Education in an

Information Age

- as seen in Japan

I glanced through a book based on conversations with Aung San Suu Kyi. The name of the book is "The Voice of Hope." I had seen her on TV and knew that some years ago she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Following the experiments of Gandhi in India and in recent times of Nelson Mandela in South Africa, she is leading a non-violent struggle against the oppressive military regime in Myanmar. Her goal is to bring justice, freedom and democracy to the people of Burma. She says she does not have harsh feelings against the present military dictatorship. According to her they lack political integrity and have demeaned the Burmese by administering the country with the belief that every individual has a price and is purchasable. Suu Kyi says that a minister in the Military Government told a foreign journalist," If you hold a ten dollar note above a grave, a hand will come out and reach for it. And if you held out a hundred dollar note, the whole body will come out." Unfortunately, this attitude that Suu Kyi is trying to dispel is not limited to dictatorships but is the hall mark of the third world countries.

In the evening I had dinner in an Indian restaurant in the shopping mall in the suburb of Hiroshima City. Out of blue, Nakayama said in Hindi, 'Bharatiya log bahut petu hote hain'. This was a most unusual comment from the host who had taken out a Bharitya for a dinner. Such is life.

The mall had an aqua avenue. While walking in it the feeling is of being inside the sea. School of fish float overhead and so do turtles, dolphins and many other colourful sea life. The Mall is on the pattern of similar suburban shopping centres in America.

The seminar came to a close today. I carry with me indelible impressions of the Japanese hospitality and of the meticulous planning that they put in their programmes.

I have fallen in love with the Hiroshima city. I have mentioned earlier that it is laced with five rivers forked out of one river, all of whom help the Ota River to join the sea. Each of the rivers has beautiful bridges and grassy walks along their banks. The city has shown remarkable resilience in having come to life that too with vigour after its total destruction.

Nakayama, Tabata and their students came to see us off at the Hiroshima Railway Station. After travelling for two hours by the bullet train, I arrived in Osaka by 5 p.m.

Unlike American cities, which are laid out like a grid spanned by horizontal rows of streets crossed by perpendicular columns of avenues, the Japanese cities with the exception of Kyoto are spread out in labyrinths. Addresses are described through landmarks, such as 5 houses down the big red building from the hardware shop on the main street or similar descriptions. It seems local persons do not have difficulty in following such directions. Foreigners like me who are amazed at the glowing neon signs written in combination of the Chinese characters and two other scripts called Hiragana & Katakana generally get lost in locating such addresses. It took me nearly 45 minutes to find the Hotel less than 500 meter from the Shin-Osaka railway station. Osaka is perhaps a smaller version of Tokyo. It is crowded and unlike the Hiroshima city is an urban chaos. I stepped out to explore a nearby area called Umeda. I could manage the subway but got lost in coming out of the railway station. I got out of the station on the side opposite to the side I had entered , and thus started walking away from my hotel. With the help of some persons I managed to reach my hotel. I have set the alarm for 5.30 am and before going to sleep have written the account of the last-but-one-day of my visit to Japan.

Reaching the Osaka-Kansai airport by the Haruka was smooth. This airport is another feather in Japan's cap of achievements. It has been constructed on a reclaimed island in the sea. It is connected to the main land by a two tier bridge. Road traffic moves on top of the railway bridge. The bridge seemed endless, it may be over 5 km in length. The airport is modern and functional.

En route to Bangkok from Osaka, the plane flew over Okinawa, Taiwan, Vietnam and Cambodia . It was a clear blue sky with occasional patches of clouds, but from a height of 39000 feet it is difficult to make out the features of the earth below.

The Bangkok airport appeared lifeless. To me it appeared much too big for the quantum of air traffic it handled at that time of the day. All items in the duty free shops of the airport were exorbitantly priced and carried tags in American dollars. I could not find the Tiger balm at the airport, perhaps it is still inexpensive and therefore no longer of interest to the shopkeepers in the airport.

I had four hours on hand for boarding my connecting flight to New Delhi. I spent the time watching the BBC channel on television. It covered live the wedding of the princess Cristina of Spain.

The departure hall for the flight to Delhi was packed with passengers most of whom were Indians. The boarding scene was similar to that of a bus-station in India. Big shopping bags of passengers would not fit in the overhead lockers and nobody was interested in adjusting the hand baggage in the space below the seats. The first ten minutes inside the aircraft bound to Delhi from any international airport can unnerve even the most seasoned flyers. When everything seemed to have settled down, one Sardarji, who was drunk, decided to step out of the aircraft, as though it was a Punjab Roadways bus to Jallandhar. He was checked in his adventure by the flight crew. He could not produce the boarding card. He started removing his clothes in search of his boarding card, but in vain. I thought that perhaps the Sardarji was walking out of the plane leaving some luggage behind. Fortunately, for all the passengers of this flight, a person came forward to vouch for Sardarji's bona fides. Thai officials relented with the condition that Sardarji instead of leaving the plane for a stroll should go back to his seat.

This visit to Japan has left sharp impressions on me of a country living in an information age. Japan has given highest priority to education. Children of this country are the most privileged lot in the world for they study in schools provided with the most modern facilities and from teachers who enjoy high status in the society. The question is to identify the factors that have made it possible for the State to support education so liberally. I have a plausible answer for this question. The clue to my answer is in a remark made by a student of the Tokyo University at a picnic in 1969. I had come then to Japan to spend a year as a visiting scientist in the theoretical physics group of the Tokyo University. To help me know the group Professor Miyazawa arranged a one day excursion to a mountain resort two hours by train from Tokyo. I saw there some persons in uniform enjoying themselves. I asked whether they were soldiers. In response to my query one of the students remarked, "Japan has renounced war and does not maintain an armed force." "The persons in uniform belonged to the Self-Defence-Force (Jietai)."

In the constitution that was framed for the country after the Second World War Japan explicitly renounced war. The Article 9 in Chapter II of the constitution reads,

This Article of the constitution has enabled Japan to limit its expenditure on national security. Substantial funds could thus be allocated to the education sector. Let us now contrast it with our situation in India. We are proud to have the second largest defense force in the world. In the past 50 years since independence we have fought three wars with Pakistan and one with China. We are hard put to find funds even to run primary schools with two teachers. We have to borrow funds from external funding agencies for strengthening our primary schools. The dilemma that rich countries will get richer and the poor will get poorer is a warning to us as a nation. We are way down in the ranking of the world-development-index. What is the way out? A possible way out is that the three countries of the Indian subcontinent instead of spending their meager funds on maintaining huge defense forces should instead spend on education.

On the flight I was served a strict vegetarian Asian meal. It was tasteless and inedible. Flight reached the Indira Gandhi Airport at the scheduled time. After taking my baggage I stepped out of the arrival lounge and was happy to see the smiling face of Shri Prakash. My trip to Japan came to an end.