Erosion of Ethics and Moral values in our society

Of late I have been seeing lot of news items in newspapers about thefts, vandalisms, and violence. Is it that people have started noticing and reporting these incidences more recently or is it that there is an increase of such cases recently. India has had a reasonably tough past with instances of violence strewn throughout history. Quite a lot has been between kingdoms, territories, regions and were more of a military nature. Then there has been religious violences, a remnant of the religious strife cultivated in India by the erstwhile tormentors - the Late British Empire. History does not in itself justify the present.

Though India have been growing at a healthy rate of around 9% per annum, around 50% of the population is still illiterate. Illiteracy alone does not result in degradation of value system. Illiteracy does not mean an inability to communicate - it only restricts the mediums of communications to personal and audio-visual. Illiteracy would mean an absence of formal education and thereby limit a persons analytical skills due to the lack of a proper knowledge foundation on which to build their skills upon. Even if illiterate a rational person should be able to think up and identify moral values and stick to them. India with its strong religious backgrounds has had a good value system but for a few stone-age traditions like sati, child marriage etc. So historic factors does not give us a valid reason for the present trend.

Formal education as is being imparted today does not give proper importance to building the moral and ethical aspects of human personality. The major stress is to create job-worthy individuals. It is important to have job-worthy individuals but it is equally important to have build strong value system in the individuals. Students who come out of the system are trained to work but are not trained to think. Most of the violent/criminal/anti-social incidences that have happened in our system could have been prevented if their perpetrators had a) a good value system b) a thinking mind and c) thought about their actions and their implications. Also most of the continuing social issues like poverty, hunger, unemployment can be tackled if more thinking individuals enter into the system to fight against these issues.

The erosion of the value system is for a big part due to the want of importance given in imparting it to the next generation. India has a very young population and it is growing at a very fast pace. If we don't put in enough effort the coming generations would not have any clue about the legacy we have inherited but are failing to pass it on.