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| What should be the govt role in education? | | |
Bharat Jhunjhunwala |
Some leading educationists believe that the role of government in the field of education should be minimal. Others believe that it should deepen its role in providing free and compulsory education to each citizen of the country. They say that education should also be common for rich and poor so that inequality in society is reduced.
There is merit in both arguments. In order to arrive at a possible solution we have to re-examine the role of the state afresh. Services that a person needs can be divided in three categories-individual, community and national.
Those services that an individual can obtain at his individual level such as clothes, food and education form `individual services'. Those services that can be made available at the level of the local community such as cleaning of the village pond or plantation of trees on the roads form `community services'.
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Those that can only be provided at the national level such as defence, currency, law and order form `national services'. The most efficient way to provide these services is to do this at the smallest possible level.
For example, the responsibility of cooking food is best given to the individual family. If this work is given to the national government a huge bureaucracy will be spawned and most likely individuals will not get food of their taste. Or, say, trees are to be planted on the village roads. Giving this responsibility to the national government will lead to the creation of an unnecessary bureaucracy. Taxes will be levied on the village people for tree plantation and remitted to New Delhi. Then plans will be made at the national level for tree plantation.
Experts at the national level will select species, which may not be suitable to the local conditions. Officers sitting at New Delhi will determine time and number of waterings. The same job could be done more efficiently if the local government were to impose taxes for the purpose and make arrangements for tree plantation according to local requirements.
The principle emerges that the responsibility of providing each facility should be delegated at the lowest possible level. It follows that food, games and clothes should be provided at the level of individual; cleaning of roads and ponds and tree plantation should be undertaken at the local level and services such as defence, currency and mobile telephony, which cannot be provided at local level, should alone be the responsibility of the national government.
Perhaps Tagore had such a model in mind when he wrote in 1904: "Today the thoughts of the Bengali people have been separated from the villages. Today the responsibility of providing water is that of the government. The burden of health provision is upon the government. For learning also one has to knock at the door of the government.
The tree that flowered itself today begs the sky for a rain of flowers with its naked branches. Knowledge was propagated without the assistance of the kingship. The king definitely honoured the learned. But the learned were not dependent upon him. If the king suspended all assistance, even then knowledge would continue to be propagated. The village tank did not dry up if the king became insolent."
This principle can be modified in special conditions.
Take land reforms. According to above principle the responsibility for this service should be delegated to the local government. Each village can fix its own level of ceiling and distribute excess land among the landless. But this does not happen because 'good' people who would stand up to the landlords at the local level and force them to give up their land are not available.
The absence of such `Constructive Workers' made it necessary for Nehru to intervene in an area that belonged to the local community. The rider is that such intervention by the higher authority in the domain of the lower authority may be made only when the local authority has explicitly failed to discharge its solemn duty.
The responsibility of provision of education should, therefore, rest mainly at the level of the individual or, at best, the community. People of the village can design a curriculum according to their needs, and appoint teachers etc. According to one estimate the Union and State governments together are spending about Rs 4,000 per student per year. This amount of tax is being imposed on the people.
It would be much more efficient if the local governments were given the responsibility to collect this tax and to provide the requisite facility. The people of village Lapodia of Jaipur appointed three teachers in this manner and provided better education at a fraction of the cost of the government school.
The role of the government must be restricted to examinations for providing certificates to those who seek to move out of their immediate areas. A variation would be for the State or National government to collect taxes for the purpose and then provide the money to the local community for managing the provision of services. Another variation would be to provide vouchers to the students to purchase education from an institution of their choice.
The basic principle should be to minimize the role of national government in a service that can be provided by at the community or individual level.
Another argument is that the G-8 countries have a state-funded school system and we would do well to emulate them. The question here is whether their system is the cause of their higher level of income; or is it the result of higher levels of income? England, for example, developed its welfare state on the strength of monies extracted from colonies like India.
Their school system is inefficient but surviving because of the huge inflow of income from the developing countries through stratagems like TRIPS agreement of the WTO. We would be able to adopt that model only if there was another country that we could exploit like England exploited India. We should chart our own course instead of following such false leads.
Another argument is that the national government should intervene in the provision of certain merit services that have a large impact on the welfare of others even though technically it can be provided at the level of individual. Consider treatment of tuberculosis. This service is best provided at the level of the individual. The patient can consult a doctor and buy the medicines. But if an individual fails to have him treated then he infects others.
Therefore, the government has a responsibility to provide treatment to him. This argument does not cut much ice. As Tagore said, such problems must be managed by invigorating the traditions of self-management of the community. Instead of giving more power to the state, effort must be made to create a culture that encourages people to get them treated.
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