Education Mess

The technological prowess that has manifested itself in India's high tech industries and outsourcing capabilities as well as science and medicine over the last decade masks a terrible education deficiency. A third of India's billion strong population is illiterate and 70 million children are denied schooling of any kind.

In an attempt to begin to redress the problem, the Indian Parliament earlier this year amended the constitution to provide constitutional guarantees for free and compulsory education for children aged between six and 14. Termed a national enterprise that would help shape up India's future, the government is thus seeking to deliver this right to every Indian child.Unfortunately, that is a goal that was first articulated by Mahatma Gandhi in 1937 72 years ago. It remains far from fulfillment.

The western image of Indian mothers, fostered by countless biographical novels, is of women fiercely driving their children to study countless hours without rest for exams. As a result, today almost 60,000 Indian physicians are practicing in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia a workforce equal to 10 percent of the physicians in India and the largest émigré physician workforce in the world. California's Silicon Valley is dominated by Indian IT specialists.

Yet, despite such impressive statistics, India lags woefully countries such as China, Vietnam and Cuba, which provide free and compulsory elementary education to all. Education in India consumes 4.1percent of gross domestic product, ranking the country 81st in the world and tied with Eritrea, according to the United Nations Human Development Program. For every 100 elementary students, only 12 graduate, compared with 50-70 in Europe and 27 globally. India aims to increase its average to a paltry 15 by 2012 and to 35 by 2020.

While at the top end India's business schools, Indian Institutes of Technology IITs, Indian Institutes of Management IIMs and universities produce globally competitive graduates, primary and secondary schools, particularly in rural areas, struggle to find staff, according to a 2006 briefing paper by Marie Lal for Chatham House. In fact, teacher strength in rural areas often runs no more than 70 percent. At that, teacher absenteeism is chronic, with a 2004 World Bank study showing 25 percent of educators are absent from class at any time.

India ranks 102nd of 129 countries, below Kenya and Nicaragua, in the UNESCO 2009 Education for All Development Index. Official child labor figures show 12 million youngsters continue to be exploited.The federal minister for Human Resource Development Kapil Sibal called the new Right to Education bill, a harbinger of a new era. But that isn't the first time the government has said it, and it probably won't be the last. A long series of educational reforms has been passed since 1987, seeking to restructure and reorganize teacher training, provide cooked meals for children and, in 2000, the movement to educate all to achieve universal primary education. In 2001, the Fundamental Right program involving the provision of free and compulsory education, declared to be a basic right for children aged between 6 and 14 years pretty much what the Lok Sabha passed again in 2009.

Indeed, the task is difficult given India's 1.2 billion population. The dynamics of rural India, where the majority of the population reside, is difficult to understand and penetrate, given the extreme poverty and caste prejudices. In the rural belts the dropout rate is as high as 50 percent, with millions of first grade entrants never completing even primary school.

The biggest challenge is to push this segment into the habit of sending their wards to schools and to provide incentives for them to continue learning. Rural children, especially girls, are unable to attend schools because the classrooms are so far away. Parents send their children for manual labor in order to feed large families back home, defying labor laws, often in extremely inhospitable conditions and for long hours in small factories making beedis flavored cigarttes, or tending to brick kilns, making handicrafts, or working in ‘dhabas' wayside eateries. They work as rag pickers, domestics and often beg in richer urban pockets.

Socio-religious factors are also major impediments. Caste and religious barriers create discrimination that impedes dispersal of education. Mental attitudes relating to sharing educational infrastructure such as libraries, classrooms, toilets, playgrounds are yet to be surmounted.There are the perennial questions about poorly qualified teachers, very high student-teacher ratios, inadequate teaching methods and material. Inevitably even students completing six years of primary schooling in village government schools lack rudimentary reading and writing skills.

Meanwhile, urban educators are obsessed with premature and forced teaching practices. Middle and upper class children in private schools face extreme pressures to qualify for the highly competitive and vaunted IITs and IIMs, given the limited seats and hordes of seekers.There are also specific criticisms of the education act that will need some ironing out. Education is listed as a concurrent subject allowing both the central government and the states to regulate it, raising major issues related to co-ordination.

Member of Parliament, Asduddin Owaisi says, This bill needs to be redrafted as it fails to incorporate the financial implications. According to estimates, the financial burden could be around Rs650 billion US$13.5 billion both for the central and state governments.Analysts say, however, that reserving a quarter of the seats for weaker sections in private schools should not burden the rest financially. The trauma arises from upper class students sharing space with the poor. There will be some socio-economic coping necessary.

The use of media such as television for learning in rural areas along with emphasis on oral learning and formal literacy has been ignored by the RTE Act. Satellite delivered teaching can be successfully employed.Indeed, there is a long way to go and India's implementation record is abysmal. If India is to sustain its growth story then the educational apparatus needs a complete overhaul.

Nonetheless, the education bill, Sibal insists, will be a precursor to change and is in line with UN Millennium Development Goals that include universal education as a target to be accomplished by 2015, a target that is daunting. It will include among its beneficiaries children with disabilities, with special schools. It seeks to crack down on schools accused of manipulating discretionary powers to charge huge capitation fees from parents for admissions of their wards. Quality teachers approved by the academic committee are expected to be appointed.

Minority institutions are to be allowed to retain 50 percent of the seats for children of their own communities. Private schools will be required to admit poor children for a quarter of their seats and state run neighborhood schools will be operational place.The mother tongue may be the preferred medium of instruction while independent state efforts will not be interfered with. The bill also categorizes disadvantaged groups as Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes/socially and educationally backward class and those with lower incomes.

While there is a long way to go there is reason for hope, officials say. According to the Finance Ministry's annual economic survey the 440 million Indians under the age of 18 can be developed into a valuable pool of cognitive talent if harnessed the right way. Effective Education for Employment, a global research firm, has said that education is emerging as a vast and expanding market in India.