E-Paper
Politicians must agree to hike the education budget
It is encouraging to note that the election manifesto of the Congress commits that, if voted to power, it will ensure that the total public expenditure on education will reach 6% of GDP by 2023-24. The CPI (M), too, has made a similar commitment in its manifesto. One hopes a consensus can be reached to achieve this target at least during the term of the 17th Lok Sabha
While there is celebration in some quarters about India being one of the most rapidly growing economies in terms of GDP, little attention is being paid by those framing and implementing macroeconomic policies to the need to provide a significantly greater quantum of fiscal support to this sector. It is true that India has made some progress in education since independence. Most of the standard educational indicators such as literacy rates, school enrolment ratios and average years of formal schooling have improved over the past seven decades of our Republic.
However, this progress is both limited in extent and marked by wide, though slowly declining, disparities across caste, gender and region as well as class. Even with regard to such a basic indicator as literacy rates among the population aged seven years and above, the male-female differential was as high as 16.3 percentage points as per the 2011 population census, with male and female literacy rates at 80.9% and 64.6% respectively. Likewise, there is, as per Census 2011, a difference of nearly 7 percentage points between the literacy rate for the general population at 73% and that for SCs at 66.1%. The literacy rate for the scheduled tribes in 2011 was significantly lower at 59%. Similarly, while gross enrolment ratios (GER) have risen significantly over the years at all levels of education, the disparity in GER between the general population and the scheduled castes in higher education remains substantial. For instance, while the gross enrolment ratio for the general population aged 18-23 years in 2016-17 was 25.2%, it was lower for the Scheduled Castes at 21.1% and much lower for scheduled tribes at 15.4%. Likewise, while a state like Tamil Nadu has a GER around 47%, the figure is much lower for Bihar at a little under 15%. All available evidence makes clear that there is considerable educational deprivation in India despite relatively higher growth rates of GDP since the early 1980s.
Article 45 of the Constitution of India had declared: “The State shall endeavour to provide, within a period of ten years from the commencement of this Constitution, for free and compulsory education for all children until they complete the age of fourteen years.” More than 50 years later, The Constitution (Eighty-sixth Amendment) Act, 2002 inserted Article 21-A in the Constitution of India to provide free and compulsory education of all children in the age group of six to 14 years as a Fundamental Right. It took another seven years before The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, was enacted on August 4 , 2009.
As with land reforms, where a plethora of legislations have resulted in little ceiling-surplus land becoming available for redistribution to the landless poor, many legislations have been passed in India but “free and compulsory” education is yet to be realised for a significant section of the population. While there are many factors underlying both the extent of educational deprivation and its varied incidence across class, caste, gender and region, what is strikingly clear is that the abysmally low relative levels of public expenditure on education constitute an important one.
The Kothari Commission on Education had recommended in 1967 that 6% of GDP should be spent on education at all levels by the State, and this had been incorporated in a resolution passed by the Indian parliament soon after. More than four decades later, the first United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government had, in 2004, adopted under pressure from the Left parties that provided critical outside support to it, a common minimum programme (CMP) that declared that the combined expenditure of the Central government and all the state governments would be raised to 6% of GDP, the norm proposed by the Kothari Commission.
Although the CMP of the UPA became the National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP) on adoption by the government, the reality on the ground hardly changed. Between 1990-91 and 2017-18, the combined expenditure of the Central and state governments put together on education has hovered between 3% and 4%, rarely exceeding even 4% and that too only by a small extent. While public expenditure alone does not determine the extent to which educational deprivation can be significantly brought down, it does play a crucial enabling role. Many other relevant aspects, such as democratic decentralisation, ensuring a secular education, elimination of corruption and a serious reconsideration of indiscriminate and unregulated privatisation and commercialisation are all important. However, without adequate financial commitment by the State, the objective of ensuring Education for All cannot be achieved.
Even as this article goes to press, it is encouraging to note that the election manifesto of the Congress commits that, if voted to power, it will ensure that the total public expenditure on education will reach 6% of GDP by 2023-24. The CPI (M), too, has made a similar commitment in its manifesto. One hopes a consensus can be reached to achieve this target at least during the term of the 17th Lok Sabha.
