Public Sector Education in India: Challenges Ahead

Promoting Business Environment in South Asia
Public Sector Education in India:
Challenges Ahead
Abhijeet Singh∗
B.A.(Hons.) in Economics
Part III
Hindu College, University of Delhi
Abstract
This paper is mainly an evaluation of public policy in India in the field of elementary
education. It aims at understanding the current context of education in India and then,
uses this understanding to assess why public policy in this regard has not succeeded. It is
found that one of the major factors contributing to this failure is a lack of a good
‘business environment’ or ‘work culture’, in the framing as well as the execution of these
policies. Then a series of possible remedies is suggested, given the overarching
importance of this sector in the nation. The proposals, resting mainly on a change in the
work culture and method of functioning in this sector will, it is hoped, address the basic
flaws inherent in the system presently.

December 2006
Paper prepared for presentation at the 4th South Asian Economics Students’ Meet in the
session “Promoting Business Environment in South Asia” organized by the University of
Colombo, Sri Lanka in February 2007. I am grateful to the faculty of the Department of
Economics, Ramjas College for their assistance in the preparation of papers in successive
SAESMs, including this one.I am especially thankful to Dr. D.K.Das, Mr. Mihir Pandey
and Mr. Alok Dash. Comments and suggestions received from Ms. Meeta Kumar were
also very helpful. The usual disclaimers apply. Any feedback or comments would be
most welcome. They may be sent at [email protected]
CONTENTS
1. Introduction
2. The importance of Education and the Indian Context
2.1 The importance of Education
2.2 Current Levels of Education in India
3. The State and education in India
3.1 Role of State in education
3.2 Flaws in the Public Provision of Education in India
4. Promoting Business Environment : Solutions for inefficiencies in
Public Education
5. Conclusion
References
Tables
Table 1 : Some International Comparisons of Educational Indicators
Table 2 : Percentage of Primary Schools under different management
Table 3 : Public Expenditure on Education in India as a percent of GNP
Table 4 : Share of Elementary Education in Public Expenditure on Education in India
Introduction
The theme of this paper is ‘Promoting Business Environment in South Asia’. The focus
of the paper is one specific sector – the public sector system for the provision of
elementary education. The aim of the paper is to analyze what lies behind the
underperformance of this sector, and in particular, how important has the ‘business
environment’ been in contributing to this sector’s inefficiencies. By ‘business
environment’ we mean here a much more restrictive concept than is generally adopted. In
this context, it refers solely to the work culture and professional practices in the sector –
its structure of incentives, its efficiency in responding to demand, the nature of the
organization, the decision making process and so on, and not to other factors like
‘investor confidence’ or ‘labour market flexibility’. The restrictive definition is adopted
in order to make it more relevant to this particular case, and in order to focus exclusively
on the crucial factors in the analysis.
The exposition itself may be thought of as consisting of two broad parts. The first part
explains the background and clarifies the context of the analysis. This includes a brief
exposition of the importance of elementary education, the current levels of education in
India and the role of the State in elementary education in India. The second part actually
analyses the causes behind the dismal performance in elementary education in India, with
special reference to the business environment and then goes on to offer remedies to better
this environment.
The structure of the paper is as follows. The first section begins with establishing the
crucial importance of education. Then it gives a brief review of the current context in
education in India. This section will form the basis on which we shall proceed on to
further analysis of the issue.
The second section analyzes the role of the government in the provision of services in the
elementary education sector in India. It begins by outlining the chief reasons for State
participation in these fields and outlines the approach of the Indian State in this regard.
After this brief policy review, we analyze the reasons for the ineffectiveness of these
policies. We identify gaps in the policies, which point to inefficiency in policy
formulation, and in policy execution. A factor receiving great attention in this regard is
the nature of the ‘work culture’ or ‘business environment’ in the context of these policies.
In the final section we first look at remedies to address these issues, and to improve the
business environment in the delivery system for these services. We also look at some
international examples of an efficient delivery mechanism, its effects and the policy
lessons to be derived from them. We also look in this section at certain successful Indian
cases, especially that of Kerala and Himachal Pradesh.
In the end, we draw together the various elements of our analysis and compile our
evidence and conclusions. The conclusion is a brief synopsis of the importance of this
sector, the role of the State, the failures inherent therein and the means that they may be
rooted out by.
2. The importance of education and the Indian context
This section aims at providing an overview for the further analysis in this paper. The first
subsection gives a brief exposition of the importance of education. The second subsection
puts in place the Indian context regarding education, in reference to which the entire
paper must be viewed. This section establishes the ground for the analysis of Indian
educational policy and its relation to the ‘business environment’, a task which is taken up
in the succeeding sections.
2.1 Importance of elementary education
So much has been written about the importance of education, and so widely is this
importance recognized in a civilized society, that it seems slightly superfluous to stress it
again. Yet a reiteration of this importance is necessary if we intend grasping the immense
significance of the issue we are dealing with.1
The first thing to recognize is that education in itself, by enhancing human abilities and
opening up new vistas, is a crucial component of the concept of development. This is
especially true if development is perceived in its broadest sense, namely development as
an extension of the freedoms available to people. The importance of education is
succinctly explained by Dreze and Sen in their book India : Development and
Participation. They stress that education fulfils distinct roles by which it enhances the
freedom of individuals, making it central to any conception of development.
Firstly, education is viewed as being intrinsically important in itself. Thus being educated
is valuable in itself, and can have a direct bearing on the freedoms an individual enjoys.
This is a marked departure from regarding education as merely a path to ‘human capital
development’, a phrase much in vogue today.
Additionally, education has distinct instrumental roles. Education helps people do many
jobs – other than being educated – that are also valuable in themselves.
Instrumental social roles of education are also important. To quote - “Greater literacy
and basic education can facilitate public discussion of social needs and encourage
informed collective demands and contribute to the better utilization of the available
services.” (Dreze and Sen, 2001).
Education is important in the practice of democracy, in the exercise of the vote, in the
accountability of the system and in the effectiveness of checks and balances. Lenin, in a
1
Education has also occupied an important place in development economics in the past half-century.
Specifically the entire approach of “human capital development”, “knowledge capital” and the “learning
curve”, all point to the increasing importance of education as a major factor behind economic growth.
Amongst the major development theories also, the new endogenous growth theories emphasize the role of
education in development. This importance is also highlighted by a vast body of empirical work in the
developing world and elsewhere.In the case of the East Asian economies, for example, the spread of
primary and secondary education has been shown conclusively as one of the crucial factors behind high
growth. The recent stress on Human Development, thanks largely to the work of South Asian economists
Mahbub-ul-Haq and Amartya Sen, has also established education as a core concern of the discipline of
development economics.
The interested reader may refer to a number of sources. For a gist of the theories see Fukuda-Parr and Shiva
Kumar (ed.)(2003), Meir and Rauch(OUP,2002), and Todaro,MP and Smith,SC(2003).
separate age, wrote – “An illiterate person stands outside politics, he must first learn his
ABC. Without that there can be no politics, without that there are rumours, gossip, fairytales and prejudices, but not politics.”(As quoted in Ramachandran,1996)
Fourthly, process roles are important. The process of schooling gives benefits which may
not have been the explicit goals of the process but which are unambiguously ‘positive
externalities’. For example, girls may get an opportunity to go out of the house for formal
education and interact with others of their age, an opportunity which might have been
denied to them otherwise. Another relevant example is the decline in fertility rates
associated with a rise in women literacy. The empirical evidence for this is fairly
conclusive.
Lastly, education has important empowerment and distributive roles. Greater educational
levels would make it easier for deprived sections and minorities to fight for their rights,
organize politically, and get for themselves a much better bargaining position vis-à-vis
the oppressing classes. As Amartya Sen stresses elsewhere –“… empirical work in recent
years has brought out very clearly how the relative respect and regard for women's wellbeing is strongly influenced by women's literacy and educated participation in decisions
within and outside the family.” (Sen, 2003)
We have seen above a brief exposition of education’s importance. It is certainly not
exhaustive but will serve as a reference point in our discussion further.
2.2 Current levels of Education in India
An analysis of the growth of literacy and education in India presents the reader with a
great paradox. On the one hand, the Indian State and people have always been ready to
acknowledge the overarching importance of education; on the other, the actual
achievements have been far less than the rhetoric would lead us to believe.
The Supreme Court declared in 1993 that ‘right to education is implicit in and flows from
the right to life guaranteed by Article 21.’ This interpretation is itself derived from the
Constitution of India which under Article 45 directs the State to universalize elementary
education in 15 years from the adoption of the constitution2. Every government elected in
India has also seen it fit to pay effusive lip-service to the further advances in literacy and
education. And yet, all this notwithstanding, the Indian record in education is not one to
be proud of.
As per the 2001 survey, more than 34% of the country’s population is still illiterate. What
is even worse is that there exists an astounding 21.70% gap between the literacy rates of
men and women. Whereas more than three-fourths(75.85%) of the men are counted as
‘literates’, the figure for women is much more modest at 54.16%. Reports indicate that
there also exists a great gap in the access to education, and the quality of education,
between the affluent classes and the economically deprived. The PROBE report (1999) is
but one example of such data. For comparison of Indian educational indicators with other
South Asian and East Asian nations, refer to Table 1.
The quality of education represents another dimension of the failure of education policy.
There have been repeated concerns that the education imparted by much of our
educational system is simply not of even an acceptable quality. Vinita Ramachandran
while discussing these very concerns writes – “In a recent study analysing the factors
that facilitate or impede successful primary school completion among children in diverse
poverty situations in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, we observed that
most children in classes III, IV and V were neither able to read fluently from their
textbooks, nor could they solve simple addition or subtraction sums. Most children in
class II were unable to recognise alphabets or numerals; children in class III were also
unable to read, write or count, though they knew certain lessons by rote.”
(Ramachandran,2004)
2
Article 45 is a part of the Constitution enumerating the Directive Principles of State Policy. These
principles and recommendations were intended as general guidelines for the Government of India by the
Constituent Assembly. These principles are not legally binding on the Indian Government These principles
recommend among other things a Uniform Civil Code, full employment etc. The universalisation of
elementary education is unique, however, in one respect. It is the only recommendation with a definite time
frame, a fact the Supreme Court noted in its judgment.
If that is the quality of education imparted, then clearly improving access to education is
not enough. The rise of this class of ‘educated illiterates’ poses a special challenge to
education policy in India.
Clearly then, though the importance of education may have been accepted for decades,
and though claims of concern and policy prioritization have abounded, there have been
major failures in the provision of elementary education in India.
3.The State and Education in India
This section lies at the heart of our analysis. In the first sub-section, we review the role
traditionally occupied by the State in the provision of education and the policies adopted
in various periods. In the second sub-section, we move on to analyzing the roots of the
inefficiencies in the public provision of education in India. We will relate these
inefficiencies to the particular ‘business environment’ in the public sector in education.
3.1 Role of the State in Education
Theoretically, a strong case exists for state provision of education services. It is argued
that the positive externalities of education will be overlooked in private provision. In
addition, state intervention may be required in order to address various ‘market failures’.
However perhaps the most important, and certainly the most cited grounds, for the public
provision of education are based on concerns about equity and rights. The role of
education in leveling social and economic inequalities has been mentioned earlier. Yet
this role would not have much meaning until and unless the access to education is
widespread. Education in a liberal, modern society is also seen as a basic right. This is
especially relevant since many other rights like the freedom of speech and expression
cannot be fully enjoyed without a sufficient level of literacy and education.
This role of the State has, at least in theory, been accepted willingly by successive
governments since independence. From the beginning, the Indian State has been a critical
player in the education sector.
Its role in this regard is extremely diversified. The State is itself a large provider of
education services. A.R.Vasavi, speaking of the role of the State in providing elementary
education in India writes –
“the state not only has access to real capital but also deploys and reinforces its power
through the symbolic, cultural and social capital that it has built up. In this the state not
only permits the functioning of elementary education institutions, but is also its most
dominant owner and manages and supervises the multiple functions associated with it: it
selects teachers and administrators, designs curricula and syllabi, constitutes textbook
committees, produces and distributes the texts, sets the school schedule including exams,
regulates teachers and their awards, punishments and transfers, and executes a range of
programmes and schemes.”(Vasavi,2004)
The predominance of the State in this sector can be judged also by the following statistics
presented in the Department of Education website. “In 1973-74 Government primary
schools were 51% of the total primary schools in India.(….) Government and local
bodies put together continued to own more than 90% of primary schools.” (MHRD
website, Department of Education, wwww.education.nic.in). The data is presented in
Table 2, with data for other years as well.
There are a number of schemes started by the State for elementary education. Perhaps the
most ambitious is the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, meaning literally ‘Universal Education
Campaign’. This scheme aims to bring all children of the age group 6-14 years into the
ambit of the educational system.3
Given the predominance of the State in education, and its recognition of its importance, it
is surprising that educational targets haven’t been met. The following sections will
analyze the reasons behind the underperformance.
3
This scheme is however merely the flagship scheme of the Government. There are various other schemes
as well. To name a few, recent years have seen the implementation of Operation Blackboard, Lok Jumbish,
District Primary Education Programme, Alternative and Innovative Education Scheme and others. Through
these schemes, the State maintains a high visibility in the sector.
3.2 Flaws in the Public provision of Education in India
Finally, we move on to discussing the reasons why education policy in India has not
worked and why its successes have at best been mixed and incomplete.
The argument given most often is that the major reason for the ambitious goals of India’s
literacy and education targets not being met has been a deficiency in the allocations.
There is certainly some justification in this argument. Successive versions of the National
Policy on Education since 1968 have called for raising of the expenditure on education to
6% of GDP. This goal has been endorsed by successive governments but has nonetheless
proved elusive. Indeed data shows that expenditure on education as a proportion of GDP
actually declined in the first half of the 1990s. A recent study(Shariff and Ghosh,2000)
documents how this expenditure as proportion of GNP actually declined from 4.1 to 3.8
per cent between 1990-91 and 1991-96.4 Even among the education expenditures, they
found elementary education accounts for less than half, as opposed to the two-thirds share
deemed necessary. So clearly, one cause of failure of education policy in India is an
insufficient level of expenditure.
Is this however, the major cause for the underperformance of the sector, as we are often
led to believe? Apparently not. A study conducted by the Centre for Civil Society in
Delhi recently threw up some interesting information. The study (Veetil,2005) stressed
that the major problem lay not in the level of allocations, but rather in the organizational
inefficiencies, lack of accountability and misutilization of funds. A handy example is the
following data compiled by the study about the non-formal education programme in
Delhi –
“In light of the existing distress in Delhi the Directorate of Education began budgeting
considerable amounts for NFE since 1994-95. Though Rs. 381000 - 535000 (1993-94
prices) were budgeted for the purpose from 1994-95 to 1997-98, not a single Rupee
was actually spent! There was some increase in Actual expenditure in the two
subsequent years; however even in 1999-2000 Actuals were only 2.4% (highest) of the
4
For data on the public expenditure on education, and the share of elementary education therein, refer
Tables 3 and 4.
Budget Estimate. Regardless of the past performance the Budget Estimate was
increased by about 6 folds in 2000-01, however not a single rupee was actually spent!
There was no amount Budgeted or Actually spent under this particular head since 200203.”
This is unforgivable in a state where there are an estimated 400,000 child workers and
100,000 street children who could have benefited from this scheme. What lies then, at the
root of the problem? It is not a simple matter of inadequate funds. The nature of the
system is also a crucial factor, one that needs to be reviewed very seriously.
It appears that the core problem lies in the delivery mechanism of education services in
India. The specific flaws inherent in the system are many. Perhaps the biggest stumbling
block is accountability. The education system in India runs primarily through a vast
bureaucracy. This bureaucracy manages all the various offices and programmes of the
Government regarding education. The bureaucracy is, in general, accountable only to
itself. The community in most cases lacks the authority to question it and the political
class simply could not care less.
Even a cursory examination of this vast system would demonstrate the pernicious culture
of inefficiency which it breeds. As A.R.Vasavi comments – “Perhaps the most striking
characteristic of this labyrinth is the extent to which it is devoid of a culture of
democracy and professionalism.”(Vasavi,2004). The incentive structure in this system is
much skewed. Promotion and emoluments are not linked to performance. Coupled with
the lack of accountability, this means that there exists absolutely no incentive for the
bureaucrats to dedicatedly work towards the effective implementation of policies. Lack of
incentives is directly reflected in the business environment in the sector as a whole. It is
here where the root of the problem lies. This is manifested in the disinterestedness with
which many schemes are allowed to run to the ground, non formal education in Delhi
being a clear example.
The other major source of inefficiency lies in the nature of the decision-making process
in the education bureaucracy. Instead of feedback and suggestions coming from the
grassroots, the typical case has been one where policies and guidelines are formulated at
the top levels and instructions passed down to the lower rungs of administration. This has
led to various problems. Firstly, “this vertical production and transfer of decisions and
programmes is replicated at every level with concomitant loss of meaning and
orientation. Little wonder that decisions and hence programmes and policies are seen
and internalized as just another set of orders in relation to which they, as education
administrators, have nothing at stake.”(Vasavi,2004)
The non-democratic culture of the bureaucracy also fosters a culture of overt submission
and covert sabotage. Since promotions and advancement depend on the superiors in the
bureaucracy, there also arises a strong culture of factionalism in most offices .Thus many
times, policies and suggestions are judged not on the basis of their content, but rather the
person from whose desk it originated. “As a result, the link between work and the agent
is contradictory: at one level what requires personal commitment and dedication is met
with indifference and carelessness; obversely, what must be undertaken in an impartial
and impersonal way is subject to personal readings and interpretations and is
sabotaged.”(Vasavi,2004)
Another aspect of the work culture is the routinisation of work. In the educational
bureaucracy, to perhaps an even greater degree than most other bureaucracies, there is a
strong tendency towards the routinization of tasks. What this means is that the inherent
conservatism and inertia of the bureaucracy prevents it from being amenable to change
and makes it inefficient in the execution of new innovative plans.
A major deficiency in the present system is the lack of widespread community
participation. The local community is the biggest stakeholder in the education system.
Yet it is effectively denied a voice in both the formulation and the implementation of
policies. Since teachers and education bureaucrats are not accountable to the community
at large, even they cannot be questioned. There have been some attempts to correct this
imbalance. The SSA framework gives a large role to Village Education
Committees(VECs) and Panchayati Raj institutions. There has not, however, been a
sincere effort to implement this role in actuality. A recent World Bank Policy Research
study found in a survey in Uttar Pradesh that 92.4% of the respondents did not know
even of the existence of a VEC while 5.0% of the rest knew of its existence but could not
name a single member(Bannerji, A et al, 2006). These statistics are reflective of a broad
pattern in education.
Another fact to be kept in mind is that most inefficiencies lie in municipality or rural
schools. These however are not the schools that bureaucrats and administrators send their
children to. What this end up meaning is that “people who have the ability to demand
and ensure the proper functioning of ordinary municipal schools have no stake in
it.”(Ramachandran,2004).
This is not an exhaustive list of deficiencies in the system. Certainly, there are other
important flaws for example, the wanton neglect of related areas like child nutrition,
which is important for education per se but where India has among the world’s worst
indicators or the inappropriateness of the course structure. However, inherent in the
educational system, some of the biggest factors are the problems in the work culture and
utter lack of professionalism that beset the bureaucracy in education.
4. Promoting Business Environment : Solutions for inefficiencies in
Public Education
Having identified the problems in the public education system, we now move to suggest
some possible options for reforms.
The first major reform needed is to increase community participation. The importance of
this cannot be overstated. Empirical data shows that community participation is a crucial
factor in the success of education policy. States in India, most notably Kerala5 and
5
The example of Kerala has often been cited in contrast to general Indian experience in education. The
factors lying behind this drastic difference in performance are community participation and monitoring,
political pressure exerted in previous decades, active social movements especially those directed at
emancipation of lower castes(Ezhavas),a progressive princely state and land reform movements. This has
had a deep impact on Kerala’s society in political discourse, development, emancipation etc. For a succinct
and enlightening account see Ramachandran(1996) and Sen(1996).The study of Uttar Pradesh in the same
Himachal Pradesh, which score highly on education are states with active community
involvement in school education. This can be done only if teachers and local bureaucrats
are made accountable to the community. If proper mechanisms are put in place, and
individual members of the community given the legal right to question, participation
should not be a problem. This is especially so because various studies have shown the
importance attached by parents to the education of children. The PROBE report, for
example, states that 98% of the respondents felt the importance of education for boys and
89% for girls. Given this high degree of interest, community participation can be easily
encouraged.
The second major reform that is required is in the nature of the decision-making process
in the education bureaucracy. The top-down, passing-the-buck approach clearly does not
work. There is need for effective decentralization of powers, including financial powers.
Also, grassroots responses and feedback must be kept in mind while formulating policy.
These things appear obvious but have dodged the public education system thus far. It is
time they were taken into account.
Thirdly, there needs to be a change in the incentive structure. For bureaucrats, this may
mean advancement and bonus on the basis of performance. It should certainly mean
official censure for inefficiency, and penalty and prosecution for corruption. For teachers
also, performance and emoluments must be linked. Absenteeism must be severely
penalized. Community participation can be useful in this regard. If the community can
call officially for a teacher’s transfer, disciplining or dismissal, then teachers would have
a much greater disincentive against underperforming consistently.
There are a number of other proposals that have been tendered by academicians and
policy-makers alike which centre around the incentive structure. One proposal that has
been mooted of late is the introduction of ‘education vouchers’, analogous to food stamps
in the US, which can be used in any school.6 This would boost competition between
volume may also be looked up, just to get an idea of the contrasts involved.The volume itself is most
instructive.
6
See for example, Veetil, Vipin P(2005) – Government Expenditure on Elementary and Secondary
Education from 1993-94 to 2003-04, (Centre for Civil Society, New Delhi)
schools, and thus lead to an overall betterment of the quality of education. Another model
presented has advocated building of schoolrooms by the State and leasing it out to
qualified teacher-entrepreneurs(Kumar,S. et al 2003). These models and others need to be
evaluated seriously. If they can lead to an efficient solution without causing additional
problems in equity, wastage or quality, they may represent feasible alternatives.
The last major reform necessary in the sector is the removal of the ‘information
asymmetries’ in education. People are in general, not aware of their precise entitlements,
nor of the mechanisms of checks and balances built in the administration. It is necessary
that full information about these schemes be made widely available. Otherwise, there is
little chance of their success.
Perhaps the biggest stumbling block in the entire system is the lack of political will.
Bureaucrats and teachers are entrenched and powerful lobbies. Education seems to rate
very low on the government’s priority list. Until and unless education as a political issue
captures the public imagination, it may be naïve to expect much to change. This is not
however, reason enough to be skeptical of all possibility of change. As the campaign for
Right to Information has shown, drastic change is also possible through concerted efforts.
5. Conclusion
We have seen the overwhelming importance of elementary education in the present
context. We have also seen the way in which the public sector has failed to deliver on its
promises of universal literacy and mass education. The public sector’s underperformance
stems mainly from the ‘business environment’ and work culture in this sector. While
increased allocations may be important in their own right, the chief task ahead is to
reform this work culture.
In the last section we outlined the major directions in which reforms are needed. It is
important we realize immediately the overarching importance of bringing about these
reforms as soon as possible. Without them, it is unlikely that India will achieve any time
soon her dreams of becoming an economic superpower. Even if India does achieve a high
rate of growth or a boom in exports or in FDI, it is almost certain that this growth will not
reach the masses. Without access to education, the fruits of globalization will also be
inaccessible to these broad sections of society.
In conclusion all I can say is that it is time India moved ahead on this front. With
progress here, there is an unlimited potential for growth but without it, progress means
little. It is important that India makes the right choice, and the sooner, the better.
REFERENCES
Dreze, J. and Sen, A.K.(1995): India: Economic Development and Social Opportunity
(OUP, New Delhi)
Kumar,S., Koppar B.J. and S Balasubramanian (2003): Primary Education in Rural
Areas: An Alternative Model(Economic and Political Weekly August 23, 2003 )
Veetil, Vipin P. (2005): Government Expenditure on Elementary and Secondary
Education from 1993-94 to 2003-04, (Centre for Civil Society, New Delhi)
Bannerjee,Abhijit et al (2006): Can Information Campaigns Spark Local Participation
and Improve Outcomes? A Study of Primary Education in Uttar Pradesh, India (World
Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3967, July 2006,available on
http://econ.worldbank.org.)
Sharriff, A. and Ghosh,P.K.(2000): Indian Education Scene and the Public Gap
(Economic and Political Weekly April 15, 2000)
Dreze, J. (2006): Universalisation with Quality : ICDS in a Rights Perspective(Economic
and Political Weekly August 26, 2006)
Tilak,JBG (2004): Education in the UPA Government Common Minimum Programme
(Economic and Political Weekly October 23, 2004)
Ramachandran, V.K.(1997) : On Kerala’s Development Experience (In Indian
Development – Selected Regional Perspectives Sen,A and Dreze,J ed., OUP India 1997)
Centre for Development Economics(1999): the Public Report on Basic Education for
India(PROBE,OUP 1999)
Sinha, Amarjeet(2004): Is it really possible? (Seminar,2004)
Sen, Amartya (1997) : Radical Needs and Moderate Reforms(In Indian Development –
Selected Regional Perspectives Sen,A and Dreze,J ed., OUP India 1997)
Ramachandra,Vimala(2004) : The Best of Times, the Worst of Times(Seminar,2004)
Vasavi,A.R.(2004): In the labyrinth of education bureaucracy(Seminar,2004)
Rao,P. et al(2004) : Reaching for Quality in the Countryside(Seminar,2004)
www.education.nic.in (Department of Education,Government of India)
Table 1 : Some International Comparisons of Educational Indicators
Particulars
World
Afghanistan
Bangladesh
China
India
Indonesia
Japan
Myanmar
Nepal
Pakistan
Sri Lanka
Thailand
Population
Area Density
(millions) (Sq. Kms)
(2000)
6055.0 * 135604354
21.2 #
652090
129.2
143998
1277.6 9596961
1027 $ 3287590
212.1 1904569
126.9
377801
46.4
676578
22.5 #
140797
156.5
796095
18.8 #
65610
62.0 #
513115
45
33
897
133
312
111
336
69
160
197
286
121
Percentage
to world
100
0.48
0.11
7.08
2.42
1.40
0.28
0.50
0.10
0.59
0.05
0.38
100
0.35
2.13
21.10
16.96
3.50
2.10
0.77
0.37
2.58
0.31
1.02
Percentage of Public expr.
adult illiterate on education
Population
as %age of
2000
GNP (1996)
20.6
63.7
59.2
15.0
44.2
13.0
NA
15.3
58.6
56.7
8.4
4.4
SOURCE: Statistical Yearbook, 1999 UNESCO
* Estimated population for 2000, # Reference year 1999, $ Reference year 2001
& Reference year 1994, @ Reference year 1997
Table taken from www.education.nic.in
Table 2 : Percentage of Primary Schools under different management
Year
1973-74
1978-79
1986-87
1993-94
1996-97
2001-02*
Govt.
50.88
38.96
41.37
44.63
47.78
47.45
*Provisional
Source : www.education.nic.in
Local
Body(LB)
42.47
55.03
51.71
47.47
43.88
43.47
Govt. + LB
93.34
93.99
93.08
92.10
91.66
90.92
Private
Aided
5.01
4.42
4.34
3.78
3.34
3.07
Private
Un-aided
1.64
1.59
2.57
4.12
5.00
6.01
NA
N.A.
2.2
2.3
3.2
1.4
3.6
1.2 &
3.2 @
2.7 @
3.4
4.8
Table 3: Public Expenditure on Education in India as percent of GNP
Year
Percent of GNP
1950-51
0.68
1960-61
1.58
1970-71
2.26
1980-81
3.00
1985-86
3.60
1990-91
4.10
1995-96
3.80
Source : Sharriff, A. and Ghosh,P.K.(2000): Indian Education Scene and the Public Gap
(Economic and Political Weekly April 15, 2000)
Table 4 : Share of Elementary Education in Public Expenditure on Education in
India
Year
1980-81
1985-86
1990-91
1995-96
All States
48.0
49.5
50.0
49.6
Centre
2.9
5.2
14.8
39.5
Total
44.3
45.8
46.1
48.2
Source : Sharriff, A. and Ghosh,P.K.(2000): Indian Education Scene and the Public Gap
(Economic and Political Weekly April 15, 2000)