According to chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar, the two-day Haryana Global Investors Summit 2016, which concluded on March 8, was a great success. Over 2,300 delegates from 12 countries attended, and foreign and domestic memoranda of understanding valued at Rs.5.84 lakh crore were signed.

Such unbridled optimism and unique inability of politicians to make realistic assessments based on ground realities, raise serious doubts about the cognitive and logical-thinking skills of the country’s political class. On February 20, just 15 days before the investors’ summit, the Haryana government had conspicuously failed to prevent or control full-scale riots staged by the state’s powerful and relatively prosperous Jat community demanding backward class status which would entitle their youth to reserved quotas in higher education and government jobs.

During the riots which lasted over ten days, lumpen elements went on the rampage attacking citizens, setting public and private vehicles on fire, and destroying property including shops, commercial establishments and businesses in Rohtak, a town 70 km from Delhi. The Punjab and Haryana Chamber of Commerce and Industry estimates that apart from 19 deaths and 170 injured, property worth Rs.34,000 crore was destroyed.   

Against this backdrop, the Haryana government’s decision to press ahead with the Global Investors Summit within five days after the riots were brought under control, is indicative of utter ignorance of the huge extent to which maintenance of law and order influences investment decisions of business enterprises and entrepreneurs. If the chief minister truly believes foreign or domestic investment on the scale proclaimed will actually flow into the state, he is living in cloud cuckoo land.

Unfortunately, Khattar is not in a minority. Almost all ministers and politicians in general, seem unable to make the connect between investor confidence and law and order. They seem unaware that states of the Indian Union which have the worst crime records — Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Assam — are the country’s most industrially backward.

Unfortunately, the vital importance of maintenance of law and order is not sufficiently understood by the intelligentsia and the public either. According to UN data, the ratio of police personnel and judges to population in India is a mere 131 and 1.3 per 100,000 against the global averages of 222 and 5. Moreover, despite the lackadaisical judicial system groaning under the weight of a 30-million case backlog, there are 1,016 judicial vacancies against sanctioned strength in India’s 24 high courts and 5,000 in the country’s subordinate courts.

Unless the government, media and the intelligentsia acknowledge that the primary duty of the State is rigorous enforcement of law and order — whatever the cost — investor summits showcasing the country’s lawless states are likely to remain exercises in futility. 

Address teacher accountability problem

The recommendation of niti aayog — the policy think-tank, chaired by renowned economist Dr. Arvind Panagariya, which has replaced the disastrous Soviet-style Planning Commission — to introduce minimum learning goals for classes I-VIII under the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (aka RTE) Act, 2009, merits serious consideration.

On March 10 in a presentation titled Education Review for 2015-16 made to prime minister Narendra Modi, the aayog (commission) recommended amendment of the RTE Act to prescribe minimum learning outcomes for children enrolled in the country’s 1.4 million primary/elementary schools. Currently, s.16 of the RTE Act stipulates automatic promotion of all in-school children until class VIII. 

The recommendations come in the wake of several surveys highlighting that the inputs-focused RTE Act and s. 16 in particular, have largely contributed to deteriorating learning outcomes in primary education. According to the Annual Status of Education Report 2014 published by the highly-respected education NGO Pratham, the percentage of class V children in rural India who can read class II texts dropped from 52.8 percent in 2009 to 48.1 in 2014. Worse, the percentage of class III children who can do simple subtraction sums fell from 33.2 percent in 2010 to a mere 25.3 in 2014. Earlier in 2014, a committee constituted by the Central Advisory Board of Education (CABE) had recommended review of s.16 with 20 state governments demanding its cancellation on the ground that it has adversely affected the quality of students entering secondary education.

However, mere stipulation of minimum learning outcomes in elementary (class I-VIII) education is unlikely to remedy the situation. NITI Aayog has also recommended “overhaul of teacher training coverage, curriculum and trainer quality… to improve learning outcomes”. But before that, the more pernicious and glossed over problem of teacher absenteeism in government primaries needs to be addressed. A recent World Bank study indicates that 23.6 percent of government school teachers countrywide are absent every day, resulting in financial loss estimated at $1.5 billion (Rs.9,995 crore) annually — a sum equivalent to 60 percent of the amount collected through the 2 percent education cess imposed upon all direct taxpayers to fund the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (Education for All) programme.

For much too long and reasons of political expediency, state governments have neglected the issue of mass teacher truancy in government schools for fear of backlash from powerful teachers’ unions representing 9.4 million teachers countrywide. If the Modi-led BJP government is serious about driving up educational standards, it not only needs to repeal s.16 of the RTE Act, but also address rampant teacher absenteeism and accountability which is a major cause of declining student learning outcomes in public education.