Karnataka, Maharashtra villages beat cities in providing basic education

Despite being India's richest states, Maharashtra and Karnataka are failing to equip students with more than basic literacy

Students in Mumbai and Bangalore – two of India’s wealthiest cities with a combined GDP of $410 billion, larger than that of Norway — are falling behind in the core areas of maths and language, scoring notably worse than their counterparts in rural areas, according to a new nationwide test.

Despite being amongst India’s three richest states, Maharashtra and Karnataka (first and third, respectively, with Delhi second) are failing to equip students with more than basic literacy. Our analysis of the new data also shows that the Centre continues to underfund a key elementary education programme.