Towards a Learning Society: 

Transforming KITE (knowledge, information, technology and education)  networks

In any society and at any historical moment, there are always segments and spaces which are endowed with tremendously high degree of  (a)  lateral instead of vertical learning, (b) ideational instead of functional learning and (c) dialectical  instead of consensual learning systems. These spaces and segments either evolve into high growth points with in or outside the elitist social structures. A new  art movement, production culture, educational pedagogy, or technological edge gets created and sharpened. The challenge is now to have such edges created not just in a few segments and spaces but all over the society. KITE (Knowledge, Information, Technology and Education) must fly and fly high, so to say, to create new networks which can reorganize themselves, self govern and be fused into or assimilated into different political, socio-cultural and even spiritual frameworks or belief systems.

Why should one be concerned about creating or reinforcing our collective identity as a learning society. The answer is that a learning society achieves in doing the following:

i)              Courting obsolescence:  it builds upon local knowledge pool accessible and shared among civil society members openly and widely so that obsolescence is courted by every one and at all levels, without feeling threatened, or bypassed. Urge to innovate and improvise becomes second nature. We stop adapting and being comfortable with low efficiency technology and institutional arrangements for too long. We do not celebrate inertia as cultural continuity. We realize, human spirit never stagnates, like any living system, it either grows or decays. Innovations become the watchword for social transformation.

ii)             Ensuring Optimal Consensus:  if we have too much of cooperation, we may comply and conform resulting into dysfunctional production or management or exchange heuristics getting institutionalized. Too little of cooperation may generate high degree of redundancy, too much insurance and a very high cost which is self defeating. We need to have just the optimal consensus so that both cooperation and competition co-exist and are in fact nurtured and encouraged. The excellence cannot survive otherwise. We cooperate in some sectors and roles and compete in other roles at the same time. Poor or rich, we differentiate. Heterogeneity spurs healthy growth.

iii)            Continuing  to Discontinue through Life long Learning: with aging  population becoming predominant in affluent societies, younger sections of society  capture the force of  discontinuity so necessary for new norms and cultural icons to be created. Instead of borrowing obsolete fashions and trends, tastes and taboos, these younger segments of  society will overcome age related compartmentalization of education, learning and skill specialization. Lifelong learning is a guarantee that we continue to discover new value in all those investments which produce new knowledge, technologies and information exchange mechanisms. Constituency for lifelong education and learning must become strong and institutional stigma on stagnant-nay decaying social groups and norms must become  manifest. Only in a learning society, do older leaders encourage the discontinuity of ideas and institutional labyrinths which sap and trap the energy needed to produce new products, services and  cultural diversity.

iv)            KITE networks overtaking kinship and other social networks: identity is a forceful need. Be it of cadre, religion, caste or family lineage. In a learning society, Networks of  Knowledge creating, disseminating, value adding and rewarding groups, individuals and institutions provide new identities. These networks do not have alumni. These are lifelong networks. Roles change, responsibilities evolve but stakes do not dissolve. The raw material of civil society: voluntary associations for performing various roles and filling various niches which markets, and state leave unfilled, will constantly emerge and evolve. We do not flaunt our primordial identities as a passport to new institutions of learning, growth and stature. Politics that survives on that, slowly gives way to more accommodative (instead of exclusive) icons of identity. These icons  are performance linked, service based and provide new niches for older skills and techno-cultural institutions to transform into more eclectic and universal learning based groups

v)            Dissolving Distances, Expanding Horizons: Choice of learning opportunities, accessible learning nodes, and local language based multi-media knowledge networks are necessary to overcome barriers of language, literacy, and localism. People should be able to learn even without literacy, in their own language and from innovations and ideas available not just locally but far and wide. Surprise is often a necessary condition for learning. ICTs (Information and Communication Technologies) make it possible for creating  learning communities across  age, class, language, skill, status and spatial boundaries. Honey Bee multi-media data base with touch screen facility has demonstrated how this can be done. Development is extending the time frame and expanding the decision-making horizon. The asymmetry in Knowledge, Information, Technologies and Education (KITE) can be overcome to a great extent by appropriate ICT applications.

Learning society is a liberating society. It encourages pluralism, fosters creativity and innovation. Heterogeneity is harnessed for generating multiple visions, contested domains of knowledge, values and cultures in a creative and positive way. While some humanistic values are shared widely and universally

The tensions do not disappear but discourse becomes more reasoned. The historical insights are harvested to learn why large parts of society learned to be helpless, why technologies in many sectors particularly affecting livelihood needs of women did not undergo upgradation, and why, the inertia was institutionalized through a culture of compliance and conformity. Each one of us might have been reprimanded in our childhood for  having asked questions too often or too many. We were told that we would learn when we grow up. There was no need to be impatient.  That is precisely the reason why we got trapped into too much of patience. We teach most subjects including field like ecology using theories and models developed in temperate west. The same culture which had strong tradition of debates and intellectual arguments started shunning opportunities of  (a) pursuing long term experimentation, (b) upholding rigorous educational standards universally and (c) blending informal and formal science and technology. But there were/are exceptions. There are individuals and small groups, which continued the eternal search for better solutions to local problems through local genius. Since society had been trapped in the morass of mediocrity through long held consensus on inertia, inefficiency and inequity of opportunities, it failed to provide institutional pathways for recognizing, respecting and rewarding grassroots innovations.

The employment in industrial as well as agricultural sector has been going down due to increasing capital intensity and declining output to  capital ratio. Informal sector has absorbed most of the additional hands and heads. And yet the tragedy is that much of  the informal sector operates in illegal ( though not illegitimate environment) policy context.  

It only shows a serious gap in the way policy makers view the future opportunities and the way society is coping with current crisis. Will a learning society deal with such a disjunction in the same way?

Ways Ahead:

There are many ways ahead to help India become a strong learning society which not only pools all the knowledge, information, insights and perspectives available in the country but also builds bridges with global pool of knowledge and learnings.

A)            Grassroots to Global: National Innovation Foundation set up recently aspires to make India a global leader in green sustainable technologies. It will do so  by developing  a national register of innovations( building upon Honey Bee data base of traditional knowledge as well as contemporary innovations supported by SRISTI), facilitating  incubators by linking innovations, enterprises and investments as has been attempted by GIAN and reinforce a culture of experimentation and innovation by building bridges between excellence in formal and informal science. Innovations in India may be sought by venture funds abroad to set up enterprises in India or outside.

B)            InnovativeIndia.org: a portal to link creative and innovative segments of Indian society with each other and with global sources of excellence. It will provide knowledge pages with links to institutions and individual experts in different scientific and technological fields, an idea and innovation bank, provide intellectual property support to unsung heroes of our society, provide access to local communities about non chemical alternatives in agriculture, connect local informal experts in various fields of industry and informal sector, help create lateral learning loops with in and outside India, connect venture funds, voluntary as well as professional market researchers, angel financiers, macro and  micro-venture promotion and financing funds, innovation based entrepreneurs  etc.

C)            Educational Networks and innovative channels to provide life long education: Recently in a workshop on new idea development that I conducted, every participant had to come out with a new product, service or improvement in existing products, services or utopia. I have been organizing similar sessions at IIMA for last two years. One of the students at IIT Bombay came out with a prize-winning idea of offering short courses in long distance trains. A learning society  will obviously provide opportunities of life long education to every body in different fields.

There are many other things that one will have to do. Museum of innovations will have to be set up  all over the country. We do not have one such museum. Leadership of younger but capable minds will have to be accepted as a norm rather than exception. There is no reason why a person should get leadership position only when one gets old.  

The intersection among three circles of learning, loving and living will provide the ultimate convergence of this mission.