Kudos to your cover story ‘Union Budget 2006-07: Lip service to education’ (EW April). The cover story was a revelation, because while the rest of the media was inclined to take finance minister P. Chidambaram’s claim that Budget 2006-07 gives “primacy” to education and health at face value, you have examined the issue in great detail and have come to the conclusion that it doesn’t bear scrutiny. It is truly shocking that while in the US, annual per capita spending on education is $2,254, in India it is a mere $26. If you had calculated it on per pupil rather than per capita basis, you would have found that the gap is even wider. Yet there is seldom a day when our foolish politicians don’t advise our youth to get ready to compete with American youth in the emerging new global market. What a joke! I entirely agree with you that even record annual incremental budgeting will not make a dent on the massive education and health disaster which is looming on the horizon. As you rightly suggest, there’s no alternative to biting the bullet and slashing defence expenditure and non-merit subsidies and canalising the savings into improving the nation’s schools and schooling. Hard decisions are required now if India is to reap the ‘demographic dividend’ in the 21st century. Prashanth Salvi Mumbai Teach pursuit of happiness I am a 68-year-old retired principal working for a small school and am really enlightened by your cover story on Pratham’s Annual Status of Education Report 2005 (EW March). It was interesting and educative. I also read your special report titled ‘Foreign influx into international schools’ in the very same issue. Read together these two feature stories arouse many concerns. The ASER report indicates that most children in our country are not learning survival competencies in the new, highly competitive society created by the knowledge explosion. These children are huge in number and cannot afford international schools. How can these children compete with those in international schools providing world class education? We need to think of teaching new ways to government school children to acquire wisdom and happiness by tapping our spiritual heritage, and imparting life skills to them. Learning in five-star schools is a distant dream for most Indian children. But learning to live happily is possible for all. There are experts in our society to teach the ‘art of living’ to the rich. Why don’t we explore people and organisations to teach ‘art of being happy’ even to those who can’t access international schools? C.G. Nagaraja Mahabodhi School, Mysore Skewed priorities I read your editorial ‘Indefensible subsidisation of IIM students’ (EW April) with interest. Everyone in the country agrees that primary education is a public good and a nation-building activity and therefore, should be subsidised. But higher, especially professional education, is a private good and should be paid for by the recipients and not the tax payer. The Central government should immediately withdraw subsidies to IIMs and deploy the money thus saved in primary education projects. The savings of approximately Rs.105 crore (Rs.2.5 lakh…
