Adding Value to Demographic Dividend

Many counties saw rapid rise in their fortunes on account out discovery of valuable natural resources under its landmass. The most dramatic of them was the discovery of oil. 

In today’s world of knowledge and service economy there is a similar raw material. Human Capital! Like all the treasure underground is valuable only when it is extracted and then refined even the human capital also become valuable when it is educated, equipped, enlightened and provided employment opportunities. In the jargon of oil industry, the basic education can be equated to extraction and higher education to refining. One big difference between these two assets is that the human capital is perishable unlike the natural resources underground and if we don’t use this resource in time it is wasted.

By coincidence of a number of historical facts, in this aging world we in India has a predominantly large share of youngsters in abundance about 550 million belong to age 25 or less. This is what Nandan Nilekani has referred to as the demographic dividend in his book ‘Imagining India’

Therefore the pressing need of our country is a world class education system. But the standard of our educational institutions is patchy. Of course we have IITs, IIMs, AIMS, IISs, IBS and many more that turn out brilliant scholars and are world brands. But look a bit deeper. How many such institutes we have for a billion population? How good are these institutions in attracting the best talents to teach and bring out research papers, patents or PhDs? More importantly how many good institutions were set up after the few during the Nehru regime? How have we nurtured the ones we have over the years to greater heights?

We all can agree that the outstanding quality of the graduates is more on account of the brand name, limitation of seats and the rigorous screening program which ensures that the these institutes together select only few thousands of students from top of a stock of few lac aspirants. Most of the brighter among them who want to pursue higher education migrate to foreign universities limiting the quality of research in all these institutions.

Going back into the history, in the first millennium, India had some of the greatest universities in the world. Nalanda was the most renowned among them which at its peak had about 10,000 students from various parts the world and 2000 scholars as teachers and researchers. This centre of learning had schools for Buddhist religion, Hindu Philosophy, religious studies, medicine, science, mathematics, politics and even handicrafts. The admission to this educational campus was strictly on merit. Strangers were not admitted to this campus unless they could satisfy the interview by erudite gatekeepers! 

Nalanda University reigned supreme for about seven centuries in spite of if being destroyed twice in between by invading marauders; once by Huns and once by Gaudas. Both times the prevailing kings restored the university to better heights. Nalanda was not an exception. We had many more institutions of higher learning like Kasi, Kanchi and Taxila.

Why then our country with such prestigious history in the field of education is in this state of mediocrity? The new education minister Kapil Sibal has succinctly observed in a recent interview. “At the moment, we have statutory constraints along with government control to set up institutions” (He is a polite gentleman in his expressions). The culprit appears to the government policies that restrict and often strangle balanced growth both in basic education and in higher education. 

The political interventions in this sector have been mostly whimsical. Instead of ensuring access by building capacity and quality focus often gets distorted to populism of quotas, permits and even intervention in course content (even to the extent of re writing history). Examples of such interventions are many. Sudden decision of reserving 90% admission in Maharashtra for SSC, poll promise to banish English education, harassment of the director of an IIT for having constructed a better hostel using money collected from Alumnus, intervention in selection of staff and heads of institutions are few examples that come to mind. Recently I got a chance to listen to the woes of the dean of a director about the restrictive intervention in his day to day administration of the institute. The worst of these interventions are in the area of quality of the education they provide in terms of dilution of selection process, course content and even the exams conducted. As Narayana Moorthi pointed out, in India we have a tendency to design our standards based on the worst performers and demotivate outstanding performers.

We see a ray of hope with the government decision to significantly increase the allocation for education and anointment as the Human Resource Minister Kapil Sibal who has demonstrated capacity for performance in the previous ministries he headed. In a recent interview with Business Standard he has observed that we need to re-energize education system by attracting investments without diluting excellence and equity.

As a means for stimulating some discussion I have placed below a menu of policy considerations. Some of these are my thoughts and many are suggestions I have heard and read and impressed me. I leave these as a menu for discussion and don’t claim to have fully thought through the implications.

1. Move Away from License Raj: As we have moved away from the license raj in industrialization we need to move away from the same in education. (We have already witnessed how we were suffocated by bureaucratic and political controls in the field of industry and how relaxation of such controls has shown that we can perform to world standards. Less than 10 years ago India had only one company in Fortune 500 and by 2008 we had 10)

2. Creation of Capacity: Government should allow sufficient capacities to be built even by private capital from within or abroad so that there is no need to build elaborate rationing systems for admissions.

3. Let them run their business: We should allow educational institutions autonomy. To choose the course, facility, students, to fix the fee and fix remuneration for the teachers so that they can attract good quality teachers from within or abroad.

4. Proper Regulatory Infrastructure: The governmental intervention should be primarily restricted to policy making and policy administration and not micro management. The government can set up proper regulatory framework and infrastructure. These regulators can decide on the standards the various boards (whether state or central board) and universities to keep. It is important that these regulatory bodies are manned with experts in the fields of education and not with politicians/ bureaucrats or their cousins and they are given freedom to decide.

Let there be comprehensive exams at class 12 and graduation level like SAT, GRE or GMAT or GATE which will form say 50% of weight  for admission with the remaining left to the respective institutions so that they can choose to have the kind of profile of students. The regulating body can ensure that the institutions administer these transparently. This will ensure that the minimum standards are kept by the respective schools and colleges. The common man is intelligent enough to recognize the quality of the schools and colleges. A good example is the preference for even un-recognized English medium schools by the poorer segment of the society against the government run schools which are free. (A recent study has shown that although only 10 % of primary schools are in the private sector almost 30% of students study in these private schools)

5. Enable Competition. educational institutions (whether college of school) could be categorized on the basis of specified and transparent criteria on the basis of the quality of management and infrastructure and given freedom to run their institutions on the basis of these categories. Institutions of highest standards may even have the freedom to design their courses, conduct exam and award degree. 

The respective boards or universities should be made accountable for the minimum standards and infrastructure available at the schools and colleges attached to them.

We should encourage system of rating of schools and colleges on transparent parameters and international benchmarks and widely publish them to stimulate an incentive to perform.

6. Focussed help to the poor and needy: Government can arrange for directed scholarship and or loans to poorer section of society and not carpet boming of subsidies. This will be better than running sub-standard schools and colleges which bring out substandard graduates or managing quotas.

We all abhor child labor. Many families don’t send the kids to schools and instead send them for work or to beg in the streets. Can we think about school that teach, give the kids decent meals and give them opportunities for some work they can handle for couple of hours a day which will pay them an income, give them education and teach them a skill? May be during summer holidays the work hours can be more. Even kids from very developed countries do summer job and part time jobs.  I am sure this will help improve enrolment rate reduce drop.

If we don’t ensure more debate and more action in this critical sector we will end up squandering this economic dividend like some countries which squandered their riches from oil and other natural resources.