Indian Scene
Indian Education: How Much Have We Grown
Sanjay Singhvi
In ancient India, education was the preserve of the Brahmin elite. Even then, real education was rare and education in the gurukul meant mainly learning by rote and unquestioningly. As with feudal and slave systems elsewhere, learning was restricted to only a very minuscule minority of the population and the common person had to be satisfied with religion which gave him a code for living.
Under the British, especially after the Woods Despatch of 1862, a more systematic method of education was adopted. However, the decision was to follow the Western system of education and to rely mainly upon missionary schools to impart the same. Though some innovations were made by many social reformers like Phule, Ambedkar, etc the western model of education became universal in India. The English increased the percentage of the population in primary and secondary education from 0.6% in 1867 to over 3.5% in 1941. True to colonial legacy, these figures were much lower than the corresponding figures for Europe where by 1911, between 8% to 18% of the population were in primary and secondary education.
Macaulay’s Minute of Education is often cited to show that the aim of the British was only to impart education to a very few to create, “a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect.” However if we read the whole of that portion of the minute instead of just these words, the context of these words is better understood. Macaulay said,
“...it is impossible for us, with our limited means, to attempt to educate the body of the people.We must at present do our best to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and colour, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect. To that class we may leave it to refine the vernacular dialects of the country, to enrich those dialects with terms of science borrowed from the Western nomenclature, and to render them by degrees fit vehicles for conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population.”
Needless to say, this great enterprise, of enriching the “dialects” and conveying knowledge to the great mass of the population was never accomplished.
In capitalist society, the ruling class never admits to the existence of class society. Capitalism destroyed the old feudal right and brought forth bourgeois democracy. In keeping with this change, capitalism has a philosophical commitment to a certain type of equality. That this equality gets skewed by the existence of private property is another matter.
Indian education in the neo-colonial context
After the second world war, with the advent of the neo-colonial system, many changes took place in the education system all over the world. In the Atlantic Charter signed between UK and the USA, out of the eight points signed, two have a direct bearing on education. Point no. 5 recognised the importance of working for the advancement of social welfare and the global economic co-operation, whereas point no. 6 committed the signatories to work towards freeing the whole world from fear and want. That the USSR and India (though not independent by then) were also a part of the “united nations” which signed the Atlantic Charter subsequently (in 1942) must be remembered.
On December 10, 1948, the General Assembly of the UN adopted and proclaimed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 26 of this states:
(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
(2) Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
(3) Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
This was adopted in the the background of the socialist constitutions which governed almost a third of humanity by that time. The 1936 constitution of the USSR may be cited as an example. It was the first constitution to recognise the right to education with a corresponding obligation of the state to provide such education. It guaranteed free and compulsory education at all levels, a system of state scholarships and vocational training in state enterprises. Subsequently the right to education featured strongly in the constitutions of all socialist states. Following this, FDR put the right to education in the “Second Bill of Rights” in the US constitution in 1944 and the principle of the right to free education (at least at the primary level) was adopted by the UN in 1948 as pointed out above.
Almost all of the neo-colonial countries countries have adopted the basis put forward in the Universal Declaration. In keeping with this Declaration, to which India was also a signatory, the Constitution of India, adopted on 26th January 1950 proclaimed in Article 45, “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.”
In 1966, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the International Covenant on Economic, Social and cultural rights. This made it necessary for countries ratifying the covenant to adopt a detailed plan of action for introduction of free compulsory primary education “within a reasonable number of years”.
Following this, India adopted the first National Policy on Education in 1968. Among other goals, this policy put forward, as the first point on the agenda, the provision of free and compulsory education upto the age or 14 as promised by the Constitution. This was followed by the policy of 1986 which was amended in 1992.
The Philosophical context
With such broad egalitarian policies governing education in our country, how do we look at education in the philosophic context. Is education today only to serve the interests of the ruling classes, or is there a certain universalisation of education? Can we say today that education is the preserve of the rich and wealthy alone? Has there not been a great democratic change in the concept of education?
Capitalism has everywhere destroyed the old feudal institutions. Under the old feudal institutions, learning was restricted to the Brahman. Today, the latest statistics of the Education Department show that the Gross Enrolment Ratio for the Scheduled Castes for standards I to VIII (6 to 14 years), 105.96, is higher than that for the General population – 97.08. The corresponding figure for Scheduled Tribes is even higher at 109.571.
Does this mean that today caste exploitation is at an end? Does this mean that neo-colonial India is more democratic and more free than colonial India? No doubt, when capitalism destroys feudal institutions, it creates an impression of freedom and equality. However, as long as private property exists, this is not the truth. The driving force of society under capitalism, and under imperialism, is the need for profit. Even philanthropy is guided by the need for profit – as all philanthropy which does not lead to profit is doomed to failure as was proved by Robert Owen. As long as private property exists, profit will remain the peg for all democratic institutions, including education.
No doubt, capitalism destroyed the old feudal institutions. But it did not create real democracy. In the same way, neo-colonialism brought all institutions into the market. It brought education also into the market. In so doing, it has freed it from the clutches of the old type of feudal right based upon status. This does not imply that the resulting system is democratic, or even “more democratic”. This is not an assertion of doctrine. It is the aim of this article to analyse the state of education in our country today, to prove this point.
Education in India today
There are many ways of analysing the state of education in India today. No doubt, compared to 1947, we have a larger Gross Enrolment Ratio. Literacy has gone up from around 12% in 1947 to around 65%. This, however, is no reason to pat ourselves on the back. The change from the colonial system to the neo-colonial system, where all exploitation was based upon the market, required a general and universal basic education. If for nothing else, at least so that workers have a minimum level of skill, so that they could operate the new heavy machinery developed. Hence there has been a general rise in the level of education all over the world. It is no use to compare literacy in India today with literacy in India in 1947. A more useful comparison would be to compare literacy in India today with literacy in other countries today. As per the UN Development Report of 2009, out of 179 countries in the world today (members of UN), India ranks at number 1472. We can compare this with Cuba, which had large illiteracy prior to the revolution in 1959. Before this, 22% of Cubans were illiterate and 60% were semi-literate. Today, Cuba ranks at number 2 in the world (behind Georgia) in literacy with 99.8% literacy. In terms of literacy all the top twenty countries in the world, according to the above UNDP report, were former socialist countries.
But let us compare with other neo-colonial countries. Samoa and most of the West Indies have literacy rates of around 97%. Myanmar (Burma), which was a part of India and had a similar colonial past, has a literacy rate of 90%. Thailand has a literacy rate of over 94%.
Even if we are to compare the growth in rates of literacy, India still comes off second best. China, which had a literacy rate of around 18% in 1945, today has a literacy rate of around 86%. Even the long dictatorship in Indonesia has fared better than India. Indonesia had a literacy rate of around 8% in 1947. Today it is at over 69%.3 Of course the miracles wrought by countries like Cuba and Zimbabwe in literacy is not even to be mentioned as being far beyond the reach of the Indian education system. This shows that what progress there has been in literacy in India is abysmally poor and points to widespread corruption as well as systemic failures.
Growth in School Enrollment
No doubt, as pointed out above, there has been a massive growth in gross enrollment ratios. However, even these figures are mere chimera. Under pressure of various incentives and threats, children are being enrolled in schools. This does no mean that they are actually attending the schools. There is much dispute about the reportage of the figures of enrolment in schools. In any case, all reports agree about the high level of school drop-outs. It is estimated that about 1/3 of all students drop-out during primary school and only half remain by the end of middle school (standard VIII). The Govt. statistics of 2006-074 say that the drop-out rate for primary school is 25.6% while that for standards I – VIII is 45.9%. The drop-out rates for SC and ST students are much higher at 35.91% and 33.09% for primary and 53.05% and 62.54% for standards I – VIII respectively. The expectancy of education life in India is below 10 years whereas in most countries of the world it has reached above 12 years. Only South Asia and Sub-saharan Africa are comparable to India.5
Expenditure on Education
The Kothari Commission or the National Education Commission of 1964 was that upon whose report was based the first National Education Policy of 1968. The Kothari Commission had recommended that 6% of the GDP must be spent upon education. This figure of 6% was adopted by the National Education Policy of 1968, the National Education Policy of 1986 (including after amendment in 1992) and also by the Common Minimum Program of the UPA in 2004. However the constant repetition of this figure has assumed the nature of a mere chant or a mantra. Even 45 years after it was first recommended, it is nowhere near the actual reality. One author has put it thus:
“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 UPA rule. As far as Union Government’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.”6
Even Bhutan (17.2% of total Govt. expenditure), Bangladesh (15.8%), Pakistan (11.2%) and most of Sub-Saharan Africa spend a greater proportion of Government expenditure on education than us. When it comes to per capita expenditure on primary education, we spend almost the lowest in the world. Even if we correct the expenditure to Purchasing Power Parity, we spent, in 2005, only $179 on each student in primary eduction (down from $192 in 1999). Luxembourg spent $11,519, the UK, $8027, Fiji $771, Malaysia $1411, Brazil $1257, Peru $495, Maldives $714.7 As a percentage of GDP, Government of India spends only 0.37 percent on higher education compared to 1.41 in USA, 0.5 in China, 0.9 in Brazil, 0.6 in Russia and 2.7 per cent in Malaysia.8
Privatisation of education
Ever since the 1992 amendment to the National Education Policy, in keeping with the New Economic Policy and the neo-liberal agenda that it had put forward, the Government has been fostering privatisation in education in various ways. At first NGOs were accepted as partners in education. Now the whole of education has become a lucrative business field. Recently, in January, the Government has had to de-recognise about 44 deemed universities on the ground that they were blatantly flouting all academic norms.
Private expenditures of education9
During the last two decades of liberalization, the burden of expenditure on education on the working class increased to around 13 times or by around 1150 percent. Even the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) 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. 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 the table on next page, 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, 0.2 % 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 is more than 29% in India compared to only 7% in France and 8.4 percent in USA.
The only clear meaning of the higher proportion of private spending on education in India is a larger profit from education in India.
Quality of education
A 2005 NASSCOM-McKinsey study says only about 25 percent of the technical graduates and 10 to 15 percent of the general college students are suitable for employment in the offshore Information Technology and Business Process Outsourcing industries, respectively. Other Chennai based studies have also suggested only 15 percent of college graduates are proficient in English. Pegging the manpower requirement for the BPO sector by 2010 at 2.3 million, the NASSCOM report said there will be a shortfall of 0.5 million.10
Conclusion
It is clear then, that the state of education in India today is quite bad, even compared to other neo-colonial countries. It is not mere chance that the state of Indian education is so abysmal. It may be that Indian politicians and administrators are more corrupt and inefficient than others, but such a supposition would be highly subjective. The reality is that the Indian masses are being kept in a state of abysmal ignorance and illiteracy since imperialism does not need them to be educated at this moment. Imperialism does need an expanding market. However, in the context of India, even 10% to 20% of India is a massive market for them, which is quite sufficient for the time being. Hence 80% of the country can easily be kept out of the labour market confined to merely eking out a subsistence. The same is true of most of South Asia and Africa. No doubt, as the need for a market grows, there will be a growth of education. One aspect of this to be considered is also the need for an expansion in the capital market. Education is becoming a juicy commodity in the capital (or investment) market. However, such market-driven expansions of education are not going solve the problems of Indian education. Sir John Sargent, in 1944 had put forward a scheme for total literacy in 40 years. This was rejected by the national leaders as they felt that 40 years was too long to wait. Now 66 years later, we are still at 65% literacy. The privatisation and eliticisation of education is not at all any solution and will only further exacerbate the problem. What is needed is a resolve to take the system of education in hand and implement total educational programs with a will as it was done in Russia, Cuba and other socialist countries. This can only be done by a Government led by the working class.
(Footnotes)
1. All figures from the “Statistics of School Education 2006-07" on the website of the Government of India, Ministry of Human Resources Development, Department of Higher Education - http://education.nic.in/stats/statpub.asp
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of _countries_by_literacy_rate
3. http://india_resource.tripod.com/development.html
4. See note 1 above
5. Education for All Globaling Monitoring Report, 2010 of UNESCO
6. Siba Sankar Mohanty, Network for Social Accountability.
7. Unesco study cited earlier
8. Siba Sankar Mohanty
9. Most of the section on Expenditure on Education is from Siba Sankar Mohanty
10. Krithika Ramalingam, India together 17 March, 2009 - http://www.indiatogether.org/2009/mar/edu-chnschool.htm
Private Education Expenditure: A Cross Country Analysis
Country Private Education Expenditures Private Education Expenditures
as a Percentage of GDP as a Percentage of Total
Education Expenditures
Primary & All Levels Primary All Levels
Secondary of Education Secondary of Education
Argentina 0.4 0.8 12.3 16.9
Australia 0.7 1.4 16.1 25.8
Austria 0.1 0.4 4 6.7
France 0.2 0.5 7 7.9
India 1.1 1.4 29.3 28.1
Indonesia 0.3 0.6 23.8 35.7
Korea, Republic 0.9 3.1 22.8 41.5
United Kingdom 0.6 0.9 13.5 15.6
United States 0.3 1.9 8.4 26.2
Source: Taken from Edustat database in the World Bank Website
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