Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Integrating Work and Education - Vinod Raina

Interest in linking and integrating work with education appears to have been rekindled by the National Curriculum Framework 2005 since it not only contains a whole section devoted to it, but also had a focus group that prepared a separate report on the subject (called FGR hereafter).

One says rekindled because active interest in this area has dwindled over the years, but for stray references to Gandhi’s views on the subject and his nai talim. There could be various reasons for that, but the major one seems to be the misplaced but growing fascination of curriculum framers in the past decade or two to address the question of ‘knowledge explosion’, demanding an increasing addition of fairly meaningless and disjointed facts from ‘thrust areas’ in the curriculum, mostly tested through memory-based examination systems. Though never clearly stated, such mindless approach to curriculum framing has operated with an inherent bias as to what constitutes legitimate knowledge. What is ignored in curriculum frameworks and resulting syllabi must therefore not be worth teaching, would be the obvious conclusion of persons who finally get down to writing textbooks. Work related knowledge of the majority of Indian population has therefore been continuously delegitimised, notwithstanding Gandhian exhortations to the contrary.

Though the attempt of the NCF2005 to regenerate interest in this critical area needs to be welcomed, it would appear that the subject has not been analysed in the kind of depth and range that would be necessary if the objective was to ensure implementation, rather than one more academic essay for future researchers to comment upon. The FGR and its summary in the main part of NCF2005 rightly attempts to distinguish between vocational education and work-centered education but in my opinion, one needs to examine the issue in a much more multi-dimensional manner in order to arrive at strategies that may facilitate implementation. These other dimensions would include, in addition to the pedagogic issue, the historical debate between liberal and work based education, links between labour and education, locating within dominant political ideologies, and the human and institutional requirements to implement a work-based mass education system.

Liberal and Vocational education

The familiar conflict between liberal and vocational education stems from the concept of streaming, whereby liberal education is seen as a vehicle for mobility into ‘high culture’ and prestige, and vocational education as a means that assigns working class, dalit and minority youth to a narrowly “practical school experience, limiting their educational access to mobility, and stigmatizing them as incapable of learning anything worthwhile, ‘academic’ subjects and skills”[1]. Many educationists and philosophers have, in recent times, however questioned the apparent dichotomy between liberal and vocational education[2]. Richard Pring, for example has argued for a broadening and reformulating of the liberal ideal so as to embrace the idea of vocational relevance, along with practical intelligence, personal development and social and community relevance[3]. Similarly, Christopher Winch has developed a detailed and rich conception of vocational education, embracing concerns about ‘moral and spiritual well-being alongside notions of economic and political goods[4].

Pring’s approach could be called more pedagogic since he disbelieves the perceived diametrical opposition between liberal and vocational education. In particular, he questions that: “the vocational, properly taught, cannot itself be liberating –a way into those forms of knowledge through which a person is freed from ignorance, and opened to new imaginings, new possibilities: the craftsman who finds aesthetic delight in the objects of his craft, the technician who sees the science behind the artifact, the reflective teacher making theoretical sense of practice”. (Pring, 1995)

The concern to reconcile vocation with education is however old, and runs across various ideological streams, though for differing reasons, as we shall presently discuss. Going with Proudhon that “the work a man did was something to be proud of, it was what gave interest, value and dignity to his life’, Smith extended the idea thus: “An education that was divorced from the world of work, that is, an education that was bookish and grammar-schoolish in conception, was valueless from the point of view of ordinary working class children. Of course, an education that went too far in the other direction, which brought up children merely to be the fodder for factories, was equally unacceptable. What was required was an education which could equip a child for the work-place but would also give him a degree of independence in the labour market.”[5]

It is customary, and rightly so, to invoke Gandhi when vocation and work are prefixed to education in India. Henry Fagg [6] in his slim volume has tried to locate Gandhi’s ideas of nai talim within the politics and issues that prevailed in 1937 when Gandhi, at the ripe age of 67, made his radical proposals for mass education that he thought were appropriate for India. It has remained a matter of debate whether Gandhi advocated work-based education as a means of self-support in order to circumvent his disappointment regarding the inability of the state to fund universal education, or as a pedagogic necessity, or both. His plea for adequate finances for universal education was met with a response that if at all, the way out was to utilize revenues from liquor sales. That meant he had to either give up his stand on prohibition, or his plea for universal education with state support, which he expressed quite plainly: “the cruellest irony of the new reforms lies in the fact that we are left with nothing but liquor revenue to fall back upon, in order to give our children education”[7].

This seems to have led Gandhi to propose a national system of education that would be self-sufficient, rather than solely dependent on state funding thus: “but as a nation we are so backward in education that we cannot hope to fulfill our obligations to the nation in this respect in a given time during this generation, if the programme is to depend on money. I have therefore made bold, even at the risk of losing all reputation for constructive ability, to suggest that education should be self-supporting …. I would therefore begin the child’s education by teaching it a useful handicraft and enabling it to produce from the moment it begins training. Thus every school can be made self-supporting, the condition being that the State take over the manufacture of these schools”[8].

His enthusiasm for self-support was expressed more forcefully after Narhari Parikh, a teacher at the Harijan Ashram at Sabarmati provided figures in defense of self-supported education from his school. This led Gandhi to assert that:

“Public schools must be frauds and teachers idiots, if they cannot become self-supporting” and, “corporate labour should be, say after the first year of the course, worth one anna per hour. Thus for twenty-six working days of four hours per day, each child will have earned Rs. 6-8 per month….We should be intellectual bankrupts, if we cannot direct the energy of our children so as to get from them, after a year’s training, one anna worth of marketable labour per hour”.

That he clearly saw links between education and vocation in terms of alleviating unemployment is clear from his answer to a questioner: “you impart education and simultaneously cut at the roots of unemployment”[9].

The self-sufficiency argument of Gandhi strongly suggests that he was professing an income generating vocational education. It is well known that one of his dissenters to this approach was none other than Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore considered the emphasis on vocation and training in Gandhi’s formulations deeply reductionist, asserting that the purpose of education was liberative rather than merely vocational. He in particular took exception to Gandhi’s emphasis on weaving education around the Charkha. The two engaged in a fascinating public debate on these issues.[10]

Gandhi of course did stress on the pedagogic importance of linking work to education, pleading for a system that considered work as a starting point to delve into history, geography, technology and science, exemplified by his famous passage about the use of takli to learn not only about spinning, but the history and geography of cotton, history and technology of the spinning wheel and so on, thus anticipating the ideas of Pring, Winch etc. many years earlier. He also stressed on the nurturing of the ‘cooperative’ and ‘peaceful’ values in children, when work was the basis of learning, rather than mindless rote learning. Above all, he pleaded for an education that would integrate the head, heart and the hand.

In an article written in May 1937 entitled ‘Intellectual Development or Dissipation?’, Gandhi developed the central premise that ‘Man is neither mere intellect nor the gross animal body, nor the heart and soul alone. A proper and harmonious combination of all the three is required for the making of the whole man and constitutes the true economics of education’. He then gave the outline of his vision of an alternative pedagogy:

“As against this, take the case of a child in whom the education of the heart is attended from the very beginning. Supposing he is set to some useful occupation like spinning, carpentry, agriculture etc., for his education and in that connection is given a thorough and comprehensive knowledge relating to the theory of the various operations that he is to perform and the use and construction of tools that he would be wielding. He would not only develop a fine, healthy body but also a sound, vigorous intellect that is not merely academic but is firmly rooted in and is tested from day to day by experience. His intellectual education would include knowledge of mathematics and the various sciences that are useful for an intelligent and efficient exercise of his avocation. If to this is added literature by way of recreation, it would give him a perfect well-balanced, all round education in which the intellect, the body and the spirit have all full play and develop together into a natural, harmonious whole”[11].

It would appear that Gandhi was trying to do many things through his radical suggestions linking work with education. Along with deeply philosophical perceptions regarding the purpose of education, he seems to have been trying to solve practical problems like funding for education and unemployment. It does become somewhat difficult to separate the philosophical and the instrumentalist in his formulations. The Tagore-Gandhi exchange aptly highlights the contested nature of the subject (missing in the NCF2005 and the FGR), since it provides insights to the resistance to the concept of work-based education even at the time of an emotionally charged atmosphere, conducive to do something new, during India’s independence. The intellectual and practical resistance to his views must have been considerable that in spite of his unquestionable stature, nai talim did not find favour for incorporation into mainstream education and was experimented as a non-state alternative. Identifying such resistances would seem to be vitally important in forging an implementational strategy sixty years later, in an India that is radically less conducive to Gandhi’s thinking. It is important to point out that the repeated reference in the FGR to the ‘Brahamanical mindset’ as the single most dominant resistance to Gandhian ideas may in fact be quite wrong. Because it would imply as if the dalits and low-castes saw merit in Gandhian ideas, and were opposed by the ruling high-castes. The situation in fact is quite the opposite.

Ideology and work-based education

Where as pedagogical considerations constitute issues internal to the educational discourse, mass education never is independent of external factors; political ideology being the most prominent. The NCF2005 states up front that it has deliberately side-stepped such issues in order not to indulge in ‘blame game’. Where as the merit of such a stance has been debated in relation to the history textbooks controversy, the absence of such an engagement in relation to work and education is very surprising, since work and labour are deeply political categories, and an absence of such engagement can lead to fairly erroneous conclusions.

There seems to be an implicit assumption in the FGR that the deprived, marginalized, dalit and toiling masses have a common enemy that is resisting vocationalised education, namely the Brahaminical elites. This evades the issue that one of the strongest opposition to vocational/ised education has in fact come from the dalits. This has to do with the very notion of the ‘worker’, and the historical social formations around work. Without reference to that, statements regarding the political left can also become misleading, as they have in the FGR, when it universlises Gandhi’s approach by stating that ‘similar experiments have been done in erstwhile U.S.S.R and other socialist countries’.

Let us consider vocationalisation in the Soviet Union and other socialist countries first. Gandhi’s vision of education was intrinsically located in the realities of rural India, as was his system of governance and essential production. At the forefront therefore to him was the carpenter, the blacksmith, the potter, the artisan, the handicraft maker, the agricultural labourer and so on. When he talked of vocationalising, he clearly had work related to such professions in mind. For the emerging Soviet Union of the 1920’s, education was intrinsically related to the creation of a massive industrial workforce. The rural artisan and peasant, very dear to Tolstoy (who greatly influenced Gandhi’s views in many ways)), was seen as a transitory phenomenon by the end of 1920’s (Anatoli Lunacharsky, who was charged by Lenin to put into place the Soviet education system stated around 1925 that Tolstoy’s artisan-based education might be allowed to continue for sometime, till it was replaced by industrial worker-based education). The development paradigm was rooted in massive industrialisation and collective farming, to replace household production and feudal agriculture. Work-based education, either through labour schools or polytechnics was therefore not related to handicraft but big industry. More importantly, the motivation was not merely pedagogic, it was deeply political. Class struggle being intrinsic to the Marxist thesis, creating class consciousness amongst the workers was integral to the Soviet education, and was simply called propaganda education. Treating such work-based education in the same manner as nai-talim can therefore be quite misleading, the political visions and developmental outcomes being very different.

It might be pertinent to refer to the US around the beginning of the 20th century here. Philanthropists worried about the problems of poor youth started small vocational programs outside the public schools around 1880’s. Between 1890 and 1910, vocational education in the narrow sense of job preparation attracted the support of a diverse range of social and economic interests. The National Association of Manufacturers was a strong advocate, pushing for schooling that would prepare workers for factories and workshops. After initial hesitation, labour unions supported and participated in these efforts.

As is evident, the nature of vocational/ised education is deeply entrenched within the political ideology that promotes it, in particular the development paradigm under which it operates. For a class struggle-based industrial workforce of the erstwhile Soviet Union, work-based education is deeply ideological; for the capitalist US industry of the early 20th century, it is mostly vocational education to prepare a disciplined workforce; and for Gandhi it was deeply linked to his ideal of India that would live mostly in villages, and produce locally in a manner that was harmonious with nature.

To put it simply, the nation was clearly divided, rightly or wrongly, regarding such a future at the time of independence. As protagonists of the modern industrial India, the Governments that came in right after independence embarked on an industrial paradigm to which Gandhi’s nai talim seemed irrelevant. Rightly or wrongly again, it has to be conceded that that was the dominant political consensus of the times.

Amongst the major dissenters of the Gandhian paradigm, then and now, are people for whom, perhaps, Gandhi was most concerned about, the dalits. Not only did they have his term for them, harijans, removed from the political lexicon, they have been vociferous in opposing any dilution of the liberating nature of Enlightenment values, in particular in the area of education. Spearheaded by the Columbia and London School of Economics trained economist, and barrister of law, Grey’s Inn, London decorated lawyer, the ‘untouchable’ Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, the dalit vision of development, education and human rights are firmly entrenched in the modernization paradigm, far removed from that of Gandhi.

The dalit aversion to anything based on traditional vocation should hardly be surprising. Given that the caste system is entrenched in the hierarchy of vocations, most of the artisanal castes being at the bottom of the hierarchy, relating them to education is viewed as a means of maintaining caste distinctions rather than obliterating them through liberal education. Vocation based education is tantamount to caste based education from this viewpoint.

I firmly believe that the major challenge to bring in work-based education in India would not be so much pedagogic, or formulation of policies. It is a political challenge; a negotiation with the liberal, left and the dalit points of view, in order to establish that work-based education can be progressive and emancipatory, both in a class and caste sense. The strong reaction of a section of left intellectuals and academics to the inclusion of local knowledge (artisanal or agricultural work would by definition derive from local knowledge systems) in the teaching-learning process, as proposed by the NCF2005 clearly indicates that the sites of resistance to work-based education are deeply ideological, and are not confined merely to the self-interests of the middle-class that views the dominant liberal system of education as conducive to their vocations.

The case for work-based education: Labour and Education

Sixty years onwards from the time of independence, we have the advantage of looking back how the system of education has proceeded, which formulations have been validated, and which have turned out to be flawed. To do so we could pose the question sharply: Has the predominantly liberal mode of education that the state opted for at the time of independence acted favourably to reduce inequalities amongst class, caste, gender and minorities; and has it transformed a majority of country’s population to creative, productive and secure citizens? The answer has to be a resounding no[12].

A few figures should help to support the answer. Even though the literacy rate has increased from around 21% at the time of independence, from a total population of around three hundred millions, to around 68% in 2001, out of a total population of around a billion, the absolute number of illiterates is greater than the population at the time of independence. This is of course related to the gross inadequacy of the school system. Where as it was constitutionally mandated that all children up to fourteen years of age should have received eight years of education by 1960, the situation in 2004 was that out of 21 crore children in the age-group 6-14, more than half, around 12 crore were never enrolled or dropped off by class eight, making a mockery of the constitutional mandates, which now includes the Right to Education for the 6-14 year olds guaranteed by the 86th amendment of 2002.

The progression beyond class 8 has been dismal. Only around 2.2 crore children are in classes 10 and 12, which reduces to half, 1.1 crores, in classes 11 and 12. Those in higher education number around a crore, most of them pursuing an utterly aimless undergraduate ‘liberal’ education degree in colleges that have been reduced to mediocre haunts.

The degree of exclusion by class eight is staggering, particularly the drop off rate of 52%. Where as the non-enrolment of over three crore children could be attributable to lack of access, the non-retention of around nine crore children, and the lack of adequate achievement of those who do remain in schools must surely have to do with the education that is transacted. Two attributes suggest themselves, that the education is uninteresting for children and it is irrelevant to their lives.

Creating interest is clearly a question of pedagogy; how to make teaching-learning more fun and less drudgery. Relevance is deeply developmental; requiring weaving education around the social, cultural and productive realities of a child, while empowering her to ‘liberate’ herself from the exigencies of her birth, experiences and social/economic constraints.

Quite clearly, livelihood considerations are related to education. An ‘educated’ unemployed is a serious problem, in as much it underscores the fact that the nation has invested in a person, without making him/her a productive citizen. The normal undergraduate and even post-graduate program would seem to be producing a large number of such unemployable youth. But the question could be asked: is that because jobs are not available or ‘suitably’ educated persons are not available for specific jobs?

That requires a scan of the labour profile of the country. In spite of the emphasis on industrialization in the initial five-year plans after independence, that could have created a large industrial proletariat, the labour force in the formal sector in India has remained abysmally low. In the decade and a half since the liberalization and privatization phase of the Indian economy, beginning 1991, where as the growth rate might is touching 8% per anum, it is accompanied by a decrease in formal employment, from 282.45 million in 1997 to 269.83 in 2003[13]. The decrease is most prominent in the public sector, from 195.59 millions to 184.49 millions, but evident too in the much hyped private sector, from 86.86millions to 85.34 millions in the said period. Unorganized labour however increased from 354 million to 390 million in the corresponding period, demonstrating clearly where the employment growth potential has been.

There is however a significant factor crucially linked to education within this employment scenario, which is the phenomenal growth of the service sector. The net decrease in formal employment is largely due to the decline in employment in the manufacturing/industrial sector, compensated by the increase in the service sector. This is also reflected in the disaggregated economic growth rates in the 10th plan period (2002-2006): the total growth rate was 7%, agriculture increased by a dismal 1.8%, industry by 8% and services by 8.9%.

The skewed nature of such development is evident from the fact that the sector that employs the largest labour namely agriculture is least productive economically, and the one that employs the least number of people, namely services, is the most productive.

What are the implications of this for vocational/ised education? It should remain undisputed that as far as integrating knowledge from non-organised areas of production, be that agriculture, artisanship, medicinal plants, forestry, construction, local water systems etc., are concerned, teaching-learning materials up to class 8 or 10 ought to be prepared in such a manner that they relate to the social, economic and cultural lives of the children, a majority of whom come from families of such backgrounds. The consequent relevance and identity of the school to the lives of the children, along with pedagogic methods that are interesting to the child might go a long way in arresting the massive drop-out rates, 52%,up to class 8.

The major question would be about purposeful streaming after class 10 and 12. It is evident that the existing undergraduate degree, in terms of quality, is neither a tonic for the mind, nor suitable for learning productive skills. The question is, if the vocational stream is to be enlarged at the 10+ and 12+ stages, along with improving the quality of the under and post graduate degrees, which directions should it take? The decline in the agricultural and industrial sectors and an increase in the service sector requires that we address this issue, in educational terms, with a fresh mind. The growth of the IT related service sector – call centers, outsourcing; and management related service sector require vocational programmes quite different from those pursued at existing ITI’s. Unfortunately, most of the educational needs in these areas are met today through the mushrooming of unregulated commercial fly-by-night shops, masquerading as private educational institutions; even as ‘universities’ as happened in Chattisgarh, where 52 such set-ups were granted university status, till the Supreme Court intervened. That is because the state has not responded to such vocational needs.

This of course doesn’t imply that vocational courses related to artisanship and agriculture are not required. One might in fact argue that if school education reflected the knowledge base of these sectors, that might provide an additional input to make these areas of production, where maximum labour is involved, more robust and active. However, one can also not overlook the over all constraints imposed by the developmental path the country unfortunately seems to be pursuing, which is higher growth rates with less employment.

Two things seem to be clear from these arguments. One that the hope that a very large part of the rural population would be proletarised as industrial workforce has remained a myth sixty years after independence, confirming Gandhi’s prophecy that India is essentially a nation of rural dwellers. Second, that instead of strengthening the rural economy, or creating manufacturing potential, hence employment, close to rural areas (as township manufacture in China has), India has stumbled on to the service sector, including IT related, as a major source of economy. Educational planning has however remained mute to such changes, and continues to blunder on with drop outs at lower stages and redundant degrees at higher stages, in a completely haphazard manner, benefiting dubious commercial education by default.

It has also to be recognized that the expansion of the service sector has given rise to aspirations, imposing educational demands that can be at complete variance with pedagogic principles. Take for example language. Crucial to the national system of education, as envisioned by Gandhi, elaborated by the Kothari Commission, and substantiated by researches all over the World, the use of local languages, if not mother tongue, in the formative years of formal education is critical to the creative growth of a child. Aspirations of parents and society at large for children, particularly in order to get a foothold in the IT related service sector is however pushing for increasing use of English as medium of instruction from the pre-primary level. Dalit organisations too favour learning in English as emancipatory, leading to dignity within the society. Can vocational/ised education remain immune to such demands? Learning English would in fact appear to be a major form of vocational education today!

Implementing work-based education

It is not as if NCF2005 is the first policy document favouring vocational/ised education. The Kothari Commission report and the National Policy on Education 1986, and its revised version of 1992 have already stated much of what NCF2005 contains. The question one may ask is: what have been the constraints on implementation?

Firstly, it is perhaps conceptual. Work-based education has mostly been interpreted as vocational education; a policy to create a separate vocational stream. Accordingly, we have seen the opening up of vocational education schools, or the addition of vocational education facilities in existing higher secondary schools. An overarching National Council for Vocational Education has also been set up, at Bhopal. Open schooling has also embraced the vocational stream, with the National Institute for Open Schooling (NIOS) and some state open schools offering a variety of courses.

It would appear that the National Knowledge Commission set up by the current UPA government in June 2005 has also been examining the question of production and work related knowledge in some detail. At a recent consultation on school education and literacy organized by the Commission, the Vice-Chairman of the Commission informed that their survey revealed that existing vocational institutions all together provide courses related to 80 vocations, most of them related to the formal sector. However, the Commission was reported to have compiled an exhaustive list of vocations covering both the formal and informal sectors, identifying 3000 vocations! So even at the level of streamed vocational education, a massive task awaits, in preparing courses in areas encompassing handicrafts, artisanship and other rural work.

This is quite different from integrating knowledge from areas of production, particularly from unorganized areas, into the mainstream liberal education. Evidently, such a task remains unattended. Will the publication of NCF2005 spur it on? Not unless attention is paid to the constraining factors. School books are made by the NCERT and state bodies like the SCERT’s/SIE’s/Boards. The faculties at these institutions and other textbook writers have mostly subject backgrounds, including from the Education discipline. It is obvious that they normally have no background, experience, knowledge, ability and hence inclination, to look beyond their subject areas (most of them also have no experience of having worked with school children, particularly rural). So in spite of what the policies might say, there are no matching institutional and human capacities to translate them into action; this has happened in the past and is likely to happen after the NCF2005.

In the first year after the NCF2005 when the NCERT has begun to write fresh books, I have formally participated in the effort as a member of a committee that is monitoring the new drafts. As a consequence, one gets an opportunity to read all the book drafts and interact with the writing groups. However one sees a great deal of resistance and throwing up of hands when it is pointed out to the writer groups how ‘knowledge from below’ could be incorporated, or generated from the children and teachers. The common responses are: ‘we don’t know how to do so; it is dangerous since the information is not validated; it will dilute the subject matter; that is not science/mathematics/history, or whatever’!

A mindset that considers codified liberal education as the only valid knowledge is unlikely to create teaching-learning material that incorporates knowledge from work. In contrast, while we were making textbooks in Eklavya for use in the government schools of Madhya Pradesh, not only were the rural school teachers (most of them also being farmers and artisans) participating in the process, but we would involve a carpenter, mason, farmer or other artisans wherever required. That is how chapters on leather tanning, bidi making, folk forms of mathematics, panchayat functioning, land, soil, and crops and so forth were written. Unless a similar process is initiated within the state owned textbook writing institutions, or people with such experience and understanding are involved in large numbers, rather than only cut and dry subject experts, implementation will not take place. The most evident example from the recent NCERT books is the class 3 mathematics book that has attempted to incorporate algorithms of folk mathematics, made possible because people behind it had worked in that area before, and believe in such integration. The class 6 mathematics book is however devoid of any such effort, possibly because its writers do not believe in the policy, no matter whether it is the NCF2005 or the Kothari Commission, or do not have the capacity to do so. The resulting approach, across the classes is therefore very uneven. But if that can be ironed out over the years, particularly in state level textbooks covering nearly 97% children is schools, it would be stupendous. That however would require a massive overhaul of the institutions responsible for textbook writing, teacher trainings and examinations. That, and not just writing policy, is the major challenge!

References:
[1] Allen Graubard; Could Vocational Education be Progressive, Radical Teacher, Spring 2004, Center forCritical Education Inc.
[2] Judith Suissa; Vocational Education: a social anarchist perspective, Policy Futures in Education, Vol 2, No. 1, 2004
[3] Richad Pring; Closing the Gap: liberal education and vocational preparation, Hodder and Stoughton,1995, (in Judith Suissa, ibid)
[4] C. Winch; Education, Work and Social Capital; Towards a new conception of vocational education,Routledge, London, 2000
[5] M.Smith: The Libertarians and Education, George Allen and Unwin, 1983
[6] Henry Fagg; A Study of Gandhi’s Basic Education, National Book Trust, 2002
[7] Harijan 5:222, in Fagg, ibid
[8] Harijan 5:197, in Fagg, ibid
[9] Harijan 5:261, in Fagg, ibid
[10] Sabysachi Bhattacharya; The Poet and the Mahatma, National Book Trust
[11] Harijan; 5:104, in Fagg ibid
[12] Vinod Raina; Where do children go after class eight?, Seminar, July 2006
[13] Vinod Raina, ibid

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Arise Awake Stop not till the goal is reached. - Swami Vivekananda Swami ji is my inspiration, not as a monk but as a social reformer and for his universal-ism.