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SO PHILOSOPHY AND SOCIAL ACTION
Modernity is a superficial life-style, while modernisation brings about some fundamental change in the ways of thought and action. Our system of education touches only the superficial life-style of our students and in most cases fails to orient and motivate them in a very purposeful manner.
form, it will take away the student from his traditional mooring and objectively promote alienation. It is perversely related to the process of social change via alienation. Education is a printing machine for job voucher. Most of the job opportunities opened up by this irrelevant education system have hardly anything to do with the agricultural mode of production. And as a result of that the impact of this system on the peasantry is to a great extent disruptive and negative. When I say all these, I do not propose to deny that even the alien system of education imparts a sort of skill or understanding or both which may be positively related with the trend of the increased agricultural production. But that does not contradict my basic contention.
Admittedly the products of this education system man the institutions and projects like (3) the Community Development and (4) the Rural Health Centres, including the Family Planning Centres and Camps. These projects and concerned personnel inject an effective element of dynamism into our relatively static peasant society. (5) The extensive network of roadways and communications and (6) the increasing coverage of the mass media are also partly responsible for breaking the cultural inertia of the rural society. In this connection we should better bear in mind that the physical and mechanical facilities of communication by themselves are not sufficient to remove the cultural gap between the urban society and the rural society and ensure uninterrupted and effective communication, facilitating the process of cultural integration and undoing, at least partly, mis-effects of stratification. (7) Generally speaking, the increasing sphere of State activities necessitating development of increasing number of officers and technologists and their complementary contingent is also strengthening the forces of social change in the rural area. If the resulting change is not that perceptible as one would otherwise expect of the mighty State initiative, the causes are not far to seek, viz. the bureaucratic structure of the government administration, unimaginative plans and programmes, lack of popular participation, and extremely poor level of peasant organisation and movement. In other words, those who are objectively responsible for introducing change in the rural life are not subjectively interested in promoting, organising and strengthening the rural leadership. The white collar's interest in the rural upliftment is typically oriented by his alien education and petty-bourgeois bias.
Among the conceptual factors of social change, I may mention, (8) Renunciation (tyaga or vairagya), (9) yajna (act of offering, oblation of
