We must thank Ms. Anjali Deshpande for challenging the superstitious faith in technical expertise. I say this despite having a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Biochemistry from California Institute of Technology where four Nobel Laureates taught me. Let us recall that the Narmada Bachao Andolan activists taught the experts in 1980s and 1990s how to include the cost of destroying forests and ecology when computing the cost:benefit ratio of Narmada Dams and how to investigate the submergence of villages due to backwater. How did they manage to do this? Simple. They learnt to do this due to their concern for society and the nation – an attribute generally lacking in the technical experts (with honourable exceptions of course) who designed the dams and wrote voluminous reports for the Government! Same is the story with Bhakra Nangal Dam, Bhilai Steel Plant, Bhopal's Union Carbide Plant and the infamous Enron Power Project. And dozens of other giant 'symbols of development' as well. Yet, this does not mean that we do not require technical experts. Of course we do but these experts need to have courses in philosophy, sociology, political science, economics and humanities as much as they need courses in maths, physics, chemistry and engineering, when they are studying for their technical degrees. They also need to do field work in villages and urban slums before they get their degrees so that can cultivate Gandhian values and concern for humankind. It is tragic that all the planning for new IITs, IIMs and the so-called 'world class' universities in the XI Five Year Plan is going to ignore these basic lessons of educational planning. This means that the Bihar Floods will be repeated again and again and the poor people will continue to pay the political price of misconceived technical expertise! How many times will the human tragedies be repeated before the ruling class and their fellow travelers in the educated middle class learn the lesson? - Anil Sadgopal -- Prof. Anil Sadgopal Former Dean, Faculty of Education, University of Delhi __._,_.___
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