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Section-3

Education and Literacy

The present UPA government has apparently in a very complacent mood as far as the need to revisit its performance in elementary education front. Our governments have always neglected education as a basic need. There is hardly any doubt that education plays a significant role in all-round development of the society. However, it is also equally true that all sections of society can not afford to buy this essential element of their life; this perhaps our governments and policy makers conveniently forget while making policies for the masses.

When United Progressive Alliance (UPA) Government came to power for the first time in 2004, by that time, in the influence of the liberalization process and increased expenses in education, it was already unaffordable for the majority of the masses. It an earlier analysis by Network for Social Accountability (NSA)[1] , during last two decades of liberalization process, the burden of expenditure on education by the working class increased by around 13 times or around 1150 percent. Even the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) had highlighted that by 2001, the number of out of school children in India was more than 3 crores and most of these children were unable to afford the cost of education due to poverty and economic backwardness of their families. Whether it is because of these considerations or because of the pressure from the alliance partners, the UPA government did emphasize on the universalisation of education and made the following announcements in its National Common Minimum Programme (NCMP).

(a)      To progressively increase expenditure on education to around 6 percent of GDP.

(b)      To support this increase in expenditure on education, and to increase the quality of education, there would be an imposition of an education cess over all central government taxes.

(c)      To ensure that no one is denied of education due to economic backwardness and poverty.

(d)      To make right to education a fundamental right for all children in the age group 6-14 years.

(e)      To universalize education through its flagship programmes such as Sarva Siksha Abhiyan and Mid Day Meal.

The people of India, gave the political mandate in favour of UPA with a lot of aspirations and hope that such a government would try to reverse the trend of distress of the masses caused by the uncontrolled growth of neoliberal vices of inequality and deprivation. When we are assessing the role of the UPA government after completion of its five year term, we have to say this with utter disappointment that the UPA has misled the poor masses of this country by bringing a progressive agenda and not complying with whatever it had promised. This particularly true in case of education sector in the country. Owing to its careless pursuit of neoliberal policy paradigm, it has not only ignored the aspirations of the masses for universalisation of education, but has not even properly utilized the resources collected from the people in the name of education cess for universalisation of basic education in India. In the present policy brief, an effort is made to provide an overview of the performance of the UPA government in the field of education.

Even after much excitement on the right to education amendment, formulation of several draft Bills[2] on the implementation of right to education, Sarva Siksha Abhiyan, Mid-Day Meal and so on, the public expenditure on education in India have registered a decline both in terms of the amount allocated to the sector as a proportion of GDP and also in terms of priority expressed as the expenditure on the sectors as proportion of total public expenditure on all sectors. We set the benchmark year for our discussion as 2000-2001 because; the post 2001 period witnessed major interventions like SSA and Mid Day Meal in the Education sector. The public expenditure on education has actually declined from around 3.23 percent of GDP in 2000-2001 to 2.88 percent during the UPA rule. As a proportion of total government expenditure, it has declined from around 11.1 percent in 2000-2001 to around 9.98 percent during first UPA rule (See Table-9).

As far as Union Gvernment’s expenditure on education is concerned, it has registered an increase during the UPA rule from around 3 percent of total Union expenditure in 2000-01 to 4.75 percent during the UPA rule.  However, such an increase in no significant way is sufficient to meet the promised 6 percent of GDP in education as the capacity of the state government to spend on education has declined over the period (primarily due to the faulty policies of the Union Government). The total state government expenditure on education as proportion of total state government expenditure has declined from around 18 percent in 2000-01 to less than 14 percent during UPA rule.

Another point worth emphasizing here is that, the Union Government is increasingly relying on education cess to finance a substantial proportion of its spending on education. As per the available information, the share of Prambhik Siksha Kosh in total education funding has been around one third during the UPA rule. However, it has been the most significant source of substituting Union government expenditure in case of school education and literacy. As can be seen from Table-10 the incremental recurring expenses on school education and literacy has been much less than the PSK inflows (please compare column ‘e’ and column ‘g’).

Table-9

Combined Public Expenditure on Education in India

Note: Both revenue and capital expenditure on education incurred by the Centre and the States are taken together.  Total Union Expenses do not include total central Assistance to State and UT Plans, Non Plan Exp in UTs without Legislature, Loans to Foreign Govt, Loans and advances to state govts, other loans, grants to states and UTs and Grants to foreign Governments. This is done in order to assess the total expenditure in the domestic economy and to avoid double counting.

Source: Computed by author from RBI handbook of Statistics on Indian Economy for state level data and Union Budget Documents for Union data

Table-10

Share of Prarambhik Siksha Kosh in Total Union Expenditure on Education

Note: @ except for the year 2009-10, all are revised estimates

# From 2008-09 onwards, include expenses for secondary education also.

Source: Compiled from the Union Budget Documents

In India, a stagnation of public expenditure on education is also accompanied by an unbridled growth of private sector, and making the education services increasingly unaffordable for the common people. The available information suggests that the proportion of private schools in India has increased from around 13.7 percent in 2003-04 to around 19.5 percent in 2008. During this period, the number of government schools providing elementary education has increased by around 26 percent from 794265 schools to 1002915 schools whereas the number of private schools providing elementary education has increased by around 94 percent from 125842 schools to 243895 schools during the period (see Table-11).  As can be seen from Figure-1, the share of Private schools in total schools providing elementary education during UPA rule is on increase.

Figure-5

Growth of Private Schools Providing Elementary Education in India (as % of total number of schools providing elementary education)

Source: as per the information in Table-11

Table-11

Growth of Private Schools Providing Elementary Education

Note: Government includes both government and local bodies

Private includes private aided, private unaided and private unaided unrecognized

Source: Compiled by the author from various sources[3]

Budget 2009-10 and the education sector

In the present budget, the government has not significantly changed the allocation for elementary education. Probably, the shift in attention has moved away from the elementary education to higher education. As can be seen from table below, the share of elementary education in total allocations for education as a whole had increased from a mere 41 percent in 2000-01 to 71 percent in 2007-08. Then it declined drastically to 59 percent in 2008-09 RE and 48 percent in 2009-10 BE. Here we are not arguing that a focus on higher education is unwarranted, but there should be a suitable argument for such a sudden shift in focus. It is apprehended in many quarters that the recent shift in government focus towards higher education is basically for the purpose of creating a suitable atmosphere for making higher education more salable as the government has been planning to allow FDI in higher education in a massive scale. Irony is, in order to privatize higher education in India and to make the sector lucrative for foreign investors, the government is using education cess as an instrument for financing the basic ground works for such privatization. As shown in figure-5, we have already noticed a massive privatization of elementary education during SSA and particularly during the last UPA rule in spite of the fact that the people of India have generously contributed towards the universalisation efforts of the government through education cess.

Table-12

Government Allocations for Elementary Education in India

As mentioned earlier, during its last regime, the government had aggressively substituted its own commitment towards elementary education with the education cess and external assistance. The government circles term a major part of this external assistance as soft loans which are in fact in most of the cases more costly than the usual market loans available in the international banking systems. Anyway, government’s substitution of its own commitment towards education with loans whose burden can be shifted to the future generations and education cess which is borne by the masses while paying their taxes and purchasing commodities, is condemnable.  As can be seen from the table-12 below, during first two years of the previous UPA regime, the government financed more than four fifth of its allocations for elementary education through external assistance and cess amount only. However, by 2007-08, the share of external assistance and education cess in financing of elementary education declined to 51 percent from around 85 percent in 2004-05. However, in recent times it has again started climbing up to 54 percent in 2008-09 and around 60 percent in 2009-10 BE. The government’s total expenditure on education has increased remarkably (although not sufficiently to cater the needs of the sector) over the last decade. , but an increasing proportion of such increased allocation has been financed directly by the common people of the present and future generations through education cess and external assistance. As can be seen from the Table -13, if we calculate the amount the central government has actually allocated for elementary education in India after accounting for the amount it has collected through elementary education cess and external assistance, then in the budget 2009-10, the allocations in elementary education has declined by around 14 percent from Rs. 9991 crore in 2007-08 to Rs. 8590 crore in 2009-10.

Table- 13

Declining Central Government Allocation in Nominal terms

There is no disagreement over the fact that the number of out of school children might have declined over these years although the extent to which the government is claiming to have achieved it is debatable. But more important is that such achievement does not reflect an inclusive process. As can be seen in Table-5 below, as per the two significant global surveys on out of school children, the total number of out of school children have declined significantly over the years, but the proportion of girls in the total out of school children have increased over the years in India. This signifies that the overall education policy in India had not been inclusive enough to address the specific problems faced by girls to attend the school system. In a predominantly patriarchal society, the increase in out of pocket expenses for meeting the cost of education might have forced the parents to do away with the education of their girl children in order to send their boys in school.

Table-14

Increase in the Proportion of Girls in total Out of School Children at Primary Level

Source: Compiled by the author from the reports mentioned in the table

A cross country comparison of private educational expenditure also reveal that in India, the out of pocket expenses is one of the largest in the world, although the quality of education upon which such out of pocket expenses is incurred, is debatable. As can be seen from Table-15, the private out of pocket education expenditure in India at primary level as percentage of GDP is around 1.1% in the year 2003 compare to only 0.4% in Argentina, o.2 % in France and 0.3 % in USA. Similarly, Private education expenditure for primary and secondary education as percentage of total education expenditure in the economy more than 29% in India compared to only 7% in France and 8.4 percent in USA. One may wonder why we are comparing India with the so called advanced countries. But the fact is, when we are competing with many of these countries in terms of nuclear weaponisation, military strength, effort to land on Moon and so on and spending enormous amount of public money towards competition with them under a false consciousness of technical growth and advancement, why can not we compare with these countries in terms of basic development indicators that matter for the people?

Table-15

Private Education Expenditure: A Cross Country Analysis

Source: Taken from Edustat database in the World Bank Website

Table-16

Average School Life Expectancy of Students and Public Expenditure on Education

In case of countries where most recent year data was not available, the information for the previous year is taken

Source: Compiled from UNESCO Statistics

In India, the average life expectancy of students at school level is only around 9.5 years compared to more number of years in many countries of the world. However, more significantly, the average life expectancy of students in India is adverse for girls compared to boys. As can be seen from Table-17, among the selected countries, India is the single country where average school life expectancy of girls are less than the overall life of all students at school. In terms of public expenditure as % of GDP also, India’s performance is even poorer than countries like Nepal. Table-8 provides information on Official Development Assistance to education in India and selected adjacent countries in the South Asia block. This clearly signifies the shrinking scope of raising resources for education through external assistance. Under such a scenario, it is pertinent that the government fills the gap by providing more resources for the purpose. Otherwise, the high claims of the government for restoring the right of the children for education shall remain on paper only.

Table-17

ODA to Education in India and Adjacent Countries

Source: Education for All: Global Monitoring Report 2009

On several occasions, the government and its various agencies highlight the need for improving the conditions in the higher education system in India. Often, the issue like ‘quality education’ is raised to highlight the poor educational outcomes and resource crunch is cited as one of the major reasons for non-achievement. It order to overcome the problem, foreign private investment is seen as the most suitable option. Towards this, the controversial Bill for Foreign Education Provider (Regulation) Act (FEPRA) was floated[5]. The proponents of FEPRA argue that allowing foreign private involvement in education sector will bring quality education in India. They also argue that such legislation will provide an opportunity to the students to get world class education in the country and foreign investment can potentially reverse the brain drain from India. There is no case against increasing the educational level of the people. The controversy however, is over the structural issues relating to the composition (primary, secondary, higher, technical and vocational) and the provision (government or private) of education. Unfortunately, higher education has been a special target of the neoliberal thinking in a sense that higher education is considered as an arena of private enrichment for both domestic and foreign capital and its role in nation building is ignored

The first and foremost condition for quality education is the quality of resources in terms of infrastructure, human resources and accessibility. Even with the largest higher education system in the world and third largest enrollment in higher education in the world with 348 universities and around 18000 colleges, only around 11 per cent of population in the age group of 17-23 years is in the education system. This is much less compared to even countries like Philippines (31 per cent), Thailand (19 per cent), China (13 per cent), USA (81 percent) and UK (54 percent).

To improve the situation, we need better infrastructure both in terms of educational institutions and other socio-economic overheads like communication, transport and so on. We also need qualified teachers whose training needs to be refreshed periodically depending on the changing dynamics. All these require funding and that can come only through public sources. Foreign private capital would not be interested in providing education in backward districts, but would largely cater to the needs of the urban metropolitan elites who can afford for an expensive education and demonstrate their class exclusiveness in the society. There is no evidence anywhere in the world that foreign capital has enriched the quality of education other than providing skilled labourers for the dominating business processes.

For the existence of a sovereign planning process, it is highly essential that the higher education be an indigenous one. Again, under a paradigm of export led growth strategy, our ability to consistently and comprehensively upgrade our production structure is the precondition to ensure that we don’t get locked into the production of a basket of exportable commodities that is not in favour with foreign buyers. Such upgradation of the production process requires an effective and affordable higher education system for the masses and not just for a few privileged ones. At the same time, it is also essential that the government put equal emphasis on universalizing primary and secondary education. On all these grounds, the Union Budget 2009-10 and all previous budgets of the UPA government have not done justice to their own promises to the people. We only hope that the people of this country shall make all efforts in future to make the governance system in our country responsive to the needs of the common masses and accountable towards its own promises made to the people.

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