Not so bleak

BS OPINION

Sceptics will cite it as an example of the government's arm-twisting, but Unicef is distancing itself from the Unesco report which said last week that India will not achieve gender parity in education even by 2015 (a decade after the target).

The statement by Unicef's executive director to a local newspaper is an important admission of the progress India has made in education in the last two decades.

Indeed, based on NSS data, the economist Surjit Bhalla has shown how India's gender ratio (the number of girls enrolled in schools as a proportion of boys) has increased dramatically, from 0.70 in 1983 to 0.90 in 1999, putting India well on track to achieving the goal of gender parity by 2005.

Dr Bhalla's analysis is even more encouraging because it shows that the increased education of girls is not restricted to either the richer parts of society or the upper castes.

Sure, the education of girls is higher when it comes to the rich (the gender ratio is 0.99 for the richest 20 per cent of the population) but at 0.79 for the poorest 40 per cent, it's pretty good when you consider that this ratio was a pathetic 0.52 in 1983.

Take any section of society (scheduled castes and tribes, Muslims, whatever) and you find the same fact "" a lot more girls are getting educated, and the proportions of girls-to-boys for all groups are converging.

Also, contrary to popular belief that the government is driving everything, NSS data show the government's share in education spend is declining steadily, from 80 per cent in 1983 to 67 per cent in 1999.

For states like Kerala, the decline is steep, from 75 to 48, while for Madhya Pradesh it is from 84 per cent to 68 per cent. Indeed, while private expenditure on education has risen a massive 10.8 times in the last 16 years, that for the poor rose even faster, by 12.4 times.

Indeed, as Dr Bhalla's correlations show, the gender ratio is hardly affected by government spending, but shows a high correlation with private spending on education.

While it is clear that it is increased private spending on education that has led to more girls getting educated, the obvious question is: why? A look at wage levels relative to the levels of education, provides part of the answer.

NSS data shows the returns to be got in terms of higher wages are four times as much for secondary schooling "" that is, a secondary school graduate gets paid four times what one who has just studied at the primary level gets. A college graduate gets eight times what a simple primary-school graduate gets, and double what a secondary school person gets.

None of this, of course, can take away from the fact that India still has a long way to go. Apart from the quality of education being what it is "" one study in Delhi found 80 per cent of those who passed Class V from MCD schools could not read or write their names "" drop-out rates remain very high, at around 45 per cent even for primary schools.

But, that said, India has made progress in education. Why dismiss it summarily?