Nai Talim and Gandhian Approaches to Development

Abstract

Mahatma Gandhi has given his scheme of Nai Talim (New Education) in a well formulated approach to education in 1937 in his news paper ‘Harijan’. It is a well developed philosophy of education based on experiments he did right from 1904 when he was in South Africa to his stay in ashrams in India at Sabarmati (Gujarat) and Sevagram (Maharashtra). It is an approach to the total personality development of body, mind and spirit and was based on four basic principles (Panse 2007): i. Education or learning in mother tongue along with handicraft work, ii. Work should be linked with most useful vocational needs of the locality, iii. Learning should be linked with vocational work, and iv. Work should be socially useful and productive needed for living. // This approach of work centric education with technology accessible locally was the basic approach of Nai Talim. It is essentially a mass education approach due to its centrality of socially useful work, and was expected to create National System of Education.