Lying awake in the early hours I chanced on a BBC World Service broadcast about the phenomenal investment India is making in science education. In contrast to the West, where the number of young people taking up science is dwindling dramatically year on year, India is now graduating 2 million science graduates per year. And that figure is rising. India intends to be the science powerhouse of the twenty-first century. It is well on its way to achieving that goal. Some students from a secondary school in New Delhi (could it have been St. Columba's?) were interviewed. They were forthright in their conviction that science education was their pathway to success. Interestingly, not all were motivated by the job security prospect. One young man, clearly passionate about science, said that he intended to be an Indian Nobel prize winner.

In stark contrast, but curiously in rather strange agreement, was the follow-up interview with a washerwoman on the streets of New Delhi. She was equally clear that investment in education was the way forward for her family. For those who are used to free education, the lengths to which this woman would go to educate her children were self-sacrificial to an extraordinary degrees. "I go without food", she said, "to pay for my son's education in a private school". Yesterday, I spoke of the martyrdom of the teacher in Afghanistan for the cause of girls' education. Here, indeed, is a life-long martyrdom of a different kind. And the cause is the same, education.