Poll – What should be India’s top developmental priority?

Hi Shantanu, above poll is very confusing to me because I find everything on top priority.

Jai Hind!

Dear Shantanu

In the next poll please consider asking which policy people want within a particular priority area.

For instance, providing good education requires a total change of the current educational policy framework in India. Similarly for health. I’ve touched upon these issues in ‘Breaking Free of Nehru’ in some detail. The key is for the government to get out of running these areas and only setting standards and regulating them (plus funding them in a non-discretionary, performance based manner).

If people want to have government schools and simply continue with what we have then India is doomed to continuing failure in this area. So the poll can test whether there is any demand in India for good policy.

Regards
Sanjeev

My view is that if the right to free quality education is in place – the awareness and action on all the rest follow:)

@ Sanjeev. I absolutely disagree with the idea that primary school education should be privatized. Every western European country (the developed world) including “capitalist” USA has a public education system which provides quality and free education to all. The idea that we should privatize key sectors of the economy and automatically it will meet the needs of the people is fundamentally false. When you privatize sectors, the only thing that takes over is the profit motive. Thus privatized education like privatized health care becomes prohibitively expensive for the common man. The idea is to educate all Indians well including the one third of India’s population which earns less than a $1 a day and provide quality health care for all.

There are some ways to fund this. One of the obvious ways is to streamline our bureaucratic system such that we employ fewer people in government doing administrative work (the entire IAS cadre can given the heave ho!)

Secondly–we spend crores of rupees sending various people on pilgrimages in and out of India. Government need not be in the tourism business. This includes running tourist hotels etc.

We also need to get the government to pass stringent laws which require students who go to government aided colleges to serve the people of India for five years. So no more passing out of IIT and boarding the first flight to the US. We as tax payers need to demand that our taxes go to those who are poor and underserved.

Education undoubtedly. I worked in UNICEF for over 20 years & hence believe that I understand devlopment indices wel. All others are very important too,but if the poor get quality education India will leap to great heights as we would have empowered our people who will get the engine moving. At the moment status of education is appalling. The poor will never get to schools and even if they do go to school will never finish it. We are not ecven mentioning quality qwhich is so bad and which is why the children never finish school. It is the politicians interest to keep thm uneducated — who will listen to them if not the poor? Who will work on their fields and listen to all their taunts?

@Shantanu. As a product of an American education system and later a parent who has sent children to the much maligned American public school system, I can honestly say that the system is fairly good at its job of teaching kids to read, write and think independently. Much of quality issues in the US are related to the place one lives–good neighborhoods have better schools and attract better teachers. But one need not use America as an example. We can use Singapore or Japan, both countries having one of the best educated kids in the world (according to UNICEF).
Both these countries have a public education system which nearly all the kids attend. Private schools account for less than 5% of schools especially in the primary schools.

When I suggested that the government and taxpayers demand that when their taxes go to fund education for a medical, or engineering student, that student has a reciprocal duty to perform, it is only in the interest of fairness. After all why should some students get a free lunch while the rest who go to private universities pay through the nose.
If fact Anbumoni Ramdass did suggest this of medical students who pass out of government colleges–that they serve the rural poor for a few years. But of course, this was protested by the students.