There is no question about the success of Indian or Chinese economic development, but at the same time it won’t be wrong to say that the Chinese are growing at the much faster pace than us. The difference in India and China’s economies has not so much to do with democracy, but with India’s failure to invest in education and health. Given India’s deplorable illiteracy index and non-existent healthcare facilities in much of the rural areas, it is a fair comment.

With the establishments of schools in 94 per cent of all villages within one kilometer in itself seems quite an achievement as one kilometer is not difficult to trudge, even for a six-year-old. There is no denying that the crucial first step has been taken. However, to find out more about how these schools are doing and what kind of education is being imparted in these schools, the census is inadequate. The vast majority of parents have accepted, in principle that their children need to go to school. To find out what they are learning in school, one has to revisit schools in rural areas. It turns out that when a nationally representative sample of six to fourteen-year-olds was given a test in reading and mathematics, only 43 per cent of them could do simple one-digit subtractions and divisions and only 60 per cent could read at a second grade level.

And herein lies the failure of the system in which more than half of the over hundred million children who are at school, mostly from poor families, are condemned to attending classes without really learning anything. There is a need to be taken to improve the quality of education in schools attended by children from poor families. Better textbooks, better teacher training and more teachers, which come to mind first, it must be pointed out that these have been tried. The district primary education programme did cover these areas, obviously without much success.
Studies done to find the strength of the class is, on an average, 30 to 40 students, which is not bad for a country of India’s size and economic standing. It is not only the poor states like Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Orissa that are lagging behind.

To solve the problem, the government has come up with a new mantra-decentralization. A village education committee has been set up in every village, with representation from parents, to monitor how the schools are faring. Most parents surveyed are not literate and thus cannot pass judgments on the quality of teaching. Moreover, the teachers form an extremely powerful, articulate and visible block in the villages, and are patronized by all political parties. The challenge in reforming education is to make teachers take teaching seriously, and one cannot do that without upsetting large numbers of teachers. Empowering parents through VECs will also not work in places where the parents are not in a position to take the erring teachers to task. Allocating money is not just enough. Throwing money at a problem and hoping that it will go away is not the way to go about in sharing the spoils of growth, perhaps more damaging is the bringing up of hundreds of millions of what are, in effect, victims of fraud-of an elaborate scam called schooling. We all know the problem probably it’s time for the treatment.