Education a basic necessity, must be handled by state: Sonam Wangchuk

For Wangchuk, if children living in Himalayan deserts are taught about agriculture not suitable to local terrain, such education would be out of context.

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“Education is a basic necessity and ethics must be a part of it. It must be handled by the state,” Wangchuk said (Illustration: Suvajit Dey)

Sonam Wangchuk, an engineer whose reforms in the education sector has helped bring down the failure percentage of students in Ladakh from 95 per cent to 25 per cent, on Saturday emphasised that education was a basic necessity and that it must be handled by the state.

“Education is a basic necessity and ethics must be a part of it. It must be handled by the state,” he said. He was speaking at an event organised by the New Acropolis Cultural Organisation on how to ensure social change through innovative practices and the role of business models in bringing about social reforms. It was organised to observe the 150th birth anniversary year of Mahatma Gandhi.

Experts from various fields such as banking, education, social reforms history and philosophy shared their views at the event.

In a panel discussion, Wangchuk emphasised that education needs to be contextual. For him, if children living in Himalayan deserts are taught about agriculture not suitable to local terrain, such education would be out of context. “It will be equality of irrelevance,” he said.

Wangchuk along with students has designed a cone-shaped reservoir to keep water frozen during spring for agricultural purposes in Ladakh. It is during spring that we have minimum flow of water, he says, adding that basic physics was used to stock water.

Anu Aga, founder of Teach For India, an organisation that encourages corporates to teach underprivileged students in municipal schools, said these leaders selected to teach students help bridge the inequality gap in education. “Teaching should be an aspirational profession, not the last resort… our educational institutes are mostly owned by politicians and builders. We need the best teachers because they have the greatest impact on students’ lives,” Aga said.

The one-day-long conference, titled ‘Leadership for a Better World’, also saw discussions on Bhutan’s gross happiness index and Gandhian philosophy.

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Gandhian historian Tridip Suhrud, author and photographer Pierre Poulain, Dr Vandana Shiva from Navdanya, Bhutan-based Dr Saamdu Chetri, author Fernand Schwarz and Yaron Barzilay from the New Acropolis Cultural Organisation also shared their views.

Speaking on having a business model to bring social reforms, Chetna Gala Sinha from Mann Deshi Bank said that the government needs to facilitate licences and permissions to allow women to start their own businesses. Her micro-financing bank has 1.10 lakh account holders. When she first applied for a licence to open a bank in rural Maharashtra, it was rejected on grounds of having no literate promoting members. “The promoting members, all women, ensured they got literate and we applied again,” she said, adding that for five years they sacrificed their dividend to create reserves in the bank.

Producer and philanthropist Ronnie Screwvala said it is not bad to have profit as a component in business. “We have not-for-profit organisation Swades that works with 1,200 schools and at the same time we are running a for-profit education programme for higher studies,” he said.

The event, with over 244 participants, also saw musical performance by folk singer Mooralala Marwada. The New Acropolis, found in 1957, is an international philosophical organisation that talks about culture and social nature. Over 40,000 volunteers work with it.