India has very low literacy rate,
and that is responsible for most of our social issues. With explosion of
population, we have millions of uneducated people who can easily be
manipulated. This is the reason we still see racial or religious issues taking
front row in any election. Most of the people vote for caste and religion
rather that candidate’s ability or development agenda. It’s not that they don’t
want to, but due to lack of education or proper education, they just can’t
judge the candidates based on merit. Similarly, honor killing, rape, dowry and
all such social evils are also indirectly related to our education system. If
you educate people from their childhood, and provide proper guidance abut such
social evils, you should be able to minimize such problems, if not eradicate
it.
Our budget allocates less than 4%
to Education sector. This is very less money to even take care of primary
education in our vast country. Then we already have so many grants going out to
the existing institutions from this money, reducing it further. We do need more
money to be allocated to Education Sector, but till this is not happening, we
have to get things done in this limited budget.
Private sector schools are only
targeting Tier A and B cities. They are not yet going to smaller towns.
Villages are completely ruled out in their expansion map. Even in major cities,
we still have less number of schools than it is required.
So, we have a major problem in
hand, and our government does not have enough resources to take care of this
problem. What should we do?
The problem
Let’s understand the problem
first. What are the reasons for lack of education in majority of places in our
country?
- Lack
of schools in various parts of country.
- Lack
of good teachers in various schools, including Government Schools.
- High
fee structure in good / private schools
- High
cost of maintaining school
- Cost
of books, notebook etc for low income families.
The solution should be cost
effective and scalable. It should be cheap enough to accommodate the low
budgetary allocation, and scalable enough to implement it from one classroom to
every classroom in country. In fact, it should be scalable enough to go beyond
the classroom, as we do not have schools in many part of our country.
