Much of the celebration around India rising to become the fifth biggest economy in the world recently rings hollow. This translates to around US dollars 2200 when it comes to per capita income. A better measure is the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) dollars that at around 7340 gains us a rank of 128 among 189 countries. There are also the United Nations Human Development Reports to consider.
The Human Development Index, in particular, better captures the measure of progress because it takes into account education and health, besides per capita income. Here India’s rank is certainly not an enviable one given the fact that we are at 131 as against our natural comparator China at 85. If one takes the BRICS as a group that is slowly emerging as an influential combination in the global arena, the ranks of other members are 114 for South Africa, 84 for Brazil and 52 for Russia. No doubt, India has to go a long way to catch up with the rest.
Remarkable progress in literacy rates, but then…
Educational attainment of a people is certainly one of the powerful indicators of human capability and progress. India has certainly made remarkable progress in this arena if one goes by its historical backwardness. The literacy rate in India was a mere 5.4 in 1901 and around 18.3 in 1951. But by 2021, the literacy rate was estimated have shot up to around 78 percent.
However, in this modern world just being literate isn't of much value. You need a certain critical minimum level of education to pursue opportunities as well as conduct everyday life in a world of fast-changing technology.
The standard practice is to take the percentage of people with at least a secondary-level education. If one goes by that, India's current record (around 2017) of 64 percent for men and 39 percent for women (among people 25 years and above) is only partly impressive given the huge gender gap.
This achievement is also dwarfed by that of fellow-members in the BRICS group, notably its natural comparator China. Russia's achievement of a little over 95 percent for both men and women is the most impressive followed by China (82 for men and 74 for women), South Africa (77 and 74) and then by Brazil women's rate of 61 exceeds that of men, who are at 58.
Of course, this group of literate people includes the highly educated i.e., graduates and above. India has excelled in quite a few knowledge-intensive domains such as space, atomic energy, advanced computing, the software side of Information and Communication Technology and a whole range of other areas. However, the high quality of students required for these areas are largely produced by a small number of universities and scientific research institutions. There is still much to be desired in terms of quality.
The resource allocation for improving quality versus expanding quantity is a genuine arena of tension. At the same time, there is much to be blamed, including rent-seeking partisan politics, for the low quality of education.
In the matter of creating a pool of high-educated workforce, the task remains challenging. Working on data available for 1983 -- 36 years after independence -- I find that the percentage of those with at least a graduate level of education was a mere 2.3 percent of the working-age population of 15 to 59 years. It was 3.8 percent for men and a mere 1.4 percent for women then.
Within the next 36 years, the situation certainly changed for the better. In 2019, the percentage of those who were graduates or above in the working-age population stood at 13.2 -- at 14.6 percent for men and 11.8 percent for women.
Here again a comparison with the fellow members in the BRICS group places India at the bottom. The irony of the situation is that the percentage of illiterates in this age group is around 20 percent, and if one counts those with less than at least a secondary-level education, that percentage swells to around 57 percent.
Apart from the gender inequality there is also the challenge of spatial inequality -- between rural and urban areas. While close to one out of four persons in the working age group in urban India is at least a graduate currently, it is one out of thirteen for rural India. Inter-state inequalities are also a challenge.
For example, the burden of illiteracy for Kerala is almost nil (3 percent) while for Bihar it is 32 percent with West Bengal at 17 percent. Close to 20 percent of women in the working age group in Kerala at least have a degree, while the stats are just about 9 percent for West Bengal and close to 5 percent for Bihar. Several studies have brought out that much of these inequalities in educational attainments have a strong social group association with Dalits and Adivasis at the bottom, despite some progress in an absolute sense.
Road ahead
The future doesn't seem to be a happy one for the common people with aspirations for higher education that paves the way for a higher standard of living. Given the failure of the central and state governments in providing good quality school education, most students don't qualify for entrance to higher education. This is compounded by the lack of adequate public-funding-driven institutions for higher education.
Such a situation has resulted in a low enrolment ratio for India in higher education. The latest (2020) figures show that among 18 to 23 year olds, the enrolment ratio in higher education -- post-higher secondary -- is a mere 27 percent as against 58 percent in China. Added to this is the acute problem of quality.
While there is a thin layer of public higher education institutions offering high-quality learning, most colleges and universities funded by the state governments can’t claim such a status. The low quality and low supply of public institutions has paved the way for the growth of privately-funded educational institutions with fees that are out of bounds for most families.
For example, tuition fees in private medical colleges range anywhere from Rs 10 to 50 lakhs or even more. The recently built private universities charge similar fees in almost all disciplines and are paid for by the richer classes in the society.
Such a pricing out mechanism has been in place for a long time even at the school level. Some reports suggests that the private cost of education of a child in private schools from 3 to 17 years could work out to Rs 30 lakh in fees in bigger cities and a somewhat lower figure in smaller ones.
The ingress of private schools in rural areas is also gathering pace especially in states where the public school system is of poor quality with run-down infrastructure. In sum, the market is solving the challenge of quality and quantity in education by a system of pricing-in and pricing-out.
At the top are the elite schools and higher education institutions with a fee structure that are affordable only to the rich. At the bottom, we have the publicly-run institutions populated by the less privileged with poor quality of teaching. In between, the middle class competes for access to the well-run public schools and the relatively low-priced private schools.
Such a three-tier system is strongly present even in an educationally advanced state like Kerala. The distinctive feature of Kerala is the continuingly strong presence of a publicly-funded school system (i.e. government schools plus government funded non-government schools).
The higher we go...
It is a worryingly different picture in the higher education sector even in India's most literate state.
Of all the colleges in Kerala, 69 percent is now in the ‘self-financing sector’, mostly privately owned with a few under cooperatives and their like. It is worth noting that of the 177 engineering colleges affiliated to Kerala’s APJ Abdul Kalam Technical University, 165 (93 percent) are in the ‘self-financing sector’. That, however, doesn't mean any assurance of quality. The latest figures show that the pass percentage in private self-financing engineering colleges at 44 percent as against 65 and 69 percent in government and government-funded colleges respectively.
While there is much to be celebrated about India's achievements including in enhancing educational capabilities, there is much more to be worried about the backlog and unacceptably high levels of inequalities of various kinds.
Educational attainments are found to be closely associated with the ability to come out of poverty as well as the low quality of employment and health and a host of other indicators that determine a society’s standard of living.
My own overall assessment of the progress made by my country tells me that one third of India is doing reasonably well while another one-third is languishing in low education, poverty and the lack of opportunities for a decent life. The remaining one third is a middling one with bouts of vulnerability, if not absolute poverty.
This is part of a series of web-only analysis columns on newindianexpress.com.
The writer KP Kannan is a development economist and former director of Centre for Development Studies, Thiruvananthapuram. He can be reached at kannankp123@gmail.com.