What ails the education in India

By Preduman K. Joseph Dhar

In India education has always re-mained the first casualty. It is not without reason. The politicians never want the common man to get sufficiently educated for fear of posing a challenge and threat to their very existence. The Bureaucrat also never wants it. He shall find his counterpart from the commonfolk than his own household. In his budget speech for the fiscal year 2000-2001 owe Finance Minister accorded highest priority to human resources development through programmes, and policies in Education, health and other social services, with special emphasis on the poorest and weakest sections of the society. The outcome as observed by us in India of this speech is before us all.

Every student of economics can easily understand that India enters the second phase of liberalisation, the Government is expected to reduce its fiscal deficit by cutting down public expenditure and confining its activities to the minimum. Under the market economy which economic liberation aims at, the Government is expected to concentrate only on Defence, Law and order and Justice. But we in India, should at the same time take due note of the fact that eduction is one of the importnat factors that decide the fact education is one of the important factors that decide the fate and quality of life of a society, Literacy is one of the important elements included in working of Human Resource Development Index (HDI) that ranks countries in order of development. India's rank of 132 in 1999 leaves us with a high illeteracy rate of 38 percent combined with low per capita income (US $370 or US $1900 adjusted for purchasing power party). If we care to read the book Indian Economic Development and social opportunity by Dreze and Amartya Sen, we will know for ourselves very clearly the importance of education in economic and social transformation in a developing country like ours.

The Government, therefore, cannot hoodwink the innocent people of India by taking recourse to be proposed 83rd Amendment to our constitution which aims at a making primary education in the age group of 6-14 compulsory. We have a provision of the type in part IV of our Constitution - Article.

In 1986 the Congress Government headed by the late Mr. Rajiv Ratna Gandhi emphatically said on various occasions that his Government would spend 6 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on education. But statistics of 1996 reveal that the Government of India has spent 3.4 percent of GDP on education. As against this a country like Kenya has spent 6.6 percent of its GDP on Education if the world development Report 1999-2000 could be any guide. Our expenditure on education has increased from 0.65 percent of GDP in 1951-52 to 3.40 percent GDP in 1996-97. If we compare the increase in the budgetary expenditure during the same period, it has gone up from 7.92 percent to 13.35 percent. This increase has not succeeded in making the country fully literate. The India Development Report prepared by the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research suggests providing of 2.85 percent of GDP against 1.5 percent of GDP actually being expended to provide Universal Parimary Education.

The National Council of Applied Economic Research says "Sixty Eight percent of the students go to Government Aided schools and the remaining ten percent to private schools where the expenditure is 230 percent more than the Government Schools. Under the Directive Principles of State Policy, the Government is obliged to provide 8 years of free and compulsory education. Here it shall be apt to suggest that the proposed 83rd. Amendment to the Constitution should extend this education to 10 years that is 19th standard, the first public examination. It shall definitely require Government to spend all the 6 percent of the GDP and even more. If the Government is sincerely wishing to provide qualitative education suitable for the requirement of the present day economy and society, then it should not be found wanting.

Now the question arises -- If we base our approach on the principles as enumerated herein above what about +2 Education and above? Who spends for higher education? Educationists and economists opine that those who have the benefit of higher education will be economically and socially better off than those who could not avail of such opportunities.

World Bank Report 1998-99 says, "Laburve Markets rewards those who possess college degrees and other tangible signals of ability. It is, therefore, the bounden duty of the Government to bear the burden of such education. Qualitative education means excellent infrastructure and competent teachers who cannot be had by paying peanuts.

It is a stark truth that higher education does not cover the priority sector vis-a-vis expenditure on it. But here it can be suggested that Government should say good bye to populist policy of spending for it. But at the same time let the Government advance education loans to economically poor students who derive to acquire higher education. Such schemes were already introduced in Australia in 1989 and Newzealand in 1992. The repayment of loan begins when the student starts earning.

In a liberalised economy, the market will decide the worth of higher education. The economic Survey Report says "The early success of our IT industry owes a great deal to relative absence of Government controls". In this context it shall be proper for the Government to exercise minimum control and greater freedom in the field of higher education.

India has rolled out a red carpet to global economy. She is also a player in this field. But to be a player does not fulfill the requirements. We have to be a successful player. What we need for this purpose is revamping of our education system from the primary stage onwards. This not only needs huge expenditure on school education but also proper direction. Let the Government take care of school education and leave higher education, by and large to the market.

Here it shall be pertinent to State tha school education should not be made like a ruderless vessel to be drifted any time ashore. It should be left to the care Educationists and not to IAS Officers who have no knowledge in the field as is the case in Jammu and Kashmir. In our State we find Principal's of Higher Secondary Schools, lecturers of Higher Secondary Schools without the B.Ed. degree. In our State Institute of Education the syllabi planners and those who train teachers in various disciples without B.Ed. degree. Our Chief Education Officers constitute such a lot who have never managed and taught primary, middle and secondary schools. Our J & K Board of School Education has always been administered by college teachers with no basic knowledge of the psyche of those whose affairs they conduct.

If India is to progress education should not be the casualty.

Post-summit Pakistan offensive in Kashmir

By Avinash Shirodkar

Indians like to say Pakistan's econ-omy cannot sustain what some New Delhi officials call its "compulsive hostility" to India. Actually, that's untrue. The proxy war is cheap and self-sustaining. The real burden is the negative impact the war has on third countries, including ones crucial to Pakistan's economic revival. And as the Agra summit made evident, Musharraf hasn't realised this yet.

The general has a long and distinguished record of beating on India. That's par for the course. He's a good soldier, an ardent nationalist. Musharraf isn't anti-Indian because of religion or Partition. For him, it's about geopolitics. He told officers in 1999 that even if the Kashmir dispute is resolved, "our problems with India may not end, because India wants to keep Pakistan weak. Pakistan is a thorn in India's side, constantly thwarting India's ambition to become a world power".

With the above mind set, it would he a worthwhile exercise to examine the collapse of the Agra summit. Whether to call it a roller-coaster ride, or a Cheshire cat which, having started off with a big grin, vanishes without trace. But there could have been absolutely no question about the tragic fate that has overtaken it. Observers who had scaled euphoric heights following the initial description of the talks as 'fruitful', 'constructive' and 'positive' have come down to earth, with nothing more than a few photo-ops to show for it.

Last-minute efforts by participants furiously searching for some semantic fig leaves or diplomatic camouflage to justify their having met at all, and roused expectations of some momentous breakthrough have also collapsed. Thus, there is not even a bland declaration or a joint statement whose significance would, in any case, have been not in what it said but in what it papered over - that for the umpteenth time the two sides have met only to part after having engaged themselves in a dialogue of the deaf.

The denouement should not have come altogether as a surprise. During the run up to the summit itself, it was clear from the pronouncements by various sources and at various levels - political and official - emanating from India and Pakistan that neither country was going to yield an inch of ground on what each regarded as its paramount concern : Cross-border terrorism on India's side and Kashmir on Pakistan's. Neither the Prime Minister, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, nor the Pakistani President, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, could have survived a day in their respective capacities if they were seen to backtrack on asseverations that they themselves had helped burn into the psyche of the people of their respective countries as inviolate, sacred and sacrosanct.

It is necessary to take with a pinch of salt the familiar refrain that the pitch was queered for the summiteers by the hardliners - the obdurate Shiv Sainiks and Sangh Parivaris on the side of India and the fanatical Lashkarites, Jamaatis and Hurriyatis on the side of Pakistan. To persist in this belief will be an act of self-delusion. In both countries, there is a sizeable section of opinion in every walk of which is convinced of the rightness of the stance taken by their own countries so far and would have considered any abrupt climb down as a suspicious sell-out. Included within its ambit are the academia, media, intelligentsia, professionals, litterateurs, apart from the political class and the military, all of them trying to be objective and dispassionate after their own fashion.

Apart from the intrinsic complexities of the issues bedeviling relations between India and Pakistan for more than half a century, there were genuine misgivings on the Indian side on the durability, or even legality, of any entente cordiale entered into with one who had anointed himself President after seizing power from a democratically-elected Prime Minister and summarily dismissing a President who had been duly installed by a legitimate process.

Also, there could well have been honest doubts about the trustworthiness of a person with whom the Prime Minister, Mr Vajpayee, had forsworn any dealings at all knowing that the blood of 500 men of India's Defence forces was on his hands in the flare-up at Kargil planned and instigated while the ink on the Lahore Declaration was not even dry.

In a sense, therefore, the talks were foredoomed to failure. What India had not foreseen was that their failure would give a ready and heavy propaganda advantage for Pakistan. It has already thrown the blame on India for the breakdown. It will now surely present itself before world opinion as the injured party and India as a country unreasonably brushing aside the existence of a dispute over Kashmir and bent on crushing a "freedom struggle" by Kashmiris with the armed might of six lakh soldiers of the Indian Army.

Gen. Musharraf has very cleverly scored points in advance by setting out all these arguments for Pakistan's brief for world forums when he met the editors on July 16 over breakfast. Since governments of other countries will have nothing to go by except the plausible sob-sister stuff put out by Pakistan, by the time India catches up with the disinformation campaign, much mischief would have been done. Instead of focussing time and energy on his other worries such as the economy. Manipur, Tamil Nadu, and the like, Mr Vajpayee will be sorely distracted devising strategies to combat the mischief on all the fronts.

This is not all. Pakistan will make the breakdown an excuse to throw all its weight behind the militants in Kashmir in order to intensify acts of subversion and violence, and create an illusion for the outside world of widespread escalation of resistance to Indian 'occupation' of Kashmir. India's use of the armed forces to control the situation will be depicted as a heartless oppression of a "freedom movement" in violation of canons of international law. In the process, India may even be hauled up before the Security Council or the International Court of Justice for trampling on human rights and the principle of self-determination. Nothing can be taken as far-fetched when other nations are either ignorant or biased or are eager to fish in troubled waters.

Where does India go from here? Pinning hopes on the visit of Mr Vajpayee to Islamabad, or his meeting Gen. Musharraf at the time of UN or SAARC meeting is to exhibit naivete of the first order. So long as the concerns which each side regards as core and non-negotiable remain the same, more parleys will not mean getting closer to agreement.

The time has come to make clear that the problems pertaining to Kashmir are to be sorted out between India and the people of one of its constituent States, and it was a mistake to concede any status or stake to Pakistan in what principally is a matter of upholding India's integrity and sovereignty. It was this approach that has helped India meet with a degree of success in countering separatist movements in Nagaland and Mizoram which at one time loomed large and ominous.

It would be a wise policy for India to tell Pakistan where it gets off, and concentrate on winning over the people of Kashmir by talking to them within the spirit of the Constitution and by giving topmost priority to economic development and creation of employment opportunities.

It will have to put in a lot of patience, imagination, empathy and sensitivity in effecting a turnaround in the situation. Kashmir does not lend itself to the conventional methods of deputations and postings of functionaries subjected to shuffling and shunting after short durations. It is time a special corps of committed, sympathetic and innovative public servants who have the reputation of achievers in various fields, professions and disciplines was constituted exclusively for Kashmir and given the support and authority to solve the problems encountered by them in the best interests of the State and the nation. INAV