The not very inspiring quality of elementary education in India coupled with an ascending dropout rate has been a cause of concern for worried educationists as well as the government which enacted a new legislation for universalizing education in order to raise the education profile in the country.
It is indeed a pity that a nation, where great reformers have historically used education as an instrument of national development and socioeconomic reform, is struggling to instill conceptual understanding in children due to unscientifically framed curriculum and lack of appropriate environment.
Also the situation remains equally gloomy across the country as governments of all hue faltered in pumping adequate resources into educational infrastructure over the years.
Perhaps, there is merit in Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s assertion that India and Pakistan should abandon the rat race of acquiring sophisticated armory to invest more in welfare issues. It certainly does not enhance our prestige when the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development ranks India almost at the bottom of the pack after evaluating her education system and student merit.
Even Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat and a prime ministerial aspirant, who supposedly posses a magic wand to solve India’s problems overnight, has paid little attention to building a strong institutional mechanism for driving the public education sector in his home turf efficiently.
Claimed to be attaining prosperity in rocket-speed under Modi, Gujarat has surprisingly lagged behind in providing the minimum infrastructure guaranteed under the historic Right of Children to Compulsory and Free Education Act passed by the Manmohan Singh-led UPA government in 2009.
The number of primary students in Gujarat, as per official figure, has dropped to 6 million from 8.13 million in 1999.
Under Narendra Modi’s much-hyped good governance, there has been a rapid slide in the number of students studying in 8th to 12th grade, thanks to the lackadaisicalness of the state machinery in uplifting primary schools to secondary and higher secondary standard.
All these years, while Modi was busy rubbing shoulders with the who’s who of Indian industry, children in his state, especially in rural areas suffered due to lack of facilities, teaching staff and scientific curriculum. Significantly, his government has also slashed budgetary allocations for primary education resulting in diminishing expenditure per student and a massive drop in the quality of education imparted.
Despite being at the helm with brute majority since 2001, Modi, the master disguiser that he is, since the emergency days of mid-seventies, shifted the onus of culpability to his predecessors, as usual accusing the previous Congress regimes of ignoring primary education in Gujarat.
Modi and his party must realize that though it might be easy to put the burden of guilt on political opponents by bombarding them with eloquent rhetoric, ultimately none but the future generations of Gujarat, whose education and healthcare needs are being grossly ignored, suffers the most. A neglected basic education system inevitably hampers skill development in the long run and disincentivizes today’s technology-driven industries to set up business in such places.
In the words of Professor Amartya Sen, “We live in a democracy where what we get depends on what we demand”. Hence pressure needs to be built up to, at least, make sure that education does not remain a low priority in a state like Gujarat where hype and hyperbole always seize any sober discourse on policy matters. An ostrich-like attitude surely would not alter the grim ground realities of funds allotted for strengthening primary education lying unutilized in most cases and the performance of state-owned schools reaching a nadir.
To Mahatma Gandhi, education was a potent tool for developing human consciousness and reconstructing the caste-driven Indian society to eliminate all bigotry. In fact the whole of South Asia, with the notable exception of Sri Lanka and a portion of southern India, suffers from a peculiar anti-education mindset prevailing within a section of the society, especially in rural hinterland, due to feudal tendencies passed down through generations. Ingrained patriarchal attitude has, no doubt, promoted educational disparities in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, where a bulk of the subcontinent’s illiterate population resides.
Unfortunately, politicians of Narendra Modi’s ilk — always apathetic toward social sector — have exacerbated the fault line by steadfastly advocating indiscriminate privatization of the education field. Such idea amounts to encouraging class-based education by way of which only the affluent can afford the costly yet quality education imparted in private schools. Ironically, Modi, who had himself endured severe economic hardship during tender age, is hell-bent on allowing a dualistic and distorted education system to prosper where the elites — often patronized by him — and the upper middle class will enjoy the fruits while the rest of the society, which is out of his radar, can only afford to send their wards to sub-standard government sponsored institutions.
Let us not underestimate the fact that income is unevenly distributed in South Asian nations. The far-rightist economic model of mere creation of wealth through high growth — adopted by administrators like Modi — will be counterproductive for this region where millions still have limited access to income. Member states of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation therefore must apply their mind jointly to come up with a holistic approach to enhance the quality of education in a region where any reforms must be pursued with extreme caution without disturbing the delicate social balance.
• Seema Sengupta is a Kolkata-based journalist and columnist.
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