One of the greatest features of the neo-liberal world order since the 1970s has been a rise in inequality. The top 1% has gotten exceedingly wealthier, the next 9% has gotten significantly wealthier, whereas the remaining 90% has more or less remained stagnant if we take into account inflation. The poverty line has not kept pace with inflation. Figures suggesting that the percentage of people below the poverty line has shrunk, have failed to keep in touch with the reality we see around us.
Basic literacy levels and the percentage of people acquiring increasing levels of education have increased. Yet our practical experience, especially in India, of the vast levels of illiteracy we see around us in the weakest sections of society convince us that the token school education that they may or may not have received has long since receded into oblivion owing to lack of practice and lack of a sustained years-long educational experience during their formative years.
The literacy rate was almost 73% in the 2011 census, growing about 1% every year since 1971. Such a growth rate would take the literacy rate close to 100% in roughly 2041 irrespective of whether censuses take place then or not. However, these figures need to be taken as most other figures—telling a story which we may or may not choose to believe in. Is the literacy rate around us 85% in 2023? Is that what our practical experience tells us? I would argue not, living though as I am in Kolkata. The 2011 census revealed that out of a population of 42 lakh in Kolkata above the age of 6, the number of illiterate people was roughly 23 thousand, or 0.5%. This does not bear resemblance to my personal experience of having lived in Kolkata for almost four decades.
Education is often seen as the only way to break free from the cycle of poverty. It is seen as a panacea for all evils—poverty, child marriage, crime, etc. Teachers in higher education in India regularly bemoan the unfitness of their pupils for higher education given their lack of basic language skills, numerical skills and socio-historical awareness skills. The fault is shifted to school education. Statistics reveal that poor student-teacher ratio, lack of basic amenities such as a roof in the classroom, gender-specific toilets in the school building, access to clean drinking water, electricity in the classroom—these affect a large number of public schools in India. Private education is expensive and better, though not always. Like any generalisation, this too can be countered by the numerous examples of high-performing public schools across India. However, those are exceptions rather than the norm. Guardians who can afford, tend to admit their wards in private schools unless there are high-performing public schools in their vicinity. Statistics will tell us that it is a trend that began with the rise of neo-liberalism and the shift away from thinking of education as public entitlement. The neo-liberal philosophy would argue that the public is entitled to nothing. Those who survive on government dole better make do with what they are provided. If they complain, they ought to earn more and spend extra to buy private services and commodities from the open market. You get what you pay for.
The problem with this philosophy is a large section of the people has very little disposable income. Education as a commodity has to vie with all the other commodities on offer. Given the low amount of disposable income, most people prefer to send their wards to public schools if there is one nearby which has any modicum of acceptability. However, with most public schools continuing to languish in abysmal conditions, people are often forced to borrow to send their schools to a private school in the hope of acquiring escape velocity and breaking free from the shackles of their cycle of poverty.
A lot of hope is pinned on education. Yet when these students enter a school, they are subject to similar forces that they face at home—pressures of poverty, caste, gender, sexual orientation, location, etc. The lottery of life is often decided in our very early years. The dice are loaded from the start. The idea of justice tells us that it should not be so. We should not be victims of the conditions of our birth. Yet, it often is so. Stories of individuals surmounting the odds stacked against them are what inspire us. However, we must always remember that they are exceptional individuals. The trajectory is not common. Such individuals and their stories find mention in the media and are often given prizes for the fact that they have managed to traverse a larger distance in the trajectory of growth than most of us.
Trying to surmount the challenges of poverty through education is tough. Also, it is a conundrum. For the majority of the school going population, does education exhibit the changing fortunes at home of the pupils or does a better-than-average educational process change the fortunes at home for the individual? In other words, those who succeed in getting out of the poverty trap—do they do so because of what they learnt at school or because their family’s income increased?
The media often report about individuals who manage to break free from the poverty trap through disreputable means. All criminals are not born poor. Some of them were even born with proverbial silver spoons in their mouths. However, a majority of people outside the top 10% who resort to financial crime have low educational skills irrespective of whatever formal certificates they possess. Education failed them. Moreover, they failed themselves in living the ethical life.
What is the solution? Throwing money at the problem will not make it go away. The money, also importantly, is never enough to throw around. Should one invest more in higher education and hope the teachers beginning from nursery level that the higher education system turns out are better educated and hence better educators? It should be mentioned here than anganwadi workers do not require to pass through the portals of higher education and they are often among the first teachers of a large section of Indian children. It is neither necessary nor desirable to increase the minimum eligibility criteria for nursery level educators.
The other target area of investment can be the nursery, primary and secondary levels of the school education system. Given that it is the education in these early years, that the rest of the education trajectory is often formed, it is crucial to invest in it if one believes in education being the cure to all evils. The first national education commission’s 1966 report envisaged a 4% of GDP spending by the government on education. It has been almost 60 years since that report but the percentage of GDP spending by the government on education has been a bit more than 2.5%. The Scandinavian countries (where inequality is low, poverty is low and educational standards are high) spend 7-8%; Brazil 6%; Australia, the USA and Mexico around 5%; the UK, China and Russia around 4%. Underinvestment by the government in education reduces the total money that can be spent on education by the government be it at the school level or in higher education. It is unfair to compare India to the Scandinavian countries because of vast differences in their nature. However, if one thinks of Brazil, China and Russia (the BRICS grouping) as large countries with similar levels of development as India (though there are immense differences among these countries at all levels), then the Indian government’s spending on education is still low.
If the Indian government reduces its spending in other fields and increases it in education and achieves that 4% of GDP mark, will it make India a better country? The answer to this question cannot be predicted as it has never been done. However, just increasing the spending will not reduce inequality. That requires similarly increasing the spending on health and public housing and creating enough job opportunities all the while ensuring a stability of population and an ability to prevent deterioration of the natural environment and climate—in sum, the main goals of any government. Performing the main development goals of a government with an eye to reducing inequality requires minute changes which cannot be reduced by education alone.
Education alone can neither reduce poverty nor inequality. Rather the current status of education in India further exacerbates inequality by perpetuating the systems that are already in place. The corporate world regularly bemoans that Indian graduates are mostly unemployable. The experience is borne out by most educators as well except those in elite institutions. Increasing the amount of vocational courses in secondary and higher secondary schools is unlikely to solve the problem if the other problems of school education remain. If a large number of students are not benefitting from general education in schools, they are unlikely to benefit if the type of instruction is changed to vocational practical skills.
In order to reduce inequality, one should not look perhaps towards schools but rather to government policy as a whole.
Critics may argue that inequality is the basis of life. Two siblings going to the same school are unlikely to live the rest of their lives on an equal footing. They may argue that the idea of liberty, equality and fraternity is flawed. Fraternity left out the women; equality is impossible to achieve and often undesirable if one thinks of positive discrimination in order to aid the weak; and one person’s liberty is another person’s captivity. Yet the point remains that global income inequality that had decreased in the 1950s and 60s, started increasing again since the 1970s.
Improving school education is likely to bring the intangible benefits of education—knowledge, awareness about the world, better language and numerical skills. Beyond that, there is perhaps little else that improving school education can achieve on its own.
