Lets face it there are so many things that we are useless at. Sport and education being only two of them. However there is one thing in which we excel and it is what makes India great. It never gets mentioned on the list of Indian achievements, it never gets mentioned in our ‘Incredible India’ brochures or TV ads, and yet whether we are Muslim, Hindu, Sikh Christian, Buddhist or animist, religiously devout or atheist, educated or illiterate, we are really good at this most important of tasks.

 

It sets all our children apart when they go to the USA or the UK to study, and you can see it manifest in the children of the slums, bastis, farmhouses, towns and villages in India from Kashmir to Kanyakumari. Everywhere in India you find children who benefit from this most precious phenomena, and mothers and fathers who supply their children with it everyday, all day and all night. It is so much of a given in our society that it goes unquestioned, unpraised, and under appreciated.

 

What we are good at is parenting. In India we have a culture of good parenting.  It is part of our tradition. We do not always get it right because we are not perfect, but we understand and apply the basics that parts of many ‘advanced’ modern countries have begun to ignore. 

 

Here we understand that parents and other adults know best. We know that even when we are wrong our twenty, thirty, or forty year old brains are more likely to be right than little Rajiv’s 10 year old equipment.

 

We know that it is our job to develop children to be sociable adults. In it’s crudest form it comes out as ‘What will the neighbours think’ and it’s highest form it finds expression in being concerned for the feelings of all others.

 

We excel at parenting because we impress on our children duties and obligations that the ‘generation me’ of the television saturated advanced consumer societies try to ignore.  Even in the poorest homes we insist that our children work hard, are respectful of others, and especially to those who are older.

 

We excel at parenting because we include everyone in the process. Every adult is aunty or uncle, and every sibling is didi or bhaiya. Our children are not taught to distrust every adult but to honour every adult. In effect we bring everyone into the parenting process.

 

We excel at parenting because we teach our children that every ‘teacher is god’. We teach our children to respect even the teachers we personally think are not up to the mark.

 

There are many things that we need to learn to cope with parenting in the age of consumerism and corrosive television. We need to learn to listen and encourage, and allow more freedom of expression, and take cognizance of our children’s changing needs, but we must not throw the baby out with the bath water.

Indian parenting insists on duties, obligations, and respectful behaviour. In India children are brought up to believe that elders know best, that every adult is there to help them, and that teachers care and have dedicated their lives to making the child’s life more fulfilled. We know this is true, for it has been so forever. It is the source of our strength and what makes this country so great.