I fondly remembered one of my favourite teachers on Teachers’ Day this year.
S.P. Chaudhary was a modest man- of stocky build, with piercing eyes, a fine, sensitive persona, a dry, earthy sense of humour and passion for Economics. He taught us this subject during our final years at Modern School, Delhi. He had an uncanny knack of explaining complex economic thought through simple everyday examples. Through these stories, he transmitted his love for the subject to anyone who listened to him attentively.
Look at any good, he would tell us. The chair on which you sit would be just a piece of wood, were it not for the efforts of the carpenter who moulded it in to furniture. All production is therefore nothing but congealed or solidified labour. This idea, we later learnt in college, was the celebrated labour theory of value, the bedrock of Marxist and socialist thought. (Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to but your chains, said Marx and Engels, in the Communist Manifesto).But equally, it also influenced thinking in western market economies through strong trade unionist movements that kept exploitation of labour in check.
Another favourite example of his was of an adventurous fisherman who lived from hand to mouth. He started saving from his meagre income and from his savings he first bought a better fishing net. He saved more and then bought a boat; saved still more and bought a bigger boat. Ultimately, he bought a trawler and became a big business man- a fine story of entrepreneurship and the role of savings and investment in a modern economy. If only our decision makers had taken this story seriously they may not have launched the disastrous licence- permit- inspector raj in our country that stifled entrepreneurship and economic growth for about four decades after independence.
He would often give the example of a mandi with a large number of buyers and sellers, with none of them individually being able to set the price. Any buyer or seller could leave the market any time, there being no entry or exit barriers and no government intervention. This is as close you will get in real life to the theoretical concept perfect competition , he would tell us. An invisible hand sets the price. At that level, buyers will buy only as much as they can further sell; sellers will produce only as much as is profitable for them. This way society puts its resources to the best possible use.
And so his stories continued. Over the years, He inspired thousands of students like me. Some of us pursued economics further and built on the foundations he laid. Others who did not, still benefited from him because they gathered some understanding of their own decisions to spend or invest.
My old school had many S.P. Chaudhuries- each a highly gifted teacher in their own right and with their own unique personality. Seventy seven years after independence our tragedy , however, is is that as a nation we have failed to produce high quality teachers like him in large numbers.Many of are teachers are unionized; many don’t attend school regularly; many have outsourced their teaching responsibilities. As a consequence, students in many government schools suffer from serious deficits in basic language and mathematical skills.
Now is the time to attend to this problem on a mission mode, if we are to effectively realise our vision for 2047. This government has an impressive record of infrastructure achievements. But physical infrastructure by itself is not enough. What is equally important is soft infrastructure or human capital. As Amratya Sen has pointed out, it is only when they are provided basic facilities of primary health care and education can people realise their full potential as free human beings. Good teachers play an important role for building the infrastructure required to realise this vision.
When teachers communicate with their students, they are imparting knowledge, but they are even more importantly, developing in the latter values they themselves respect and believe in. This way they mould mould future generations.
We need thousands of more high quality teachers in our country, but we will get them only when talented young men and women want to become teachers. This will happen when society accords them much more respect and status. Interestingly, one of my favourite English teachers actually preferred to remain a teacher rather than join the much coveted Indian Civil Service!
The writer was Chief Commissioner of Income-tax and is the author of the Moral Compass- Finding Balance and Purpose in an Imperfect World, Harper Collins India, 2022