“Modern society is inherently change oriented.Any alteration or modification that occurs in a situation over a time is called social change.
According to World Bank- “Social Change is the significant alteration of social structures (that is of patterns as social action and interaction) including consequences and manifestations of such structures embodied inners (rules of conduct), values and cultural products and symbols.
DEVELOPMENT PLANNING AND SOCIAL CHANGE
Planning aims at Change in social organization. Community Welfare schemes like improving educational facilities, increasing employment opportunities, doing away with evil social practices.
Development planning was initiated in India to cater to the socialist ideas of Nehru and developmental needs of the country. We lacked technological advantage and market advantage and people were making their living from agriculture and traditional handicrafts.
India has evolved into a country after freedom struggle, in this struggle people came from every strata of society. Prior to the national movement people had experience of excessive state-controlled during the colonial period and state was capitalist oriented during that time. But again there was a concern that if socialist model will be adopted then there are chances of complete autocratic rule of state. Thus it can be said that socialist development planning was not the goal of the country but it was rather the only way out at that point of time.Hence, we had no choice but to go for non-capitalist development planning.Nehru believed that accelerated growth can bring economic surplus to the hands of the state that can be used in infrastructure sector like health, communication and education.
Critics have pointed out to the fact that development efforts benefitted only a class of people. Erosion of authority and dissatisfactions with existing process of development has contributed to the problem of violence, lawlessness in the country.Development planning has led to the emergence of different categories of powerful middle class in rural and urban India – class of ‘merchant capitalists’.
Amartya Sen asserts that the government should have started with two different areas of development i.e. health and education. Health is both physical and mental capability of a person to earn a livelihood and education gives him capacity to gather skills and challenge discrimination, understand his rights and so he is able to demand justice when it is not extended to him.
EDUCATION AND SOCIAL CHANGE
Education is regarded as the key for restructuring the economies of developing countries. It helps in overcoming the techno-economic problems and also plays an important role in resolving the socio-demographic problems. Education facilitates the development of human resources, cultural expression, and improved health and thus provides an essential base for social and economic development. It is considered as an empowering phenomenon which enables the people to combat social justice and exploitation and thus creates the required synergy for a structural socio-political transformation.
Modern education initiated by British expanded rapidly after independence. This contributed to transmission of skills. A vigilant and articulating working class, factory based organizations, rational authority system in economic organizations, a service sector economy and economic modernization was a result of the spread of education in India.
Education is an important instrument of modernization. Modern values in social, economic and political spheres have to be instilled in the minds of people to achieve the goal of modernization. Values such as equality, liberty, scientific temper, humanism and ideas against blind faith pave the way for modernization. This task can be effectively performed by education.
Universal access, universal retention and universal achievement – universalization of education.
Education also made significant changes at familial level. There is an increase in the number of nuclear families and with the spread of nuclear families, there is a greater trend towards gender equality in families. Kerala has demonstrated how mass education could develop literacy rates even that of women.
Abdul Kalam in his presidential address said that, when women are educated, a society with stability is formed. Thus the spread of education amongst women resulted in delayed marriages, fertility control, population controller.
Amartya Sen says that Kerala’s performance on socio-economic indicators is better when compared to the performance of every district of China.
Education also results in the creation of a secular mindset. As goals of life become increasingly secular, ritual dimension of caste is decreasing. Education thus gives primacy to secular goals.But, the spread of education in India had been lopsided, the concentration of educational institutions in urban areas. The BIMARU (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh) region is characterized by low facilities of education at school level, education is still the way it persisted during the colonial rule. It continued to be capital and knowledge intensive.
Education is the most important single factor in achieving rapid economic development, technological progress and creating a social order founded on the values of freedom, social justice and equal opportunities to all. Programs of education lie at the base of the effort to forge the bonds of common citizenship, to harness the energies of the people, and to develop the natural and human resources of every part of the country.
Further, the report of Kothari Commission (1964) held that the destiny of India is now being shaped in her classrooms. In a world based on science and technology, it is education that determines the level of prosperity, welfare and security of the people. The quality and number of persons coming out of our schools and colleges will depend on our success in the great enterprise of national reconstruction. The report adds, ‘In fact, what is needed is a revolution in education which in turn will set in motion the much desired social, economic and cultural revolution’.
Critics have pointed out that education is not a prime mover of social change or as the main weapon, or even one of the important instruments of achieving fundamental social changes. Here, it is asserted that change is in or through the educational system is not possible without prior changes in the social structure. The changes in economic structures,political power structure, or the legal structure are the loci of change in the social hierarchy and the relationships between different sections in it. All these factors including education are interrelated, and it is difficult to separate out the effects and say that a particular aspect of the change is attributable to education. Hence education seldom rises above the socio- economic and socio-political situation in which it is embedded.
According to Jean Dereze, three major factors still mar education in schools–poor infrastructure, irrelevant curriculum and poor quality of teachers.He notes how caste disabilities, gendered parenting, poverty can be impediments to education. By impeding equitable access, education may thus exacerbate inequality and strengthen the position of the elites.
Education also has an emancipators’ role and promotes social awareness, mobility and sharpening of self-respect and dignity. However, it is noted that education performs only a restricted role in the upward mobility of the weaker sections, and at the same time enables the elites to maintain positions of power and authority.
“No society is totally open and provides for true mobility for all. Education needs to be accompanied by the removal of other structural barriers also to be an effective instrument of social change. “