but of all humanity.
Yet in our increasingly interdependent world, perhaps because
of the enormous power which lies in modern knowledge and
particularly in science and technology, the walls of secrecy and
exclusivity are being built as fast as they are torn down. W e tend
to think more and more frequently of national science and
nationaluniversities,as if these were not contradictions in terms.
But science is universal or it is not science. The university is
international or it is not a university. And Unescos response to this
tendency to localize truth, nationalize knowledge and encircle
information has been to promote and co-ordinate,at the inter-
national level, intellectual activity in the broad fields of its com-
petence,to denationalize and widen,to the extent of its powers, the
search for truth.
T o cite only a few examples:
The International Council of Scientific Unions, which launched
the International Geophysical Year and the International Year
of the Quiet Sun, responsible in turn for many of our achieve-
ments in space today;
The International Oceanographic Commission,which has charted
the resources of the Indian Ocean, the South Atlantic and the
Mediterranean;
The Hydrological Decade, aiming at the establishment of a water
balance in our world of plentiful and scarce water;
 Towards a community of thought

The International Institute for Educational Planning, which is a

world co-operativeeffort for universalizing education;
The international commission which has just published its monu-
mental nine-volumeScientijic and Cultural History of Mankind; and,
more recently,
The international interdisciplinary programme for restoring the lost
equilibrium of man and his environment,a programme launched
at the initiative of India as the practical sequel to the 1966Inter-
national Symposium on the life and work ofJawaharlal Nehru.
In all these forms and through all these means, the methodology of
intellectual co-operationthat has evolved is that of the dialogue-
dialogue which implies simultaneously debate and struggle on
specific points of sharp differences and contact and tolerance on
common focal points. In this context, tolerance is simply the
privilege of the strong,just as struggle is the function of the co-
operators.Thus the 200 international intellectual bodies associated
with Unesco are busily engaged in building the foundations and
advancing the frontiers of intellectual co-operation in all the 125
Member States of Unesco.
Another expression of this expanding intellectual co-operation
frame is the twenty international conventions and ten recommen-
dations legislated by Unesco, with a view to furthering peace
and the common welfare of mankind through education, science,
communication and culture. These I have listed in Annex I
(page 301).
Yet it is on but one example of Unescos past efforts in this
field that I would like to dwell,if only briefly,for it seems to m e to
furnish a particularly useful illustration of the Organizations
work in promoting intellectual co-operation. This is the Inter-
national Association of Universities.
University men and women from thirty-two countries were
brought together by Unesco in 1948 at Utrecht University and
once again in 1950 with an enlarged membership in the Mediter-
ranean University Centre ofNice. The participantsofthesemeetings
had just emerged from the terrible deprivations of war. More than
half the European university community had been killed. The few
professors and students whom I met in Vienna and Budapest,
in Warsaw and Munich were living without heat,light or sufficient
food and there had been no contact among them for over six
years. They had never met their confrrbres from Asia or Africa,
and were completely unaware of the activities of their North
American colleagues.
Let m y country awake

These meetings were primarily European and North American-

with no African universities and only ten from Asia present. Yet
the precursors of this great rendezvous were truly international.
I have in mind the famous letters Einstein and Freud exchanged
on the universityspeace role as part of the university co-operation
programme promoted by the International Institute of Intellectual
Co-operation;the bronze statue of Paul ValCry looking down on
the Nice meeting as a reminder of European-Latin American
university collaboration, which he so actively promoted. I have
in mind also the ancient universities and earliest thinkers, for all
these seemed to be present at Utrecht and Nice,conversing across
time and space like the philosophers in RaphaelsSchool of Athens,
who speak to each other across the same hall ofthe Vatican Museum
through three hundred years of history.
These are the spirits which in 1950inspired the founding of this
International Association of Universities which was to be, in the
words of its charter,theguardian of intellectual life, the promoter
of knowledge, truth, tolerance and freedom and the servant of
society.Fifteen years later, 297 universities, this time from sixty-
five countries, from all over the world, met in Tokyo to reaffirm
and carry forward this mandate.
Unesco has thus striven from its inception to assemble,to reunite
and infuse with new purpose a world intellectual community
which the Second World War, despite its terrible devastations,
could not altogether destroy. The new means of travel and com-
munication have added a new dimension to this community;they
have made it possible for it to be a working proposition, a reality
and not merely an ideal,a true community in practice as well as in
theory.
Yet specialists are not long content merely to meet, exchange
views, discuss generalities. N o matter how much conviction and
fervour they may bring to consolidating the intellectual and moral
solidarity which their co-operation represents, the majority wish
first and foremost to work on their special field, to push forward,
often in their traditional solitude, the frontiers of a particular
discipline, to engage in concrete projects with concrete results.
This is perhaps the major lesson which Unesco has learned in this
field. If a world intellectual community is to exist in reality and
not merely on paper, in practice and not merely in platform
oratory,then it must obey the laws of its own economy and internal
consistency. T o have solid bases, to be real and lasting,intellectual
co-operationmust not only be desirable,it must also be necessary:

286
 Towards a community of though

it must come into being because of problems which cannot be

solved without its contribution. To be the kind of force for under-
standing and peace that Unescos Constitution calls for, it must
become a community not merely of sentiment, but of specific
thought and action on the common tasks which could not be
accomplished without it.
The first and most basic task in my view is the problem of devel-
opment.As we have seen,development is not simply an operational
problem:the forces it involves are immense and varied;the obstacles
it faces are complex and towering; and its real implications are
interconnected and ambiguous. For more than anything else,
we have learned that our opponent is a formidable one. W e have
learned that we must define the concept, the purpose and the
means of achieving it. And w e have learned that in order to do so,
we must pool the intellectual resources of the entire world.
Unescos first contribution to development has been through
education. It discovered and used systematically the technique of
regional conferences of Ministers of Education and Ministers of
Planning to define educational priorities, establish education
targets, and promote educational plans and planning offices so
that today education is, in every country,being planned as part of
national development plans.
As we have seen, the basic content which educational pro-
grammes now require is science,science and more science.Science
must thrive first of all in schools and universities if it is to be im-
planted and applied in every society.Because this content is almost
synonymous to the development effort, it now needs urgent
attention.Science programmes and science content must be defined
in teacher training, curriculum reforms, primary and secondary
syllabuses and new teaching methods and learning techniques.The
diversification of educational flows and the development of higher
education must take into account scientific and technical man-
power and research needs and priorities. Science policy organs
must be planned and promoted and a network of national scientific
research institutions developed and fed by the educational system.
A n enlightening illustration of this interconnexion of education
and science is that after two years of work on application of science
problems, the Economic and Social Councils Advisory Committee
on the Application of Science and Technology to Development
was pushed further and further into educational questions, and
indeed tried to undertake an over-allstudy ofeducational problems
in developing countries.
Let m y country awake

Unesco has therefore changed its planning technique and

transformed the regional ministersconferences into conferences of
Ministers of Education, and Science and Economic Planning. This
was done so that first, the interdependence of science and educa-
tion and second,their interdependence with development could be
clearly identified and programmes comprehensively and realistically
planned and executed.
In the next few years we will go further than this. For the im-
plantation and application of science to development is not only an
educational and scientific problem: it is also and perhaps most of
all a social and cultural problem,a problem of attitudes and values,
of change and reflection. In the end, the success and value of
Unescos contribution to development will depend on the change
which education and science produce and induce in man and
society, and whether they make men more happy, more just and
more peaceful.
This problem of change, the last obstacle to development, has
been all but lost from view in the process of mobilizing separately
our educational, scientific and technical forces, for setting the
goals and methods of growth defined as development.When we are
able to establish,at regional conferences of Ministers of Education,
Science, Culture, Communication and Planning, plans and pro-
grammes comprehensive enough to reflect man himself, the
problem will stand clearly before us. The problem is of social and
economic change as well as growth: of political democracy, which
is as important in some areas as increased production;of the fund-
amental freedoms and human rights which are of greater urgency
for some regions than GNP growth; and of land reform, popu-
lation control and the equitable distribution of wealth and income,
which have the same validity for some of our Member States as
improved productivity.For economic development is not a central
or autonomous focal point, but a sub-system of human progress,
economic, social, cultural and moral, in its totality; its final
objective is man himself. Of course, Unesco cannot solve these
problems itself. But because they are the real problems of man,
Unesco can and must contribute to the search for their solution as
it is today helping countries to find the means to create their own
self-sustaining growth.
Development is thus perhaps the predominant theme of Unescos
research and promotion of intellectual co-operation. And such
concrete research projects and programmes are interwoven
throughout the Organizations programme. O n the one hand

288
 Towards a community of thought

they inspire intellectual co-operation as their fundamental goal;

and on the other, they call upon it as the only means of
implementation.

Unescos research panorama

Unesco sponsors a wide range of development research pro-
grammes, in the broad sense of the term, involving an annual
average investment of some $250 million, of which about $25 mil-
lion-or some 40 per cent of its over-all budget-come from the
resources directly administered by the Organization.A representa-
tive sample of such programmes would include: curriculum reform
and adaptation;new teaching and learningmethods and techniques;
educational psychology;school buildings;functional literacy;basic
sciences; natural resources; hydrology; oceanography; brain and
cell research; seismology and seismotechnics;technology;informa-
tion techniques; social pre-conditions and consequences of the
implantation of science and technology; science, culture and
society; man and his environment.
From the point ofviewofresearch design,planning and execution,
these widely varying, Unesco-sponsored research programmes fall
into three categories.

Unescos o w n research. The first category consists of research under-

taken by Unesco or by an agent acting under its supervision.Here
each programme is selected, planned and executed by Unesco or
by an agent acting under its authority. The research into new
teaching and learning techniques undertaken by Unescos Inter-
national Institute for Educational Planning, in Paris, and the
studies made on the social consequences of industrialization by
Unescos South Asian Social Science Centre, in New Delhi, are
examples of this first category.

Sponsored research. The second group consists ofdevelopmentresearch

undertaken by a Member State in partnership with Unesco.
In this category, the actual responsibility for research design and
execution belongs to the Member State concerned, with Unesco
acting as adviser and agent. Basic-scienceresearch in the advanced
centres of the Indian universities, and curriculum reform in
Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia are examples of this category
into which, in fact, a considerable portion of Unesco-sponsored
research falls-particularly that financed by the extra-budgetary
Let my country awake

resources of the United Nations Development Programme, the

World Food Programme,the Trust Funds and the international
and regional banks. In this group, I should add, the distinction
between teaching or training and research is a rather hazy one.
Almost all training projects are grounded in research and have built
into them a research element of varying importance.
The research programmes of the great international non-
governmental professional organizations,in the natural,social and
human sciences, in education and mass communication,to which
Unesco grants subventions totalling some $800,000 annually,
should also be included in this group. The research carried out by
these bodies must conform to the constitutional objectives and
programme priorities of Unesco, but its planning, execution and
development are the free and autonomous province of the profes-
sional organizations themselves.

Co-ordinated research. The third category consists of research pro-

grammes initiated or stimulatedby Unesco,whose detailed planning
and execution rests with national or international bodies, with
Unesco playing a fundamental co-ordinatingrole. To this group
belong such research programmes as those in hydrology co-
ordinated through the Co-ordinating Council of the Hydrological
Decade,in oceanography through the Intergovernmental Oceano-
graphic Commission, in natural resources through the
International Advisory Committee on Natural Resources, in
the field of interdisciplinary brain research through the Inter-
national Brain Research Organization, and interdisciplinary
studies of the cell through the International Cell Research
Organization.

Research issues. Several questions can be asked of this panorama of

Unesco-sponsoredresearch.
The first and most basic question is, of course: why does Unesco
sponsor research,and so heavily?
A further question is: how does Unesco decide to sponsor certain
research programmes and not others?
A third question is: how does Unesco decide to allocate a given
amount of its own resources to these programmes and to call upon
the Member States and other concerned bodies to budget ap-
propriate resources?
A fourth question is: how does Unesco evaluate its research
programmes once they are approved and sponsored?
 Towards a community of thought

Rationale for research.The first question as to why Unesco sponsors

research to the extent it does,is perhaps too basic. It is like asking
the temple why it worships, or the university why it teaches.
Research is a part of Unescos very being-which is to maintain,
increase and diffuse knowledge.That really is its rationale-and
nothing else.
But other subsidiary reasons can be given. Unescos mandate
could not be fulfilled merely by transplanting existing knowledge
from one country to another, nor even by adapting knowledge to
the particular conditions of a society, and it certainly does not
involve following one particular national or regional tradition and
body of knowledge. Such a course would be contrary to the
multiIatera1, international-trusteeship obligation imposed on the
Organization. Knowledge must be adapted; there must be some
transfer of techniques and transformation of know-how;there has
to be synthesesof the best in all systems;and above all,there has to
be discovery and innovation to meet new situations and new
demands. Beyond all this lies the further problem of ensuring that
the growing volume and pace of information does not distort know-
ledge, and that the explosion in knowledge does not in its turn
smother wisdom, which is the source of all development,economic
and spiritual.These imperatives can be put in the form of questions
using the language of the Constitution:H o w is fresh impulse to be
given to popular education and the spread of culture? What
kind of collaboration among nations will advance the ideal of
equality of educational opportunity? H o w can educational methods
be suggested which are suited to prepare the children of the world
for the responsibilities of freedom?
As I have already pointed out, there are two other important,
although lesser, reasons which make up, from Unescos point of
view, the basic rationale for research. The first is that the nature of
an increasing number of disciplines, particularly in the natural
sciences, either requires for intellectual reasons or suggests for
reasons of economy that international co-operationbe the instru-
ment by which they are explored and developed. Because collabo-
ration among the nations in the fields of its competence is the
method by which Unesco carries out all its programmes, research
becomes, almost by the nature of things, a priority call on its
resources. Indeed,unit costs in the research field are generally so
high that many Member States look to Unesco to provide initiative
and co-ordination services for co-operative research ventures
which they could not or would not undertake individually.
Let m y country awake

The finalreason flows from Unescosconstitutional responsibility

to contribute to the common welfare of mankind and weighs
perhaps most heavily in the balance, notably in view of the
priority which the Organization has given to the promotion of
development. Here, however,we enter the highly complex domain
of research pay-off and cost-benefit analysis, to which I shall
return later.
I must confess at the start,however, that the most basic reason
for Unesco sponsoring research is not rational analysis but experi-
ence itself, which is confirming that research pays off, that it is, in
short,one ofthe most economical ways ofdealing with problems and
contributing to human welfare. Rational analysis does enter in at
the evaluationstage,however,and I shall be discussing its problems
and uses under that heading.

Selection of research themes. The second question is essentially a

refinement of the first. What are the reasons for which certain
research programmes are selected and others rejected?The selection
of certain programmes is the result of the conjuncture of the
priority research needs of Unescos Member States with the
constitutional and institutional resources of the Organization.
The intellectual and moral isolation of the war years made
internationalintellectual co-operationthe priority need of the late
forties and the early fifties. It is for this reason above all that
Unesco used its constitutional and institutional resources during
that period to sponsor and finance a large number of international
programmes which did not relate specifically to the developmentor
socio-politicalperspectives of any given Member State,but rather
to the generality of their interests.This involved creating specialized
learned bodies where they did not exist, as in geophysics and
geology, in the human sciences and, as we have seen, in world
university co-operation,and initiating research programmes at a
level of international generality in fields where they seemed most
urgently needed, whether it be in education for international
understanding, science liaison or the resolution of tensions.
In the mid-fifties,reform of outdated colonial curricula, and
extension of education to those who had been deprived of it, rose
to prominence with the entry into Unesco of the newly independent
countries,who made a reality of the Organizations Charter obli-
gation to assist Member States educational development at their
request, and led to the priority of educational and curricular
research prevalent at that time.
 Towards a community of thought

In the late fifties, science and technology emerged as the major

force for development and created urgent demands for the effective
fulfilment of Unescos scientific mandate. During this period, pro-
grammes were born and given high priority for research in the
basic sciences in Latin America, science reform in Asia and Africa,
natural resources, hydrology and oceanography throughout the
world, and work in these fields led, in turn, to more recent pro-
grammes,in which the broad themes of science,society and culture
are interlinked and made the subjectofhighly specialized and inter-
disciplinary study and encounter.
The institutional mechanism through which this process of
development and evolution takes place is twofold. The instrument
for screening and selection of research programmes is the Unesco
Secretariat,aided by a host of specialized advisory groups, includ-
ing the Unesco National Commissions in its Member States. The
decision to undertake these programmes, on the other hand, or to
accord priority to them is the sovereign responsibility of the General
Conference of Unesco, aided by the Executive Board and the
Director-General.

Financing of research. The third question relates to the principles

or criteria which Unesco uses in allocating a given amount of its
resources to the programmes which it selects, and in inviting
Member States and other bodies to make their allocations to such
programmes.The principle governing allocations is that of internal
consistency.It is a principle which has many facets.
There is the technical consistency of a programme. A research
programme,whether it be educational,scientific (coveringnatural,
social or human sciences), cultural or communicational,must con-
form to its own unique and autonomous features and scientific
imperatives. School-building research,for example, must embrace
both architecture and educational administration. Similarly,basic
scienceresearch must conform to the systems of learning,the science
policies and research strategies involved.
There is also the financial consistency of a programme. This con-
straint requires that each selected programme should be such as to
allow for its required minimum mass and for it to fit into the
financial and budgetary framework of the Organization. Where a
programme executed by a Member State with the aid of Unesco is
involved, this consistency principle further requires that the pro-
gramme correspond with and contribute to the development stra-
tegy of the Member State concerned. Of some eight technological

293
Let m y country awake

research projects costing $30 million currently operated by Unesco,

for example, UNDP/Unesco furnish only $IO million and the
Member States concerned $20 million.

Evaluation
At this point of the development strategy, the fourth issue arises,
that of the evaluation of approved research programmes. Unescos
evaluation of its research programmes proceeds at four levels.

Operational evaluation. The first level concerns the fairly simplistic-

administrative-operationallevel ofevaluation: determining whether
the componentsofthe research programme were efficiently handled;
whether the expert advisers arrived on time; whether they were
technically and humanly qualified; whether the equipment and
documentationwere adequate and arrived in time for the expertsand
national staff to use them on the programme; and whether the
training in research design and methods given to local personnel
was adequate.
These are the kinds of questions which this type of operational
assessment seeks to answer, in order to reduce wastage and to
enhance the efficiency of operations. The famous or infamous
operational evaluation of the Tanganyika ground-nut scheme is,
however, a reminder of the inadequaciesof this level of evaluation.
There the operation was IOO per centsuccessful.The experts arrived
on time; the massive equipment, seeds and fertilizer were at the
project on schedule; the local staff turned up and worked ac-
cording to plan. The only failing was that,at the end,there was no
ground-nut grown. Despite its obvious and basic drawbacks,
however, this type of administrative and operational inspection is
clearly the starting-pointofany effort to assure efficiency in research
programmes,and all Unesco research programmes are subject to it.
And even for this operational audit, when it is conducted in SUE-
cient depth, a simplistic cost-benefitanalysis can be used.
Unescos Asian Evaluation Commission (I 965), for example, in
examining the unit cost of the South Asian research programme
on the social consequences of industrialization, arrived at the
following conclusion:
TheCommission undertook an examination of the costs incurred
by the Centre in promoting and undertaking research contracts or
research, considered as the object of the staff time and missions
spent in substantivepromotion anddesign ofthe research (ancillary
 Towards a community of thought

expenditure) as well as a proportion of the operational costs of

the Centre determined on the basis of professional staff time
(other expenditure). [See Annex 2, page 304.1
The Commission finds that during the period 1961-1964,
every $1,000spent by the Centre on contracts related to research
or on research undertaken in the Centre was accompanied by
$445 I of ancillary expenditure and $1,055 of other expendi-
ture, or a total expenditure of $5,506.
The Commission considers that the costlines of this operation
and in particular the 1/5.5ratio of production to cost, casts some
doubt on the viability of the work of the Centre.

Subject evaluation. The second level of evaluation is an assessment of

how far the research programme has, in actual fact, conformed to
the many-sidedconsistencycriteria which the particular discipline or
programme area demands. Evaluation of Unescos research pro-
grammes in humid tropics,curricular reform,and tensions in their
first stages, for example, indicated rather clearly that neither the
research designs nor the financial resources allocated to them
conformed to the consistency demands of the disciplines involved
or the methods imposed. Hence they did not attain their stated
objectives. In the second stage, the programmes were reshaped to
conform rigorously to the demands of scientific consistency. For
instance, in place of the more generalized research programme,
todays natural-resources research projects, particularly for devel-
oping countries,begin with an exploration of specific resources in
the Member State concerned, and include in particular: (a) a
systematic inventory of environment and potential resources; (b)
research-laboratory and field, basic and applied-specifically
directed towards understanding ecological phenomena and solving
local problems of resource conservation and utilization.
Similarly,research on tensions has been replaced by modest but
systematic studieswhich will lay the groundwork for more ambitious
research in future.

Evaluation of objectives. A third type of evaluation is the measurement

of change which the research effort brings about or which at least
accompanies it. It involves defining the pre-research situation,
keeping a continuing record of all observable movements until the
completion of the programme and comparing the before-and-
after situation in order to check,in quantitative and non-quantita-
tive terms, whether the stated objectives have been achieved,

295
Let m y country awake

and, to the extent possible, how much less, how much more and
what besides. A subsidiary purpose is to re-examinethe objectives,
as previously defined,in light of subsequent movements. This kind
of evaluation is now being built into Unescos educational and
communication research programmes. It is also being adapted to
programmes of technological research. As regards research in the
natural and physical sciences, however, such built-in evaluation
has so far proved to be difficult and will probably require further
adaptation of methods. So much of this research is,rightly,random
and unco-ordinated,so many of its results accidental (Pasteur and
chicken cholera, X-rays, nylon, radio, stainless steel), that a
truly realistic method of evaluating it might seem to require
more refinements than a cost-benefit-consciousadministrator could
allow.
However limited such attempts at built-in evaluation might be,
they nevertheless appear to have far-reaching implications, in
particular because they require an effort to integrate the time
factor, or at least to give special attention to the time schedule
of research programmes. The shift from subject evaluation (which
characterizes programmes developed by the community ofresearch
workers through academic discussion) towards control through
the assessment of results, already involves a major change in pro-
gramming practice, from programming by discipline to program-
ming by project, which is typical of major programmes. Matching
programme implementation against programme objectives makes
possible further efforts to define intermediate objectives,to identify
mutual relations and relevance as between different research
stages,and to work out a coherent combination ofprojects concern-
ing, at one and the same time,research,development and produc-
tion, at least of prototypes. Such a trend can clearly be observed in
the evolution of Unescos world literacy experimental programme,
which is beginning to show some of the features characterizing,
on a much larger scale,the Grands Programmes ofspace and nuclear
research. (For lack of an adequate English term, I use the French
term Grands Programmes to refer to programmes which are: major
in objective;urgent in time;large in resources;and programmed by
project instead of by discipline, involving an interdisciplinary
approach.)
It is thus clear that,looking to the future,evaluation of Unescos
research programmes will have to have access to increasingly
sophisticated methods and tools,of which cost-benefitanalysis is a
valuable but rather limited one. Although these sophisticated
 Towards a community of thought

methods are only now being envisaged, their future use on a large
scale is but a matter of time.

Programming strategy as evaluation. The evaluation of objectives also

results in improving their selection and thus involves the emergence
of a programming strategy. The twin features of Unescos current
research programme-the choice of priorities and the stress on
concentration and consistency-are an implicit recognition of the
stimulating, emulating and pull effects which the Grands Pro-
grammes of research and their methodology have on scientific
activity and economic life, and therefore on Unescos programme
and the efforts of Member States within its framework. Further-
more, in view of the tendency to move from biennial to long-term
programmes and budgets, Unescos research activities are increas-
ingly becoming one reasonably integrated Grand Programme, or
at least a set of mini Grands Programmes,which go beyond the mere
intellectual co-operationofthe forties and fifties and theoperational-
co-ordination days of the fifties and the sixties.
From the point of view of an international organization, one
advantage of this technique is that it is likely to permit the achieve-
ment of better results from the pooling of limited resources. Just
as, at the national level, the systematizing effect of the major pro-
gramme creates greater efficiency, so it is conceivable that, at the
international level, a major programme geared to the economic
development needs of the countries involved would contribute to
a more rational ordering of tasks which,in any case, are divided to
to some extent internationally, and to the further organization of
concerted efforts.
Clearly, the concept of Grands Programmes represents an effort to
adapt existing techniques of management to the political conditions
and procedural constraints resulting from Unescos situation
within the United Nations system and vis-&vis Member States,
who remain its constitutional decision-making authority. The
problem is to bring about a programming consistent with the
development needs of Member States and with the constitutional
goals of the various United Nations agencies, including such
financing bodies as the United Nations Development Programme
and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.
This involves the elaboration of long-range programme strategy,
linked to inter-Agency co-ordination,which will concern itself
with methodologies of forecasting and inventing the future, along
with the initiation of new technologies specific to developmental

297
Let m y country awake

requirements (as against transfer of technologies by imitation),

with policy research in comparative national administration,
and with the investigation of potential responses to the challenges
ahead, which may very well require new patterns of competition
and/orconcentration of effort.
It should be noted that studies are being pursued in this problem
area,within the framework of continuing research on integrating
technological forecasting (over the different levels of technology
transfer) and aligning research and development (including
fundamental research) with the goals of society. Clearly this calls
for management techniques and programming tools suitable to
Unescos needs and the all embracing nature of the problems with
which it deals. In this connexion,I believe the Planning Program-
ming Budgeting System (PPBS)will provide an important research
tool for Unescos programmes of the future, as well as another
reason for a new emphasis to be placed on the concept ofprogramme
strategy. Indeed,I believe this concept will emerge even further as a
central one in economic research as well as in the practice of
decision-making bodies. Modern programming involves recourse
to relevance-treeschemes,and PPBS is in fact an application of the
relevance-treetechnique.

Cost-benejt analysis--a partial rejection. In m y view,it is especially in

this context that the cost-benefit tool should be examined. It has
potential which is of immediate and short-run application, and
limitations which are well known and obvious. The cost element in
any given research programme is the discounted flow of benefits
which have been given up by the allocation of resources for it,
in preference to other alternatives.The benefit element is the flow
over time of the results that would not have been obtained had
such an allocation not been made. At the simplest level, therefore,
the bench-marksof research programmes would be established in
terms of benefits and costs so defined, and an evaluation would be
carried out by measuring the extent to which the difference be-
tween them is maximized.
I referred earlier to the simple cost-benefitanalysis of the Asian
Evaluation Commission with regard to Unescos research pro-
gramme on the social aspects of industrialization. More recently,
Unescos African Evaluation Commission (I 968) applied an even
more elementary cost-benefitanalysis to our programme of research
and studies on African curricular reform. The commission con-
cluded:
 Towards a community of thought

(a) The ratio of staff costs to operational costs (for 1968)is about
3.7. This is too high in view of the fact that the staff is not
organizing any training locally, and that it has been assigned
modest objectives in 1968 in comparison with the important
sum earmarked for this year.
(b) If one remembers that one and a quarter million dollars
have been so far allocated to the Centre, and that this sum
represents the equivalent of the cost of at least 60 expert years,
one can hardly escape the conclusion that the funds were not
efficiently used, and that they were out of proportion with
the meagre results so far achieved.
A further and more sophisticated application of the cost-benefit
analysis-in this case to Unescos oceanography research pro-
gramme-is reproduced in Annex 3, page 308.
In the computation of costs and benefits there are, however,
many imponderables and limitations that arise from the non-
applicability of such calculations to new scientific knowledge (as
distinct from adaptation and transfer of existing technology). New
knowledge,that is, the results of science research,may or may not
have multiple applications and is likely, moreover, to have extra
economic (socio-politico-cultural) aspects. In considering them,
time is particularly important because almost every factor,includ-
ing prices and margins, is subject to absolute and relative change
and shift. And finally problems of optimization, of the choice of
means and ends, involve all disciplines and not only those of the
economist or the scientist. The economist is not unaware of these
limitations. But usually, after making a rather perfunctory bow
to the inadequacy of his tools, he tends to ignore it.
The lumpy nature of most research and the externals that
characterize many research programmes are a further distorting
factor. For example, the Unesco-Indian switch-gear research
programme has been criticized for its heavy equipment component.
The Unesco project officer commenting on the criticism of this
research effort states:
One must be cautious in assuming that a project with a major
financial allocation for equipment does not provide other benefits.
For example, the Bhopal switch-gear station has been criticized
in some quarters as essentially an equipment project. However,
there is no doubt that the project is also educational in developing
a staffable to handle a sophisticated electrical system and performs
an important testing service to the Indian electrical industry in the
development of equipment. The project may provide equipment

299
Let my country awake

but it also provides India with an important service entirely

operated by themselves and making them independent of outside
assistance. And that is an important function of all assistance
projects.
Similar external economy benefits apply to the Mekong River
Delta Mathematical Model and the various hydrology programmes
in the Sahara,Paraguay Basin and for the Volta and Senegal rivers.
M y conclusion is that for limited project-appraisalpurposes,the
cost-benefittool can be applied. Indeed,it is being applied increas-
ingly by Unesco for its research projects. Such project appraisal is
internal to the project and involves appraisal of the costs and
benefits of the research means and methods proposed as against
the expected results.In all Unescos programmes,such cost-benefit
computation includes elements of training and standardization of
methods. For some projects-particularly those of a pilot nature-
the computations must take into account the capacity of a project
to give comparableresults indiffering situations,i.e.itsrepeatability.
But even in such project appraisal, the analysis makes available
several alternatives between which a choice must be made, instead
of establishing a priority for one path. The choice between alter-
natives depends ultimately on the merging of three strategies-
research, programme and developmental.
And this leads m e to turn from project appraisal to programme
evaluation. It is undeniable in evaluating research programmes
that the future lies in the use of sophisticated tools associated with
programme strategy such as the Grands Programmes and the bringing
into play of relevance-tree techniques. But for the use of such
evaluation techniques to be effective and economical, the United
Nations must dispose of a minimum research resources mass-a
mass which I do not believe it has yet attained. It is m y hope that
in the seventies the resourcesavailable to the United Nations system
in general and Unesco will enable us to move into a full-fledged
programme strategy of developmental research.
Annexes to Chapter 13

I. Conventions,Agreements and Recommendations

A. Conventions and other instruments for which the United Nations
Educational,Scientific and Cultural Organization acts as depositary:
Convention for the Establishment of the International Computation
Centre, with Annex, 6 December 1951.
Agreement constituting a Council of Representatives of European
States for Planning an International Laboratory and Organizing
Other Forms of Co-operation in Nuclear Research, with Annex,
15 February 1952.
Supplementary Agreement prolonging the Agreement constituting a
Council of Representatives of European States for Planning an
International Laboratory and Organizing Other Forms of Co-
operation in Nuclear Research,with Annex,30 June 1953.
Convention for the Establishment of a European Organization for
Nuclear Research,with Financial Protocolannexed to the Convention
and Annex to the Financial Protocol,I July 1953.
UniversalCopyright Convention,with Appendix Declaration relating to
ArticleXVII and ResolutionconcerningArticle XI,6September I952.
Protocol I annexed to the Universal Copyright Convention concerning
the application of that convention to the works of stateless persons
and refugees,6 September 1952.
Protocol 2 annexed to the Universal Copyright Convention,concerning
the application ofthat convention to the works ofcertain international
organizations,6 September 1952.
Protocol 3 annexed to the Universal Copyright Convention concerning
the effective date of instruments of ratification or acceptance of, or
accession to,that convention,6 September 1952.
Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of
Armed Conflict,with Regulations for the Execution of the Conven-
tion, 14 May 1954.
Protocol for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed
Conflict, 14May 1954.
Convention concerning the International Exchange of Publications,
3 December 1958.
Convention concerning the Exchange of Official Publications and
Government Documents between States,3 December I958.
Let m y country awake

Convention against Discrimination in Education, 14December I960.

Agreement for the Establishment of a Latin American Physics Centre,
26 March 1962.
Protocol instituting a Conciliation and Good Offices Commission to be
responsible for seeking the settlement of any disputes which may
arise between States parties to the Convention against Discrimination
in Education,IO December 1962.
Agreement concerning the Voluntary Contributions to be given for the
execution ofthe project to save the Abu SimbelTemples,g November
1963.
Agreement establishing an African Training and Research Centre in
Administration for Development (CAFRAD),I8 December I 967.

B. Agreements adopted by the General Conference of Unesco for which

the United Nations acts as depositary:
Agreement for Facilitating the InternationalCirculation of Visual and
Auditory Materials of an Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Character with Protocol of Signature and Procis- Verbal of deposit
ofthe model form ofcertificateprovided for in Article IV of the above-
mentioned Agreement, IO December I948.
Agreement on the Importation of Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Materials, with Annexes A, B, C,D and E and Protocol annexed,
17 June 1950.

C. Agreement adopted under the joint auspices of Unesco and other

International Organizations and for which the United Nations acts as
depositary:
InternationalConvention for the Protection of Performers,Producers of
Phonograms and Broadcasting Organizations,26 October I 96I.

D. Recommendations adopted by the General Conference of Unesco:

Recommendation on International Principles Applicable to Archaeolo-
gical Excavations,5 December 1956.
Recommendation Concerning International Competitions in Archi-
tecture and Town Planning,5 December 1956.
Recommendation Concerning the International Standardization of
Educational Statistics,3 December I958.
Recommendation Concerning the Most Effective Means of Rendering
Museums Accessible to Everyone, 14 December 1960.
Recommendation Against Discrimination in Education, I 4 December
I 960.
Recommendation Concerning the Safeguarding of the Beauty and
Character of Landscapes and Sites, I I December 1962.
 Towards a community of thought

Recommendation Concerning Technical and Vocational Education,

11 December 1962.
Recommendation Concerning the International Standardization of
StatisticsRelating to Book Production and Periodicals, Ig November
1964.
Recommendation on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the
Illicit Export,Importand TransferofOwnership ofCultural Property,
19November 1964.
Recommendation Concerning the Status of Teachers, 5 October 1966.
Recommendation Concerning the Preservation of Cultural Property
Endangered by Public or Private Works, 19November 1968.

303
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3. Application of cost-benefit analysis
to Unescos programme of oceanographic research
Economic benefits from oceanographicresearchare oftwo kinds:annual
savings in costs of goods and services,and increases in production.
Such public investments as dams and aqueducts can be clearly
related to calculable economic returns. The decision to make the
investment can be based on relatively accurate estimates of benefit-cost
ratios. This is not true for research expenditures planned over a period
in the future of ten to twenty years. Experience showsthat research does
produce very large returns,but these are usually unpredictable in any
detail. O n the other hand,it is possible to foresee the kinds of changes
that could be brought about by research in a particular field, and the
value of these changes if they could be made. Such an attempt at
forecasting may be useful, even though the forecasts are based simply
on necessarily subjective judgements rather than on quantitative and
objective data. Decisions about research expenditures will be more
soundly based ifresults from theproposed expenditurescan be compared,
even approximately,with the results from other uses of the same funds.
It can be expected that both new production and savings resulting
from oceanographic research will increase with time. If the rate of
increase is proportional to the production or the savings, these will
increase exponentially with a doubling time of T years. If the value of
the annual new production or the annualsavings T years from now is B,
then when T is fifteen years, the average annual benefit over twenty
years will be 0.64B; for T = IO years, it will be 1 - 1 2B; and for
T = 7 years,2.0 B.
A continuinginternationalinvestmentin oceanography ata reasonable
level will be an essential component in bringing about annual savings
and added annual production ofmany billions ofdollars a year over the
next twenty years. Ten to fifteen years will be needed to achieve these
gains and other expenditures in addition to marine research will be
required if they are to be realized.
In evaluating investment decisions,economists usually discount total
future returns and costs to their presentworth,that is, their value at
the present time. In our case,this is determined by the return on an
investment at compound interest made today that would yield the same
future return as the research.The rate of interest is called the discount
 Towards a community of thought

rate. Because the results of research are always uncertain, research

expenditures are a fairly risky investment, and consequently a high
discount rate should be assumed, say, I O per cent. A dollar ten years
from now would yield the same return as an investment today of thirty-
seven cents at I O per cent compound interest; hence the presentworth
of this future dollar is thirty-seven cents.A dollar fifteen years from now
has a present worth of only twenty-two cents.
Savings and production increases from better use of the sea will result
only in part from marine research. Other expenditures will be required
beside those for research itself. The fraction of the discounted benefits
directly attributable to marine research will vary from IO to IOO per cent,
depending on the field of application. This fraction must be weighed
against the cost of the research. Calculations indicate that the fractional
return on the international investment in marine research which will
probably be made during the next twenty years can be four to five times
larger, during those twenty years, than if the same money had been
invested today at I O per cent compound interest.
T o be conservative, such calculations should be based only on tangible
and foreseeable economic results, without attempting to forecast break-
throughs,or to include any revolutionary technical innovations. Econo-
mic values cannot be placed on the human satisfactions that will come
from greater understanding of the oceans and the ways of life in the sea,
or on the benefits to national prestige and international understanding
that may be expected from international co-operationin marine sciences.
Several kinds of direct economic benefits have been omitted from these
discussions. For example, marine research is essential to maintaining the
production of the worlds fisheries at its present level, but we have
directed our attention mainly to the possibilities of increases in produc-
tion. The petroleum resources of the continental shelves have a large
potential, but most of the required oceanic research is carried out by the
oil industries with their own funds. Considerable savings can result from
better forecast and warning systems for tsunamis and storm surges, and
these also are omitted, as are the benefits to petroleum and mineral
exploration on land that can come from greater understanding of the
geologic history of the oceans and of marine sedimentary processes.

(Extracted from Draft of a General Scient$c Framework for World Ocean

Study.)

309
Chapter 14 The art of the impossible

I have written with some confidence of the operational and

intellectual functions of Unesco. The Organization is carrying
out these functions so effectively and gaining so much precious
and cumulative experience in doing so, that I believe the next
decade will see a change from the kind of selective, essentially
pilot activities,which limited resources continue to make necessary,
to a progressivelymore massive and effective attack on the problems
with which they deal. Indeed the reasons for expansion are so
compelling,so much in the very nature of things, that they can no
longer be seriously questioned.
Yet the supremepurposes of the Organization go beyond this,go
beyond even those treasures of the human spirit which are its daily
concerns. For the Constitution enjoins Unesco to promote col-
laboration among thenationsthrougheducation,scienceand culture
not for their own sake but tocontribute to peace and securityand
inorder to further universal respect for justice,for the rule of law
and for the human rights . . .which are affirmed for the peoples of
the world, without distinction of race,sex,language or religion.
The supreme role of Unesco is thus ethical and moral. It is to
marshal all the forces of its structure and programme into a
consistent effort to serve peace and justice, human rights and
fundamental freedoms.And I a m afraid that it is most of all when
considering this task that my confidence and what I suppose might
be called m y inveterate optimism begin to waver. For when I turn
to the ethical Unesco of the past, I have only a series of questions
to pose.
Like the United Nations itself, Unesco was created at a threshold
of human history, a moment in time which the Organization was
designed to perpetuate even as circumstances changed, to sustain
through concrete action toward a common goal,in fair weather and
foul.
The preamble to the Constitution expresses that moment more
eloquently and more precisely than I could ever hope to. Many of
its phrases, more than twenty years after their adoption,seem still
to deepen with the years, to inspire renewed resolve, meditation,
 The art of the impossible

hope and despair, they plunge so directly into the heart of the
matter: . ..since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds
of men that the defences of peace must be constructed; ...
ignorance of each othersways and lives has been a common cause,
throughout the history of mankind, of that suspicion and mistrust
between the peoples of the world through which their differences
have all too often broken into war;...the great and terrible war
which has now ended was made possible by the denial of the
democratic principles of the dignity, equality and mutual respect
of men, and by the propagation,in their place, through ignorance
and prejudice, of the doctrine of the inequality of men and races.
Yet if Unescos Constitution proclaims these ethical imperatives,
if all of her Member States have agreed that the Organizations
fundamental role is moral and ethical, they have also agreed, at
least tacitly, that they cannot or will not now agree on how it
should be fulfilled.
The images of Unesco at grips with this issue, the images which
come into m y own mind, are invariably driven and marked by that
contradiction. Perhaps m y thoughts are shared by those who
attended the ninth session of the General Conference held in New
Delhi in 1956.It was just at the outbreak of the Suez War and the
Hungarian revolt. The Prime Minister of the host country,
Jawaharlal Nehru, opened the Conference.
W e meet, he said, at a moment when w e can hear again the
dread tramp of armed men and the thunder of the bombs hurled
from the skies to destroy men and cities below. Because of this there
is perhaps a measure of unreality about your discussing the various
items on the agenda which [themselves] have nothing to do with the
crisis of the moment. But these very developments force reality
upon us and mould our thinking....Unesco [has come] to repre-
sent something that [is] vital to [human existence and progress]
and may be said to represent the conscience of the world com-
munity.
Unesco, the conscience of the world community? I know some
of us have pondered and worried over this idea. Others have tried
to escape it. But it reappears again and again throughout the
Organizationshistory.
I recall an official visit I made to one of our Member States
which had been bombed by a neighbouring country. I had with
me a cheque for $IOO,OOO which other Member States had volun-
tarily contributed to help rebuild the schools and libraries which
had been destroyed. The Minister of Education took m e on a tour
Let my country awake

of the bombed towns. With his back to the flattened museums

and cultural monuments and with the smell of burning books and
school desks still in the air, the minister turned and handed back
the cheque to me. Wedont really need Unescos help to rebuild
our schools, he said. Wecan manage it alone. What we want
Unesco to do is to stop this cultural desecration and moral destruc-
tion from ever happening again. For us, Unescos mandate is a
moral one.
There is a further picture. During a visit to a Member State in
the early fifties, which was then under the rule of a dictator, I was
treated to the usual round of official visits to schools and museums
and required to participate in the governments plans and pro-
grammes for education and science. All the countrys leading
educators were in prison or in exile, its creative writers and thinkers
living in poverty, leading silent, clandestine lives.
Every evening, when I returned to m y hotel room, they would
come to talk, staying on until the early hours of the morning;
men and women with frayed coat-sleeves,worn shoes and emaciated
bodies, the members of underground women and youth groups,
the silenced educational and scientific circles. One by one, they
offered to me, the Unesco representative, vivid accounts of the
real state of education and the almost complete lack of freedom in
their country. Weknow you have to accept the official invitations
extended to you and appear to accept the false accounts given to
you about the situation in our country, they said. But,for us,
you are from Unesco-the Organization which was founded to
promote fundamental freedoms. We are waiting for you to fulfil
that promise.

I do not mean to imply that Unesco has not tried to fulfil its
supreme function, has not attempted, if only in a small way, to
respond to these searching questions. The Organizations peace-
building work thus far has not been negligible. Its programmes
directed to cultural exchange and mutual understanding, to which
I shall return in greater detail; its many seminars on education for
international understanding; its out-of-school youth programmes
for peace, friendship and mutual understanding; its persistent and
frustrating attempts to safeguard the cultural property of mankind
in the wars and disturbance in the Middle East, Central America
and Cyprus and to ensure real education for the refugee children
there and in Africa;its project for the reform ofhistory and geography
textbooks;the scientificwork it has sponsored on race,resulting in the
 The art of the impossible

destruction of all grounds,in scientific theory and experimentation

for the doctrine of racial inequality; its associated schools project,
centred on primary- and secondary-school teaching about the
United Nations, which groups together some 600 primary and
secondary schools and teacher-traininginstitutions in over a score
of countries; its promotion of the teaching of international law;
all these represent what would seem to be a creditable record over
the more than twenty yearswhich have passed since the adoption of
our Constitution.
Yet when the yardstick of evaluation or of cost-benefitanalysis,
with which we are systematically examining our operational and
intellectual functions, is applied to this peace-building work of
Unesco, the question of its effectiveness might well be posed.
I recognize that carrying out an evaluation in this area is a
difficult and uncertain task, that there are no quantifiable base-
lines or bench-marks,that a long time period must be taken into
account.Nevertheless I think it is worth attempting,and will try a
very rough charting ofthe very vast and very dangerous terrain that
Unesco faces in carrying out its ethical mandate, concentrating to
begin with on only one of its facets:international misunderstanding.
T o do so,w e must first turn to the past. In Book One, I have
described at some length and perhaps with some emotion the
economic theories and doctrines which characterized the world
order prevalent before the Second World War. These theories,
which aimed in general at preserving a static balance, had their
corollaries in political thought and structures, in colonial systems
and in the ideas of men and nations with which they corresponded.

The pre-Unesco world order

In those days-seemingly distant, but only a little more than two
decades ago-nations and peoples were thought to be divided
between those endowed with intelligence and those who were
mediocre by birth, those with the right to wealth, leisure and
education and those born to work for a pittance, in poverty and
illiteracy. It was held as given that some nations and peoples were
called by divine right to be rulers and carry the burdens of the
ruling class, and that others were destined by Providence to be
ruled and to enjoy the benefits of a subject people; that there were
superior and inferior races, civilized and barbarian peoples.
The basis of this doctrine consisted of an assumed existence, in
the very nature of things,of a hierarchy of cultures,in the idea that

3'3
Let my country awake

there were higher and lower cultures. Education was a luxury

reserved for those born with the riches to afford it, a privilege
limited to those with the necessary aptitude and intelligence, a
facility reserved for the superior race, with its superior culture,
to which some selected members of the inferior race, with its
inferior culture,might graciously be admitted, once assimilated to
the others through some curious process of osmosis.
Was it the economic and social conditions prevalent at that time
which explained,if they did not justify,this dominant doctrine and
accepted attitude? Or was it the doctrine and attitude that justified
the conditions? In any case,one fitted into the other and each was
authoritatively expounded as part of the naturalorder of the
world in which men lived.
Until twenty-fiveyears ago, much of the world was a terrifying
spectacle of ignorance, poverty and disease, of vicious circles
leading to the degradation of the individual human spirit and of
human society, implacable as the punishments of legendary
emperors, immutable as the visions which have come down to us
from the ancientpoets. In India,when I was born,more than 90 per
cent of the population was illiterate,only slightly more than IO per
cent of the children were in primary schools; the economy was
frozen and on the verge of collapse. The average life expectancy
was 19 and the average annual income around 40 rupees. Handi-
crafts and small industries were fast disappearing; the mass of
unemployed and under-employed landless agricultural labourers
was reaching staggering proportions. And quinquennial famines
stalked the land.
The great parliamentary speeches were taught to every Indian
schoolboy of m y generation as examples of moral and rhetorical
excellence. And what did it mean to us, knowing the misery of our
land and its people, when we came upon passages such as the
following from Macaulays defence of Warren Hastings, the first
Governor-General, facing parliamentary impeachment.
The physical organization of the Bengalee is feeble even to
effeminacy,we chanted faithfully. He lives in a constant vapour
bath. His pursuits are sedentary,his limbs delicate,his movements
languid. H is mind bears a singular analogy to his body and is
weak even to helplessness. What the horns are to the buffalo, what
the paw is to the tiger, what the sting is to the bee, what beauty,
according to the old Greek song, is to woman, deceit is to the
Bengalee. O n we went to the height of our peroration: Large
promises, smooth excuses, elaborate tissues of circumstantial
 The art of the impossible

falsehood, chicanery, perjury, forgery, are the weapons, offensive

and defensive,of the people of the Lower Ganges.
Laughable as Macaulays views are today,I recall the shock that
went through m y system when I came upon this passage as a boy,
as one of those to be committed to memory. Almost fifty years later,
I could remember it word by word. And it was not Macaulay
alone, but passage after passage of the most sober, liberal and
judicious thinkers of that time.
This then was the doctrine and its world order that had been
established and was dominant in all five continents, with some
islands of relative purity and small but imperishable movements
of protest, when Unesco was created, according to the preamble
of its Charter,to assure thewide diffusion of cultureby promoting
the democratic principles of the dignity, equality and mutual
respect of men, and by eradicating the propagation, through
ignorance and prejudice, of the doctrine of the inequality of men
and races.

Unesco and the changing world

This was the background which makes it so easy to understand the
enthusiasm and goodwill, the desire for mutual understanding and
appreciation with which Unescos General Conference, bringing
together all the Member Statesfrom five continents in New Delhi in
1956, launched the ten-year concerted effort which came to be
called, in our shorthand, the East-West Major Project. The full
title of this significant programme was the Major Project for the
Mutual Appreciation of Eastern and Western Cultural Values.
And how could such an effort fail, if all our Member States so
wished and willed it? It was the very heart of the Organization,
the raison dttre of its existence.
I have spoken of Unesco as a symbol,a monument. So too was
this decision by the sovereign body of our Organization. It was
itself a great symbol of the countless struggles for equality and
independence and brotherhood. It was itself a monument to the
silent and intractable lost causes which had persistently refused to
lose,and which had stubbornly gathered impetus over decades and
at the cost of untold sacrifice. It was itself a kind of victory of the
idea of man.
The ten years decided by the General Conference for launching
its first action on this doctrine of man have now passed. For me,
there was no programme, no effort undertaken in those ten years

35
Let m y country awake

that was more central to the destiny of the Organization than this
project, no more awful contest and struggle that would decide the
future of man, than this concrete attempt to achieve cultural
understanding.
What did we do?
What did we accomplish in this period?
The dominant characteristic of the programme was that it was
carried out by 59 Member States of Europe and the Americas and
28 M e m b e r States of Asia, with 34 African Member States joining
in its last five years. This is the real Unesco-a framework of inter-
State co-operation-and this was indeed the first and most basic
achievement of the project: that it was carried out by Member
States,with the Unesco Secretariat as an instrument of liaison and
a focus of multilateral action.
W e do not have a detailed,comparative and statisticalaccount of
the individual activities carried out by the Member States without
reference to the Secretariat within the framework of the project.
I can, however, provide the record of what these Member States
did in liaison with the Secretariat, that is, the pulse and tempo of
the programme as seen from its central point. I should add,though,
that even if I were to recount everything the States themselves did,
it would only add quantity and diversity, without changing my
basic thesis regarding the projects objectives and methods.
The record is impressive and the General Conference has
recognized it as such. The first task was to carry out the function
of promotion of and liaison between Member States activities.
This was discharged by the Bulletin of the Major Project, called
Orient-Occident,which had an average readership of ten thousand
for each issue. Fifty-two issues in three languages were published
in the ten years.
The concrete activities included the translation of one hundred
Asian literary works, from India, China, Japan, Iran and the
Arab States, into English and French during the ten-year period.
The average readership for these works, which falls between the
higher readership of novels and pocket-book editions and the lower
readership of specialized reference books mainly available in librar-
ies, was about 4,000.The total readership over the ten-yearperiod
can therefore be estimated at as much as 400,000,if not more.
Some twenty international cultural meetings, colloquia and
other conferences were held, in which more than 30,000partici-
pants and observers took part, as well as a number of large audi-
ences. Moreover, most of the participants were professors, authors
 The art of the impossible

and artists who often communicated their experience of the

colloquia to large numbers through their teachings or writings.
As a result of the project, some forty geography textbooks in
fifteen countries were revised or are being revised with a view to
removing some of the sources of friction between hostile countries.
These textbooks were circulated to experts from different countries
who sent their comments to their publishers. Although textbook
revision moves slowly, it can be estimated that, in the long run,
this process will reach more people than any other aspect of the
programme, and at an age when they are most open to new
ideas and impressions.
Further, teaching of international understanding and extra-
curricular activities presenting other cultures were intensified in
the some 600 associated schools and teacher-traininginstitutions,
and perhaps some 500,000 teachers and students were involved
during this ten-yearperiod. Ih addition,twenty posters and photo-
graphs were prepared, illustrating daily life in different countries,
for distribution in schools. As a rough estimate, it can be said that
some one and a half million children have seen these charts.
More than 25,000 leaders of youth organizations were directly
engaged in cultural exchanges and study,and more than 5,000adult
education leaders. Through other out-of-schoolactivities,perhaps
another 200,000persons have been involved, through the project,
in the understanding of other cultures.
T w o hundred recorded programmes on Oriental, classic and
folk music, Asian poetry and cultures were broadcast over 200
broadcasting stations in 125 countries. The number of persons
who actually heard any particular broadcast is difficult to
estimate. In the light of the average number of listeners to
different kinds of programmes and the reactions to some of the
most successful broadcasts within the East-West Major Project,
however,it can be estimated that some of them reached 20 million
listeners.
T w o hundred and fifty articles on Asian cultures have been
distributed in 150 countries and have reached several hundred
thousand persons, with some articles reaching well over a million
people.
Lastly, some 120 fellowships for advanced scholars to study
Eastern cultures were awarded, and two associated institutes in
India and Japan were established,involving the work of some one
hundred specialists who were responsible for fifteen publications on
Asian cross-culturalresearch.
Let m y country awake

To sum up, it can be estimated that more than 700,000persons

were actively involved or personally interested in operations
conducted within the framework of the East-West Major Project.
As for the general audience reached by communicationmedia, it is
clear that several million, and in some cases as many as 20
million people were touched.
All of these programmes were devoted not only to spreading
awareness of traditional Asian values, like tolerance, politeness,
non-violence,simplicity, adherence to truth, intellectual openness
and curiosity,but also, and most of all, to stressing that there is no
geographic or cultural or regional monopoly of good and evil,
to bringing home to as many human beings as possible that the so-
called East-West dialectic, involving the confrontation of two
great cultural entities,is based on false and non-existingstereotypes.
No culture has built-invirtues and vices; there are wise and foolish
Chinese and ugly and beautiful Inaians,just as there are fun-
loving and serious-minded Yugoslavs, gentle and hard-driving
Americans, dry and jovial Italians,phlegmatic and warm-hearted
Englishmen.
This is what we have done, but what have we accomplished?
At the conclusion of the project,Unescos General Conference,
at its fourteenth session in 1966,considered the question. After an
intensive discussion based on an evaluation carried out by the
distinguished international Advisory Committee,which guided its
progress over ten years, the Conference noted that: The Major
Project led to a deeper mutual understanding of cultures and a
more informed selection of methods of combating ignorance and
prejudice.It further recognized that the programme had contrib-
uted to thedevelopment and spread of significant information on
various cultures [and] the building of cross-culturalunderstanding
and appreciation into school programmes and the development of
techniques to achieve this.
In ten years,Unesco helped people to acquire a deeper mutual
understanding of [Asian] culturesand used effective methodsof
combating ignorance and prejudice about Asia, says the General
Conference.Has Unesco really begun this double task-to promote
understanding and combat misunderstanding? W h o m has it helped
and influenced? What are these effective methods it has used?
It is right that we ask ourselves these searching and somewhat
sceptical questions, because ignorance, prejudice and misunder-
standing not only still exist as a live force, but have formidable
means and methods at their disposal.
 The art of the impossible

Using the method of sampling, I have relied on evidence that

comes to hand relating to the impact on the world at large of this
ten-yearprogramme,and of other cultural studies programmed by
Unesco-to show that examples and exponents of the most flagrant
kinds of misunderstanding, far from disappearing or at least
beginning to retreat, continue to thrive in only slightly more
subtle ways.
Less than a year after the Major Project ended,in 1967, a well-
known magazine with over five million subscribers and more than
twenty-fivemillion readers in I30 countries and territories featured
a lead essay on the theme, Corruptionin Asia. This is a sample
revealing not so much the political and social view of this journal
but of the defects of our information sources and the services
behind them. This same periodical, only one month later,featured
an article on Race and Ability which could have been a popu-
larized version of Unescos September 1967Statement on Race.)
The essay is a serious, semi-academic,semi-journalistic piece,
buttressed by an air of scholarship,wide reading and much delving
into sources, some going back to the ancient Sanskrit code of
Bhraspati and Confucius and Seng Tsian. Its content can be briefly
summarized.Dashes have been inserted were the names of Member
States,cities or persons occur.)
First, a dogma is set forth: Chiselling is a part of the Asian
ambiance,from the ramshackle capital oflazy little -to the broad
boulevards of booming -and the expense-account nightclubs of
prosperous -. Even rigid communist disciplinarians have failed to
suppress the fast-buckartists: from Red China come tales of profi-
teering in the communes;refugees report that shady officials do a
brisk business in exit permits.
Next, some geographical concessions are allowed. The evil of
corruption, to be sure, is not peculiarly Oriental. Asians rightly
resent any holier-than-thouattitude on the part of foreigners.
Yet despite Western short-comingsat home,there is a difference.In
the West, corruption takes ingenuity. In Asia (and to a lesser extent
in Africa and the Middle East) corruption is habitual and even
traditional.
Then religion is called in: In fact, corruption is really only
a Western word. The stern ethical injunctions against wrong-
doing embedded in the Judaeo-Christian tradition are nowhere
to be found in the other-worldly concepts of Asian religions.
Buddhist doctrine lacks the concept of a wrathful God who punishes
evil. ...
Let my country awake

Finally, sociology is added: To the Asians, what counted

most was not duty to nation but duty to family and friend. ...
Family loyalty is the binding force in Asian society. ...The ideal
is to find a successfulpersonage who will lend influential aid to the
child-and who will later expect reciprocal support.... The
mayor of a -township denounced the investigation [into corrup-
tion charges against him] as an invasion of his family privacy. ...
Rampant though nepotism is, it represents only a part of the corrup-
tion that permeates -from top to bottom.
And the conclusion is drawn: Itis the system and it isnt going
to be changed no matter who is elected. ... It is likely that the
odour of Asian corruption will linger for some time to come. ...
Asians are acquiring a taste for the material advantages of Western
life and developing a respect for the benefits of free enterprise.And
along with this taste and this respect,they are beginning to realize
that the old ways, which they call traditional, but the West calls
corrupt, are simply not good business.
A number ofquestions are raised by the confrontation ofUnescos
ten-year programme and its mass of documents, radio and film
material with this pithy, clear and lucid essay which sums up for
its readers, in two pages, the supposedly special characteristics of
more than half the worlds population. I do not mean the simplest
and most obvious question of which view ofAsian culture is correct.
That is a matter of faith and prejudice and indeed of our most
fundamental concepts ofthe nature ofthe human race. Surely every
nation or culture of this earth will recognize that some of its people
have vices and corruption among them.And just as surely no one
will find that such vices are inherent, built-in,and an eradicable
part of a system ofvalues, except in some other nation or culture.A
mere confrontation of the various points of view is sufficient to
demonstrate their absurdity.
What I have in mind are a number of questions about Unescos
very methods of work, over which the magazine article makes one
ponder.
What is the relative effect on our reading and literate world of the
Unesco programmes efforts and conclusions as compared to those
of the essay? I suspect that the twenty-fivemillion readers of the
essay now hold views on corruption as an Asian cultural value that
are clearer and more definitive than any appreciation of those
values that Unescos programme has been able to promote among
the more than twenty million people it touched in some way. I
realize that this question cannot be definitely answered one way or
 The art of the impossible

another. But Unesco is aware of the possibility. Its Advisory Com-

mittee has said: One commercial film could offset painstaking
efforts to promote the appreciation of values. Has the magazine
essay,which is but a single sample of the other, non-Unesco,world
order and values,completely wiped out all the efforts and results of
Unescos ten-year programme?
A second question relates to the methods followed by Unesco in
its programme. Working through governments and official bodies,
they are dispersed and scattered over a multitude of minuscule
activities,with the usual buckshot scatter-patternof consequences.
Should Unesco,in regard to its fundamental trust and mandate to
promote cultural understanding,pull in and concentrate its fight on
key segments of thought and life? Should it, in this area,stop being
objective and neutral,scientific and scholarly in the abstract sense
of the terms,which assumes that misunderstanding and prejudice
either do not exist or will simply go away by preaching and teaching
understanding?
Should Unesco come out in the open and use the methods of
partisan and committed in-fighting openly, clearly and rationally
against ignorance and prejudice? Should it not only expend its
limited resources in long-term research, aimed at arriving at a
scholarly consensus on the nature of European or Asian or African
culture,but also (although perhaps more indirectly) write this kind
of essay against false cultural images and the old order of things?
Should it produce films,radio and television programmes,exposing
the continuance and insidious spread of ignorance and misunder-
standing of cultures?
What of the people influenced,the grist to the anti-Unescomill?
The General Conference in 1966,in reviewing the results of the
programme, recognized that: Despite its attempt to reach the
world public as a whole, the Major Project had been the most
effective in informing rather small and specialized audiences in
many Member States. This result was implicit in the methodology
of the project,which,with the exception of displays and exhibitions
and a rather limited public-informationprogramme,was addressed
almost exclusively to scholars and other experts. It was suggested
that this approach is inevitable and not necessarily to be criticized,
since the general public in any country can realistically be reached
only through its own intellectual leaders.
The intellectua1 leaders,the scholars and other experts, have
indeed been the audience of the Unesco programme. But to hope
that, through them, the general public will be informed and
Let m y country awake

influenced seems to m e a little like whistling in the dark to keep up

onescourage.W e know for a fact that the sample essay from which
I have quoted has been read and digested within a week by twenty-
five million people. Unesco has taken ten years and spent a great deal
of money to reach,in one way or another,a number less than this.
And the quantitative gap is not all. For the Unesco audience of
intellectual leaders and scholars is already on our side. Addressing
them is like preaching to the converted;it is like carrying coals to
Newcastle.The sample essay,on the other hand,actually converted
some millions (five,ten,twenty?) who have no other knowledge or
views on the subject,to a certain view of Asian culture.
A second sample is related to another of our cultural-studies
programmes.In six days of September I967,a daily newspaper had
as its closing section a full-pagedescription in each issue of the life
and culture of the Central American republics, Costa Rica, El
Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Panama. Many
of the statements are curiously similar to the article on Asia from
which I quoted previously, although written in a different language
and dealing with an area separated from it by some 20,000kilo-
metres. In one of the articles, the six countries are described as
banana republics;in another, the bribing of customs officers is
graphically described as part of national culture; in a third, the
power of the military is depicted as normal and eagerly welcomed
by the people; in a further article, the country and its people are
described as habitually dirty and prone to grovelling.
H o w do the authors account for this bleak and monolithic picture
of six small and quite different countries? As their audience and
tone is less intellectualand scholarly,they have no need to bring
in sociology or philosophy,biology or economics, political science
or theology:
Howcan one explain? In the same way that one explains politics
in the Middle East:simply because it is the Middle East. Nor is there
a different explanation for Central America.
The outrage and despair which m y Central American and
Panamanian friends felt in reading this distorted account, which
purports to be an exhaustive study of their culture,is quite under-
standable. Written in the first person by two writers who claim to
have travelled widely for three weeks in the six countries, it has
been made to sound convincing and credible. I know that the
Clite who travel to Central America and have studied its culture
will remain uninfluenced. I know just as well, however, that the
effect on the preponderant masses of the reading public who
 The art of the impossible

have no other source of information and therefore no basis for

comparison,will be quite another matter.
Unesco is now launching a programme for the study and dissem-
ination of Latin American cultures. Should not the methods we
will use and the resources we allocate to it meet the real situation?
So far,$45,000 has been voted for preparatory work in 1967-68 and
$130,000in 1969-70,and what is envisaged is not in keeping with
this demon of ignorance and prejudice.
A third sample relates to the problem arising in trying to respond
to what Unescos Constitution calls the need to preserve the
independence, integrity and fruitful diversity of cultures. The
following example, while perhaps too personal, nevertheless
illustrates well the case in point. In a series of articles and publica-
tions from my own state in India-Tamil Nadu-the glories of the
more than 5,000-year-old culture which is found there are sung
at some length, and the dependence on that culture of Tamil
Nadus Asian neighbours,in Ceylon, Malaysia, Singapore,Burma
and even in faraway Fiji,are specially stressed. The series ends with
a suggested programme for the cultural streamlining of these
neighbouring cultures.
The problem of cultural understanding is especially acute
when it is a question not so much of small countries studying
larger ones and emulating their achievements,but oflarge countries
appreciating the unique cultural values which their smaller
friends treasure and preserve. I believe that many of m y readers,
although they may not be familiar with the problems of Central
America or Tamil culture, will know some of the major obstacles
that small countries face in establishing a viable basis for the
doctrine of equality of cultures. Whether it be the concept of a
model prototype society, the appeal to an emotional fatherland
or the theory of an original State from which a new and ideal
civilization grows and spreads, such problems are often similar,
despite the differencesin geography and the varieties ofcultures and
ideologies involved.Their effect is to attempt to submerge, stream-
lineand swallow the cultures of smaller countries. In sum, I refer
to the menace of monolithic culturalism or monotonous accultura-
tion.
Unescos small programme for studies of Balkan and south-east
European cultures is relevant in this connexion. As Unescos
Director-General,RenC Maheu, stated at the first congress of the
association running this programme,meeting in Sofia in 1966,this
programme is significantin regard to peace. Rising above doctrinal

323
Let my country awake

antagonisms and even ideological conflicts,it will give distinguished

scholars from countries living under different social and economic
systems an opportunity to join in studying a common history and a
common cultural heritage more comprehensive than ever before,
thereby demonstrating the fundamental brotherhood of the
peoples of this region.But what is the effect of this programme on
the public at large? O n other European Member States? W ill
present efforts tackle the problems I have mentioned? W il
l their
methods and resources be up to the task? W i
ll they enable us to see
how the plurality and richness of our diverse cultures may not
only be preserved from internecine strife, but also protected from
corrosion and extinction by larger and more pushing cultures?
A final sample relates to our programme in the field of race and
racial prejudice, but suggests some lessons which might be drawn
with regard to our fight against cultural misunderstanding. A
journal devoted to popularizing science includes an article which
uses apparently scientificfindings, first to set up a hierarchy of
races, and then to identify higher and lower cultures within that
hierarchy. In this remarkable expos6 about the cultural character-
istics of the Negro and the reasons for his racial separateness,
scholarly references are first made to the findingsofanimal geneticists
concerning hereditary genetic endowments. The conclusion of
human biologists, that there is not only an interplay of genetic
differentiation and rapprochement in the human species,but also an
equality of cultural capacity which results in its basic unity, are
then purportedly refuted by the animal geneticistsfindings,which
they themselves consider irrelevant to this type of analysis of the
human species, but which the journal says have been proved
relevant by the cracking of the genetic code. (Quite the contrary
would appear to be the case. The evidence to date continues to
indicate the universality of all kinds of living organisms and
indeed to reinforce the precept of the equal biological potential
of the species.)
The third step is to hold up the animal geneticists findings as
scientificsupport for the belief that Indians or Africans or Latin
Americans are inherently dirty, lazy and corrupt (a fact which is
supposed to become painfully evident when they cohabit with
cwhitecommunities), and not because of their culture or religion,
but because of their very nature. The fourth and finalstage is to call
in evolutionary trends and physical anthropology to show that the
different races of man crossed the boundary from ape to homo
sapiens at different points in time-the Negro, it appears to the

324
 The art of the impossible

authors, having crossed the last. And so the limited genetic endow-
ments of the Negro-nature has apparently given all Negroes
loose joints-account for his cultural achievements in dance
forms ranging from the jitterbug to the high life, the watusi and
frug, as well as his pre-eminence in sprinting and boxing. It also
turns out, according to thisjournal,that the white man crossed the
boundary many moons earlier. H is genetic endowment therefore
includes a brain capacity and structure which account for his
aptitude for science,his excellence in technology and so on.
In the field of race and racial prejudice, as in one other area,
Unesco set itself from the start to fight the evil, not simply teach
the good. Unescos 1951Statement on Race and its publications
on race and racial misconceptions became the shorthand guide for
hundreds of young university students who began specializing in
race relations; they were used as textbooks in nearly every uni-
versity; and they account, at least in part, for the swing of the
younger generation of scientists, sociologists and anthropologists
toward the equality premise set forth by Unesco, and for the
emotional climate around the race issue today. It was these
unequivocal statements which led to the withdrawal of South
Africa from Unesco membership in 1955.They also resulted in the
adoption in 1962 of the Unesco Convention against Discrimination
in Education, and in 1967 in the publication of a book on the
disastrous educational, scientific and cultural consequences of
apartheid.
The 1967 Unesco Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice
has now complemented and climaxed the 1951 and 1964 State-
ments. It declares in no uncertain terms: Current biological
knowledge does not permit us to impute cultural achievements to
differences in genetic potential. Differences in the achievements of
differentpeoples should be attributed solely to their cultural history.
The peoples of the world today appear to possess equal biological
potentialities for attaining any level of civilization. Racism grossly
falsifies knowledge of human biology; and Groups commonly
evaluate their characteristics in comparison with others. Racism
falsely claims that there is a scientific basis for arranging groups
hierarchically in terms of psychological and cultural characteristics
that are immutable and innate, In this way, it seeks to make
existing differences appear inviolable as a means of permanently
maintaining current relations between groups.
Is there in this evil ofracism and its cultural consequences,and in
our ways of attacking it, a lesson for all of Unescos methods,

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Let m y country awake

including those used in our programme for the study of African

cultures, which was launched in 1962,and on which we are now
spending some $75,000 per annum?
But it may be said, perhaps, that I exaggerate the importance
of cultural understanding and appreciation in the present world
situation,torn by conflicts and outbursts of violence, menaced by
inequalities. It may be said, perhaps, that priorities must be set,
that first of all we must deal with the burning world issues of our
time and devote all our efforts and resources to them before we
tackle an age-old problem that no civilization has yet dealt with
satisfactorily. It may be said that there will be time, when peace is
guaranteed by political arrangements, when poverty is conquered
by economic co-operation,to come down to the complex,painstak-
ing task of understanding one another. Yet is there not a curious
interaction between the concepts held of other cultures and these
very issues, and indeed all international relations? Does not our
idea of man affect almost all our effortsto respond to the two most
burning issues of our time, development and peace?
Would not greater cultural understanding and the Unesco
idea of man which is its basis help in the struggle against under-
development, for example, and in particular in marshalling
greater development assistance?
I do not know. Perhaps the main thing that is lacking is the
conviction that the thesis I have been outlining is a valid one. For
other rationales are being offered every day to explain the stag-
nation of development assistance and its decline in real terms.
The one given by the magazine essay on corruption in Asia, for
example, is both a further description of aspects of Asian culture
and a picturesque commenton the flow and manner of disbursement
of bilateral development aid to countries of that region.
Specific situations are referred to:
In - an equally permissive atmosphere has been bolstered
by war and galloping inflation. Though Premier -s hands appear
clean, the resort town of -is dotted with elaborate villas of his
generals, whose modest salaries are obviously being supplemented
from other sources. ...
Apacification official in -province, for example, was caught
collecting the pay of a 59-man revolutionary development cadre
that in fact had 42 members. Though many sidewalk stalls ofblack-
marketeers have been closed down,- still has a thriving trade in
illicit Western luxury goods pilfered or bought from huge stocks
brought in by -. Veterans of the -war are reminded of the vast,
 The art of the impossible

theft-riddenport of -. The -were really much better at this than

the -says one. ...
Neighbouring-where the economy is also fattened on a rich
diet of -cash,is happily exercising what amounts to Asias most
institutionalized system of corruption. ...
In-, last years-scandals,involving several Cabinet ministers,
stirred such a public outcry that Premier - felt it necessary to
regain the confidence of the people with rigid investigations.
In -, the national government was similarly goaded into com-
missioning a retired Supreme Court Justice to investigate charges
that -had vastly enriched himselfand his family in his sixteen-year
tenure as deputy prime minister, then prime minister of [his state].
But the judges verdict was Asiatically restrained.
And the conclusion suggested is to promote internationalcontacts
aimed at developinga respect for the benefits of free enterprise.
For this purpose: Increased contacts with the rest of the world
should help to develop greater understanding of the techniques of
government and business competition; and this, in turn, would
encourage the confidence of Western leaders and international
agencies, tired of seeing their aid money siphoned off into illicit
channels.
H o w similar this conclusion is to that established over 130years
ago by a historian and imperial administrator to deal with the
problem of the hierarchy ofcultures and in particular the difficulties
posed by lower cultures: Bypermitting the natives to fill a few of
the high situations,we shall gradually raise a native aristocracy of
our own, who would consider the security of their own fortunes
identified with the safety of the government.
Perhaps there is hardly any point in confronting the Unesco
doctrine that I have outlined, particularly in Chapter 2, and the
essays thesis on aid to development,they are so clearly irreconcil-
able.
Unesco holds that inequalities in development constitute an
inequity and are a danger to world peace, and has appealed to the
developed countries to double the flow of funds to the developing
areas. The essay takes the view that Asian corruption feeds on aid
funds and becomes more deep-rooted.(It does not even pause to
raise the question why, if government-to-governmentgiving and
aid raises problems of graft, bribery and condoned theft, more of
such giving and aid should not be channelled through multilateral
Agencies like the World Bank, the United Nations and Unesco
where these problems do not arise.) I a m afraid that there is not so

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much an accidental correlation as a fundamental difference in

optic, a basic conflict between diametrically opposed concepts
of man and his culture, that has led to such different conclusions.
The newspapers series incontrovertibly illustrates this point,
particularly when it comes to development in general and edu-
cation in particular. First it expresses doubts as to the wisdom of
eradicating illiteracy,by a characteristicreference to the hierarchy
ofcultures,this time ironically reversed. Theculture and way of life
of the Indian are of a much higher standard than our own,it
says of the Central American Indians; Away from his tribe and
his customs, he is nothing. Uprooted, half-civilized, he soon
becomes a human wreck, a drunk and a discontented slave....
Then it uses illiteracy, quite naturally, to explain and excuse
other things: theonly possible form of governmentis a dictatorship,
since the number one problem is anarchy: it is impossible to create
a democracy similar to that of the Scandinavian countries when
95 per cent of the population is illiterate.
I have spoken thus far only of the idea of development in its
relation to cultural understanding and misunderstanding. Yet is
there not also a profound and tragic relationship between the
concepts which underlie the articles that I have sampled,and the
horrifying conflicts,the crises and devastating wars,the humiliations
ofman by man which even now are bringing our world to the edge of
the precipice-in Europe and the Americas,in Africa,in the Middle
East, in Asia?
W e live in a world which spends more than twenty times as
much on war and defence as it does on helping the developing
countries to overcome the very causes of the coming conflagration.
W e live in a world in which the arsenals and the fortresses of a few
countries cost more per year than the total national incomes of all
the developing countries of Asia,Africa and Latin America.
I ask myselfi what can Unesco do about this?
And I compare our actual peace-buildingwork, on which per-
haps $ I million is being spent each year, with the $200,000
million spent every year in building up an arsenal of absolute
annihilation, a terror of total destruction. I can hear echoing
in m y memory and in m y heart that voice out of the past, the
sad, patient voice of Jawaharlal Nehru and those slowly
enunciated, almost brooding words with which he opened the
ninth session of the General Conference which later launched the
programme I have been discussing, our first major effort to help
men to understand and appreciate one another: W e meet at a
 The art of the impossible

moment when we can hear again the dread tramp of armed men
and the thunder of the bombs hurled from the skies to destroy men
and cities below.
I come back to the $I million a year w e are spending to
carry out our ethical mandate, and the $200,000 million we
are spending on war promotion, and I ask myself again and
again how Unesco, in the face of this imbalance, can represent
what Nehru called theconscience of the world community,how
can we pretend to be the inner voice of all men when w e speak in
such a tiny, hoarse whisper?
I think of the 600 schools and colleges associated with Unesco
where children are being taught Article 3 of the Universal Decla-
ration of Human Rights: Everyone has the right to life, liberty
and security of person. I think of the spirit and letter of Article I
of the Declaration which those children are learning.Are all human
beings born free and equal in dignity and rights? Are they endowed
with reason and conscience and should they act toward one another
in a spirit of brotherhood? Or is the doctrine of the inequalityof
men and racesto continueits currencyasit did when,littlemore than
two decades ago, it took the lives of more than 50 million people?
And I set that meagre number ofchildren studying in our associated
schools against the hundreds of millions of schoolchildren and
parents, adults and youth,who read daily newspapers and listen to
radios and watch television broadcasts which speak of kill ratios,
of debts whichmust be repaid by blood,of the need for vigilance
at the frontiers, of sacred war, of pre-emptive strikes and
enemy forces growing faster than our forces can kill them, of
inferior races and peoples and nations. What doctrine of man
is it that we are teaching our children and our childrens
children?
I recall Article 18of the Declaration: Everyonehas the right to
freedom of thought, conscience and religion, and Article 19:
Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression.
I recall that Unesco has made a creditable contribution, through
concrete projects and international conventions, to the inter-
national exchange of persons and the free flow of information.
Yet millions of people are today denied freedom of thought. The
consciences and minds of millions of schoolchildren are dulled by
the repetition of slogans and half-truths.There are many countries
where writers are not free to write, where artists are denied free
expression,where fear and distrust reign over their ancient citadels
despite all the provisions in all our charters.

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Let m y country awake

The art of the impossible

Can Unesco really do anything about these supreme issues,with its
pitiful resources and impossible mandate enshrined in its Constitu-
tion and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights? Can Unesco
learn the art of the impossible?
I do not know. But if Unesco cannot,what other agency could?
And before we speak of resources,w e must look further into objec-
tives and methods.
Should we not learn from the experience of the Major Project,
both fruitful and disappointing as it was, that there are differences
between the audience for our work and the public we are trying to
reach,that the world of public opinion cannot be reached urgently
enough, and with enough concentrated impact, through the
world of scholarship? That the more than twenty million people we
succeeded in reaching are those who did not need to be convinced,
while the thousands of millions w e did not reach,ignorant ofeach
othersways and lives,were thosemostinneed ofthemessage which all
our Member Statesand our Constitutionitselfhas asked us to convey?
Moreover, is it not time that we went beyond the neutral
dissemination ofinformation to the active support of a position,the
promotion of a doctrine approved by the governments of the
world? Is it not time to recognize that the message which Unesco
has to offer to the world is something which no scholarship,however
erudite,no science,however precise, can give to the human heart?
And are we ready now, after twenty years,not only to encourage
positive manifestations, sponsor translations, publicize achieve-
ments, facilitate exchanges,but also to confront the very doctrine
which the Organization was created to fight against? Is it not time
to struggle against misunderstanding in the same way we work to
eliminate illiteracy and racism, as an injustice to be stamped out,
not a scandal to be covered up?
It will be said that to attack is dangerous.Unesco must conciliate,
not divide; it must smooth over differences,not accentuate them.
I agree. And on this I want no misunderstanding. Unesco must
conciliate; Unesco must harmonize; Unesco must provide the
synthesis.But before accomplishing these ultimate objectives and in
order to achieve them, it must do something more.
History has taught us that it is by fighting against injustice that
we define human rights. Does it not have another lesson in store:
that it is only by recognizing our failure to see one another as
human beings that we will come to know what man is?

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Is it not by recognizing and by fighting against the distrust and

scorn and ignorance among ourselves, the humiliation of humiliat-
ing others, that the science of the human spirit will grow and
flourish? And is it not through this art ofthe impossible,that w e will
come at long last to construct the defences of peace, not in one
nation or continent, not for one race or culture or religion-for
these are transitory defences,penetrable as any other-but founded
in the intellectual and moral solidarity of all mankind?
I believe that this is the supreme call of the Second Development
Decade,the supreme challenge of the next ten years. I believe that
together we can answer these questions. Unesco can answer. The
time has come to begin.
 Epilogue

A word on what I have learned

-the human face
W e have seen that Unesco has three basic and interrelated func-
tions: the operational task of assisting Member States in their
development efforts; the intellectual task of marshalling the co-
operation of specialists in all the vast fields of the Organizations
competence; and the ethical task of building peace and respect
for justice, the rule of law and human rights. I would like now to
turn from these impressive, but rather abstract concepts, from
the needs and possibilities of the Organization and the challenges I
believe it is facing and will face in the next ten years, to a further
final task.
Many eminent thinkers have defined the idea of Unesco,
elaborated and systematized its numerous aspects, and drawn
conclusions therefrom. Some emphasize particular texts, others
particular practices or traditions or angles of observation, others
stress the budget and the administrative services, still others the
programme and its impact upon the educational, scientific and
cultural life of the world. All these approaches to Unesco are
entirely valid since Unesco, as the agency of man which sums up
all his strength and weakness, will always be reflected in the eye of
the beholder. And they are all part of the continuous process of
reflection, evaluation and revision which is one of the Organiza-
tions vital sources of rejuvenation and cumulative progress. Even
the most severe criticism,provided it is sincere and seeks improve-
ment rather than destruction, can supply important impetus in
Unescos voyage ahead,into an improved future.
Yet my intention in these concluding pages is not so much to
join in this process of evaluation as to portray one part of the
universe of discourse which makes up so important a part of the
Organization I serve.Behind the great Unesco events which I have
been privileged to witness and contribute to,behind the impersonal
texts and resolutions,the programmes and budgets and structures,

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behind the great world movements in education,science and culture

which Unesco has itself instigated and/or become associated with,
behind the impressive results and still more impressive challenges
that lie ahead, are simple human voices and human faces,human
beings coming from the different countries of the world, men and
women of different colours and beliefs, representing or coming from
countries with different economic and social systems, who have
come to Unesco to work together for man.
They are also Unesco, not only the books it has published, the
projects it has carried out, and the legislation it has adopted. In
m y experience it has always been the human qualities which
remain the most important in any encounter, in any great con-
ference or expert meeting, no matter what resolutions it has
passed or final report it has adopted. I believe it is the same with
any permanent institution,no matter how importantits functions,or
difficult its tasks.
Uncertain, difficult and ambiguous is this theme concerning
persons,which I now propose to explore,this subjectiveworld which
one never quite leaves in ones daily tasks, despite ones efforts,yet
which one never quite enters entirely either. I do so with a profound
respect for the men and women with whom I have worked, and
out of a desire to portray the truth of their service to develop-
ment. For that service,in a larger sense,is nothing less than Unesco
itself.
W e talk of humanity and human brotherhood,yet we can never
quite visualize all men, never see them in concrete,human terms.
W e speak of the service of man and often we forget the men and
women closest to us,with whom we work together in the struggle
for human betterment. Thus it is that the doctrine of development
and the corollary task of the Organization I have sketched in
preceding chapters is incompletenot so much because it is somewhat
personal and subjective, but because it is not personal and sub-
jective enough. For Unesco is above all a human institution. No
portrait of it, whether scribbled in chalk on a blackboard or
painted on a wall or canvas,can be whole and truthful without a
glimpse of the human faces, multifarious yet turned toward the
common goal of development,which are the Organizationsbrain
and sinews,muscles and heart and mind. And no personal statement
I can make would be complete if I did not try to portray even
within this very limited canvas what these men and women have
attempted,if I did not try to provide some sample image which the
reader might remember of that which I shall remember to the end

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 Epilogue

of m y life, which will remain the only image I have known of the
face of man.
I do not wish to imply that there are no differences among those
who participate in the great human venture which Unesco re-
presents, nor that the Organization operates in an atmosphere of
untroubled harmony.O n the contrary,reflecting the world in which
it lives,Unesco maintains and functions through a continuous state
of tension and a mutual adjustment of the varying sets of opposing
forces which are built into it. Its progress toward general agreement
is all the more significant, in m y view, in that the differences that
divide its members are real, that they reflect the basic concerns of
our time.
The budget of the Organization which is the infrastructure for
its development task; the question of Unescos role in building
peace and promoting development,in strugglingagainst the vestiges
of colonialism and in fighting against racism; the meaning of
universality of the membership of the Organization as imposed by
its mandate; the safeguarding of cultural monuments in countries
at war; and at the Secretariat level the relations between Head-
quarters and field staff:these are some of the points of tension. As
Unesco reflects man in his totality, it does so by holding within its
frame all these opposing and contradictory forces which dominate
his life.
Yet it remains the individual human beings, working tirelessly
to harmonize these tensions, contributing their time and energy
and often their devotion to making the Unesco mandate, even in
the midst ofdiversion and sometimes open dispute,a rallying-point,
a concrete reality and a harmonizing force in its own right-it is
still individual human voices and ideas which prevail most vividly
in my memories of a unique organization striving to exist and grow.
Which of these many voices should I now try to record? What of
the many ideas should the voices that I record explain? To stay
within the limits ofthese pages and to avoid a degree ofarbitrariness
I limit myself to the development theme as portrayed in the Direc-
tors-Generalunder whom I have served,as a prototype ofthe many
thousands ofmen and women,from whom I have learned what that
theme means for Unesco.
Julian Huxley, Unescos first Director-General,faced immediate
and multifarious demands for rehabilitation and intellectual co-
operation. Europe wanted its educational system rehabilitated.
Artists and creative writers looked to Unesco as a new source of

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Let m y country awake

support and inspiration. American scientists who had looked into

the horrors of the split atom and the bomb wanted the young
Unesco to take over the future course of nuclear science. Asia and
Latin America looked hopefully to Paris for practical help in their
development of education and science. Philosophers and humanists
looked to Unesco as the Ideal Republic of the wise and humane.
All these forces joined together in 1946 to vote an annual pro-
gramme whose cost was estimated at $100million, while the mem-
ber governments voted 965 million for that year.
Huxleys answer was the search for a governing idea which
would hold together this multi-purpose and many-faceted Organi-
zation. This he found in the concept of the advance of world
civilization. H e held up as the unifying idea a world concept,
secular, pragmatic and moving, grounded in human history and
the product of mans mind and spirit. H e defined the idea in these
terms: Iwould like to throw out the suggestion that for the purpose
of a unifjring and general appeal, the underlying idea behind all
Unescos activities can best be expressed in the five words-the
Advance of World Civilization. Civilization, because civilization
implies peace, and is indeed in essence the technique of peaceful
living; World Civilization,because peace must be global,and because
civilization confined to one humanity is not compatible with
Unescos Constitution,and is indeed provocative of violence and
war; Advance of World Civilization,because world civilization is in its
infancy,and because we need the dynamic appeal of a distant and
ever-recedinggoal.
It may well be that this strategy was in advance of his time, and
was way ahead of the rehabilitation needs of the war-torncountries.
Unesco was then merely a hope and a symbol. It had yet to win its
spurs-in any of the three areas in which it operates-intellectual,
operational and ethical. But Huxley was a visionary and his vision
of Unesco in 1946 was affirmed at the commemoration of the
Organizationstwentieth anniversary in 1966.H e knew as well as I
did that there are some ideas which simply refuse to die, particu-
larly, I should add, when they have such stubborn champions
as he was.

Walter Laves, Unescos first Deputy Director-General,organized

Unescosparticipation in the United Nations Expanded Programme
of Technical Assistance (EPTA).H e called me into his office one
day and said: You have finished your job in fellowships and are
now wasting your time there. The Director-Generalwants you to
 Epilogue

head a small development unit which he is creating in his office

called the Technical Assistance Unit-TAU, which in Chinese
means purity. This small developmentunit,I hope,will grow into a
mighty force purifjmg the Organization. That was a historic
prophesy of Walter Laves,for it has been in defining,refining and
discharging its development tasks that Unescos intellectual and
ethical functionshave found concrete embodimentand remained an
urgent and insistent challenge.

Jaime Torres Bodet was Unescos second Director-General.H e is

Mexican and so knew what development, and even better, alas,
what underdevelopment means at first hand. H e spent his pre-
Unesco life in Mexico, as I did mine in India, fighting under-
development through education. H is first and major development
programme at Unesco was the project for the creation of a network
of fundamental education centres. He created two-one for
Latin America, CREFAL, and the other for the Arab States,
ASFEC, which have become permanent development institutes.
Torres Bodet always regretted that he could not extend his
fundamental education network to Asia and Africa. H e sent m e to
negotiate its extension to India, Thailand and the Philippines but
the hugeness, plurality and lack of homogeneity of Asia defeated
him.Africa was not independent during his mandate and was thus
a closed continent for Unesco.
Torres Bodet instinctively and whole-heartedly backed the
early efforts on Unescos participation in the United Nations
Technical Assistance Programme. H e did not know and did not
want to know in all their many practical, heart-breaking but
gloriously exhilarating details the fast-growingTechnical Assistance
activitiesthat I was directing. T o him these activities demonstrated,
he stated, thatan increase of funds over and above the minimum
contained in the regular budget yields considerably more advan-
tageous results for Member States than could be obtained by
spending the same amount within the ordinary programme.
But what was memorable about Torres Bodet and what I wish
above all to record in these pages was his belief in man, his hu-
manistic faith in Unesco as an embodiment of the moral solidarity
of mankind on which he in turn founded his rationale for develop-
ment and human progress.Schools will be built,he said,institutions
will be erected with or without Unesco,but Unesco alone can build
institutions and promote development as a moral imperative. H e
preached human solidarity as the essence of Unesco everywhere he

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Let m y country awake

went-in Asia, at the United States National Commission Con-

ference at Buffalo, at the United Nations General Assembly and
Economic and Social Council, at the various sessions of Unescos
General Conference and Executive Board, and again at the Sor-
bonne on the occasion of the Organizations twentieth anniversary.
One of Unescos friends, listening to him at a dozen of these
meetings, remarked that each time he felt he was hearing about a
completely different Organization-but the single unifying theme
was the intellectual and moral solidarity of man.
And indeed all that Torres Bodet did and planned for himself
and for Unesco was founded on this aspiration and conviction and
was aimed at strengthening the Organization as the surest base
for building peace in our world, and understanding and co-
operation among nations. H is farewell words to the 1952 General
Conference were to follow Unesco for the next two decades and
become the banner for his successors. In m y mind they are just as
alive today as when he uttered them more than fifteen years ago.
They follow us still and will long continue to do so: I pray that
Unesco may one day develop a programme such as we,who had the
privilege of being present at its birth, dreamed of in London in
1945,and that,notwithstanding all obstacles,peace may be secured,
a peace which through education,science and culture,will ensure
for the world a destiny worthy of mankind.

Luther H.Evans, Unescos third Director-General,laid the firm

foundations for the spectacular growth of the Organization in the
development field. M y attitude from the day I took office as
Director-General, he declared,hasbeen that Member States must
be intimately involved in every important stage of the Organiza-
tions cycle of programme-making and programme execution. I
was convinced that the Member Governments were too much
inclined to regard the Director-Generaland his staff as an inde-
pendent force which they were unable to control effectively. To
counter this situation and gain the confidence of governments,he
visited thirty-four of Unescos then seventy-two Member States
in his first year of office and drew the following conclusion: M y
impression is that in relation to almost every country concerned,
and perhaps in relation to all of them,the following developments
have resulted: (a) m y colleagues and I have developed a much
firmer knowledge of a great number of Member States,their needs,
their wishes, their plans for the development of education, science
and culture; (b) a broadened acquaintance between the leaders of

338
 EpiIogue

the Secretariat and the leaders of governmental and other circles in

Member States; (c) a much truer idea of the purposes and methods
of the Secretariat on the part of governments of Member States; (d)
a greater responsiveness by the Secretariat to the needs and wishes
of Member States; and (e) a strengthened belief by leaders in
Member States that Unesco, in the measure that it receives the
supportof Member Governments,can do much for the educational,
scientific and cultural advancement of their peoples and hence for
peace and security in the world.
The constitutional reform at the Montevideo session of the
General Conference transforming the Executive Board from a body
of distinguished individualsto an intergovernmentalorgan,together
with the present system of regular consultation with the Executive
Board as regards the appointment of senior staff,were prepared un-
der his direction. H is complete trust and belief in Member States
made Unesco into the Organization for intergovernmental action
which it has remained to this day.
Unesco, he wrote, is a living presence in the sense that it is
a voice heard by many, a guide followed in a good few places,
more and more a searchlight thrown on dark places, to point the
road to advance in all the countless cases where advance is sought.
But all this stimulus is preparatory to action-action in the schools
and laboratories,action in the libraries and museums, action in the
fields and villages,in a word,action in the Member States.
In the programme that he proposed,for execution by his succes-
sor, he states: Withincreasingly active participation by Member
States in the preparation and execution of the Organizations
programme, and with its own participation in Member States
activities and its contribution to the Expanded Programme of
Technical Assistance and the Special Fund, Unesco, while con-
tinuing to develop internationalco-operationbetween governments
and peoples to an ever greater degree, will draw more and more
countries into its work and enable them to derive greater benefit
from its efforts. The proposed programme offers extensive and far-
reaching opportunities of co-operationto States all over the world.
In particular, it registers a determination to provide the African
countries with greater possibilities of taking part in the inter-
national organizations activities: this perhaps is not one of its least
significant features.

It was at this point that Vittorino Veronese became the Director-

General of Unesco, at the moment of Africas liberation. As

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Let m y country awake

Chairman of the Executive Board for two years before he became

Director-General,he had travelled widely in Africa and foresaw
the great events which were to come. For him Africa was a second
home and one of his first tasks as Director-Generalwas to organize
the first great rendezvous of free Africa, the 1961Conference of
African Ministers of Education at Addis Ababa, which he per-
sonally inaugurated.
H e often referred to the golden rule,primum vivere deindephilosophare
(live first then philosophize about it). In the Unesco mixture,
intellectualslike Veronese always insisted upon action.H e launched
the great Unesco campaign for the safeguard of the temples and
monuments of Abu Simbel. Equally, it was one of the African
leaders, Mr.Hampate Ba of Mali, who was brought by him into
Unesco, who kept insisting on the importance of the universal
while not neglecting its development tasks. At the close of the
thirteenth session of the General Conference he declared:
Unesco!a Tower of Babel, but a Babel which has been rebuilt
for the greater glory of Man, of whom one must never despair,
with all due deference to those fretful souls who see everything in
black. What can one see at Unesco? One can see the United States
of America, which gave millions of dollars to save Abu Simbel,
because it is part of the universal cultural heritage;one can see the
United Kingdom which steps forward to free its vast overseas
possessions,which were the honour of its army and the pride of its
Crown. One can see the vast U.S.S.R. which, having sacrificed
thousands of men and millions of roubles so that its people might
have the right to speak, continues to fight with courage, method
and steadfastness against everything that recalls, however little, a
colonialism which is inhuman,shameful and outmoded.
Mr. Eteki Mboumoua of Cameroon, who also accompanied
Mr.Veronese into Unesco, conveyed a similar reminder in his
presidential address to the fifteenth session of the General Con-
ference: For eight years now, the young African countries have
been flocking to Unesco, a little embarassed by their brand-new
independence.They came with the hope, only vaguely formulated
then, of gleaning from a rich source that in which they felt they
were cruelly lacking or insufficiently provided: world-wide intel-
lectual and cultural aid;aid from a special source,with a reassuring
name, which could supplement and blend with bilateral aid and
dilute certain of its anachronisms. Measuring the ground covered,
it must be acknowledged that this spontaneous trust and hope have
not been disappointed.
 Epi1ogue

M r . Veronese, even after he left the Director-Generalship,has

continued this tradition ofhelping Unesco respond to this particular
moment in development history represented by the freed and
awakened nations of Asia, Africa and Latin America. At the World
Congress of Ministers of Education on the Eradication of Illiteracy,
meeting at Teheran, he helped put financial teeth into the world
literacy campaign which emerged from that conference. H e
continues to be active in all efforts to mobilize financial resources
from banking and other financial sources for this deeply human
and tragic development demand-the fight against illiteracy.

I remember Rent Muheu, the present Director-General,for the

profound effect he had on Unescos development effort and the
many lessons that I learned from his thought in guiding the opera-
tions of Unesco. H e will be remembered as the man who for the
first time brought to the great biennial debate of the Plenary
Session of the General Conference (fourteenth session) both the
urgencies and the dimensions of the development tasks incumbent
on Unesco. In the historic 1966 evaluation document which he
placed before the General Conference, he began with one fact,that
the Organization continues to expand-in the number of its
Member States,in the work of the international non-governmental
organizations associated with it, and in the financial resources
available for its own activities-and laid down the two basic
conditions for the regularization of this continuous and continuing
growth: (a) the concordance of national requests and the inter-
national programme administered or promoted by Unesco;and (b)
agreement between the Organizationsprogramming and priorities
and those of the financing agencies which provide its extra-
budgetary resources. H is conclusion was clear and has become
the development directive of the Organization:
Whatis of supreme urgency and in some respects dramatically
so, in the present state of mankind, is the generalization and
improvement of education throughout the world,plus the establish-
ment of science in the underdeveloped countries and its application
to their development.
T w o years later,he portrays the still tragic urgency of this task
in moving human terms:
As I pen these almost absurdly modest figures of the regular
budget request, I cannot help calling to mind the hundreds of
millions ofmen and women,young people and adults,our brothers,
who are illiterate,I seem to see their faces peering out ofthe shadows

34
Let my country awake

towards the lamp beneath which I a m writing these lines which

concern them but which they could not read, and I seem to hear
their cry,like the oceansroar,in which protest and anger mingle.
I cannot but believe that one day this cry will be heard as
it deserves to be. I should like, in any case, to take this oppor-
tunity of appealing once more to the wisdom of governments
and the generosity of private individuals,to the sense of justice
that inspires each and the sentiment of fellowship that is inherent
in all.
Of many memorable moments that I shared with RenC Maheu,
the one that sticks most in m y mind, perhaps because he spoke of a
loss and of grief which was so close to me, is the last tribute which
he offered to Jawaharlal Nehru.
Nehrusdeath came when the Executive Board was in session. It
was a spontaneous and moving moment in Unescos history. All
thirty Board members chose to speak of some personal encounter
they had had with Nehru and recounted what had happened.
RenC Maheu spoke of Nehrus attachment to Unesco. H e recalled
how Nehru had made Indias best available to Unesco and partic-
ularly to the Executive Board: two persons who later became
Presidents of their vast land, Dr.S. Radhakrishnan and Dr.Zakir
Husain;one who became the Prime Minister, Mrs. Indira Gandhi;
one leader of the opposition to his Government, Dr.A. Laksh-
manaswamy Mudaliar; and one Vice-Chancellor, Mrs. Hansa
Mehta. H e then stressed that the world-widegrief caused by Nehrus
death was in a particular sense Unescosgrief and that it should per-
haps be in a particular way that Unesco should pay tribute to his
memory.
Others will speak of the great void he has left in the affairs of
the world,Mr. Maheu said. W ewill lay stress on the unique place
that he occupied in the hearts of men. Others will speak of his glory
and his remarkabledestiny as party leader and head of government.
W e will recall his tireless quest for truth and love.Others will calcu-
late the effects ofhis death on the balance and future of the forces in
his own country, in the vast expanse of Asia, and indeed, in the
whole world. W e , for our part, wonder how, deprived of this guide
and this example, we shall be able to choose and follow our path
amid the raging confusion of this world in upheaval, now that the
kindliness of that smile, often so gay then suddenly so tired, the
warmth of those brown eyes, the charm of that red rose, have
disappeared from our view,now that that great light which shonein
the East has gone out for ever-that light from whose radiance

342
 Epilogue

millions, nay tens and hundreds of millions of us had become

accustomed to nurture and rekindle the purest flame of our human
conscience.

And so I conclude.I a m sure that some of m y readers will think that

I have not gone far enough, that I have but skimmed the surface
ofthe inexhaustiblesprings ofdevelopment that the many hundreds
of thousands of heads and hands from all over the world have
fashioned into the Unesco we know. For m y part I wished only,
with m y poor,unpractised means, to say to all those who will listen
what has been important to me in m y life and work, the scenes and
voices and images of the human intellect and will and feeling which
have lifted up our hearts,which have sustained us in our daily task,
which have called us all forward,if only a single inch,toward our
common goal of peace and justice and development and brother-
hood, toward what Torres Bodet called adestiny worthy of man-
kind.
I know that,in doing so,I may have seemed to have broken with
a great tradition, that of the anonymity of the Secretariat. M e n
pass but the Organization remains. Yet that is precisely one of the
reasons for which I thought it best that the curtain should be lifted
if only for an instant. M e n are temporary. W e see it in those who
came before us. W e know it will be true of those who come after. W e
see it in ourselves. M e n pass. Their lives are fugitive. Their minds
pass from subject to subject,their hearts from life to life as if in
multiple incarnations which shine for an instant in the imagination
and then are gone.H o w else can we preserve them than by speaking
what is in our hearts?
I have another reason for this portrayal, for setting down the
truth as I have seen and known it in the cause of development. It is
to serve Unesco. It is by truth that Unesco works for thebrotherhood
of man,just as it is through the brotherhood of man that she works
for truth. And it is by following these two great calls alone that the
Organization will prevail.
And I a m still in Unescosservice.It is still m y role,m y purpose,
m y inner calling, m y way of life. Like India with her endless
variety of races and creeds, of riches and poverty, of the old and
new, eternal change and endless permanence, Unesco is still m y
country and still m y task.
I believe the time will come when all men will recognize two
countries in their inmost heart: the country of their birth, the
country that formed them, that gave them sustenance and their

343
Let m y country awake

first sense of strength and solidarity and identity, and that other
country, the country whose boundaries endlessly recede, whose
flag is made of hundreds offlags,whose rivers flow from a thousand
sources,that universal country which is our calling and our destiny,
where all men are brothers, where all men and women work
together not for power or material goods alone,but to addan inch
of happiness to each others lives.
I realize that that time is not yet here, that perhaps at this
moment it is further away from us than ever. I realize that Unesco
is but one of the first, cautious embodiments of that universal
country of the human mind and heart which may never come
fully into existence. Still I lift m y voice as generations ago Tagore
lifted his voice to India, still I repeat his words so much more
eloquent than m y own,which say so well what I would wish to say,
which I believe will echo in mens hearts wherever and whenever
Unesco is given the power to speak:

Where the mind is withoutfear and the head is held high;

Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow
domestic walls;
Where words come from the depths of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary
desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever widening thought
and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, m y Father, let my country awake.

344
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Chapter 6
M . S. Some thoughts on science and Latin American development.
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Chapter 8
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Chapter IO

ADISESHIAH,
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UNESCO Final report: Conference on the Application of Science and Tech-
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Final report: Conference of the Application of Science and Tech-
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fourth andjfth sessions. New York, United Nations, 1969.43 p.

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Ecosoc Administrative Committee on Co-ordination (ACC)Statement on the

Second United Nations Development Decade. New York, I 969.
13 p. (Doc.~/4718.)

Chapter 11

M.S. The international role

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Chapter 13
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Frontiers of intellectual cooperation. Address given at the

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Chapter 14
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Epilogue
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Executive Board, seventy-sixth session, Paris, zp April to 12 M a y

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 Index of persons

Adam Smith,see Smith, Adam Hampate Ba,340

Alberuni,237 Harbison,R.,14
Anderson,A.,I 73 Hastings,Warren,3 I4
Annadurai,C.,247 Hawtrey,R.G.,38
Ashby,E.,168,249 Hayek,F. V.,38, 43
Asoka,272 Hoffman,P.,14, 15
Hogg,Q., 116
Huxley,J.,335-6
Basenach (Father), 12
Bentham,J.Z., 25 Jevons,W.S.,43
Bergson,A.Z.,25
Bhraspati,3 I 9
Black,E.,15,200
Boserup,M.,151 Kennan,G., 240, 246
Bourguiba,H.,195 Kennedy,J. F.,184
Keynes,J. M.,12,25, 43, 212
Kumar,B.,1 2
Clemenceau,G.,I 14
Confucius,3 I g
Corbusier,Le,235 Laves,W., 336-7
Lenin,V.I., 51
Lewis,A.,14, 25
Little,D.,25
Einstein,A.,286
Eteke Mboumoua,340
Evans,L.H.,338-9
Macaulay,T.B.,268, 314-5
McNamara,R.,200, 212
Maheu,R.,15, 17,47, 247, 251,3%
Fa-Hien,237, 272 341-2
Freud,S.,286 Malthus,T.R.,42
Marcuse,H.,246
Marshall,A.,25, 39
Marti,J., 141-2
Gandhi,I. (Mrs.),342 Martin,A.R.,I I I
Gandhi,M.K.,204, 235 Marx,K.,25,43
Ganesan,M.G.R.,172 Mehta,Hansa (Mrs.)342 ,
Ganesan,S., 172 Mill,J. S., 42
Gilson,E.,265 Myint,H., 25
Grundtvig,N.F.S.,I 17 Myrdal,G., 15, 169,277

363
Let my country awake

Nehru,J.,14,20, 185,285,31I,328-9, Smith,Adam,25, 52, 172

342 Strumilin,S., 14, 51, 173
Newman (Cardinal), 237
Nyerere,J.,15
Tagore,R.,20, 144,344
Thomas,P.J.,1 2
Pant,P.,235 Torres Bodet,J.,16,337-8, 343
Pareto,V.,25, 167 Tourt,S., 15
Paul VI (Pope), 45-6
Perroux,2 I O
Pigou,A. C.,25
Powell,E.,240 Udall,S.,109
Prebisch,P.,15 U Thant,9-10,185

Radhakrishnan,S.,342 Valtry,P.,286
Ricardo,D.,25, 42 Veronese,V.,18,41,339
Rostow,W.W.,25

Walras,L.,25
Sarkar,N.R.,12 Warren Hastings,Jee Hastings,Warren
Schramm,W.,I 16 Whale,P.B.,1 2
Schdtz,T.,14 Woods, G.D.,15, 200, 203
SengTsian,319
Servan-Schreiber,J.-J.,245
Shah of Iran, 271
Sidgwick,H.,25 Zakir Husain,342

364
 Subject index
ASFEC (Arab States Fundamental
Education Centre), 337
Abu Simbel, 47, 340
Addis Ababa Conference, 19,74
Addis Ababa Plan (1961), 50, gg, ZOO
Adult Education, Unesco World Con-
ference on (1960),164; see also
under Education, adult
Advisory Committee on the Applica-
tion of Science and Technology
to Development, 207, 287
Afghanistan, 272, 274
Agrarian reform, I 88
Agreements, adopted by General
Conference of Unesco, 302
Agricultural education and sciences,
267
Agricultural science students, 190
Agriculture, and development, output,
I 86-9I
Aid, 185
financial, overvalued, 203
levels in Development Decade,
United Nations (Second), 202-4
Al-Azhar, Cairo, 237, 272
All India Radio, 88
Arab States education programmes,
99
Arkansas, 51
Amateurism, as operational problem,
268
American Psychiatric Association, I I I
Amortization and interest, on debts,
203
Application of science and technology,
126,129
Armament expenditures, 184
Ami, 81
Asian Ministers of Education (Kara-
chi, 1960),199
Assistance, educational, see under Edu-
cational assistance
Assistance, resources,
bilateral, 271
multilateral, 27 I
Australia, 58-9, 104,156
growth rate of G D P , 40
Austria, 191
Bangkok Conference, I 7, 279
Basic science teaching and research,
267
Behaviour, economic, 2 I 3- 15
Belgium, 155, 191
Bilateral assistance, resources, see under
Assistance, resources
Biology, and race, 324-5
Bolivia, 266, 283
Bologna, 237
Brain drain, 116, 167,244; see also
under Migration of talent
Brain research, 290
Brazil, 58-9, 66, 88, 152,211,278-9
Breakthrough, in science and techno-
logy, 106
Budgets, national, percentage spent on
education, 58-9
Burma, 16, 323
CECTAL (Latin American Centre
for the Application of Science and
Technology), 139
CREFAL,337
Calcutta, 167
Calorie intake, daily, 193
Cambridge, University of, 249
Cameroon, 340
Canada, 58-9, 145,156,164,272
365
Let m y country awake

Capital,52, 61 Cultural Co-operation,Declaration of

flow to developing countries,203 the Principles of International,
formation,52, 115, 157 '7'
investmentin resourceprojects, 153 Cultural development,267
output ratio (COR),52 Cultural policy,I 57
Catholic Church,272 Cultural tourism, 158,267
Cell research,290 Culture,157
Ceylon,16,272, 323 as consumptionitem,158
Chang-an,237 economic analysisof,158-9
Change, as investment,158
problem of,288 and prejudice,158
in society,164 self-justifying,I 59
consequences,I 66 Curriculum reform,84-5, I I 7
constituents of, 164 mathematics,84
education and,166 CzechoslovakCommissionfor Unesco,
rate of,165 110, I20
Charter,United Nations,43, 45 Czechoslovakia,63
Child,
at home, 159
learningprocess,161
at school,160 Dainton Committee (United King-
Chile,58-9 dom), 244
China,Republic of, 188-9,192,196, Debt-servicingburden,203
206, 316 Decentralization,I I 5
Christian College, Tambaram, Ma- Declaration on Race and Racial
dras,1 1 Prejudice,Unesco (1967),325
Clothing,37 Democracy,183,241
Cobb-Douglas production function, Democratization,198
2 IO ofeducation,240
Colombia,279 Denmark,117,191,199,272
Colombo Plan,273 Devastation,industrial,109
Communication,222 Developing countries, growth rate of
mass,267 GDP,40
satellite,88 Development,
techniques of,267 causalfactors,53
Comparativestudies,63 as change,43
Computer,244 concept,26
revolution,I 06 defined as function of series of
Consumption,as first welfare propo- variables,2 14
sition,27 definition,38, 209
Conventions,forwhich Unesco acts as and education,49
depository,301-2 global,44
Cost-benefitanalysis,296,298-300,308 as growth,43
Costa Rica,322 as growth plus change,&
Council for Mutual Economic Assis- industrialized countries,104
tance,33 as redemption,47
Counterparts,281 resource-demanding,46
Crafteducation,curriculumreform,84 sciencein, 125
Crisis, and social disruption,204
in developed world,238 structuralchanges,214
ofyouth,235 viewed as system,2 I 2
 Subject index

Development Decade, United Nations, and development, 49

45 in Development Decade, United
Development Decade, United Nations Nations, (First), 199
( 1 4 , 184 in Development Decade, United
aid, levels, 202-4 Nations (Second), 200, 220
described as Decade for Frustra- and earning power, 62
tion, 206 enrolment, in primary, 54
education, rgg ratios, school, 56
GDP and GNP,209 in secondary, 54
science and technology, 202 in tertiary, 55, 256-7
Development Decade, United Nations total, 258
(Second) expansion in Development Decade,
the challenge, 230-6, 331 United Nations (Second), zoo
educational assistance, 282 as industry, 85
planning, 1: I 2 investment, 66, I 12-13
G N P , percentage for aid, 231 percentage of national budget,
goals, 214 58-9
and International Education Year percentage of national income,
(1970), 236 58-9
national goals in, 232 for leisure, 120
national priorities in, 232 lifelong, 170,201
over-all attack, 208-36, 267 objectives of, I 71
programmes, organization of, I 72
communication, 223 method, 83, 177
culture, 222 new methods and techniques, 266
as development sectors, 223 opportunity cost, 61
education, 220 percentage investment, 55
science, 221 as production agent, 68
social science, 234. productive factor, 7 I
strategy for education, science, productivity, 223
culture, communication,2r5 pyramid of, 75
targets and programmingfor, 2 I 6-30 reform, I 16
qualitative and quantitative, 226 rural, 266
Disarmament, 184 secondary, expansion, 75
Distribution, as fifth welfare proposi- self-education, I 77
tion, 30 socio-culturalrole, 65
standards, 89
technical and technological, 267
technology, 83
total cost, 61
ECAFE, 186 unit costs, 89
East-West Major Project, 315, 321 versus underdevelopment, 70
Economic and Social Council of the waste, 79-80
United Nations, 212, 268-9, 338 for youth, 121,266
Economics of culture, 157, 159 Education, permanent, I 74; see also
Education, 39 under Education, lifelong
adult, 66, 168, 189 Educational assistance, 274
as consumption good, 49, 71 imbalance in, 274-5
content of, 83, 176 philosophy of, 276-83
cantinuing, I I 8 Educational Commission (India), 270
democratization,240 Educational expenditures, world, 200

367
Let my country awake
Educational planning, 266
International Conference on (1968), Germany, Federal Republic of, 58-9,
I74
El Salvador, 322
Employment, 39, 192
Enrolment, educational, see under Edu-
cation, enrolment
Environment,
descriptive investigation, 146
pollution, I og
Ethical function of Unesco, 264
Ethiopia, 5tl-9,289
European Economic Community, 33
European Free Trade Association, 23
Evaluation,
cost-benefit analysis, 3 I 3
general, 294-300
of objectives, 295
operational, 294
programming strategy as, 297
by subject, 295
Expanded Programme of Technical
Assistance (United Nations)
P T A ) , 3 3 5 339.
Expansion of universities, 239
Expenses, educational, 73
Export earnings, 198
Family planning, I 76, 226
Fiji, 323
Finland, 119,156,191,199,272
First World War, 42
Florence, 47
Food consumption, 39
France, 58-9,65,87,138,155-6,191,
198, 271, 277
Fifth Plan, 34
GDP (Gross Domestic Product), 52
developed countries and developing
countries, 184
growth rates, 57
1950-60,40
world, 73
GNP (Gross National Product), 127
growth rates, 215
percentage for aid, 23 I
Genetics, and race, 324-5
63,65, 155-6, 191,272
Ghana, 63, 89, 156
Gitanjali, 20
Gran& Programmes, 296-7
Greece, 58-9
Gross Domestic Product, see under GDP
Gross National Product, see under GNP
Growth,
contribution of education to, 49
economic, models, 2 I I
education investment and, I I 2
problems, I 04-5
rate of economic, 39, 52
annual, 184
rate indices, significance of, 41
rates for Third World, 205-6
social problems, 109
theory, 198
Guatemala, 322
Guide-lines for educational assistance,
276-83
Harrod-Domar model, 2 IO
Health, 39
Survey Committee, India, 78
Honduras, 322
Housing, 39
H u m a n freedoms, United Nations
definition as component of level
of living, 39
H u m a n resources, 108
development, 249
India, 77
and science, 132-4
H u m a n Rights, 68, 195,208
Humanism and Unesco, 265
Hydrological Decade, 284
Co-ordination Council, 290
Hydrology, 267, 290
Iceland, 156
Illiteracy, adult, 201
World Congress of Ministers of
Education on the Eradication of,
341
 Subject index

Income, composition, 32 International Conference on Educa-

annua4.55
per capita, 37
national, percentage investment in
education, 58-9
as sixth welfare proposition, 31
as yardstick of growth, 39
India, 16, 58-9, 66, 88, 127, 143,
151-2,154-6,164-8,170,
188-92,
195-7, 204, 211, 234, 278-9, 283,
314,316-17, 323,337
area sown, 147
Committee on Energy Resources,
753
Education Commission, I 75
educational requirements, 75
Fifth Plan, 80
Fourth Plan, 77, 172
Health Survey Committee, 78
Institute of Technology, Bombay,
271
National Commission for Co-opera-
tion with Unesco, 270
perspective planning, 77-8
population problem, I 76
scientific personnel, 77
Second Plan, 79
Thacker Committee, 78
unemployment of engineers, 91-103
water utilization, 147
Working Group on Technical Edu-
cation and Vocational Training,
78
Indian Economic Association, I 2
Indonesia, 16,88-9, 271-2, 278
Industrial society, 164
Industry,
contribution to G D P , 191
and development, 191-2
as lead sector, 191
Information explosion, 242
Innovation, 104,223
attitude to, 157
International Association of Universi-
ties, 285-6
International Bank for Reconstruction
and Development, 297
International Brain Research Organi- Karachi Plan, 17-18, 199-200
zation, 290
International Cell Research Organi- Knowledge, explosion, 242
zation, 290
tional Planning, 20, 2 I 2, 2 I g
International Council of Scientific
Unions, 284
International Development Associa-
tion, 207
International Education Year (1970),
236
International Geophysical Year, 284
International Hydrological Decade,
'39
International Institute of Educational
Planning, 271,285, 289
International Institute of Intellectual
Co-operation,286
International Oceanographic Commis-
sion, 284, 290
International Symposium on the Life
and Work of Jawaharlal Nehru,
285
International understanding, teaching
of, 3'7
International Year of the Quiet Sun,
284
Inventories, of natural resources, 14
Investment,
in armaments, 107
to consumption ratio, 196
in R. and D., 107
in science, 136
Iraq, 16
Iran, 16,316
Israel, 53, 63, 127,188,192, 206
Italy, I 16
Ivory Coast, 58-9, 271
Japan, 53, 58-9, 63,65, 104,116,127,
'49, I55-6,3'6-17
growth rate of G D P , 40
R. and D.in, 105
Jordan, 269
Kampur, 167
Kerala, 167
as primary resource, 146

369
Let my country awake

Labour, 52 Monumenls,protection and conserva-

productivity,52 tion, 234
Lagos Conference, 140 Motivation,in development,2 I 3-14
Land, 52 Multilateral assistance,resources,27 I
Land Grant Colleges (U.S.A.), 250
Laos, 274
Laser, 244
League of Nations Commission on Nalanda,2:37
Intellectual Co-operation,284 National goals and priorities,232
Learning, 248 National Union of Students (United
dated, 163 Kingdom), 247
process of, 161 Natural resources,
techniques,86 analytical investigation, I 52
timing, 162 availability. I 52
Lebanon, 16 balance-sheetmethodology, I52
Leisure, I 10-1I cataloguing,I&
education for, I 20 definitions,143
Literacy,adult,57, 175 development, 149
functional, I 76, 266 economic availability,148
Living, levels of, United Nations economic interpretation,I 50
definitions,39, 215 fear of bottleneck,148
education,49 government action, I 54
Loyola College, 1 2 innovation,144
Inter-African Convention on, I 38
International Advisory Committee
on, 290
investment, 149,I 53
Lagos Conference (1964),126
Madras, 168 N e w Delhi Conference (1968),I 26
University of, 82, 242 organization of research,154
Madurai, 168 regional and area planning, 152
Malaysia, 196, 272, 323 research,267
Mali, 58-9, 271, 340 Santiago Conference (1965),I 26
Malthusianism,educated,82 utilization, I 52
Man, and his environment, 267, 285 Nature study, curriculum reform, 84
Manpower, 75, 115, 192 Neo-colonialism,208
projections, 74 Netherlands, 155-6, 191,272
Materials Policy Commission, of the New Guinea,58-9
United States President,145 N e w York University L a w School,249
Mathematics, curriculum reform, see N e w Zealand,58-9, 104,272
under Curriculum reform growth rate of G D P , 40
Mediterranean University Centre, Nicaragua. 322
Nice, 285 Nigeria, 89, 2 I I, 278
Mekong Model, 300 Federal Teachers Training College,
Mexico, 53, 58-9, 63, 127, 188, 192, 271
196, 206, 272, 337 Non-development,183
Migration of talent, 107;see also under Norms for educational development,
Braindrain 63-4
Military takeovers,in Africa, 183 Norway, 156,191,199,272
Minorities, I I O Nuclear weapons, 244
Models, economic growth,2 I I Nutrition,39
 Subject index

Obsolescence,in skills, I 18 Prices,world,ofprimary products, 198

technological, I I 8 Production,52
Oceanographicresearch,299, 308-9 as fourth welfare proposition,29
Oceanography,267, 290 optimum,29
October Revolution,42 total volume, 52
Operational assistance, and Unesco, Productivity,education, 223
265 labour,62
Operational evaluation,294 Profitability,62
Opportunity cost, I IO Promotion of women, 267
Optimum, 109 Protestant Churches, 272
Organization of African Unity, 138
Orient-Occident, 3 I 6

Qualitative excellence, I 2
Quantitative expansion,82
Pakistan, 16,58-9, 127, I%, 278 Qarawiun, 266
Pallavaram,162 Quecha, 266
Panama, 322
Papua, 58-9
Paraguay Basin,300
Peace,university as bulwark of, 252-5
Personal development, I 20 Race, 324-5
Philippines,58-9, 127, 138, 156 Racial prejudice, 324
Physiocrats,42 Radio Farm Forum, Canadian Broad-
Planning,35, 78-9 casting Corporation,88
budgeting, 200 Re-adaptationof skills, 66
educational,70, I 14,200 Recommendations, adopted by Gen-
methodology, 79 eral Conferenceof Unesco,302-3
unit of, 79 Recreation, 39, 120
national, 73, 206 Regional Banks, 200, 207
programming,200 Regional Institute of Higher Educa-
Programming Budgeting System tion and Development,Singapore,
(PPBS), 298 138
of science, 224 Research,
of targets,34 basic science,293
Point of optimum (or preference), 26, co-ordinated,290
109 cost-benefitanalysis, 292
Pollution, I 09 natural resources,267
Population, 192 panorama of Unesco, 289-300
by age-groups,259-60 pay-off,292
demographicgap,194 rationale for, 291
explosion,86, 240 school building, 293
problems, moral and spiritual, 194 scientific, I I 5
progression,45, 68 sponsored,289
United Nations World Conference, Research and Development (R.and
I95 D.),105, 127,226, 228-9
Populorurn Progressio, I 5 as percentage of GNP, 156
Post-industrialsociety, 163 private expenditure, I 55
Pre-industrialsociety, I 64 Resources, see under Natural resources
Price marginal-costdifferential,30 Rest, 120
Let m y country awake

Retraining, I 18 Santiago Conference (1965), 126

ofskills,60 as test ofdevelopment,I 29-3 I
Robbins Committee (United King- universities,role in,132
dom), 83 United Nations Conference on the
Round Table,Unesco, 142, 185,254 Application ofScience and Tech-
Royal Economic Society,2 I 2 nology,125-6
Rural education,266 Scient& and Cultural History of Mankind,
285
Second World War,42, 185,193, 286
Self-education,I I 7
Senegal River,300
St.PaulsCollege,CalcuttaUniversity, Singapore,323
I1 Socialparticipation,120
Sahara,300 Socialsecurity,39
Salaries and wages, in low-income Social studies,curriculum reform,84
countries,281 Social wastes,rog
Salary supplements,281 problems of,67
Santiago Conference, I 34 Society,
and Declaration,19 structuralevolution,163
Plan,200 three types,163
Savings,and investments,196-8 Somalia,271
as third welfareproposition,28 Sorbonne,245
Scholarships,243 South Asian Research Centre, 294,
Science, 304-7
activity in Asia, priority areas, 138 South Asian Social Science Centre,
basic research,I 28 New Delhi,289
basic teaching,128 Soviet Union, see Union of Soviet
CASTASIA (NewDelhi), 201 SocialistRepublics (U.S.S.R.)
curriculum reform,84 Space exploration,244
for development,I 25 Spain,272
in educationalprogrammes,287 SpecialDrawing Rights,207
investments,I36 Special Fund, United Nations De-
as key to development,201 velopment Programme,232, 269,
Lagos Conference,201 271, 339
planning,224 Statement on Race, Unesco (1951)~
policy, 134-6,225 325
and planning,267 Studentpower,238
as prestige,125 Subject evaluation,295
regional and international co-oper- Sudan,196
ation,137 Sweden,58-9,63,87, 149,199,271-2
in SecondDevelopmentDecade,22 I Switzerland,87, 149, 191
Third OECD Ministerial Meeting Syria,58-60
on,127 Systemsanalysis,2 I 2
World Planfor,225
Science and technology,
as driving force in development,
131-4
implantation, in Africa, 131; in Tamil Nadu,India,247, 323
Latin America, I 3 1-2 Tananarive Conference,I 9
Lagos Conference (1964),126 Tanzania,279, 289
New Delhi Conference (1968), 126 Tarapur,reactor,235

372

Target-setting task, responsibility,230
Targets for Second Development
Decade, 2 I 6-30
qualitative/quantitative,226
Teacher/pupil ratio, 248
Teacher-student relationship, I 78
Teacher training, 266
Teachers, 81
Teaching and learning,a new concept,
247-8
Teaching and machines, 178
Teaching methods, 88
Technical Assistance,
criteria problem, 275
Expanded Programme of, 232
expert costs, 275
Technical education, 267
Technological education and research,
267
Technology, I 26
inter-Asian centres for transfer of,
138
as primary resource, 146
transfer of, 126
Television, closed-circuit,I 16,225
Thacker Committee, India, 78
Thailand, 16,269
Towey Canyon, 109
Tourism, cultural, 158, 267
Trade, free, 34
international, I 98
as seventh welfare proposition, 32
worsening terms, 198
Training, adult, I 18
Trust Funds, 233, 289
Tunisia, I 95-6
UNCTAD (United Nations Con-
ference for Trade and Develop-
ment), 206-7, 215
UNCTAD I, 46
UNCTAD 11, 46
Unicef, 232
UNIDO (United Nations Industrial
Development Organization), 207
UNDP (United Nations Develop-
ment Programme)see under United
Nations
Subject index
Underdevelopment, 70, 204
high-level,I 05
Unemployment, intellectual, 74
technological, 106
youth, 241
Unesco,
Agreements, 302
Asian Evaluation Commission, 294
basic purpose, 265
budget, 263, 265, 268
Charter, 292, 315
as Conscience of the world c o m m u -
nity?, 31I
Constitution, 265, 310,330
Conventions, 301-2
Declaration on Race and Racial
Prejudice (1967), 325
Directors-General, zoo; see also
Evans, L.H.; Huxley,J.;Maheu,
R.;Torres Bodet,J.; Veronese, V.
doctrine of development, 212, 214
East-West Major Project, 314, 321
as educational clearing house, 273
ethical and moral role, 3 I 0
ethical function, 264
Executive Board, 263, 293, 338-9
extra-budgetary resources, 232
as frame for intellectual co-opera-
tion, 285
General Conference, 174, 232, 254,
263, 266-7, 293, 311, 315-6,
338-9
Fifteenth, 209, 2 I 4
Fourteenth, 43, 318,321,341
in 1962,184
Thirteenth, 270
Twelfth, 2 I 2
Headquarters, 263, 335
'idea of', 333
Indian National Commission for
Co-operation with, 270
intellectual function of, 264, 284
International Conference on Youth,
Grenoble (I 964), I 2 I
as international framework, 273
international standards, 273
Latin American Educational Plan-
ning Centre, Santiago de Chile,
271
Literacy Fund, 271
long-term promise, 265
373
Let my country awake

Member States, number of, 267, Development Programme, 46, 207,

273 233, 269, 271, 289, 294, 297
methods of work, 321 Governing Council, 269
National Commissions, 263, 270 Special Fund, see Special Fund,
operational assistance, 265 UNDP
operational function, 264 General Assembly, 46, 209, 338
operational priorities, 266 and Specialized Agencies, 185, 207
panorama or research, 289-300 system, 207
peace-building role, 335 World Population Conference
peace-building work,3 I 2 (196513 '95
and private bodies, 273 United States of America, 58-60,
promoting development, 335 62-3, 65-6, 87, 1083, 116, 145,
protection and conservation of 149, 155-6, 164, 167, ~ 7 0 ,271,
monuments, 234 277
against racism, 335 GNP,53
Recommendations, 302-3 Universal Declaration of H u m a n
Regular Budget, 232 Rights, 195,270, 329-30
Research Centre on Social and Universities, 74, I I 7, 185, 202, 225,
Economic Development in South- 286
ern Asia, 304-7 cosmopolitanism, 237
Round Table, 43, 46, 254 crisis, 243
social science programme, 234, 263 as development instrument, 250
South Asian Research Programme, expansion, 239
294 governance, 248
staff, 265, 267 moral dilemma, 243
Statement on Race (1g51), 325 a new concept, 248
teaching of international under- origin, 237
standing, 317 and peace, 252-5, 286
Trust Funds, 233 renovation, 251-2
Unesco/IAU study on higher educa- role, 237-55
tion in South-East Asia, 249 scholarship, 243
Union of Soviet Socialist Republics science and technology in, 132
(U.S.S.R.), 53, 58-9, 62-3, 65, situation, 250-1
87, 155-6, 164, 170, 271, 277 Utrecht, University of, 285
United Arab Republic, 66, 197, 21 I,
278-9
United Kingdom, 33, 53, 58-9, 65,
87, 1'6, '49, '55-6, '9'
R . and D.in, 105 Vellore, 11,81,83, 162,268
United Nations, Venezuela, I g G 7
Advisory Committee on the Appli- Venice, 47
cation of Science and Technology Violence, 208, 246
to Development, 194 Volta River, 300
Charter, 43-5
Children's Fund, see Unicef
Committee for Development Plan-
ning, 206
and decision making, 206 Warisata, Bolivia, 266
Development Decades, see Deve- Wars, 208, 212,243, 328, 335
lopment Decade, United Nations solemn appeal against, 254-5
(First), (Second) Waste, 158

374
 Subject index

Welfare, World Congress of Ministers of

in economic thought, 25 Education on the Eradication of
proposition derived from, see under Illiteracy, 341
Consumption, Distribution, In- World crisis, I 83
come,Production,Savings,Trade, World development strategy, 2 I 2
Work World Food Programme, 233, 289
Women, 108 World order, 185
fertility, 195 World Plan for Science, 225
illiteracy, 195
promotion of, 266
Work, Youth, 110,279
attitude to, 157 crisis of, 185, 235
as second welfare proposition, 28 education, 266
Working Group on Technical Educa- Education for, Unesco International
tion and Vocational Training, Conference on, I 2 I
India, 78 as majority, 241
World Bank, 72, 75, 185, 196, 200, unemployment, 24I
203, 232, 327 Yugoslavia, 189, 192, 196, 206
World Confederation of Organiza-
tions of the Teaching Profession,
81 Zambia, 289

375