 A more organized aberration came where the English tried to educate Indians the way they want. They said they may be brown of skin, but they must think like us, their values must be what ours are. Almost every day, I never came home without being beaten for something. So, this effort is very appreciative. In many ways it is positive. Sudden change may make it collapse totally, because first you have to educate the teachers how to be. In a much-needed move, the Government of India recently announced sweeping changes in the education policy for the first time in 34 years. I am keen to know your review of the new policy. Well, India's education for millennia was conducted in a certain way, where education was designed to integrate you into life process, without life process overwhelming you, that everybody had freedom to choose. Probably, if you look back a thousand or fifteen hundred years ago, the only culture on the planet where nearly ninety to ninety-five percent of the women were literate is India. Nowhere else this happened that long ago. Education is very, very recent for women in the rest of the world. I'm telling you, all ladies, recently educated. But education was part of both male and female populations in India for a very long time, which changed in the last six hundred to eight hundred years, because of aberrations that happened to that culture. And about hundred and fifty, two hundred years ago, a more organized aberration came, where the English tried to educate Indians the way they want. Very clearly they defined it, they had no ambiguity about what they wanted. They said they may be brown of skin, but they must think like us, their values must be what ours are. Like this they went on, schooling system was very, very cruel. Similar things have happened in America for the native Americans. The English education was a cruel system of trying to contain a child in a room and beaten for twelve years with some rubbish that doesn't mean anything to him. I escaped. So this happened in India in a much larger scale, an organization, than the way it happened here. So when this happened, what was their intent of educating the Indian populace? The only thing is, they wanted... they found Indians were very good with mathematics, languages, because they... everybody spoke four, five languages, they could pick up any language easily. And they're very good without using even their fingers, without using paper, even today it is true. I think the present generation is completely losing it because of the gadgets. Otherwise, when we are growing up, even today, we can count things, multiply things, divide things in our mind without using any other instrument. So they found this very valuable, they thought these guys will make good clerks and accountants for her majesty's service, because the ambition was to take the entire world. And you needed very docile, honest, hardworking people who will never rebel, who don't have bloodthirsty-ness in them, who are very calm, who will never organize revolutions or anything. They will just do their work. You put them in slavery, they will think this is their karma, and they will just do that also. Well, when they saw this attitude, they thought of all the nations they had colonized at that time. India looked like an ideal place to educate and make sure this whole enterprise of... recall this, this whole enterprise of imperialism will be staffed by Indians. And it was, even a large part of British army, both in World War I and World War II, was Indian soldiers who fought for fifty paisa a day, understand? They did not even give them shoes, they were just wearing sandals, Indian jodhpuris, and they were in the trenches in France and nearly some hundred and fifty thousand men lost their toes and their feet because they were in ice cold temperatures with no shoes. So they found, in spite of that they fought with minimal food because they were told to fight because this thing is there in India if you take something from somebody. The present day Indians may be losing it, but generally, traditionally, it is called as, I have eaten something from you. That means I'll always do the best for you. Suppose you give me one day's food, that's it. Only one day you fed me in my life, I'll always remember that and always serve you in the best possible way for that one thing. So this is called namak that I've eaten the salt from your hands because this comes from the understanding of runanabhanda. If I've taken salt from your hands, that means we are one. So they use this in a big way and educated Indians, the way it is necessary to fill all the clerical and accounting posts across the world, which they fulfill pretty well. But in this education process, the most important thing is obedience, not intelligence, not ingenuity, not unfolding of individual genius. It is obedience. You must obey, otherwise you'll be punished. This brought, was brought in. Maybe in the current generation, according to the Indian laws, you can't beat a child in the school, but when we were growing up, why should I tell you all this? I don't think, you know, almost every day, I never came home without being beaten for something. Like this, like this, sometimes they get cruel like this on the knuckles, tumble, tumble. So I went there only when it was absolutely necessary because what are... what are they trying to do? So this education system, mildly, was transformed in 50s and 60s, a little bit of change, but didn't have the courage to shift it totally because changing a whole system can lead to collapse. Did not have the wherewithal and the money and finances to do it. I'm glad though it took so much time at least now it's happening, I feel it should have happened much earlier. We could have done this in 90s, but it came to 2020 and now we are making changes. If you ask me personally, I'm very appreciative of the changes that have happened, but I'm not satisfied because I would like more drastic changes. First thing is liberate the children from this tyranny. Everybody is talking about, even day before yesterday, I was in conversation with the minister. I... well, if a child goes to farm with his father and learns how to farm, this is called as child labour and the father can be arrested because he took his son and made him work there. But school is a horrible labour, in my experience it was. Now we are trying to create schools which doesn't feel like labour, otherwise and it's a tyrannical labour because this moment you tell me you learn this language, I'm just beginning to read and understand. Tongue you drink a bell and you say, suddenly I learn mathematics and Tongue I learn chemistry, Tongue I learn physics and Tongue a stupid guy comes and tells me moral education. Well, this is tyranny of the worst kind. At your whim, you try to change and shift the child's focus from this to that, that to this. You think this is bloody schooling, this is a bloody factory which doesn't produce anything significant. This is a factory designed to feed other factories. The whole education system is designed unfortunately to cater to the economic engine that is running, which is your personal interest, it's not child's interest. Education should be about blossoming a human being to their fullest. Well, this may sound too idealistic, are we capable of doing this in the nation? Should we not produce accountant, should we not produce engineer, should we not produce many medical sciences? Yes we should, I'm not questioning it. Tell me, at the age of six or seven, you are trying to understand how, let us say, how hydrogen and oxygen comes together and becomes water. Tell me, did you really understand or did you just start believing it? So you are propagating a new religion. Nobody understood how two parts of hydrogen and one part of oxygen became water at the age of seven or eight, even now you have not understood, as far as I'm concerned. I have not. So you just start believing it. So if all you want to do is propagating a new religion, which doesn't get you anywhere, well all the best. At least now there is an effort to make this more relaxed, that what is said in the school is not absolute. School provides an ambience for the child to interact with his own age group and also develop a thirst for knowing. This is all a school should do, to inject a new level of thirst to know something every day new. And of course, information and other things are available, especially today in today's world where information is everywhere. Propagating information is no more a school. A school should become largely an inspirational place. Information is available everywhere. What human wisdom could not do, it looks like the virus is doing. Now suddenly everybody's understood. I've been talking about this incessantly for the last ten, twelve years. It is time that there is nothing being taught in the school. The only purpose, you know our schools are like this, we don't have trained teachers. Only people who are well educated, who are well behaved, who are well cultured, creating an atmosphere of inspiration and nurture, so that they don't take to wrong things. They don't take to anything which is damaging to their life. That's all the concern is. Rest of it let them grow up. First of all, these words which have gotten implanted into human psyche and in the languages, it is very... it's only in America I hear this. When I ask people something about their background, they say, I was raised Jewish, I was raised Catholic. Why are you being raised? Only cattle are raised. Human beings should not be raised, human beings should grow up. If human beings have to grow up, there is a certain ambience and atmosphere that is nurturing for their growth. That is all a school should create. Right now, if you want these plants to flower, you don't go there and pull flowers out of the plant. All you do is maintain the atmosphere in the soil, water, sunlight, whatever else it needs. You just maintain the ambience. The plant will flower. You cannot make it flower. Right now, school looks like you want to pull flowers out of people's heads or whatever else. No, you only interested in pulling money out of their heads because the entire damn world has become economy, economy, economy. All right? Economic system is here to serve humanity. Humanity is not here to serve the economic system. I think that's in that sense without disrespecting unfortunate loss of life and suffering that people are going through or hearts are with you for that. But in terms of relegating the economic system to secondary level from being a primary thing has been in some way achieved by this virus. Right now, staying alive and staying healthy is more important than how much bank money you got. It's a very good happening for the human beings. This should have happened of our own wisdom, which is what these centers are, where nobody's thinking money. We are living in a way that there are many people who are living with me who not thought money for the last 10-20 years because money doesn't mean anything to them. I have developed people around me that if you put a... you know, you open up the federal bank to them, they'll walk in thinking, what is there to read? It's not even a library because it doesn't mean anything to them. Because what money can buy doesn't matter to them. Of course we all eat, all this is there, but for that you don't have to run such a horribly destructive economic engine which is just ripping the life out of this planet. So in this, if you want to correct this, this can't be corrected by crippling the economy. This can only be done by transforming our education system. So this effort is very appreciative. In many ways it is positive, but still for me it is still coming from too much fear. In a controlled way little shift is happening. But maybe there are practical problems, I understand that because in India millions of children probably around... if in Tamil Nadu alone, there are about fifteen million children in school, I think. No, I'm sorry. No, no, that's wrong. In Tamil Nadu, in the government schools in Tamil Nadu there are a million children in the government schools. A similar number is there in the private schools. So approximately maybe around two, two point two million children in Tamil Nadu. All over the country in twenty-eight states, there must be at least seventy to hundred million children in schools. If you take them up to high school, probably up to hundred, hundred twenty million children are in school. So the changes that you make for such a large structure, you will have to make it carefully. But I only hope I have also given my insights into education what needs to happen. And hope in a calibrated manner more changes will come in the coming years because to absorb these changes, for many schools to absorb these changes to create the necessary staff, to create the necessary infrastructure, it may take two, three years before they're able to implement what changes they have made which are significant. One important change that has happened which is good is children can pursue education, they can break it and again they can come back, which already is there in this country I think, but otherwise in India if you break your education you're finished. That's the end of your education. You never come back. So now there are options that you can take a break and again you can come back. You went through little madness for one year, so you dropped but now again you got to your senses, you want to get back to school. That possibility has opened up which is a great thing that is a very significant change. A certain number of children are committing suicide unable to bear the pressure because in India if you get ninety-nine percent in your examination your parents will ask, where is the other one percent? What happened? What did you do with that one percent? So the pressure of performance where in the Delhi University children who got hundred percent don't get seats for graduation courses because there are so many people who got hundred percent. So essentially the most significant aspect of this change that has happened in education policy is from route learning to a more creative way of thinking and applying themselves which is very significant. I think it's a good change. Can we make all these changes effective? You know for all these hundred million children plus instantly I don't think so but it'll take time. It's a good move. I would have expected a little more. One thing I wanted from the government which I've been pitching for especially for higher education is release them. Let the private people do whatever they want. Do not control the private schools. Government schools you decide what to teach that's up to you but private schools release them in such a way. I actually told just to the leaders of the nation, I said see I will teach nonsense and I will charge a million but the parents love it, children love it. What is your problem? Where did this come that administration starts thinking you love the children more than the parents? Where did this come from that you're concerned about the well-being of the child more than the parents? Well there are ignorant parents, they may induce them into all kinds of things. Yes, that much protection you must give but you must not assume that there are many parents who will take children in the wrong way. If they're drinking they'll take them into drinking, if they're drugging they're taking them drugging whatever compulsions they have, they will initiate their children into same compulsions and there are any number of parents who will enslave their children for their own. This thing parents are not above board completely. Any number of parents have horribly enslaved their own children. So in that sense the state has to be active and vigilant about it that is understood but still what I'm saying is easier than done. I'm not trying to say they're wrong. All I'm saying is we must continue to change. This is not like an absolute change has been done and we've achieved something. We must continue to change. Every few years more and more relaxation should happen. Education should become a joyful choice, not a compulsive extruder out of which you have to come out in a certain shape. This needs to happen everywhere in the world. In India it's necessary because it's a massive population. We need to bring a possibility where education builds beautiful human beings, not soldiers. Well, soldiers have become necessary in the world only because we have created a world full of confrontation. At least within the given society we can avoid the soldiers. At the national borders unfortunately we still need soldiers. This also would go if economic disparity in the world largely gets equalized either by everybody going up or everybody coming down one way or the other. If there is economic disparity goes away, you will see national borders will not mean much. That needs to happen but we're doing everything possible to see that doesn't happen quickly because imperialism is being practiced in so many ways, in so many subtler ways than before and new forms of imperialism is being developed in various parts of the world. So evolution of individual human being is most important. This is where education is vital, that it is evolution of individual human beings on this planet. But right now educated people on this in this world, in the last 200 years if you look at it educated educated people have been the most cruel people on the planet. Educated people have been the most destructive people on the planet. Even ecologically it's only educated people for destroying this world. Illiterate people are not doing such things. Even now it is only in the cities across India, reasonably educated people who are a big virus threat, the rural population anyway maintaining social distance. In Tamil Nadu if you see, this is a culture in South India, when somebody speaks to somebody they will speak like this. They were always conscious that your breath should not touch somebody else. Now look at all of you. But once in a way you would like to raise this and cough at somebody because your freedom to cough in somebody's face. You know, this is being, protests are being taken out. Why can't I infect somebody? That is the way the world happens. Virus must, you know, transact. We all know biologically that is how it is happening. Microbial life needs to transact. But you don't have to be an active participant in it. Anyway it happens and you don't have to give a virus which is destructive to somebody's life. Well, this is what it means. Educated people on the planet should become the most responsible unconscious population on the planet. Right now unfortunately our education systems have not built this. The future generations, this is what we should aim towards as long as the Indian policymakers are seeing this as a calibrated change which will, which they will continue to change over a period of time. The present change is fine with me because I understand the largeness. It's not ideal, the changes, the small changes. Some are significant changes but I understand the size of the education machinery, sudden change may make it collapse totally because first you have to educate the teachers how to be. When they don't know how to be, suddenly changing the education system could be a disastrous process. So they're changing in installments. That's what I'm thinking, that they're changing in installments. Every few years there will be changes and changes. This needs to happen. Nobody should believe this, these changes that have been done is absolute and perfect. They are not. I must say, it reminds me. I never understood why but it was fine with me. See, by the time I finished my graduation, which is twelve plus three, fifteen years of education, I have been in thirteen different institutions. One, I can blame it on my father because he was working for Indian Railways and he was being transferred a little bit. That is one cause. But even when we stayed in one city, still I changed every year. This happened. One day Shankaran Pillai applied for a job. Then the interviewer looked at this and said, may ask many questions which all he answered properly. Then he said, you have left over fifteen jobs in your career. You're only forty years of age, you left fifteen jobs. Why is that? Shankaran Pillai said, I never left any of them of my own intent. That was so for me also. I never wanted to leave the school for some reason. They put me in another school and another school and another school.