E.R. RAMACHANDRAN writes: India ranks 105th out of 127 countries in education as per the UNESCO education for all development index report for 2004. The UN body says it’s doubtful that India will achieve the education for all goal of 100% enrolment in primary schools by 2015—one of the United Nations’ millennium development goals.
China, with a larger population than India, ranks a respectable 54th.
Infant mortality rate is the number of deaths of infants less than one year old in a given year per 1000 births in the same year. This rate is often used as an indicator of the level of health in a country. In the United Nations world population prospects report 2006, infant mortality rate for India stands at 55.0 stands between Ghana at 56.6 and Solomon Islands at 54.5.
Our immediate neighbours Nepal , Bangladesh and Bhutan are better than us at 53.9 and 52.5 and 45 respectively.
Even countries such as Costa Rica, Puerto Rico and Chile fare far better at 9.90, 7.2 and 7.2 respectively.
These are just two parameters with which world will evaluate India. These are cold figures which are not being discussed on television or in the expert newspaper and magazines columns by the pundits this election season.
These figures do not mean anything to Sonia Gandhi or L.K. Advani, Manmohan Singh or Mayawati, or all the potential prime ministers waiting in the wings, from Sharad Pawar to Ram Vilas Paswan, or the kingmakers, Prakash Karat and Sitaram Yechuri.
Don’t they mean anything to you?
This post should be read with an earlier post which dealt with issue of lack of interest on the part of our leaders in education. Lack of money is hardly the problem. At present, central government is collecting Education Cess of 2% on all central taxes and further 1% Secondary and Higher Education cess of 1% on the same taxes. How this money is getting spent would be a matter of interest for the public. RTI Act might help in this matter. Aforesaid sums are in addition to regular budgetary allocation for education. I suspect that bulk of the money is spent on the Estalishment, itself, especially the “Asthana Vidwans” of the Central Government, such as professors emerituses, resident jesters in Indian Historical Research Council, NCERT, to name a few.
In any case, there is no reason to be so abjectly self-critical. A bigger country certainly will have bigger problem and take longer to solve. Once Rajiv Gandhi said, “India is like a very large aircraft with a very long response time”.
It is amazing that there are only twenty-six countries below us. I mean it is amazing that we are ahead of twenty-six countries in education.
When will we stop pretending that being able to sign one’s name is sufficient evidence of one’s literacy?
Our politicians know that an uneducated populace is the greatest gift God can give them.
This is utterly Shameful!
And even more so to to be not alarmed by it and by saying that we are a big nation and hence face bigger problems and to accept that we are slow to react.
If a large aircraft doesn’t react in time, it is certain to crash!!!
There are nations who are bigger than us, more populous than us, and also face more problems than us (not the same country, but different ones) but solve the problems at a rate much better than us. Agreed, that we are unique in every possible way but that is not an excuse for coming a cropper in front of the rest of the world when it comes to some things very basic to human life.
The allocation to education as a percentage of GDP has actually been falling.
Gururaj
>>China, with a larger population than India, ranks a respectable 54th.
So, our Problem is bigger than them?
Forget media discussing this. Even the churumuri readers who get so concerned about everything else in the world will not be discussing this.
@gururaj, agree India a is bigger country with bigger probelms, but how long is long enough to solve the problems? That statement makes sense only when people (elected representatives of the people) try to solve it, not when just ignore it and expect it to solve itself.
BHAY HO!
Our country is the residence for the majority of the poor in the world. Hope this population won’t double up, so that we all be dragged BPL and eventually can’t afford a computer & net to reply to posts like this in Churumuri.
BHAY HO!
Dear Prashanth,
China is an totalitarian country and can do anything. India being a democratic country, pushes and pulls are too many. I am not, for a moment, saying that this is a happy situation. As I have said, the huge Educational Bureaucracy and establishment must be spending away most of the money earmarked for education. Comparison based on ranking alone is simplistic and difficult to analyse. Besides, being a closed society, one might have to take Chinese information fist full of salt.
Dear Manoj,
Bulk of the money for education is spent by the Central Government, based on the budgetary approval of the MPs. LS election is at hand. Shouldn’t we use this opportunity to quizz the candidates and political parties who knock on our doors what is their commitment towards education, providing drinking water, reliable sanitation and the like? In our country, development is too much focused on civil works like bridges, dams, roads and the like, where the bureaucracy and elected representatives can make money. I believe that elected reps can be compelled to function only by voters pressure. Our political parties and electoral candidates love uneducated voters.
Ok.
So these numbers matter to you.
So what do you do?
Move on to write your next post…. :-)
“Yatha Raja Tatha Praja”
Shows that democracy for a mass of illiterates is a farce…perhaps not for India…
I think Arjun Singh should be contacted ASAP. But he will say we should open more madrasas:)
Seriously this is terrible statistic but the retard HRD minister was allowed to simply pursue his personal agenda!
The Americans who happen to be just rightly educated as per your education standard have lent themselves into such a mess. Your equating education with wisdom is faulted. In India , every child is duly trained and also made wise by the elders who give time to tell them how to do things and understand things. Just because they have attended the school , it is not that they do not understand matters. Our scriptures have the ultimate the capacity to impart ultimate wisdom and every Indian child is more enlightened than the most elders elsewhere.