| It
is difficult to figure out what exactly the UPA government
wants. On the one hand, from the declaration of the
National Common Minimum Programme onwards, the government
has declared that it will make education a major thrust
area, that it will increase public spending on education
to at least 6 per cent of GDP and take measures to make
India a ''knowledge-based'' society and economy. On the
other hand, both in the pattern of spending in the past
two years and in the budget allocations for the coming
financial year, as well as in its remarkably derelict
attitude to the Right to Education Bill, the government
appears to suggest that educating all our young people
is not a real concern.
Indeed,
thus far everything suggests that despite all the lofty
promises and grandiose claims, school education will
continue to receive niggardly treatment from this government.
What is worse, funds for flagship programmes such as
the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan are not being increased but
actually cut, despite the fact that the Constitutional
Amendment 21A that was passed in 2002 has mandated the
public provision of universal schooling for eight years
to every child in India.
It is a well-known fact that financial statements of
governments are not always what they seem to be. Even
so, the current Finance Minister appears to have taken
such sophistry to new heights, to the point that in
many cases, when he declares greater focus on and attention
to a certain area, it is effectively a code for less
spending.
Take this statement from the Budget Speech presented
a few days ago in Parliament: ''In allocating resources,
school education must have primacy. Hence, I propose
to increase the allocation for school education by about
35 per cent from Rs. 17,133 crore in 2006-07 to Rs.
23, 142 crore in 2007-08…Out of this amount, Sarva Shiksha
Abhiyan will be provided Rs. 10,671 crore.''
The casual listener would be forgiven for thinking that
this is a welcome indication that the government is
finally taking its responsibility for universal schooling
seriously, in terms of increasing central government
allocations as a minimum necessary step towards this
goal. However, a closer look at the actual numbers reveals
that the allocation for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan is proposed
to be brought down by more than Rs. 385 crore (around
4 per cent decline) from the amount that was spent last
year.
So how has this ''35 per cent increase'' come about? It
turns out that the only significant expansion in elementary
education is in the Mid-day Meal programme (formally
known as ''Nutritional Support to Primary Education''),
for which the allocation has increased by 37 per cent
to just under Rs. 6600 crore. This increase is simply
because the Supreme Court has directed the central government
to provide funds to ensure that the mid-day meal programme
is operationalised in all elementary schools in the
country, but even this amount falls short of the estimated
requirement.
The other increase in the school education budget has
come about at least partly by sleight of hand. The departments
within the Ministry of Human Resource Development have
been reorganised, and so spending on secondary education
has simply been moved from the Department of Higher
Education to the Department of School Education and
Literacy.
It is true that the allocation for secondary education
has indeed increased by just under Rs. 2,000 crore.
But it is immediately evident that this is not even
a small proportion of the requirement for meeting the
growing demand given the population bulge and the need
to ensure universal education up to Class VIII and increasing
enrolment up to Class X. (Since elementary education
covers only up to Class V, the resources for Classes
VI to VIII have to be met from the secondary education
budget.) So clearly the central government is continuing
to wash its hand of the financial commitment that will
be necessary to ensure universal school education.
This is despite that fact that the goal of ''sarva shiksha''
is nowhere near being reached. While enrolment at the
primary stages has improved (current being around 93
per cent according to the recent Pratham survey) the
dropout rates remain very high, especially but not only
for girls. Even by the end of elementary school (Class
V) the Pratham survey finds that at least 25 per cent
of children in the relevant age group will not complete
elementary education. And standards of learning are
quite poor on average, even among those who do stay
on.
Of course, this reflects major problems of quality,
relevance and accountability in our government school
system, but it is also a direct result of the very poor
quality of infrastructure. Indeed, given the shortage
of classrooms, basic facilities like electrical fittings,
toilets, teaching aids and the like, not to mention
also the shortage of teachers and the preponderance
of multi-grade classrooms with single teachers, it is
a wonder that enrolment does not collapse even more.
In fact, it speaks volumes for the significance that
is increasingly placed upon education by parents from
all income groups and all walks of life, that children
are asked to brave atrocious conditions and many obstacles
in order to somehow get an education. But then this
should impart much more urgency to the government’s
programme to ensure good quality universal school education,
not only because it is becoming a major demand of the
people, but because without it our society cannot hope
to progress in any meaningful way.
Despite all these irrefutable arguments, it is now common
to find among policy makers in Delhi, the argument that
school education being in the concurrent list, it should
be left to state governments to provide. The distortion
of the promised Right to Education Bill, involving the
proposal to suggest a model bill to be enacted by state
governments in non-compulsory fashion and without any
additional financial commitment by the centre, is one
example of this callous and cynical attitude. The reduction
of the proposed outlay on elementary education in the
coming years is another.
If all these numbers are correct, then how has this
Budget been interpreted as a budget for education? It
turns out that this is almost entirely due to the expansion
in outlays for higher education - to the tune of around
Rs. 4,000 crore additional allocation - which is almost
all going to central universities and other institutions
to allow them to expand to meet the recommendations
of the ''Oversight Committee'' (Moily Committee) regarding
reservation for OBCs in higher education.
Of course such expansion is to be welcomed of existing
institutions, especially if it does not affect the quality
of teaching, but it is certainly no substitute for increasing
resources to other areas of education. Unfortunately,
even for higher education, there has been hardly any
provision in the budget for expansion in the form of
new public universities and other institutions, which
the country desperately needs.
So it seems that in education as in so many other areas,
the UPA government began well in terms of recognising
the problems and identifying the crucial priorities
in its Common Minimum Programme, but is now gone almost
completely off track. It has already been shown how
damaging this can be to the ruling party politically
- its remains to be seen whether the lesson will be
learnt in time.
|
