#
Did you know that Parsi's in Mumbai, instead of being left at the Tower of Silence after
#
they die, are now cremated?
#
Because a cow fell sick in the early 1990s.
#
Did you know that the smog in Delhi is caused by something that farmers in Punjab do and
#
that there's no way to stop them?
#
Did you know that there wasn't one gas tragedy in Bhopal, but three?
#
One of them was seen, but two were unseen.
#
Did you know that many well-intentioned government policies hurt the people they're supposed
#
Why was demonetization a bad idea?
#
How should GST have been implemented?
#
Why are all our politicians so corrupt when not all of them are bad people?
#
I'm Amit Verma and in my weekly podcast, The Seen and the Unseen, I take a shot at
#
answering all these questions and many more.
#
I aim to go beyond the seen and show you the unseen effects of public policy and private
#
I speak to experts on economics, political philosophy, cognitive neuroscience and constitutional
#
law so that their insights can blow not only my mind, but also yours.
#
The Seen and the Unseen releases every Monday.
#
So do check out the archives and follow the show at seenunseen.in.
#
You can also subscribe to The Seen and the Unseen on whatever podcast app you happen
#
And now let's move on to the show.
#
When I was growing up in India in the 1980s, making phone calls wasn't the easiest thing
#
The government had a monopoly on providing telephones and the waiting list for a telephone
#
could extend to five years or more.
#
I was a privileged kid, my father was in the IES, so we had a phone at home.
#
But even for a privileged kid like me, air travel was a luxury.
#
You guessed it, the state had a monopoly on airlines as well.
#
All we had then was Air India and Indian Airlines.
#
Air flights were prohibitively expensive for most people, including us.
#
That changed in the 1990s when India was forced to liberalise because of the balance of payments
#
Telecoms and airlines were thrown open to private players whose incentives were different
#
The government survives because it has a monopoly on violence.
#
When it needs more money, it simply takes it from us the people, the bakras, its subjects,
#
Private players in a free market, when they are not cronies of the government, have only
#
They need to provide value to their customers.
#
The freer the markets, the more the competition, the harder they have to try.
#
And relatively free markets transform telecoms and airlines.
#
Today if you want a phone, you don't have to wait for five years.
#
You can get it in five minutes at a very low price without having to bribe anyone.
#
Equally, air travel is affordable for vastly more people than it used to be.
#
Now all this is very nice, but useful as telephones and airlines are, there is one thing that
#
is far more important for us and for our nation, education.
#
The government has done a terrible job of providing education to its people for over
#
As bad as it used to do in telecoms and airlines before those markets were opened up.
#
And yet, there are enormous restraints on private players in the market place, especially
#
those who provide budget education to the poor, which contrary to popular stereotype
#
is a majority of private schools.
#
In less important fields like telecom and airlines, the government has allowed society
#
to help itself, which is basically what markets do.
#
But not in the case of education and our children still suffer for this.
#
Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
#
Please welcome your host Amit Bhatma.
#
Welcome to The Seen and the Unseen.
#
Today's episode is about education in India.
#
And my guest is my friend Amit Chandra.
#
Amit has been a researcher and activist in the field of education since the early days
#
of the century, working first for the Center for Civil Society and now with NISA or the
#
National Independent Schools Alliance.
#
He has strong thoughts on education.
#
Many terms that are fraud committed on the people of India by the government.
#
In this episode, we decided not to talk about the many solutions people offer, like school
#
vouchers and so on, but just describe the scope of this fraud, which in our opinion
#
is actually inevitable because of the way the incentives of government are structured.
#
I've done episodes on education before.
#
You can find them on Seen and the Unseen at IN.
#
But this was the longest and most comprehensive one so far, so do listen in.
#
But first, before that, a quick commercial break.
#
If this happens to be the only podcast you listen to, well, you need to listen to some
#
Check out the ones from IVM Podcasts who co-produce the show with me.
#
Go to ivmpodcasts.com or download the IVM app and you'll find a host of great Indian
#
podcasts that cover every subject you could think of.
#
From the magazine I edit, Pragati at thinkpragati.com, there is the Pragati podcast, hosted by Hamsini
#
Hariharan and Pawan Srinath.
#
There is a brilliant Hindi podcast, Puliya Baazi, hosted by Pranay Kotak Sanay and Saurabh
#
And apart from these policy podcasts, IVM has shows that cover music, films, finance,
#
sports, sci-fi, tech and the LGBT community, all under one roof or rather all in one app.
#
So download the IVM Podcasts app today.
#
Amit, welcome to the Seen and the Unseen.
#
Amit, all of us know, I mean all Indians know that we have a problem with education and
#
at some level that problem is not just restricted to like the education sector and children
#
studying and so on and so forth, it cuts across every level of society because even the unemployment
#
problem that we have in India today to some extent is because our education isn't skilling
#
people enough and you see so many people come out of the education system and actually not
#
And I know that you have worked in this field for more than a decade and a half and you
#
have very deep and strongly felt feelings about what is happening in education in this
#
You've often described it as a fraud.
#
So I'd like you today to elaborate on different aspects of our education system and the politics
#
What has been your biggest learning in all these years?
#
Thank you so much for having me on your show.
#
Yeah, so one insight after working for such a long year in education sector, I realized
#
that something that we are not doing right to our next generation and somehow for whatever
#
reason, reasons we can explore later.
#
But what we are doing, it won't be wrong if we simply call it that we are frauding our
#
Maybe our system is frauding our own children.
#
One simple way to give you why I'm saying and why I have such a strong opinion is you
#
would know recently by the government, there were advertisements for government jobs and
#
those were of peons and chaprasis and all of that kind.
#
And you know that for a thousand position, you get applications of millions, which would
#
also include applications by those who have done MBA, LLB, even PhD, they're applying
#
It simply means the certificate that they are holding.
#
It might say that you are a B.Tech, you are engineering graduate, but they don't have
#
that skill, neither they think that they're able to, they have those skills to claim themselves
#
as their rightful position of engineers, right?
#
So that simply gives you an indication that this entire system, which has designed and
#
which you have not a fake certificate, it's an original certificate while there have been
#
several debates about people with fake certificates.
#
Also this is original certificate, but it has completely artificial value.
#
And therefore I say we are cheating our own students, we are cheating our people.
#
And this is what activists like you called degree inflation, that you have an inflation
#
in degrees and these degrees are meaningless.
#
And these degrees of course are degrees which the ones you mentioned, LLB, MBA, they come
#
But according to you, the fraud starts right from the earliest stage of schooling because
#
you know, surveys like the famous Acer reports and so on, listeners should search for these
#
Acer reports on Google, A-S-E-R, which show learning outcomes across the country.
#
And they are mind blowing.
#
They talk about how people in 10th standard can't add or subtract or put a sentence together
#
and they are in just, you know, and even by forget come out with a degree later on, even
#
before they get to that stage they are unequipped for anything.
#
And at times I think why there is no UN cry about either Acer report or similar government
#
So if you know when PISA report came in 2010, India was ranked, if I am correct, 72nd out
#
of 73 countries only next to Kazakhstan on the learning outcome.
#
And that to think of what was the most interesting part was the response from the government.
#
Government decided not to participate in PISA assessment and ranking from next year onwards,
#
which is to me something shooting the messenger is shooting the messenger exactly instead
#
of taking that as a benchmark and learning and finding out what is wrong.
#
And you say, okay, next year, next round of PISA report will put a benchmark for ourselves
#
and we come up with better ranking, something what we are doing now on ease of doing business
#
But the response in 2010 was government decided not to participate in it and they could also
#
criticize and give certain reasons about methodology and foreign style of conducting assessments
#
But when Acer did it, Acer also shows pathetic learning outcome.
#
It says sixth grade students, 64% of sixth grade students cannot do basic Hindi, English
#
and maths of second grade.
#
I mean, 64% of sixth grade students not able to do second grade learning outcome.
#
I mean, certainly massively we have failed to deliver what is basics and they also do
#
Even if we are not able to provide that, we should fire ourselves as simple as that.
#
It's a criminal activity.
#
And one of the tragic things here is that, you know, we the elites who have the most
#
volume in media and all of that.
#
And we think, hey, our kids are going to a good school and we sort of ignore this as
#
not as big a deal as it is, but it just impacts everyone.
#
And talking about the point you made that if a sixth standard kid cannot show learning
#
outcomes of second standard, 64% of them, also consider what it does as you go down
#
When he reaches the seventh standard, can he even understand what is being taught?
#
He won't be able to cope.
#
And when he's not able to cope with that learning, it affects your self-confidence, it affects
#
your morale, it affects your eagerness to learn more and more.
#
It creates a vicious circle and we just lose generations of children like this.
#
Let me tell you something very interesting here as well.
#
So first thing is certainly we have failed to deliver whatever is even basic desirable
#
result we were thinking of.
#
Now government had in 2009 passed this act called Right to Education Act, wherein their
#
idea was that they will have 100% literacy rate and therefore also 100% school enrollment.
#
Now since the quality is so bad and if you look into data, I have actually also brought
#
this report in case we need to dig data that students and you have rightly pointed out
#
are migrating their abandoning government schools and coming to private schools.
#
That's one reason for quality.
#
But whatever students they have, they are not able to teach and they have set the goal
#
Now then think of what they are doing wrong to meet the goal without teaching.
#
And that is how they have beautifully exploited this provision of Right to Education Act called
#
No Detention Policy, which means up to eighth grade, well certainly there is a fascinating
#
way of justifying No Detention Policy as well or there could be a sincere logic also.
#
I don't really want to get into it, but how that has been used up to eighth standard,
#
then you don't fail at all, which simply means it's a mass certification program without
#
So up to eighth you keep coming to my place, there is nothing at the end I give you a degree
#
or a certificate saying you are eighth pass and we achieve as a nation 100% literacy.
#
And because you need to do nothing to get to that eighth pass point, that immediately
#
becomes meaningless and therefore all the way down the line other certificates also
#
become meaningless because a certificate has no correlation with the learning.
#
Ar chalo ye to fir bhi ho gaya, with the let's say government school students, it has similar
#
kind of impact on private schools as well.
#
So private schools who are beings in some sense glamorized or justified in terms of
#
doing well etc. or students who are growing up or we call millennials who are growing
#
up they are thinking okay the assessment is student centric etc. we have not failed blah
#
But the moment they are going to tenth standard or twelfth standard or later, they realize
#
that they know nothing or almost nothing or they get through a psychological situation
#
where they are certainly reflecting upon themselves that all along they have been kind of applauded
#
for doing what they are doing and later on they realize that possibly what they were
#
doing were certainly not wrong for almost everything for which they were given three
#
stars or five stars and which later on if they finally get into some kind of let's say
#
medical or engineering good colleges you also see that increasing rate of societal where
#
students are actually not able to cope up.
#
Now there is family pressure also they have paid some good fee or donation or whatever
#
and got a seat of let's say medical or engineering in high reputed college and under society
#
and parents and peer pressure they know that they got into this good college but if they
#
are not able to cope up they don't want to go back to family and say I am a failure and
#
that is where I believe that is also one of the factors leading to increase societal attempts
#
So I mean exactly like this is so basic that a failure in our education leads to a failure
#
in every aspect of our society it affects everything it affects our employment situations
#
because as much as the fact that there aren't enough jobs being generated there is also
#
the fact that we are churning out millions of people with degrees that really are meaningless
#
and they are not equipped in the job market this affects their confidence and their sense
#
of self worth and it is just a massive social problem.
#
So for a moment you know and I think this is something all my listeners would agree
#
on that even if within whatever elite cocoons and I am assuming that everyone who listens
#
to the podcast is elite in some way right like you and me but whatever life may be like
#
there in the cocoons I think everybody agrees education in India is badly broken.
#
Now what I want your sort of insights on and you have been in the field doing all this
#
work for fifteen years not just at the micro level but at a broader level of fixing policy
#
and trying to fix the structure of education in the country take me through some of the
#
root causes for this problem.
#
This is something very difficult to identify one root cause.
#
So give me a laundry list whatever comes to my list let's just go with.
#
Because we have created such a mess now even this mess has piled up so big decoding the
#
root of the mess is too difficult but one thing certainly I would say is we have highly
#
politicized and bureaucratized our education system that is certainly not acceptable.
#
In terms of this you can see some sense of nationalization or controlling the entire
#
education system and which is also very discriminatory and one thing also I talk about is it's pretty
#
anti poor while certainly government may claim that almost everything is free if you get
#
into government schools and you might find that their per child expenditure per year
#
goes ranges between thirty thousand to sixty thousand rupees.
#
So if that is the amount being spent on per child per year then certainly it is a massive
#
expenditure and that is the price on which you can in some private schools you can find
#
decent education that's one.
#
Second thing happens to be that government lets out norms for all kinds of schooling.
#
I'll give you example if you if let's say you want to start a school in urban area you
#
need one acre of land if you want CBSC affiliated schools or if it is a rural area around two
#
acres of land and thereafter the number of classrooms so for each section there should
#
be or for each class there should be a separate room principals rooms teachers room library
#
separate toilets separate drinking water laboratory etc etc playground size of your staircases
#
size of window fire and safety requirements and everything.
#
If by this norm if any tier one or tier two city that you want to start a school you would
#
require an investment today of at least around fifty crores to start one school to start
#
one school and that is only when I'm talking just money it also has a number of licenses
#
and permissions and which on an average goes around thirty licenses or permissions altogether
#
and therefore what you see if school is being started at this cost at this price and it
#
also gets thousand students enrollment your price point happens to be very high so simply
#
it doesn't make sense in economic terms and the moment the price is very high which simply
#
means only elite or few people can afford schooling rest are supposed to go to government
#
or municipality schools but certainly are not giving desired results and that is what led
#
to private school revolution in India.
#
So before I come and I want to talk about this private school revolution in India and
#
especially the rise of budget private schools and parents of the poorest families voting
#
with their feet and taking their kid out of government schools and putting them into budget
#
private schools which are like operating in holes in the world and paying for that sums
#
of money which will seem trivial to us but means a lot to them.
#
But before I come to that I want to address like three broad points that you raised at
#
the start of your answer where you spoke about politicization of education, bureaucratization
#
of education and first I want to address a great point you made about the sort of the
#
attitude of nationalization of education where you have a sort of a command and control way
#
So let me sort of try to paraphrase what that might be and you tell me if you agree with
#
the assessment and what you can add to that is that in education what we have tended to
#
do is that like in all parts of our economy after independence we decided that we need
#
a command and control structure and especially because it is so important the government
#
needs to make sure that education is provided to the people and one of the things they did
#
was not just pour money into education and government schools and all which is great
#
but they also stopped the private sector from coming up.
#
They placed restrictions like you cannot open a school for profit which came out of a mistaken
#
notion that profit is a bad thing necessarily while you can really only get profit by benefiting
#
society and I have had an episode on this a long time back which listeners can find
#
at Seen Unseen Radhai and the profit motive in education with Parthia and the result of
#
that was that while there was this demand for quality education the supply wasn't allowed.
#
The government said no we will do the supply and there were too many restrictions on private
#
schools A. so there is a profit motive around which people find ways like you have trusts
#
and all that but you have to find jogar ways around it and the other is a kind of regulations
#
you pointed out that your playground has to be this size you need to have so many toilets
#
you need to have falana dhimkana rather than leave it to the market and leave it to parents
#
to decide what kind of school they want to send their kid to they restrict the supply
#
so badly that there is a massive shortfall there which the government itself because
#
of incentives can't really provide.
#
So structurally firstly have I summarized it correctly?
#
Pretty much pretty much in fact something that you were talking about and the norms
#
I talked about is before 2009 before right to education act unrecognized schools also
#
could operate and there was number of unrecognized schools which are giving only primary education
#
they could operate but RT act has made it mandatory to be recognized and actually what
#
that has led to post this act around 20,000 schools have already closed down so 20,000
#
low-cost private schools which came up as an alternative as what you talked about parents
#
are choosing by feet and they are also paying money because they think that education is
#
their only hope if you want to change whatever poor people have gone through and they want
#
to change their fortune finally is for the next generation through education otherwise
#
they know that they don't have a huge investment to set up a business or something like that
#
and that is also being closed down and therefore that leads to this major question and that's
#
why I really want to very strongly say everything is fraud in education that we are certain
#
cheating our next generation and if then we are thinking of something like make in India
#
or start of India etc etc it's all just shame I mean we can't do basics while I talked
#
about politicization you also have to think about why all of these things have sustained
#
for so long how come we are we were able to control while talking about education any
#
bureaucrat would give you a reply that education is a state subject so there is nothing called
#
nationalization etc but directly or indirectly it's all controlled by governments certainly
#
they have certain liberty to pick up which language to use etc etc but by and large they
#
follow ncrt curriculum and there is a similar trend so what let's say Gujarat adopts also
#
Maharashtra adopts and then Karnataka adopts etc and it spreads out when I also talked
#
about politicization of education specifically you should look for politicians who are either
#
coming from education background or are highly influenced by people in education so something
#
like that has happened is union of government school teachers something I specifically point
#
out and the kind of role that they play in in education policy or its execution is we
#
know that there is no accountability I mean one of the reason why it happens to be a very
#
lucrative occupation is this is the only job where you are the school operates for 210
#
days or something around it it's largely their day or in case there are second shifts it's
#
a four to six hours job with as number of holidays and decent people and and despite
#
that there are huge rates of absenteeism in government school there was a report by World
#
Bank which says on any day around 25 percent of teachers are absent which means one fourth
#
randomly and those who are there that they are not motivated or you can also look into
#
who all are going into this government teaching occupation those who are looking to become
#
a great teacher certainly not all those what they are looking for a one state job a government
#
safe secure job their motivation is certainly not teaching however I'm not kind of vilifying
#
all of those young talent which is getting into it's a structural issue it's not like
#
individuals are at fault those teachers are at fault they're they're in a sense also
#
victims right they are also victim and that is also good I have actually a friend who
#
got into government a government job as a school teacher and she had to pay bribe to
#
just claim her salary wow anyways so the other role I wanted to point was the role of teacher
#
union also because teacher happens to be an influential personality in any community which
#
has been so good I mean we have been proud of that but since they are influential no
#
political representative actually want to get into anything which is which causes conflict
#
or confrontation right also if you get into a little further more detail when voting happens
#
and polling happens the only person present inside the polling booth is a teacher because
#
all of these teachers have polling duty right and you know inside they can either influence
#
the voters or do any mess thing which you don't really want to get into and therefore
#
they are able to influence political parties who come or go in government and therefore
#
they are able to control it and that is one of the reasons why you find in right to education
#
act all kind of norms in terms of input or school recognition salary qualification but
#
not as much in terms of duty and if duty is not being performed accountability or penalty
#
or punishment or whatever you could think of that's completely not there and therefore
#
there so what happens is it's politicized the entire management of education management
#
in government schools is not done by management professionals it's all done by bureaucrats
#
so those will be block education officers or district education officers or education
#
secretary additional secretaries they all completely behave like inspectors who are
#
coming here to inspect penalize and in the process also make money for themselves frankly
#
speaking and that happens to be the only aim nowhere I will tell you one incident I was
#
in a school in Trichy I was visiting and I was interacting with the school leaders and
#
they said their experience one of the guy told me that 10-20 years ago when education
#
officers used to visit schools we used to prepare students now when the education officer
#
comes to visit school we prepare the building so that the toilet is fixed there is drinking
#
water it's in clean it's painted the benches are there those sprinklers are there or fire
#
safety equipment is there so all of that focus has completely shifted on input rather than
#
quality of education and output and which I don't see improving as long as the bureaucrats
#
leading it there has to be some kind of education is coming in the role and they deciding or
#
at least working together with schools figuring out what is wrong happening so I want to examine
#
I want to go a little further into this point and examine the interplay between power accountability
#
and incentives but before we do that let's take a quick commercial break welcome to another
#
week on IVM it's been a great week and if you aren't following us on social media please
#
do we're IVM podcast on Twitter Facebook and Instagram on geek through this week they just
#
and didn't discuss their favorite movie soundtracks on the scene in the unseen Amit Burma talks
#
to researcher and activist Amit Chandra and they dissect India's education sector on Cyrus
#
says we have writer and director Anand Sivakumaran who's hosting a great new show for us called
#
Anand and Cyrus talk about how Anand journeyed from an engineer to a full-time writer on simplified
#
Narayan, Chuck and Sriketh go to the root of the word assassin and twisted an interesting
#
This week on Shunyoon we're joined by Sanjay Nath who is a co-founder and managing partner
#
at Bloom Ventures we have a really interesting conversation about investing on Marbles Lost
#
and Found Zen and Avanti talk to a psychotherapist Alicia Halani and also this week marks the
#
50th episode of the Prakriti podcast hosts Hamsini Hariharan and Pawan Srinath sit down
#
to talk about the long strange trip has been and also round up some of the recent news
#
and with that I'm going to take you on to your shows.
#
Welcome back to the scene in the unseen in this episode we are discussing the state of
#
education in India and my guest is Amit Chandra who's been a researcher and activist in this
#
area for more than a decade and a half and has very deep insights about it and before
#
the break Amit you were talking about how teachers unions are so strong and they're
#
a very powerful interest group and therefore they control a lot of the politics of it.
#
Now tell me if my understanding is correct because I kind of try to look everything through
#
the economic lens of what are the incentives and the...
#
Before we get into because then we are going to the next step of discussion let me give
#
you one more example which tells you when I say fraud at several levels of fraud not
#
only with the kids with the system with the teacher with the quality almost everything.
#
Very recently CAG, CAG which is the auditing body came up with its report and it estimated
#
1.1 crore fake student enrollment in government schools of Uttar Pradesh alone.
#
That's more than 10 million people wow.
#
Fake student enrollment now you would wonder why there are fake student enrollment.
#
Yes because that decide amount of fund you would get you know there is a midday meal
#
So let's assume the cost per child per day is 10 rupees right.
#
What does it mean 10 crore rupees every day is a 100 crore per day expenditure on midday
#
Yes which is going into someone's pocket right.
#
Then there are altogether 14 kind of freebies which is given shoes, shocks, uniform, textbooks
#
Stationary all of those.
#
Then the teacher positions are created and all this transfer posting appointment happens
#
on the basis of number of students there.
#
And also you want to increase your enrollment and you show you are performing better right.
#
There is also now at least with ASER and government data even MHRD is conducting there is NAS.
#
So now the data is being collected that whether students are enrolled or not coming or not.
#
So you are fuzzing all the data to show that students are there and they are coming.
#
However they are not present in school they are not learning all the money is being eaten
#
With all the different freebies and so on.
#
I mean this is such an amazing illustration of how government inevitably tends to descend
#
into a parasitic role and everything in India especially just becomes a jewel.
#
But to get back to the question of incentives which I think is worth unpacking for our listeners
#
is that because teachers in government schools essentially have power without accountability
#
because they are teachers, they are tenured, they get the salary, they get but they are
#
not actually held accountable in terms of the kind of education they provide.
#
And very often there are more teachers than you need because if there are so many fake
#
students and you have to maintain a student teacher ratio that rationalizes the appointment
#
of many more teachers who are not required and who probably won't show up to work.
#
And because the incentives are so flawed because they don't actually need to deliver unlike
#
a private school which is dependent on the fees coming in every month so this pressure
#
to actually perform and compete.
#
But because that pressure isn't here and the incentives are so bad, your learning outcomes
#
are bad on a per capita basis in the sense, I don't know whether it was you but I heard
#
this statistic recently about how the same outcomes are provided by private schools for
#
one third the cost of a government school, the per student cost despite the fact that
#
This study, this paper was done by Karthik Murlidharan in Hyderabad schools wherein he
#
simply compared students of government schools and students of low cost private school, not
#
just private schools, very low cost with the similar kind of economic background of students
#
and he found that while the learning outcome in those low cost private school was slightly
#
So if you are comparing in terms of learning outcome, it's not great, slightly better.
#
But in terms of cost, those happens to be one third.
#
So one third of the same cost you can provide in low cost private school something similar
#
So even if you're not providing a better education in an absolute sense, you are providing much
#
more bang for the buck which really matters for poor people and the reason you're doing
#
that and again you know it's often an unfair sort of rap which is placed on libertarians
#
like me that you think all government is bad and all private is good and blah blah blah
#
and that's not the case at all.
#
I just committed from a point of view of incentives and in the case of education, who do you want
#
to be in a position of power?
#
You want the children and the parents of those children to be the people who have the power
#
and who dictate the outcomes and you want teachers to be accountable in terms of the
#
education that they provide and you have those incentives in private schools including low
#
cost private schools where the parents will just work with their feet and go elsewhere
#
if they feel the education isn't good enough.
#
But in a government school set up the way our school system is set up, that power is,
#
you know the kids and their parents aren't empowered with that because teachers are completely
#
unaccountable and therefore whenever any reform is proposed, the teachers will obviously oppose
#
that reform because you know that brings accountability, this system works so beautifully for them,
#
why would they mess with it?
#
While we talked about this study by Karthik Muralidharan, let me also mention and your
#
audience could find out a paper done by Professor Geeta Gandhi Kingdon.
#
So what she did, she took all the learning outcome and kind of converted into units,
#
so units of learning and compared with the cost, I don't remember exactly but it comes
#
somewhere around if I'm not mistaken is that for each unit of learning outcome if you compare
#
with government and private school, government schools spend ten times more so it doesn't
#
give you bang for the buck and the simple reason is anywhere you go private sector has
#
efficiency and that is what they are known for and that actually leads to the in case
#
of accountability and designing system wise, you don't want even centrally designed or
#
at a state level also which also happens to be like a center when we have states like
#
UP which is bigger than several countries, why can't we trust parents, teachers or people
#
who are locally or even students, I mean simply we ask students, at times we have wondered
#
if students had voting rights, the scene today could have been different because as we talked
#
about politicians trying not to take banga with teacher unions, the moment they would
#
realize okay, now students have got voice and voting right and they would certainly
#
force them to think about could we think of a student centric education model, so why
#
can't we involve them, why can't we simply give them liberty and in case of India, it
#
is common sense before India becoming democratic, at least electoral democratic, education in
#
some sense and even when Britishers came and introduced formal education, it was almost
#
free and there was no government and therefore there was no politicization or bureaucratization
#
of education, so we have had history and in fact if you get into the reports of James
#
Stooley kind of, he says in the British India, Bengal province alone had around 5 lakh schools
#
and today after like hundreds of years, today all together we have around 5 lakh schools,
#
so in that sense the number of schools that you could kind of compare only Bengal as a
#
state and currently entire India and in those sense the number of schools should have gone
#
up rather than going down or staying stable, while the population has gone at least 10
#
Much more than that and because the demand for quality education is always high, I mean
#
that's what parents really want a good education for their kids and but that supply is not
#
allowed to exist and the government system has essentially become parasitic rather than
#
you know actually trying to deliver outcomes, but the other point I want to address and
#
I am sure you face this throughout the many years you have spent in this, is that when
#
you talk of private schools people often say oh private schools are too expensive and you
#
know government schools are doing this social service and private schools are too expensive,
#
but actually that is a massive myth, you know as James Stooley himself pointed out for example
#
in a beautiful book he wrote on the subject, all the papers and books that Amit is mentioning
#
by the way will be linked at the bottom of the page of this podcast, so do look for those,
#
but to come back to the question I mean is it true that private schools are only for
#
Not at all, certainly not at all and therefore I have brought this report also, this is called
#
report on budget private schools in India and that is what therefore if you look into
#
how schooling has developed in India, you will find at let us if we start from independence,
#
country decided to go for kind of state taking responsibility of providing education, however
#
they did not have capacity as much, but thereafter started this idea of government schools and
#
private schools, but that point of time private schools were only for elite or some missionary
#
schools which were private with the idea of also spreading religion or as they are called
#
missionary schools, similarly not missionaries in terms of Christian itself, but also other
#
religion, but slowly as state realized that they do not have capacity and in fact if you
#
go back to the debates of drafting constitution at that point of time there was debate of
#
having something called right to education as a fundamental right so that it states responsibility,
#
but the constitution makers at least they realized that it is a new nation coming up
#
and state does not have that capacity and therefore they dropped the idea of keeping
#
right to education as a fundamental right.
#
So by and large coming to the point that there has been government schools and small private
#
schools and some missionary schools and thereafter when government realized that there is a capacity
#
issue they started something called aided private schools which means it is a privately
#
run school and if they are able to sustain it for more than three years then government
#
will pitch in with funds etc. which later on because then government was funding it
#
they started controlling it, it also become exactly like any government school and this
#
third segment which is private school and if you read all of these education policies
#
with the national education policy of 1968 or 86 or 92 or the new one we were drafting
#
over state education act you will find it takes the view of government schooling so
#
schooling through government institution or aided government institution there will be
#
only a small segment which will say if there are private school what are the rules and
#
norms etc. and in that sense it happens to be completely bias so you think of government
#
schools we will run it but if there is a private school then for that there are norms, guidelines
#
or control mechanism so by approach itself we are completely biased so government school
#
because it is ours we will fix it right there is no set timeline standard or if you have
#
not delivered what will be the panel mechanism etc. the approach that you take for private
#
schools anyways so the main point I want to come to that this low cost schools or budget
#
private schools the revolution kind of that James Stooley talks about I do not attribute
#
it as a success of policy what I say is there is revolution of low cost private school because
#
the policy provisions failed because as a policy issue we never wanted private schools
#
to flourish and therefore now as government has challenge and if you look at now the dice
#
data almost around 40% students are enrolled in private schools now only around 60% and
#
this I am saying as a nationwide you can also find some urban areas specifically let's say
#
Hyderabad Delhi or Mumbai where majority of students you will find going to private schools
#
so the point I wanted to make is this revolution has as a failure to policy design neither
#
that policy was designed to promote it the other part to answer your question is whether
#
these are for only elite or rich people certainly not once again I would refer to Professor
#
Geeta Gandhi Kingdance report which is in the same report the average monthly fee of
#
private schools in UP comes around 250 rupees 250 rupees 250 rupees and therefore now if
#
you will also identify as I travel a lot I also interact with auto rickshaw drivers taxi
#
drivers even cycle rickshaw pullers and I have found that even poorest of poor such
#
as cycle rickshaw puller today he would prefer to skip a day's meal but wants to send their
#
children to a private school and certainly these are not elite private schools these
#
are those low cost private schools so I would not say it is only for rich certainly because
#
of several policy provisions that we talked the cost happens to be inflated which certainly
#
through reforms could be brought down yeah and then that's to me it's a deeply poignant
#
story that if someone who's earning three or four thousand a month you know is his household
#
income and he cares deeply about his kids education because he wants him to go beyond
#
what he has managed to do in his life and he wants his kid to get an education but the
#
free government schools which are set up for that are simply not doing that and he's actually
#
paying money which is a substantial amount of money for him 250 may not seem anything
#
for us or 500 may not seem anything for us but for those people is a substantial amount
#
of money but they're making that sacrifice because it is their only way out and then
#
what they also see is that even those private schools that they send their kids to face
#
these enormous enormous challenges from the state itself and like you pointed out those
#
are the schools being closed down those are your even I come from a city called Banaras
#
and at my house there is a maid and maid sent her children to a private school and that
#
is the kind of schools being targeted now by the government which I see completely it's
#
injustice it's inhuman and you have tens and thousands of low-cost private schools like
#
that having to shut down because of government regulations despite the fact that they came
#
up in the first place because the government had failed to provide that education and that
#
just makes me so angry that I think that your term of anger for this which is fraud is not
#
sufficient it's it's much worse than that it's it's a crime on the people of our country
#
so you know a lot of these things activists like yourself have been talking about for
#
a long time trying to raise awareness and so on and of course parents of kids everywhere
#
understand this especially the poorer you go the more they understand how bad things
#
are for example I was told of some statistic recently some that's a more than 80 percent
#
of government school teachers send their children to private schools you know what better evidence
#
you require than this not only teachers all the politicians even who advocate government
#
schooling they send their children to private schools and they also since the money and
#
power and sources they're sending their kids to foreign schools so then they don't even
#
have to teach here in the Indian curriculum right so you know and it's kind of obvious
#
that the way the structure is a lot of interesting ways towards moving towards a solution emerge
#
and let's not discuss any of those individually but in terms of let's talk about what in the
#
political economy makes change so difficult like one thing you pointed out is that there
#
are interest groups like government teachers unions which hold a certain amount of power
#
and they lobby politicians and they don't let it happen so can you shed some more light
#
on the incentives in the political economy in the different interest groups and also
#
earlier like you've spoken a bit about the politicization of education but you also mentioned
#
bureaucratization of education so can you expand on that as well a little bit sure let's
#
come to that political economy thing first difficult to explain it in a short time but
#
I mean I'll give you just snapshots the first thing you could see is politicians they also
#
have to go by the public sentiment and somehow it's already built in public sentiment that
#
there should be free education and therefore government could deliver it however everything
#
is taxed and paid by citizens themselves but somehow there is this acceptance that free
#
education is not to be charged second whosoever is providing should not make profit out of
#
it whether it's private or government or whoever they are they do it for the purpose of charity
#
and therefore for politicians who sincerely also want to bring change becomes too difficult
#
because all of a sudden there will be many organizations unions on street protesting
#
against them that they are kind of privatizing or commercializing education right or giving
#
in profit hands so that makes itself a difficult that's first thing now second thing I would
#
also doubt whether politicians are so interested in doing it for reasons and this parasite
#
culture and the pressure groups that they have that with their with teacher unions or
#
other lobby groups to reform it also one thing has come to my notice is education or things
#
like that happens to be a deliverable the outcome of which will be shown in long term
#
so for an example my parents decided to invest in my education and after 10-15 years only
#
they can see outcome and when the tenure is only five years or something and it to make
#
bureaucracy work and get a school sanction for any MLA or MP in the constituency will
#
take one two three years so the impact is not as visible and therefore in my opinion
#
let's say even if I might be wrong too but their interest is more into let's say building
#
toilet or giving cumble or whatever which is more of a photo opportunity that the MP
#
MLA is doing something or cleaning road or whatever so I don't really see that they
#
are as interested yeah any any points that that you think is more I just say that I hundred
#
percent agree with your opinion because and this is one of the you know problems you face
#
with governance is that politicians are always focused on the short term and like you correctly
#
said something like investments in anything that show results in the long term beyond
#
the five-year term of a politician therefore become pointless they are more interested
#
in optics and photo opportunity which you know a toilet toilet will provide more than
#
something that is more abstract especially if it means withdrawing from the you know
#
removing restrictions on private schools the government servant can't then there's nothing
#
concrete for him to show too because it seems like I mean what have you done but what you
#
correctly pointed out earlier and something that makes me almost despair is this attitude
#
that Indians have that whatever problems we have the government is a solution little realizing
#
that in cases like education for example the government is a problem yes it is and you
#
know one example I often kind of try to point out is that you know people say that look
#
education is so important so the government has to do it and my reply to that always is
#
that it is because education is so important and crucial that the government must allow
#
society to participate in it and like I'm an 80s child and the classic analog I give
#
is of telecom and airlines and especially telecom that those were government monopolies
#
in the 80s it took you five years to get you had a five-year waiting list for a telephone
#
and then private players were allowed and if you go by the same rhetoric they give behind
#
education then you would expect the quality to drop the private players to exploit customers
#
and the prices to be too high but instead what you have is an explosion in quality because
#
of competition and because of those incentives and now today the poorest of the poor have
#
smartphones even if they're not educated you know and and it's one of the great tragedies
#
of our country and it makes me angrier and angrier as the years go by and the students
#
are able to understand English today because of mobile English keypad rather than going
#
to school and understanding English anyways something that I also wanted to talk more
#
because these days the anger comes out is you did not contest my insight of education
#
being fraud otherwise they could have given you several examples.
#
Let's imagine I agree with you but I know much less about why it is a fraud so let's
#
assume for a moment that I have contested it I have said no Amit is not a fraud so why
#
I will give you because we started talking about government teachers also and how even
#
they are victim one of the things I can talk about is at the beginning of the session around
#
March or April try going to meet any of the education minister at the residence or office
#
or education secretary in any of the state what you'll find that there is a huge crowd
#
and you'll find most of the people in the crowd are teachers now these teachers are
#
there lined up at the house of education minister and if you investigate into the reason you'll
#
find they're mainly asking for their transfer and posting and then certainly minister would
#
do whatever formally has to do there will be a guy more like an agent or mediator or
#
whomever you call it would be there who would then deal with them so fix up a certain price
#
and that so if you pay then you will get your desired postings etc. right so that itself
#
has become a massive fraud at places though this was being done at a secretary level then
#
ministers realize that we are losing money that we can make some ministers has taken
#
in some states let's me I hope I go back home chief minister realize that there is enough
#
So those kind of people don't listen to this podcast so don't worry about that.
#
At times I remember at some education minister office that they I had gone to meet and that
#
a teacher walked in for the same request and he says no no chief minister sahab directly
#
So it's become so lucrative.
#
Right so that is the kind of day to day examples that you get and then you think of do we as
#
a country have some hope.
#
So you're someone who's not only been a researcher and spread it all this but you've also been
#
an activist and you've tried to bring about change I mean you are innocent.
#
Can I point out one more please go ahead I'll come back to my question later please.
#
The other big thing happens in your marks inflation right.
#
So there are boards education board each state has education board and CBSC ICSE and IG and
#
Specifically one fraud thing started with the evolution of CBSC itself.
#
So if you remember I as I said I'm from UP I went to a state affiliated board school.
#
So at our age at that time there was this chief minister called Kalyan Singh and people
#
say I passed high school or intermediate in Kalyan Singh's regime which means before that
#
was Mulayam Singh and at the Mulayam Singh time they were very generous and liberal with
#
You know today you can see Bihar the massive you know cheating their parents or friends
#
who are helping them to copy.
#
So that used to happen and therefore Kalyan Singh so on what the main point I want to
#
come to on an average if you see the result every year would be 30 percent 40 percent
#
maximum 50 percent students who have passed.
#
And the topper of the state would have 82 percent 83 percent right.
#
Now then CBSC came in and CBSC had a different marking pattern and therefore the similar
#
kind of average student like me if I'm getting 50 percent marks in state board I would get
#
65 or 70 percent mark in CBSC board.
#
Slowly that state realized that all of these CBSC students are easily getting admission
#
later on in let's say Delhi University or whatever university for college and our students
#
are not finding admission if the admission is based on your high school and inter marks
#
and therefore they also started figuring out other ways of inflating the mark inflating
#
or changing the marking pattern so that students get more marks.
#
There happens to be one more dynamics here.
#
So every time and let's say as an education minister I want to show my performance that
#
I have done very good in education segment or like recently last year in Punjab the education
#
secretary was expelled he was fired because of the poor percentage of result.
#
So you want to show that earlier 50 percent students used to pass we have improved so
#
70 percent students are passing right something similar is happening in Delhi also currently
#
they are debating our students are performing very well right.
#
I won't get into that Delhi debate I can get into that separately but states are also inflating
#
state boards inflating marks to show that we are doing good job students are getting
#
The results of teacher case government school are also coming very well and even CBSC adopted
#
this system what they called it moderation system.
#
So they figured out scientifically and justified ways of giving you more and more marks.
#
That is another level of fraud happening and then we say achha bacha dum dik raha hai
#
aur iske 90 percent marks hai.
#
Yeah I remember back in the day in my 10th and 12th I got like around 70 percent and
#
my now wife got a little more than me and we were just talking like a couple of days
#
back that boss aaj ke zamane mein toh we would have got admission nowhere we are finished.
#
In Delhi something like since Stephen College they got 100 percent students with 100 percent
#
marks as admission so even you have 99 you are not going to get admission.
#
So think about it now why is that as an activist or as a solution if we start thinking about
#
it is because the producer when you design or produce is who?
#
The same government when the assessment is happening it's the same government when the
#
outcome has to be shown it's the same government so as long as I monitor myself I would give
#
all good marks I will say I am the best person even better than Narendra Modi right and that
#
Be careful what you say.
#
Not that kind of audience listens to you because anyway right I am in home same.
#
So you need to bring some level of accountability and transparency in the system otherwise.
#
And that's a great insight like again to go back to the question of incentives the government
#
is the provider the government is also the person who is ranking the quality of the provision
#
financing and financing the provision and everything whereas you know in a regular market
#
system what you would really have is that it's the parents who decide the people who
#
are and therefore they keep the system sort of accountable.
#
So consumer kata yahaat pe kuch lete nahi parents ka se assessment to karate nahi.
#
Bachcha se toh assessment karate nahi khitne achha teacher khitne achha infrastructure
#
khitne achha tumhara education minister.
#
And in a sense the fact that so many poor parents vote with their feet and take their
#
children to budget private schools is itself them assessing the state of education and
#
the state then reacts by shutting down as many of those private schools as it can.
#
And the other tragic point that you just pointed out and which is again a great insight I'd
#
like to call attention to is the relation between optics and performance.
#
And that's not I mean it is in the nature of governments and the parties that are ruling
#
the governments at any time that their incentive is not really to perform because no one's
#
holding them accountable.
#
But their incentive is to focus on optics like dekho itne bachche pass ho gayi aur
#
last time se zyada hai because they want to get re-elected.
#
And again the incentives are completely destroyed.
#
But the question I sort of want to ask is that you've not only done a lot of research
#
and gained a lot of insight into this field but you've also been an activist and a very
#
passionate activist whose you meet politicians all the time, you meet bureaucrats all the
#
So my two part question is that what level of acceptance is there among these individuals
#
in government outside of their roles and their incentives that there is a problem and that
#
And part two is that going beyond this acceptance of going beyond this recognition of the problem
#
has there been any movement towards a solution in all the time that you've been working?
#
This is a difficult to answer because to answer this I will have to decode all of these conversations
#
that I have with politicians and policymakers and I'll have to base my judgment on that
#
everything that they are saying is sincere and true.
#
Yeah but you have a sense of whether it's not by…
#
So I do think that at certain level within the government also they realize.
#
So number one because they have designed and they are doing it they know it.
#
But as I said the major challenge for education sector happens to be this public sentiment
#
That is change or politicians get a sense that people are open for change and if by
#
bringing some sort of reform I would not be thrown out of office they would be open to
#
The other way of thinking is until it becomes inevitable.
#
I know with my conversation with people formally and informally they whenever they have realized
#
in fact we had I personally had high hope with this current MHRD minister and the secretary
#
also and specifically the secretary however I am deeply deeply disappointed is they realize
#
it and they were trying to look for political viability of bringing some of those reforms.
#
So within government there are segments something like Neeti Aayog published its three years
#
action plan and within there is a section on school education and they have proposed
#
some good ideas but it's difficult at the moment.
#
Also I understand their challenge to for currently BJP led government no matter what they do
#
the moment they touch education every one opposition etc comes in as a separate education
#
or commercializing education and for that they have also so if you know twice they constituted
#
committee for national education policy and yet they have not progressed on it.
#
I can't comment on future but today or tomorrow it's going to become inevitable and they will
#
have to do it because there is no other way than saving truth by accepting the truth.
#
Right, so you know this has been an incredibly insightful episode and I want to end by asking
#
you two questions I ask all my guests on whatever subject they are talking about at that point
#
in time and those two questions are what makes you despair about what is happening to education
#
in this country and what gives you hope?
#
Once again these are difficult questions so something is why I got into it and still investing
#
my time and energy even it's very frustrating thing to do is we ourselves have gone through
#
this system at times I feel that it was good to be a backbencher because the system could
#
corrupt me less all of those in the front were highly corrupted I was also a backbencher
#
and I have seen many of our own friends and colleagues or relatives or cousins struggling
#
with it or even today and that makes me work on it frankly speaking that you feel you have
#
no choice you owe this to. We have to cause the I mean the pain I have seen people going
#
through of unnecessarily for an example let's say parents scolding or relatives scolding
#
for bringing lesser marks than 70% or 90% or why not to study I mean this study thing
#
entirely has become such a I don't know what to call it big burden on children all the
#
time parents are behind them study study study kya uska relevance aane wala hai how is going
#
to make difference I mean as simple as a question I ask is today we possibly our average lifespan
#
would be 50 to 60 years I assume not more than that what is so great with our education
#
thing that I spent half of my life studying it. Great point yeah. So that is what and
#
that is where you have to be optimistic you have to have hope that things would improve
#
at times and that is why my disappointment I have seen some hope some light at the end
#
of tunnel but tunnel happens to get longer and longer. Amit thanks you have been extremely
#
insightful over this episode and your journey is very inspiring and thank you so much for
#
coming on the scene. Thank you for having me. If you enjoyed listening to the show do
#
follow Amit Chandra on Twitter at Amit C tweets Amit C tweets no spaces the studies we spoke
#
about on the show are linked at the bottom of this episode's page at scene unseen dot
#
I N and think Prakriti dot com you can browse past episodes of this show including our two
#
previous episodes on education episodes 9 and 19 at scene unseen dot I N and you can
#
follow me on Twitter at Amit Varma A M I T V A R M A thank you for listening.
#
you check it out the episodes are going to be out every single Tuesday.
#
Tuesday to catch us talking to the smartest people we know on the IVM podcast website
#
app or wherever you get your podcast from.
