« Cotton farmer suicides in Andhra Pradesh | Main | Your tax rupees at work! »
December 04, 2005
Temples of modern India are libraries
While inaugurating the Bhakra dam, Nehru commented it as the temple of modern India.
Going forward into new millennium, the temples of India are libraries.
The modern India is going to depend more and more on the knowledge of its populace to progress itself and to compete with the west. The libraries are surely the temples of India. But these temples are in dilapidated condition now and most of them don't even exist. The government does not realize the significance of the libraries. Or sometimes, the corruption is so rampant that the funds for libraries go straight into the pockets of crooked.
Probably the schools & universities also would qualify as the temples on par with libraries. We have been doing reasonably good with the schools. But the universities are right now in such a bad shape because most of the research at Indian universities is irrelevant to current India; we seem to rather ape the west and look forward for an approval from the west.
One saving grace for these temples could be philanthropy. The philanthropy in the west has done some miracles. Why did not Dhirubhai Ambani leave his wealth to libraries (or some other philanthropy) rather than to his bickering children ? Hope, at least the more modern thinkers like N.R. Narayana Murthy does that!
Posted by nachiketa at December 4, 2005 05:59 PM
Comments
I came across a very interesting piece on the philanthropy of Narayana Murthy which you may find relevant.
Posted by: Atanu Dey at December 3, 2005 10:42 AM
In my previous post, I neglected to post the link to Narayana Murthy -- it is http://www.kamalsinha.com/iit/people/narayana-murthy/
Posted by: Atanu Dey at December 5, 2005 11:24 PM