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Wizardry or dignity? By Kancha Ilaiah My children's book, Turning the Pot, Tilling the Land: Dignity of Labour in Our Times, published by Navayana, was supposed to be launched at a famous bookshop in Chennai in the third week of August. But the manager postponed the launch saying, "These are Harry Potter days and no other programme can be held now." It is obvious that the Indian elite prefer their children to read a book on fantasy rather than one on dignity of labour. The hype and marketing wizardry surrounding Harry Potter is so big that parents and teachers too get caught up in the wave and encourage their children to read it. A book on dignity of labour does not appear to inspire them. But the latter will cure a historical disease that India has been suffering from, whereas Harry Potter will not. The government is thinking of introducing compulsory sex education in schools. A furious debate is now on about its pros and cons. No doubt sex education is necessary to tackle the problem of AIDS and venereal diseases. But even though the whole nation suffers from the indignity of labour, no one ever proposes that every child should be compulsorily taught the dignity of labour. We have suffered a huge loss on the scientific front, and in terms of human efficiency and productivity because of inbuilt values that teach the indignity of labour. But this has never been an issue for any educationist in the country. Our public spaces are dirty, ugly and murky. No citizen has a sense of cleanliness. The houses of the rich, the middle class and the poor are all unclean because the householders themselves are not ready to clean their houses themselves. Either paid servants or the women are forced to clean the houses and the streets. Men, young or old, have the right to use the whole space at home and outside but never think that it is their duty to keep their living spaces clean. Imagine all our citizens contributing their mite to keep our villages, towns, cities and our environment clean. Thus we can save of lot of money which is now spent fighting contagious diseases. But the whole process of maintaining cleanliness requires the constant involvement of the people in the labour process. However, caste and gender discriminations built into the Indian ethos have always assigned such work to the lower castes and the women. Since no schoolbook teaches our children the dignity of labour, the so called educated children too are indifferent to all this. Even now, the educated lot is unwilling to get their hands dirty. Only the Dalit-Bahujan castes should get their hands soiled. What will happen when the children belonging to these castes too get educated? Who will do all the work? At one level, the problem of indignity of labour is universal, but India suffers from it more than any other nation. Even in the United States, the blacks and the Hispanics do much of the work related to cleaning and construction. But in everyday life, an average Euro-American, or the Chinese or Japanese, has more respect for labour than an average Indian. At homes, offices, in scientific laboratories, in industries, a person who considers every work to be dignified develops a different attitude to life itself. This is where we need to introduce sufficient reading material for children, but not merely in a narrative form. There ought to be a national debate on the issue of teaching dignity of labour. In fact, this is more urgent than the debate on sex education, since it has to do with the development of the nation. There can be a debate on when it should be taught and in what form. Several questions need answers, but the debate has not even started.
