It has been often said that the purpose of education is to bestow reason. History debunks this.

A nation known for giving the world many of the best philosophers, scientists, doctors, engineers, soldiers, and music composers, exterminated 6.5 million Jews. What happened to reason? Pol Pot, educated in one of the best universities in Paris, did the same thing in Kampuchia. What happened to reason? All the extreme ideologies in the 19^th and 20^th Century - Marxism, Fascism, National Socialism, Islamic fundamentalism, and Al-Jehad, were propagated by philosophers and highly erudite leaders. Again, what happened to reason?

Reason is like mathematics; it tells us how to go. The heart tells us where to go. Educating the head without educating the heart may produce brilliant scientists, CEOs and philosophers, but who will use their brilliance for destructive or evil purposes.

Schools must, therefore, have a social purpose that goes well beyond academics. Socialization must aim at value-education and bringing out the inner spiritual potential of the child.

I feel that there is a greater challenge on our hand - how to live with our own people - how to live with homogeneity. We face this problem in our families, in the organizations we serve, and in society. In India, for example, there is an insurgency in the North East, 35,000 to 40,000 persons have been killed in Jammu & Kashmir, and 32 percent of the country's districts are under Naxal influence. Add to this the alienation of millions of Muslims and Dalits.

I firmly believe, that before we start living with global diversity, we must first learn to live with our own people.

1. Unless schools bring out the inner potential of a child and help her to become self-aware, she cannot lead herself. Leadership is the ability to lead oneself first; then others. School education must, therefore, have a social purpose; not merely academics.
2. Leadership in schools will emerge only when students and teachers are empowered. In its fundamental sense, empowerment will occur when the responsibility for learning shifts from the teacher to the student. Will teachers allow this; because in a diminutive sense, it will be seen as loss of power. After all, empowerment is about exercising power over oneself, not others. This transition is not going to be easy. So how do we manage the process?
3. Leadership will arise when schools move away from teaching skills to enable students to acquire competencies, especially:
   
   • Ability to become lifelong learners.
   • Ability to love and the capacity to forgive.
   • Ability to live together (with nature also) to include conflict-management.
   • Synthesizing vast amounts of data and making sense out of it. Transdisciplinary-knowledge is essential in this regards.
     
4. Leadership will happen when teachers teach the child (whole-education) and not merely the subject.
5. Principals and all teachers are ultimately transformational leaders, not instructional. They transform themselves, the curriculum, and the child.
   

One of the primary reasons why India has not been effective against terrorism is because the civil police do not have a clear mandate, role and training to fight terrorism. Whatever strategy exists is police-centric because of the inability to distinguish between 'terrorists,' which demands armed action, and 'terrorism' that requires addressing the root causes of religious and political violence. The former is body-warfare; the latter is mind-warfare.

26/11 has conclusively proved that the police, and even the National Security Guard, (NSG) are grossly wanting in mission clarity, intelligence, and training. It did not require 400 NSG commandos to take 48 hours to deal with ten terrorists! Then they are not commandos. I cannot imagine GSG 9, SAS or Delta Force deploying a battalion to snuff out ten terrorists.

The civil police are mentally and culturally better equipped than the Army and para military forces (PMF) to fight terrorists and resolve the root causes of terrorism. This approach was largely responsible for success in Punjab and Meghalaya. Since Other Forces are tenure-based they lack continuity, and therefore, there is pressure on them to produce results through the 'body-count' game. Comparatively, these forces  lack empathy in ascertaining the emotions and feelings of the community. To make matters worse, they are wanting in local terrain knowledge, cultural sensitivities, and the inter-play of community problems.

The police on the other hand enjoy the advantages of local recruitment, continuity, transfers and job rotation within geographic areas, and neighbourhood familiarity. Moreover, since they are stakeholders there is higher accountability of their actions. It is, therefore, not surprising that the police often enjoy greater acceptability and empathy of the locals than the Army or the PMF.

Following on from this hypothesis, I believe that the role of the NSG should be restricted to surgical intervention in extraordinary situations such as hijacking of aircraft, ships and oil rigs; hostage rescue; nuclear, chemical and biological threats; vertical or submarine insertion; and counter-terrorist operations outside India. Everything else should be within the purview of the civil police.