Human Development in India - NCAER

6EducationThe chapters on income (Chapter 2) and employment(Chapter 4) clearly identified education 1 as an importantdeterminant of the economic well-being of households.Apart from its monetary returns, as we will show in thesubsequent chapters, education also appears to be linked toother dimensions of well-being, including health outcomes,investments in the next generation, social networks, andcivic participation. Most importantly, ensuring equal accessto education is increasingly viewed as a basic duty ofa mature civil society. However, in spite of the universalagreement about the importance of education, publicdiscourse often seems to be divorced from the realities onthe ground. While this disjunction often becomes visible indemands from courts for more data when adjudicating casesregarding educational reservations, many other dimensionsof the Indian educational landscape—such as the increasingprivatization of education and inequalities in skills—haveescaped attention, sometimes because of data limitations.This chapter seeks to fill some of these gaps and identifycritical challenges facing Indian educational policy, usingspecially designed data collection modules from the IHDS.This chapter highlights several themes. First, it documentsthe striking success of the Indian educational systemin improving school entry. Among recent cohorts, 90 percent of children enter school. This is a far cry from the 30per cent of men and 60 per cent of women from cohortsaged 40–59 who never enrol. However, as we begin to movebeyond simple access, the challenges of keeping children inschool emerge as a paramount concern. The second themein this chapter reflects a concern with educational quality.Inequality in educational quality and quantity, between differentsections of society, is a third theme emerging from theseanalyses. Although gaps in literacy and school enrolment,between different social groups, have been declining overtime, substantial gaps in educational attainment still remainbetween men and women, and between children from Dalit,Adivasi, Muslim communities, and other social groups.A fourth theme documents the growing privatization ofeducation in India, as reflected in both private school enrolmentand increases in private tuition. A fifth theme focuseson the readiness of the Indian labour force to meet increasingskill demands in a global world. At the lower end of theskill spectrum, these demands include basic literacy and atthe higher end, they include English language and computingskills. As rewards to skilled jobs increase, it is importantto identify who is ready to enter these jobs. This chapterdocuments the striking regional differences in English andcomputing skills across different parts of India, foreshadowinga growing regional cleavage.DATA ON EDUCATION, EDUCATIONALEXPENDITURES, AND SKILLSEducation forms an important marker of human developmentand is included in the widely used human developmentindices, such as those developed by the UNDP. These indicesfocus on enrolment at the primary, secondary, and tertiary1The terms education and schooling are used differently by different disciplines. Human development literature tends to use the term schooling todistinguish between formal school-based education and individual growth and development. In contrast, in some educational literature the term schoolingis used somewhat pejoratively, to reflect the hierarchical nature of schools and physical punishment. Hence, we use the simple term education.