Education, health in Bihar: Success and the lack of it

THE STATE OF BIHAR: PART IV

Bihar's Plan size for the current year is Rs 10,200 crore. But Chief Minister Nitish Kumar is working to get it increased by Rs 1,000 crore immediately "" for, in the two months after the state budget was passed, spending has already crossed targets.

The increase in expenditure is mainly under two heads: Education and health; and roads.

Talking to Business Standard, Kumar acknowledged that there had been complaints from the education sector. The recruitment of 2,35,000 teachers was one of the first announcements made by his government when it came to power 18 months ago.

Since then, more than 100,000 teachers have been appointed, but accompanied by all the usual allegations: that the appointing authorities, the Panchayat Mukhias, had ignored applications, had appointed men of their choice for a fee, and that there was no physical infrastructure in the schools.

Kumar agreed that complaints of lapses in appointments had been made, but said this was because of a systemic loophole.

"When we gave the mukhias registers in which all the applications were to be listed, we did not certify the registers. So when we started recruitment, he would only enter the names that suited him and tore up the rest of applications he received. Now, we are giving them certified registers. All applications have to be entered in this book and the entire panchayat has to endorse the choice," he said, adding that this complaint would not be heard in the next phase of recruitment.

For a teacher in a panchayat school, the stakes are high. He is usually a local resident, so it is employment for a lifetime. Since the panchayat monitors his attendance, absenteeism is a non-option. And as more than 50 per cent of the panchayats are headed by women, a well-run school in the village is the highest priority.

As part of this year's budget, the physical infrastructure for education is being expanded as well. Over the next three years, all primary schools in the state will have at least six rooms, two toilets, a boundary wall and a teacher-student ratio of 1:40. The budget has a special grant of Rs 5,000 for excursions for children, because most children have never been out of their village, Finance Minister Sushil Modi says.

Spending on health has also gone up and having outsourced pathological services, the state government is now providing the major hospitals with equipment that will work, though reports say many doctors don't know how to use the equipment. Modi says the scheme that has worked best is free medicines.

However, Bihar is possibly the only state in India where the state government doctors have struck work to demand a Voluntary Retirement Scheme. Their demand is unlikely to be heeded, the state government says.