The government also provides free education up to and including the college level for public schools and universities. (Private education institutions, which are quite expensive, do not get public assistance.) Even the children of tribal communities who travel with their live stock along the grazing routes now have access to free education. This is made possible by having (mobile) teachers travel with tribal communities. I have met a number of these teachers during my visits to Iran. One of them is a nephew of mine, who told me that one small tribe had only three school-age kids. Nonetheless, the education authorities of the region had assigned a teacher to the tribe to teach their children. Not surprisingly, according to World Bank statistics, literacy rate in Iran has during the past two decades moved up from 63% to slightly over 80%.
Although women are required to comply with the official dress code, they are encouraged (by both their families and the government) to excel in educational and professional pursuits. The results have been quite impressive. Women now constitute the majority of university students. They are doctors, engineers, teachers, scientists, writers, artists, salespersons, and even taxi drivers. More and more women are joining the workforce, despite the very high level of unemployment, which is largely due to criminal economic sanctions and military threats from abroad.
Characterizing social spending and government assistance to the needy as "handouts is both cynical and elitist. It is also a disingenuous argument designed to camouflage the pro-capital biases of big-business interests. Proponents of economic liberalism have always used this snobbish argument to cut social spending in order to keep taxes low on the affluent, and deny the poor and working classes a decent degree of living conditions.
Not only is this selfish attitude of the wealthy unfair to those who suffer from the woes and vagaries of an unregulated capitalist economy, it is also short-sighted and counterproductive in terms of their own long-term interests. Instead of viewing social spending on infrastructure as a long-term investment that will help sustain and promote economic vitality, they view it as a burden, or overhead, that must be cut as much as possible. By focusing on the current, short-term balance sheets, they seem to be oblivious to the indirect, long-term returns to social spending. Evidence shows, however, that neglect of public capital formation can undermine long-term health, prosperity and productivity of a people.
Fighting corruption and trying to curtail or retrieve what he calls the "unearned incomes of the corrupt establishment was one of the major agenda items of Ahmadinejad's presidential campaign. Not only did this frighten the nouveau riche, but also many of the religious authorities who are not necessarily wealthy but whose comfortable positions of prestige and stature would be threatened by Ahmadinejad's efforts to whittle down what he has called redundant bureaucracies. The elite had had enough.
Frightened by Ahmadinejad's crusade-like commitment to fight corruption, waste and costly privileges, champions of economic liberalism poured money into Mousavi's election campaign to unseat him. The presidential election of last June was their last stand against their clearly populist nemesis, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. (It is regrettable, as well as ironic, that while Ahmadinejad and his co-thinkers are at loggerheads with major segments of the clerical establishment, most of the Iranian opposition abroad fail to make any distinction between the two forces. Instead, in a largely emotional approach, they tend to lump all factions of Iran's ruling circles together as a cohesive or monolithic body that pursues the same political or policy agenda.)
4. Mousavi and His Reform Agenda
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