India’s Top Developmental Priority – Education?

Some of you might remember a poll on this blog from six months ago on “What should be India’s top developmental priority?“.

There were a number of choices I had offered, namely:

• Access to good quality education for all?
• Access to basic healthcare for all (I will include clean drinking water in this)?
• Focus on the Girl Child (including her education and obviously, health)?
• Other answer…

I was reminded of this poll again last week while reading something else and decided to revisit some of the issues that were thrown up in the comments section.

At the top of this list was “Education“.

Now, many commentators better read – and more thoughtful – than me have written on this subject, so that would not be a bad place to start.

Atanu Dey, for example, is stinging in his criticism about the present state of affairs:

Do the movers and shakers of the Indian state understand that fundamental point (that education should be a priority)? Apparently not because precious little is being done about it. Instead of sending silly probes to the moon, the nation should be dedicated to figuring out what to do about the education system. Anyway, barely educated people cannot be reasonably expected to fully comprehend the value of education.

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In an article in ET last year, Janmejaya Sinha (MD of Boston Consulting Group) made similar points:

We talk these days about India’s favourable demographics.

…However, whether this is an advantage or not depends on our ability to have a productive population. If we have a large group of young uneducated people without the ability to participate in the workforce, what we will have is a demographic disaster.

…India’s workforce today has 484 million people. Of these 273 million are working in rural areas primarily in agriculture (many of them clearly underemployed)…Shockingly, 40% of the current workforce is illiterate and another 40% is below 12 class pass. That means 200 million of our workers cannot even sign their name!

…In fact, we will not be able to accelerate our GDP growth rate to over 10% or have any meaningful impact on inequality in incomes unless we can address this.Let me ply you with some unfortunate statistics. Currently about 23 million children are eligible for entry into the school system yet only six million finish the 12 standard and only about 2.3 million graduate. Thus 17 million do not even finish school. It gets worse than that – the quality of education on offer is abysmal. On any day 25% of the teachers are absent and 50% of children in class V cannot read a story and 21% of them cannot recognise numbers.

…Unfortunately the reasons have been known to all in the government for a very long time. Report after report has highlighted the issues but a cynical and self-absorbed polity refuses to gather the will to take on vested interests coming from its own ilk.

The lack of even basic education for our children flies in the face of India becoming one of the poles of a multi-polar world. All the talk of every major political party on inclusive growth is quite frankly just a farce!…

In another of his post on this subject, Atanu Dey concluded (emphasis mine):

India is being raped by criminals who are dressed up as politicians. It makes a body weep bitter tears.

So what can be done about Education?

Over at the FTI discussion group, comments on this subject are approaching the 100+ mark…and yet, we have barely begun…The key issues are around “funding” and “regulation”… and I am sure before long we will have a debate on “content” as well.

That discussion is still evolving so I am unable to post specifics here but suffice to say it is one of the most active discussions on the group.

In the latest issue of “Towards a Great India“, Sanjeev Sabhlok proposes a system of “Customised Vouchers” in addition to privatisation of education:

Privatisation is only the first part of this model. Parental choice is the other part. School education vouchers would be issued by the government for each child and mailed out to parents. Children of poor parents would be issued high-value vouchers. Rich parents will not get any vouchers…All parents would thus be empowered to send their children to almost any school they want to. All they would need to do is to pay a top-up amount over and above the value of the voucher.

In the new model, (schools)…would get money based on a reimbursement of vouchers. They would therefore need to enrol as many children as they can. They will have to go out and literally beg the poorer parents – such as the parents of child labourers – to send their children to school…Second, schools would need to ensure that the children they have enrolled achieve the required educational standards. Only then will they be able to invoice the government against these vouchers. The more the number of children these schools enrol and pass out at an agreed, independently tested standard, the more the money they will receive.

Note that through high-value vouchers for poor parents, schools in economically backward areas will be able to afford high salaries for teachers and potentially attract even better teachers than schools in wealthy urban areas. Good schools would thus emerge in rural areas and slums for the first time in India’s history. This would dramatically increase both the quality of education and competition in the school market. Very little central planning or quality control will be needed as the market will sort out good schools from the bad. (A self-regulating body of school experts would help.)

Above all, the preferences of parents in selecting the right school for their children will be honoured, and who can be a greater well wisher of a child than its parents?

His conclusion?

Sadly, this simple and effective model will remain a pipedream since ruling politicians in India currently use the school education system almost purely to ‘mint money’ for themselves. Education is simply not their goal. Money making is.

I feel somewhat handicapped in commenting on this matter since (a) I have not read widely enough on this subject and (b) my experience(s) are largely based on what I went through as a child…However, I believe in the metros, things are changing and “alternative” schools have come up that are slowly getting popular.

And yet, the dire shortage of good schools continues to be the single biggest worry for most parents.

I am pretty certain that freeing the primary education sector (at least) from the clutches of excessive (and mostly unnecessary) regulations will help…as would allowing easier entry of private investors and institutes in the sector.

Others approaches and ideas include education vouchers (mentioned above), Public-Private Partnerships etc…But the issues are deep-rooted and go beyond mere regulation or funding…and as I mentioned before, I am not sure I have the expertise to comment on them.  But there are at least three people I personally know who not only have a deep interest in this subject but also a fair amount of expertise…I will be looking forward to their comments.

I would like to end with this brief excerpt from Rajesh Jain who advocates a parallel system on his blog:

…The second approach, advocated by Atanu, is to create a parallel system from scratch — encompassing K-12 and beyond. This thinking starts with the belief that the current education system is fatally flawed and there is no way to apply band-aid. What is needed is a new system, a new standard. And there will be early adopters among parents and kids who will be drawn to this new system.

Will this work? Don’t know…Is it worth trying? Absolutely.

For the moment though we will have to console ourselves with Hon Sh. Kapil Sibal – who of course is a vast improvement on his predecessor and will hopefully usher in some significant (and positive) change.

But does he have his priorities right?

Tavleen Singh, writing in the Indian Express has a simple suggestion:

Before the Minister dissipates his energy on doing too many things at the same time he needs to concentrate on finding out why schools are in short supply. Why is it so easy for officials to set up a fine school (Sanskriti) for their children on expensive real estate in the heart of Delhi and so hard for ordinary citizens to do the same? Why should a country that needs millions more schools not be able to build them? What blockages are there?

Well said…But don’t we all know the answer to these questions? A few days back when I raised this issue during meetings in Indore, everyone knew why the problem persisted. Worse, I did not sense any hope that the situation might change.

And the problem is not limited to primary education. As Tavleen Singh wrote:

If Kapil Sibal can end the licence raj for education, like the Prime Minister once did for industry, he will have done more than any HRD Minister has done in living memory. If he fails then there is no hope of us ever building the 1,500 additional universities that the Government of India’s own Knowledge Commission says we need. There is no hope of us being able to build the millions more schools we need if we are to stop being the country with the largest number of illiterate people in the world.

Of course, against the backdrop of the “largest number of illiterate people in the world”, all talk of “demographic dividend” simply vanishes into thin air. But I remain (as ever) hopeful.

In a subsequent post, I will look at issues around health-care and the “girl-child“.

Health-care is critical. A population of a billion is an asset ONLY if they are healthy to do productive work. The demographic dividend that we so proudly talk about is predicated on a healthy demography…A malnourished, sick demographic rapidly becomes a liability.

As for the “girl-child”, I actually think if there was ONLY one problem that we could address in this generation – or ONLY one area that we can improve, it needs to be the health and education of the girl child.

I believe (perhaps somewhat simplistically) if we take care of the girl child, educate her, ensure her health and develop her into a confident, independent human being, more than half of all our problems will simply go away.

What do you think? Looking forward to thoughts, ideas and comments.

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Also read: India’s Demographic Dividend by Bibek Debroy.