Indian Education: Macro-level Systemic Problems

After independence, India has significantly expanded its educational infrastructure. Gross enrolment rates are near universal in most states. However, the quality of education remains a major concern as many large scale educational assessments indicate overall poor academic outcomes of students (ASER 2005-14; Education Initiatives, 2010; NCERT, 2008). Most academicians, media, and people in and around policy circles acknowledge this dire state of education. However, the discussion on “the way out of this mess” only revolves around school, teacher and/or student level interventions. While micro-level (i.e., school or teacher-level) reforms are essential for qualitative improvement, there are some systematic macro-level problems which are more critical yet they remain unaddressed.  

Lack of Policy-relevant Knowledge

Suppose you are the educational secretary of a state and have to invest hundred crore rupees in primary education. What will be your investment priority? School infrastructure, hiring more teachers, performance pay for teachers, psychological support for children, improving quality of school-meal, subsidized text-books and school uniforms for the poor, celebrations of numerous festivals in schools, or organizing sports and cultural events across state? Will you distribute this money uniformly across all districts or in certain priority? What proportion should you spend on the least developed regions? All of these questions are extremely important and only empirical research can provide answers. Unfortunately, India has neglected empirical research for so long that it cannot provide answers for effective investment priority and policy formulation even for one state. There exists very little empirical work on educational issues.

Moreover, whatever little empirical studies that are conducted, are often not accessible to policymakers, fellow researchers, and practitioners. In most cases, one copy of the study is submitted to the funding agency and the other one could be lying somewhere in the college/department library. Unfortunately, universities do not even keep doctoral dissertations and theses accessible to wider audience. Intervention studies in Indian context, which are available on the internet, are mostly conducted by the researchers outside of India or funded by International agencies. Muralidharan (2013) provides a nice summary of major works in Indian education and their policy relevance, but not one study was conducted by an Indian institution. In total, one gets a feeling that the centre and state governments are not serious about generating indigenous pool of policy relevant knowledge in education sector. Accordingly, most debates and discussions around educational issues are dominated by "expert opinions" and not by empirical work. 

Arbitrary approach to Policy Formulation

Apathy for indigenous knowledge is a problem, but I am more concerned about the process of policy formulation. State officials and policymakers are not formally trained to consume research literature. Empirical research, especially field experiments and causal inference, is a highly developed field which demands technical expertise. It is highly likely that a state government does not have a single competent educational researcher in its policymaking-team. In such scenario, policy formulation is often based on a mixture of subjective factors like majoritarian view, administrative ease, and policymakers’ intuitions, world-views and/or personal-experiences. This is extremely dangerous way of policymaking given that lives and careers of future citizens are at stake.

Absence of Valid & Reliable Academic Outcomes

Another major issue pertains to the absence of standardized grade-level outcomes across various educational settings, from vernacular religious schools to elite English medium private schools. Everyone talks about poor quality, but there is no standard definition of “educational quality”. Without standardized assessment of a representative sample, a state may not be able to evaluate the effectiveness of educational interventions and policies. In other words, everyone, including the policymakers, are clueless about whether their actions are producing any good. In addition, teachers, parents and students remain unclear of the expected knowledge and skills for a particular standard.

Lack of Understanding of Human Resource Required in Educational Sector

Yes, there is a  great dearth of education specialists across the country. But, more frustratingly one gets a feeling that the policymakers only seem to understand two job profiles: teachers and teacher-trainers. There has been little attention on developing human resource for educational administration at state, district, clusters or schools, curriculum and instruction design, testing and measurement, educational research, psychological support in schools, and policy making. 

As a result of above discussion, India has not been able to establish consistency between national human-resource requirement, knowledge-base, policy design and implementation, and educational practices in the field (Figure 1). 

I present a potential mechanism for establishing these linkages in blog post entitled, Mechanism for Educational Excellence in India: Towards Solution 

Do share your thoughts...

Modi’s Rise: Thanks to Anti-Modi Propaganda

Almost all recent opinion polls in India suggest that Narendra Modi, BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, is the top contender for the office. Nationally and internationally media describes him as a rightwing hardliner – a poster boy of Hindutva (i.e., religious rightwing politics). This raises several questions: A) Has Indian society lost religious tolerance that it considers electing a Hindutva hardliner who has been allegedly linked to communal riots in Gujarat as a Prime Minister? B) Why is India’s socialists and secularists unable to stop this political shift? and C) Who can stop Modi in the present scenario?

The short answer: For more than a decade Anti-Modi campaign from the left of the political spectrum has fueled Modi’s rise, and his fall is in the hands of his Hindutva followers. Sounds baffling? Let me explain:

Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat during the 2002 communal riots in which two thirds of the victims were Muslims. Obviously, violent episode of such kind would elicit critical response from any civilized society. Genuine critical opinions may vary from negligence and in-action to mishandling at various administrative-levels and failure in maintaining the law and order during riots. However, the opposition led by the Congress party, Delhi-based national media, and innumerous minority-rights advocate NGOs presumed Modi’s culpability in rioting within days. Extreme rightwing groups (e.g., Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Bajarang Dal) whose many members were later convicted in rioting were off the radar and Modi was made the sole target in media trials. Hyper criticism was widely prevalent across mainstream media houses as Modi was frequently labeled as “Anti-Muslim”, “Hindu Fascist” and “Hitler”. Since 2002, almost every media story on Modi government had a line suggesting his riot links. International media imitated the same ritual. This trend continues till date in sections of media, though to a lesser extent.

Nonstop bashing in national media without any proven charges in the court of law opened up doors for Modi’s rise – first in Gujarat and then beyond. Within religiously polarized Gujarat, Modi succeeded in establishing conditioning in his Hindu voters that his criticism is a propaganda by those with vested interests. Gujarati Congress leaders grasped this voter conditioning after their loss in 2002 state elections. Though Modi has primarily won all successive elections on the developmental agenda, his political opponents in Gujarat have been extra cautious and have restrained from hyper personal criticism, especially on communal issues. In fact, when Tehalka magazine released tapes of Gujarat riot sting operation just few days before the 2007 state elections, many of the Congress party leaders accused it of having conducted the sting at Modi’s behest. However, the Congress leaders in Delhi did not understand the social context. Then Congress chief, Sonia Gandhi’s famous remark of calling Modi a “merchant of death” resulted in further polarization of votes on the religious lines and eventually Congress lost miserably.

Outside of Gujarat, sustained one dimensional depiction of Modi as a Hindu fascist in national and international media had almost convinced most people. However, this strategy backfired and Modi’s stature rose in mainly three phases.

Phase I – Story of Good Governance

Stories of Modi government’s efficient governance started resurfacing within a year and he was named the second best chief minister in India Today magazine’s national survey in 2003. Sporadically their proactive measures in power and infrastructure sectors, global investor summits, and initiatives to create business friendly environment grabbed headlines. By 2011 he was named the best chief minister for seven times in India Today polls. This counter narrative made people more curious to explore who is the real Narendra Modi – a symbol of communal hatred or an efficient administrator.

Phase II – Emergence of Social Media

With the spread of internet and social networking, Modi found a medium to connect directly and to satiate people’s curiosity bypassing mainstream media. Modi has enormous presence on the internet. Unlike his opponents, he has the oratory-skills to connect with the intellectuals as well as the masses and shares all of his speeches on his youtube-channel. A fairly significant section of people, especially the youth, consists of those who do not identify with the camp of religious hardliners and who cannot tolerate misgovernance, inefficiency and rampant corruption. Modi had grasped this voter dilemma long back. For past several years, he has been trying hard to reach out. He talks about governance, economy, technology, environment and developmental issues. It is possible that many of those who had presumed Modi to be a demon saw his human side and bought-in his development centric politics, which is very rare in India. Modi is yet to find a political opponent who presents counter narrative of the developmental vision for India.

Phase III – Acquitted by the Court of Law

In 2013, Ahmedabad Metropolitan Magistrate gave a clean chit to Modi based on the report submitted by the independent inquiry supervised by the Supreme Court. The inquiry has not found prosecutable evidence against him. This development may not have affected opinion of Modi-supporters or his critics. However, a large number of potentially neutral voters now had no concrete rationale for blaming riots on Modi.  

Today pro-Modi camp is massively big. It covers not only Hindu hardliners, but also liberals who buy-in Modi’s claims of administrative acumen. Modi has a huge following among the youth, possibly across religious lines. So far, he has maintained a fine balance in keeping his right-wing followers and liberal young fans under the same umbrella. However, this balancing-act may get more difficult if the hardliners push their agenda publicly. Educated youth may find it difficult to sit in the same camp with religious hardliners, who tend to impose their world-view on others. Nonetheless, it is difficult to say if the hardliners are destroying Modi’s potential vote bank of liberal youth across religious lines. In total, the fault lines within the pro-Modi camp is the only big threat which can shatter Modi’s plan. 

Now that there is a real possibility that Modi will be the next prime minister of India, most of the anti-Modi liberals and leftists are crying foul. One wonders what they were doing when their colleagues were presenting anti-Modi propaganda, and not complete factual picture, on the mainstream media for more than a decade. Did they not anticipate what the consequences would be if their story did not stand the test of time? Anti-Modi camp is shrinking and there is no justification provided for the presentation of unidimensional one-sided picture with selective facts for so long. Religious bigotry and rioting is a social malice across India. Why has there been a sustained campaign against only one politician? Unfortunately, some of the media houses and senior reporters have shamelessly changed sides to orient themselves with the winds of change.

In all this, genuine critics of Modi’s politics and governance have emerged as the biggest losers. Any criticism of Modi or his administration is labeled as a Congressi-propaganda by rapidly expanding pro-Modi camp. The political discourse breaks down right away as there is a predetermined position and no openness to consider the counter narrative.

Perhaps the complete truth of Godhra incident and the following riots will never come out. But, we can hope that the liberals and leftists in India will learn a lesson of sticking to the facts. They should not forget their own contribution to Modi’s rise. 

I welcome your comments...

India Election 2014: Bird’s Eye View

The political arena is heating up in India as the next general election is less than five months away. The performance of the current ruling coalition government, Congress led United Progressive Alliance (UPA), has been far below expectation. There is a wide-spread disappointment with the Congress party as reflected by numerous media-surveys and recent state-election results. The government has been struck with policy paralyses, indecisiveness, and numerous large scale corruption charges. There is a general sense that the Congress party has serious credibility issues and has lost touch with the people.  

            National politics in India primarily has three coalition groups: Congress led UPA; BJP led NDA (National Democratic Alliance); and the third front consisting of various regional parties unwilling to sit with either Congress or BJP. There can be a fourth front led by the left parties and other regional parties who find it difficult to sit with either of the first three coalition groups; but this group is unlikely to have significant number as per the current trend. The third front does not have a clear leader and projects a politically unstable formation. Also, the third front is highly unlikely to be in position to form a government without support from Congress or BJP. Therefore, given Congress’ dire state, theoretically, it should have been easy for the main opposition party, the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party), to claim for a clear mandate in the upcoming elections. All BJP had to do was to find someone who projected three traits: clear policy-driven governance, decisiveness, and non-corrupt image. However, BJP went ahead an extra-mile and projected Narendra Modi as its prime ministerial candidate who not only projected those three traits but also brought-in the baggage of 2002 communal riots. Though no court has found any direct role of Mr. Modi in the rioting, his opponents have targeted him for more than a decade now as he served as the chief minister during riots in which two-thirds of the victims were Muslims in a Hindu Majority state. In addition, BJP’s claim as a party of incorruptible has limited takers as many of its politicians have been charged with big corruption scandals. This created a political vacuum for a party with absolute incorruptible and secular credentials. AAP (Aam Aadmi Party or the common men party) is exactly addressing this gap.

AAP was formed last year by a group of anti-corruption activists led by Arvind Kejriwal. In its political debut, it triumphed and formed a government in Delhi. Though the party is in nascent stage, it hopes to make the most of the political vacuum discussed above. Both media and established political players hyperbolize and sensationalize AAP’s positives and negatives. In Delhi, Congress has given outside support to AAP; and is happy to shoot at BJP from AAP’s shoulder with election 2014 in sight. While it is a real possibility that AAP cuts down a few vital BJP seats making government formation an uphill task for Modi, it poses a greater threat for the Congress. Though AAP consists of individuals with varied world-views, its overall outlook seems center-left with elements of direct democracy governance-model.  Ideologically, there is little difference between AAP and Congress. Apart from its legacy, the Congress has little to offer what the AAP cannot. But AAP can offer non-corrupt, non-dynastic and non-nepotistic profile which the Congress cannot. AAP has already influenced the national political discourse. There is a clear swing in favor of anti-corruption and more transparency in governance at various levels. Many politicians across parties have adapted to austerity. Nonetheless, AAP has a long way to go before it actually challenges any of the established parties at the center. Most importantly, it has to develop party-cadre at grassroots across the nation, and demonstrate acumen of governance and ability to work with other parties. If it succeeds nationally, it will, at best, be able to challenge the BJP and substitute the Congress in the long run.

BJP is primarily banking on the Modi-wave. AAP has certainly made things difficult, but Modi’s political acuteness is still unparalleled. Modi’s words and actions set issues and agenda for national political debates. A fairly significant section of people, especially the youth, consists of those who do not identify with the camp of religious hardliners and who cannot tolerate misgovernance, inefficiency and rampant corruption. It seems that Modi had grasped this voter dilemma long back. For past few years, he has been trying hard to reach out. He talks about governance, economy, technology, environment and developmental issues. However, his biggest challenge is to control his right-wing followers from ruining his efforts to accommodate potential voters who buy his governance and “India First” credentials [Note: Modi defines secularism as India First. It is a rhetoric, but the basic idea is that the policies should be in interest of all Indians and not just certain sections of caste/religion]. It is difficult to say if Modi’s right-wing hardliners are destroying his potential vote bank of liberal youth across religious lines, rather than consolidating his Hindu vote-bank. Educated youth may find it difficult to sit in the same camp with religious hardliners, who tend to impose their world-view on others. It will be interesting to see how Modi performs this balancing-act in coming days.

Whether the Indians create BJP’s Modi-wave, AAP’s political revolution, or maintain Congress’ grand-old Nehru-Gandhi dynasty rule, only time will tell. We will have to wait, but not too long.