Unlettered but not ignorant

The author is talking about educating farmers to use scientific methods

On Wednesday, the media went to town reporting the agitation by Tamil Nadu farmers at Jantar Mantar. On one of the far too many 24X7 news channels on TV today, an “expert” said that farmers across India need to be educated so that they can farm using scientific methods. The spread of literacy, he said, would provide a safety net for them when their crops failed. This got me thinking about a mistake that development theorists commonly make, when they equate illiteracy with ignorance. When we define literacy within the narrow parameters of conventional schooling, we’re doing a grave injustice