A look at virtually all the older forms of violent (political?) activity — be it the bombings by believers in the Aum Shinrikyo cult in Japan in the 1990s or the Russian anarchists of the 19th century — has led to the conclusion that terror has always been a largely ‘bourgeois’ enterprise. Perpetrators of hate need technology to inflict violence of a scale to make an impact and the training to do so is available in modern institutes and through modern technical programmes.

An analysis by Marc Sageman (Understanding Terrorist Networks) concluded in 2004 that it was not the madrassas that were closely correlated with terrorists or terror, but modern western institutes where students from abroad can end up turning to militant Islam as a way to counter the alienation they experience.

There is also an argument that Asians who go in for a technical degree often don’t get oriented to any history or social science and so are more vulnerable to odd explanations of the world they may encounter later. Then the information explosion exposes young sharp minds to all kinds of propaganda. While pornography gets all the attention, goes the argument, this other dimension of the information revolution might be the bigger threat to world peace.

Change — economic and social — especially in the developing world is taking place at a breathtaking pace. Unlike in the olden days, this is not the growth of the middle-classes who were driven by ‘higher goals’. Our approach to ‘modernisation’ and even ‘education’ no longer makes a case for ‘enlightenment’ or a ‘broadening of horizons’. The new middle classes quickly entering the ranks from a variety of social backgrounds are hungry to move up faster, and why not? But often, the degree, or even simply ‘fluency in English’ is a tool to get into the job market, make more money. It is important, therefore, to look at the social evolution of the new middle classes, particularly techies. It is a process different from the first burst of the modern English-knowing middle classes in India in the late 19th century.

... contd.