Schools for the poor: Chance or Choice?

Touted as an unsinkable ship of social progress, public schooling in India has been showing dismal performance for several decades. In spite of steady increase in funding, government schools have shown stagnated or stunted growth.

Consider the following facts: In India 82% of children in rural area and 47% of urban areas attend public schools. At any given time one in four teachers are absent from work at government schools in India (world bank and KSG Harvard study). Even though the enrollment rate in primary schools has stood around 94%, more than 40% of these children drop out after primary school. What is alarming is that learning level among these children is far below the minimal standards. ASER 2005 study shows that more than 60% of the children in 7-14 age group cannot read a simple story at grade 2 level, leave alone basic math skills.

Inspite of the above grim picture, one might cite examples of some specially targeted school systems (like Kendriya Vidyalaya's) showing considerable achievements, but they come at the expense of enormous inputs over a relatively small set. Attempts to scale up small successes working within the public system has achieved only marginal successes. The situation contrasts with percapita expenditure of government on these children. City governments in India spend Rs 1,000-1,700 per child on education? Not every year.. but every MONTH!! [School Choice]. State wise, for example Karnataka spends about Rs600 per child, per month, which is more than the average cost of private schooling. Studies show that on an average, children in private schools perform far better than public schools.

Why is this so? Is there something inherently wrong with public schools? No one denies the primary role of government to ensure education as a public good to available to all children in the society. But, the government is only a tool for the purpose of education, it just happens to be a wrong tool [1]. Government is inherently inefficient in delivering public goods. Bureaucracy, Un-competitiveness, hierarchical structure etc, have made public school system one of the most corrupt public sector in India. If not for the public schools how do we ensure universal access and equitable quality in education? I believe that best solution is to fund students -not schools, through educational vouchers.

An education voucher is a coupon offered by the government entitling a student to take education at any school of his choice. It is a tool in the hands of a poor student to exercise the same choices in education, as are available to the richer students [2]. School vouchers improve quality through competitive market mechanism. Private parties set up schools in order to attract students. Market forces make them to use the available resources in the most efficient manner and provide better quality of education. Underperforming schools will eventually phase out since every student, irrespective of socio-economic background is now empowered to choose the school of his/her choice. Thus money from the market follows the student and not the underperforming schools. Eventually even the government schools have to compete with private schools to attract students and thus enriching the quality. The innovativeness of voucher system is to empower the poor to be a consumer in education market. Markets delivers the best products (here education) at the most competitive price. Voucher system has dual advantages: the efficiency and accountability of private sector, along with equity and universal access of the public sector [See: CCS-concept note].

Not everyone accepts the choice based of funding. Voucher critics argue that school choice system leads to commercialization of education, eventually destroy the public education and thus defying the purpose of universal elementary education. These critics argue from the ideological position that education, being a public good, should be delivered only by government. Their belief that private sector with its profit motive cannot deliver the public goods is quite wrong. For example, environmental protection is a necessary public good, and one most effective used method to reduce carbon emission is 'carbon trading'- a system based on markets with government playing the only as regulator. To combat poverty, Mohammad Yunnis (last year noble laurete economics) pioneered micro credits for poor in Bangaldesh , again based on market principles.

Let us come out of arguments, be scientific and ask, are there any evidence that the voucher system has worked in reality? YES... Voucher programs have been implemented in different forms in countries as diverse as Sweden, Chile, Holland, USA, UK, New Zealand, Czech Republic and even Bangladesh [CCS]. There is sufficient evidence to show that in many of these countries Voucher system has led to increased performance of schools, better test scores and learning levels.

"It will not work in India- India is different!", critics say. They don't have a clear idea why it might not work, they just say India is different!. But, is there any data to show that it has not worked (I should remind them of Sherlock Holmes words, "It is fatal to hypothize before one has the necessary data.")? NO.. Where as, I believe that it will work better in India. In India, public sector has performed worse than most countries, where as private sector performance is comparable.

Setting aside one's beliefs, ideologies or prejudices, we should seriously look into whether Voucher system works in India. I hope, medium scale experiments (say at the district level) will be carried out to measure the feasibility and effectiveness of Voucher system. If it works, we have a good solution to the long standing problem of under-performing school system in India.

References:

1. School choices overview
   
2. CCS India education choice campaign
3. School choices India
4. Kingdon, G. “The Quality and Efficiency of Public and Private Schools: A Case Study of Urban India”, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 58, No.1: 55-80, February 1996.
5. Public and private schools in rural India, Karthik Muralidharan

Indians dont have Sex, babies just happen!

Rahul Bose's comment on IBN live's Rising India , 'In India nobody has sex, suddenly babies happen!' , has more to it than just a pun.

There is a sharp contrast between the perception of 'tabooed Sex' and reality. There is more to it than just explaining the presence of billion plus population with no talk on Sex. Economic liberalization has not changed the social conservatism. We are not comfortable with the issues of sex and sexuality. Politicians are equally adamant in perpetuating this system. Three southern states-Madya Pradesh, Karnataka and Maharastra, successively banned the Sex education in schools. This happens in a country which has the second highest number of AIDS cases in the world. Consider Karnataka education minister Basavaraj Horatti's statement "In today's world, we need moral education and not sex education”. Politcians have a tendency to equate sex education with pornography (I suspect probably they have only seen the latter :) ) and impose their opinions and prejudices on people without having the faintest idea about their implication. Studies in US indicate that 'there is little or no correlation between sex-education and promiscuity'. Studies world wide (US, Europe and Africa) show that sex education and awareness at early stages of childhood are key factors in reducing AIDS and other STDs along with developing a healthy sexual attitude.

There is another stronger reason for making sex education part of the curriculum in elementary schools. A grim story was revealed recently in the first ever nationwide survey on child abuse. One out of every two children in India is abused physically, emotionally or sexually. Consider the following facts: 88% face physical abuse from parents, 53% face sexual abuse, every 2nd child reports emotional abuse. Boys are equally vulnerable to abuse as girls. 70% of children have never reported the abuse! (Based on CNN-IBN discussion on Why kids are not safe in India?).

Parents and society are equally to be blamed for this messy situation. Physical abuse is apparent in almost every family. Even in schools, about 60% of the teachers beat up their kids. Indian society has infused every parent to treat their 'children as their commodity' and exercise their full authority over them. Rarely ever we talk about 'rights of child'. Little do we realzie that in more than 80% of the cases parents are the emotional abusers. Renuka Choudry says "we have unwittingly victimized the kids in one way or the other".

What is rather worrisome is that in a society which "apparently" treats sex as 'sin', more than 50% of the kids face sexual abuse. Most often the abusers are the one of who are "trust"worthy to the family like relatives, cousins and friends. Children are afraid to talk about this with their parents out of shame and guilt. Parents are hesitant to openly about relationships, sex, good touch versus bad touch. Loveleen Kackar, the author of the report says "there is actually a conspiracy of silence among parents, policy makers and the civil society". " Its happening everywhere but we are just putting it under the carpet. We put ban on Sex education, we don't want our kids to talk about sex. " says child rights activist Gerry Pinto.

One question keeps haunting me, 'when will we come out of this self imposed cocoon of conservatism and face the reality?' When will our politicians ever realize the consequences of their prejudice? Why do they want to hold back to the past?

If we wish to stop more than 100 million children from the wrath of abuse, it is time for the civil society to take strong action.

Corruption is a symptom and not disease

In India, no denies the validity of common perception “Sarkari daftar mai sabhi paisa khahte hai” (In government offices everyone demands bribe). Why is there so much corruption prevalent in Indian society? Is it that by inborn nature that many people tend to be corrupt? Given the large-scale prevalence of this problem, we can argue that corruption and dishonesty in public life is not an individual trend. Surely it is not a trend peculiar to Indian society. Problem of corruption is prevalent in all societies to varying degrees in different public and private sectors. Many countries (including highly developed ones) have passed through similar conditions at various times in History and have seen different faces of corruption. The inter linkages between human behavior engaging in corrupt/dishonest practices to political and administrative structures, economic conditions and social order is subtle and needs particular attention. I would like to stress that corruption is not a ‘disease’ carried by individuals in a society but a reflection of the prevalent socio-economic and political conditions.

A study conducted by Center for media studies highlights the practice and prevalence of corruption in India. Their study in collaboration with Transparency International (TI) indicates that in India, common people (excluding high profile business man and politicians) pay petty bribes more than Rs.20,000 crore ($5bn) to avail various public services. More than 60 percent of citizens had the firsthand experience of paying bribe or “using a contact” to get a job done in a public office. Corruption is not merely in the media or in the minds of people as it is sometimes made out. But it is in the system all across the public services, is what this study highlights http://www.cmsindia.org/cms/corruption.pdf.

CMS in 2006, ranked India 70th in the world on corruption barometer (higher ranking indicates greater corruption). Ironically Police (crime and Traffic), the very own people responsible for maintenance of law and order, stands high on the corruption index. Judiciary (lower Courts) and Land Administration are rated next only to Police. Corruption level varies drastically from state to state. Kerala being the least corrupt and Bihar (as expected) stands as the most corrupt state. Surprisingly economically prosperous states like Karnataka and Tamilnadu occupy the top rankings. These rankings are based on both “perception” and “experience” of people.

If one tries to dig out the reasons for such widespread prevalence of corruption, we can come out with the following set of reasons (not exhaustive of course).
• Lack of transparency and accountability in the system,
• Hierarchical administrative system,
• Poor literacy and lack of awareness,
• Lack of an effective corruption reporting mechanisms,
• Ineffective judiciary,
• Lack of performance incentives and competitive atmosphere
• Lack of honesty in officials in the Government,
• Acceptance of Bribe as a way of life, custom and culture.
I would argue that the last two reasons are essentially due to the other factors listed above. The ubiquitous presence of corruption in society leads to the acceptance of bribe as a way of life and culture.

Lack of Transparency
Lack of transparency in public services gives an undue advantage to civil servants to keeps the information from public preview, there by easing the route to corruption. For more than eight decades Indian’s were legally denied the access to files or documents related to public work, due to an archaic law called official secrets Act -1923. It restricts the information disclosure or inspection of government work by general public. This secrecy protected the government from public scrutiny. In October 2005, government enacted the powerful Right to Information Act-2005 overriding the official secrets act. The result was immediate, thousands of cases of petty corruption were exposed, citizens awareness resulted in drastic decline in petty bribes. Within a year India’s ranking in corruption declined from 88 to 70. But on the other hand, India still gives protection to government servants from prosecution. Articles 310 and 311 provide not only guarantee constitutional protection to civil servants but also make it mandatory to seek prior sanction before prosecuting them. These laws create multiple routes for the civil servants to escape from being caught in corruption cases.

Hierarchical administrative structure
Centralized and hierarchical administrative system creates a bureaucratic chain paving way for corruption at each level. Corruption is rampant in almost all countries following centralized planning and socialist economy- like Russia, Poland, eastern Europeans nations, third world countries like India, Pakistan etc. To give an example, In India states have the responsibility of primary education. In Karnataka, primary and high school teacher appointment to a post in village has to pass through various layers and reach the state capital. The bribing goes on at each level in this structure making education the second most corrupt sector.

Lack of Accountability
Almost everywhere government sectors suffers from lack of accountability. Secure jobs, lack of incentives for performance or mandates for underperformance results in sloppy work. More stress is given on the inputs than the outlays. Public monopoly and lack of competitiveness makes the public sectors underproductive. Lack of questioning of outcomes puts less pressure on civil servants to perform and hence would naturally resort to corrupt means for personal gain.

Poor law and order maintenance and ineffective judiciary
People with power and money can influence the police, politicians and judiciary. More often people convicted of corruption find escape roots and are rarely punished. The very people responsible for maintaining law and order are corrupt. CMS survey indicates that Police are the most corrupt in India and is followed by Judiciary (lower courts). Cases often go on for decades together and delayed justice is denied justice. Indian constitution boasts of being the largest constitution in the world with over 400 articles. The constitution has undergone 112 amendments in sixty years! A closer study reveals that it is highly procedural, non adaptive and sometimes ambiguous. The laws and civil codes derived out of constitution are unsuitable for changing societal conditions. India’s justice system is one of the slowest in the world.

Illiteracy and lack of awareness
Poor people are susceptible to be duped easily. Well-informed citizens are less susceptible to be duped by public. Illiteracy and poor education system creates lack of informed citizens and prevents them from actively participating in the democratic process. There is a strong correlation between education and economic development with reduction in corruption. In the late 40’s India and South Korea were comparable in many ways; both had literacy around 20% (17% and 22% respectively), poverty level was high in both countries- so was corruption. But the next few decades South Korea was marching fast on the road to development both economic and social. By 70’s South Korea’s literacy rose to 88% where as India showed a dismal increase to 35%. South Korea boomed economically becoming one of the rising Asian tigers. Corruption in South Korea decreased rapidly. India’s corruption remained as it is. Evidence can also be seen in many impoverished African countries, where corruption is widely prevalent.

Lack of effective corruption reporting mechanism
In the absence of good corruption reporting mechanism, people get discouraged to take initiative to tackle corruption. Tedious bureaucratic procedures, paper based methods, presence of few centralized information centers, remote location create huge barriers in reporting corruption.


Human behavior towards corruption
The factors described above inevitably influences the human behavior to find the shortest perceived route to individual prosperity- Corruption. Thus, corruption is a collective behavior (symptoms) reflecting the conditions prevalent in society.


References

1. http://www.cmsindia.org
2. http://www.parivartan.com
3. http://rti.aidindia.org
4. http://www.transparency.org

Magic of Invisible Hand

Every time I visit my hometown Bangalore, it shows a fast changing picture of society. It is city projecting the modern face of India. Being a pakka Bangalorean myself, I have seen it changing rapidly in the last 15 years. Two decades ago, Bangalore was considered to be a pensioner’s paradise-a calm sleeping city without many economic activities. It was mostly composed of middle and lower middle class people and the city hardly had shown any growth since Independence.

Last decade changed the very face of Bangalore and came to be termed as Silicon Valley of Asia. Bangalore became the buzzword for development and growth in modern India. Dictionaries added the term ‘Bangalored’, to refer US jobs outsourced to India. Books like ‘Bangalore Tigers’ have been written on the rise of Indian giants in software Industry. BBC news has captuured the changing face of Bangalore in its series of articles. Roots of India’s spectacular economic growth (more than 8% GDP growth per annum) lies in growth of cities like Bangalore. Hyderabad and Chennai too have a similar story to tell. The world is singing India’s economic boom.

What do these development have for the average man? First, there has been drastic reduction of poverty and improvement of quality of life. The Human Development Index (HDI) of Bangalore has increased from 0.623 to 0.753 in the last decade and is one of the highest in the country. HDI measures the average quality of life through various parameters like education level, life expectancy and purchasing power of people. In comparison, Bangalore’s HDI rating is higher than that of Kerala, which stands number 1 in state ranking.

Changes can be also seen in various public and private services. Public transportation has improved a lot in Bangalore. Variety of new and improvised BMTC buses and many of them are equipped with modern GPRS tracking system. All autos are clean, well maintained and equipped with digital meters. Restaurants, Darshini’s and numerous fast food chains have come up serving wide variety of foods while maintaining good hygiene and quality. Railways stations have become lot cleaner and modern. City is changing its face every moment.

An average person can now afford much more than what they could a decade ago. Purchasing power and consumerism has grown rapidly among all sections of people. An auto driver on an average earns Rs.10,000 per month. Most of the middle class youngsters working in software, call center earn a huge some of salaries and spend proportionately. The salaries in public sectors have also shot up rapidly. Salaries of lecturers, government employees have almost doubled in the last five years where as the inflation has grown at a slower rate (compound at 5% per annum makes a rise of 30% in five years). So even they can afford much more than before. The spending habits of people have influenced the growth various commercial activities. Number of shopping malls, pizza huts, mobile revolution, restaurants have shot up and have created numerous jobs reducing unemployment drastically, thereby providing uplifting the lower socio economic classes. It is also true that income disparity has widened. Even though everyone doesn’t have same share of the pie, the pie has definitely gotten bigger.

Who is responsible for these changes? Is it the government with its rhetoric of ‘Garibi hataov’, ‘rozgaar yogna’ , ‘framers subsidy’, or is it due to bunch of philanthropists giving money to NGO’s to alleviate poverty?

Neither the Government, nor the pure charity has bought any significant changes. Root of all these changes lie in government becoming ‘liberal’ since the 90’s by ending the ‘Licence Raj’ in economy and opening the market for international trade. This released the entrepreneurial spirit of Indians to show their potential to the world. We saw the birth of Infosys, Wipro and Satyam. Hundreds of multinationals like Cisco, Yahoo, Texas Instruments and Microsoft saw their destiny in India. The motive behind all these companies was to raise productivity and make profit. Hundreds and thousands of young engineers got jobs in these companies and started earning huge sums of money. They also worked for their own personal gains. Most of them neither directly worked for nor had any intention of contributing actively for the social development. Yet they themselves became the indirect cause of change in the society.

The change, as economists rightly attribute, is due to ‘the invisible hand’ at work. To quote Adam Smith from his ‘The Wealth of Nations’:
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest…. Someone earning money by his own labor benefits himself. Unknowingly, he also benefits society, because to earn income on his labor in a competitive market, he must produce something others value…”.
Each person pursuing his own interest has invested his human and financial capital to allocate resources in the appropriate manner for maximum personal gain. In the process he or she has added substantial value to the society by creating goods and services beneficial to the rest of the society. This process has generated wealth and prosperity and thereby alleviating poverty automatically.

What was government’s role in the whole process? Government helped the whole process not by increasing its role, but by limiting its role in the economic affairs. Economic freedom has also benefited the government by increased taxes collection. As people are getting richer they pay more taxes, governments budget gets fatter. Government with all its inefficient and corrupt usage of resources still leaves a bigger slice of pie for the poor in its social initiatives. Eventually if the government succeeds in empowering all sections of society, almost everyone will be able to the, reap the benefits of liberalization and global trade.

India is rising not by the state but despite the state. Thanks to the power of invisible hand!