Education in Republic India

NEW INDIA

Education in Republic India

Drawbacks of education

Today is the age of innovation and specialisation. And with this fast moving techno-age, the Indian educational system seems to go nowhere. Though we are aware about the progressive minds of Indian students all over the world, we tend to overlook the fact that most of them find abode abroad in USA or Australia. Let us focus on some stark realities.

Indian education is full of innumerable pages of obsolete, outdated theory with no innovation or any practical work. The eagerly awaited new textbooks have nothing more than flashier cover pages. Moreover no importance is given to co-curricular activities. All this results in an all Indian sundae comprising of bored students who consider studies as an interminable disease and teachers who are victims of disinterest. This also increases suicides among students.

Overcomes

 

Change the education system from the primary level (reduce work load, put more importance on physical activities, encourage original thinking etc). There should not be any form of evaluation (exam or so) till age 10 years (i.e till class 4 level). Subsequently the exam patterns should change and put more emphasis on original thinking and problem solving rather than emphasizing database-quiz type format. Basic education should be in mother tongue but English also should be compulsory from class 

Introduce strict accountability of public money for any research in any institute or university. And any research finding (mainly related to novel service or product) using public money must be mentioned in an open source (e.g unrestricted web site(s) for public access). If hundreds of corers of rupees are spent on “developing Bt- crop for insect resistance”, then public have the right to know what is the outcome from that huge spending of tax payers’ money. And if needed, a farmer or other researcher(s) should be able to access that information and more importantly the materials developed in such projects, as claimed by the researcher/institute.

Reduce spending of public money on higher education and research for non-performing institutes and universities. Only teaching (without any productive research in form of quality publications or usable patents) does not justify huge spending by some so-called “elite” institutes/universities. All institutes/universities should be graded and judged as per their performance and public monetary support should depend on that. (UGC has started this but not with much cooperation from universities and so-called elite institutes and with very limited success so far).

Increase spending substantially on primary and high school education (Both qualitative and quantitative). Increase the salaries of teachers at least at per with university lecturers and put stringent quality control while recruiting the teachers and introduce accountability among them. We must increase substantially the number of primary schools and quality of those and improve on physical infrastructures like school buildings, a minimum standard of school laboratory and library, a decent play ground, some internet connected computers in libraries etc.

What the government is not realising right now is that education which is a source of human capital can create wide income inequalities. It will be surprising to see how income inequalities are created within the same group of educated people.

Example:

Let us take P be an individual who has had no primary or higher education. His human capital is zero and hence it bears no returns. Let Q be an individual who completed his MBA from S.P Jain college and let R be an individual who completed his MBA from IIM Ahmadabad. The average rate of return for an MBA student is 7.5% (hypothetical). Q gets a rate of return of 5% and R gets a rate of return of 10% due to the difference in the reputation and quality of the management school. Let the income of P, Q and R be 1.In a period of 10 years, P will be having the same income as he does not possess human capital. For the same time period Q will earn an income of (1+0.05)^10=1.63 and R will earn an income of (1+0.10)^10=2.59. Now lets see what happens when the rate of return on human capital doubles. Earnings of P will not change since he does not have any human capital. Now Q is going to earn (1+0.10)^10=1.63 and R is going to earn (1+0.20)^10=6.19. Flabbergasting! As soon as return on human capital increases proportionately income inequality increases. With return on human capital doubling, Q’S income increases by 59% and R’s income increases by 139%.

The above example just shows the effect of the quality of human capital n income inequality. So if the government does not improve education system particularly in rural areas the rich will become richer and the poor will get poorer.