Articles by Poromesh Acharya

The fundamental difference in their attitude to life gets reflected in the educational writings of Gandhi and Tagore. If Tagore's artistic bent of mind prompted him to conceive of leisure as the core of meaningful life, Gandhi's value of manual labour made him emphasise work as the fruitful way of harnessing energies.

Poromesh Acharya The universalisation of elementary education not only means universal facilities, universal enrolment and universal retention, but also the availability of a universally high quality of teaching. This review of primary education the facilities available, enrolment and drop-out rates, and the quality of teaching shows that we are a long way from achieving the goal of universal primary education.

Receding Goal Poromesh Acharya While non-formal education is helpful in creating the ambience for literacy, it is no substitute for formal elementary education. The focus has to be on structural reorganisation and functional remodelling of the formal system of elementary education and linking it with development programmes.

A Case Study Poromesh Acharya The relation between educational development and communal politics in Bengal during the 30s and 40s of this century is a fascinating subject which has not received the attention it deserves from scholars of either Bengal politics or development of education in Bengal. Communal politics in Bengal has been generally studied from the standpoint of land relations as an expression of land politics. This approach, while certainly not invalid, only partially explains the problem of communalism in Bengal. Communal differentiation as rooted in the realm of cultural identity remains still an autonomous reality which needs to be taken into account particularly in dealing with issues like education. Against this background, this paper deals with the communal tensions generated by the introduction of the Bengal Secondary Education Bill, 1940, in the Bengal legislative assembly during the period of provincial autonomy.

Poromesh Acharya This paper examines the role of English in the Indian educational system, with special reference to Bengal, in a historical perspective. It stresses the role of the bhadralok, the urban gentry, in shaping the system of education. When Macaulay introduced English education and partitioned Indian society by creating a new caste of English educated gentry, Bengali bhadraloks hailed it and. by doing so helped in perpetuating the division. History shows that the importance of English could never be reduced at the tower level of education while retaining its pride of place at the higher level of education and in the commercial and administrative sphere.