Nai Talim

In addition, it embodied a series of negative outcomes: the disdain for manual work, the development of a new elite class, and the increasing problems of industrialization and urbanization.

[4] Gandhi's model of education was directed toward his alternative vision of the social order: "Gandhi's basic education was, therefore, an embodiment of his perception of an ideal society consisting of small, self-reliant communities with his ideal citizen being an industrious, self-respecting and generous individual living in a small cooperative community.

Gandhi's disciple, Vinobha Bhave, developed the idea further as a means of social transformation: "The crux of Nai Talim lay in overcoming distinctions between learning and teaching, and knowledge and work.

Vinoba discusses the need to redefine the relationship between teacher and student, "they must each regard the other as a fellow worker..." Instead, the 'teacher' was to be skilled in a kala/hunar (and to derive sustenance from this and not a teaching salary).

"[6] It is for this reason, among others, that Gandhi placed such central emphasis in his pedagogy on the role of handcrafts such as weaving, metal work, pottery, spinning; they symbolized the values of self-sufficiency or Swaraj and independence or Swadeshi.

Traditional and colonial forms of education had emphasized literacy and abstract, text-based knowledge which had been the domain of the upper castes.

Gandhi's proposal to make handicrafts the centre of his pedagogy had as its aim to bring about a "radical restructuring of the sociology of school knowledge in India" in which the 'literacies' of the lower castes--"such as spinning, weaving, leatherwork, pottery, metal-work, basket-making and book-binding"—would be made central.

[9] It was much later, while living at Sevagram and in the heat of the Independence struggle, that Gandhi wrote his influential article in Harijan about education.

The National Planning Commission set up by the central government expressed its opposition to Gandhi's vision of Basic Education on several grounds.

The Nehru government's vision of an industrialized, centrally planned economy had no place for 'basic education' or self-supported schools, rather it reflected the "vision of a powerful and growing class of industrialists, their supporters in politics and intellectuals with high qualifications in different areas, including science and technology.