here is widespread apprehension that the United Nations’ Education For All goal by the year 2015 — translated into the former NDA government’s Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan — cannot be attained without eliminating a dozen pernicious corrupt practices which bedevil Indian education. Dilip Thakore reports Eleven-year old P. Ramesh (name changed) is a class V student of a primary school run by the Municipal Corporation of Bangalore (pop. 7 million), the fast-expanding megalopolis known worldwide as the information technology (IT) capital of india, a nation foolishly over-hyped as an emergent it power in the crystallising fully-wired world of the 21st century. But if Bangalore is widely regarded as a hi-tech city of developed world standards, Ramesh is wholly unaware of it. Let alone connectivity, the Bangalore Mahanagar Palike Higher Elementary School, Austin Town which has 800 boys and girls aged five-14 instructed by 18 teachers on its muster roll, doesn’t even provide drinking water or toilets to its students or teachers. Together with other children from poor families, Ramesh goes through the motions of learning history, geography and maths from poorly printed, low-quality textbooks written in Kannada, the official language of the state of Karnataka (pop. 56 million). Teacher unpunctuality and absenteeism in this municipal school is persistent and incurable and multi-grade teaching is the norm. Little wonder though Ramesh has been attending school for four years, the best he can do is read and write his name and address accurately as he struggles with elementary maths. The drinking water infrequently available in the four recently installed taps in the school is dangerous and the two toilets (for 800 students) in the school are shunned by teachers and students. As per a policy directive of the state government which funds the school where education is provided free, Kannada is the medium of instruction in all subjects, though English — the language of business which has made Bangalore globally famous as the back-office of the world — is inexpertly taught as a second language. After four years in school Ramesh cannot read, write or converse on a par with his counterparts in western or eastern countries. But in the rapidly emerging free-trade global economy, he will have to compete with them in the marketplace for innovations, goods and services. Tragically, Ramesh’s predicament is the rule rather than exception for 90 percent of the estimated 146 million children enrolled in primary (classes I-V) schools across the country. Herded into cramped, insanitary multi-grade schools bereft of furniture and elementary teaching aids in which little learning is dispensed or absorbed, only 59 million children stay the course to complete middle school (class VII). Given this weak foundation of the initial schooling years, it’s hardly surprising that the quality of students who persist through middle school and beyond is the cause of much lament within Indian industry, if not in government where paper qualifications rather than actual education is at a premium. It is against this sobering backdrop that well-intentioned monitors of the socio-economic scene need to assess the…
