The Hindu Business Line : Giving a push to primary education

A century ago, Swami Vivekananda unerringly put his finger on the one sure-fire antidote to the slough of backwardness in which he found India: “Education, more education, still more education”! There has been no dearth of legislation and efforts to expand the facilities for education. The then Madras Province had been a pioneer in launching the mid-day meal scheme as an incentive for increasing school attendance and bringing down the drop-out rate. It is now h ailed a model for the rest of the world.

The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), Education for All, is again a marvellous concept, aimed at universalising elementary education for all children in the six-14 age group by 2010. This is as it should be, for elementary or primary education constitutes the only firm foundation and feeder for all other levels of education. The official write-up setting out the objectives and the modalities is comprehensive and leaves no aspect untouched.

Under SSA, the States are given generous financial assistance by the Centre. It was on a 85:15 sharing arrangement during the Ninth Plan, 75:25 during the Tenth Plan, and 50:50 thereafter between the Central and State Governments.

The outlays for SSA and District Primary Education Programme have been touching Rs 6,000 crore annually, and the releases of funds have also been prompt. In addition, local bodies are collecting education tax at specified rates under State laws.

The outlay-outcome dichotomy, made worse by deficient monitoring, so characteristic of governance in India, is also the bane of educational system. Let me illustrate this with reference to Tamil Nadu.

Madras Province was the first to enact an Elementary Education Act in 1920 empowering local bodies to levy an education tax up to a ceiling of 5 per cent of the property tax.

This morphed into the Tamil Nadu Compulsory Elementary Education Act in 1994. It took five years more for a Government order to issue laying down the pattern of expenditure out of the tax proceeds on maintenance of physical infrastructure, new capital works and so on. The G.O. strictly prohibited transfer of any part of the proceeds to the general account of the local bodies.

Mismanagement

The information collected by the Catalyst Trust, a voluntary organisation devoted to clean politics, good governance and citizen awareness, and the Citizens Centres that have come up under its aegis, gives rise to fears of diversion of crores of rupees collected as education tax. Here is a sampler: In 2006-07, the Chennai Corporation collected Rs 60.30 crore as education tax, of which Rs 30.11 crore has been coolly transferred to general account, and Rs 6.39 crore shown as unspent, in spite of many schools subsisting in woeful conditions. Apparently, only Rs 24 crore was spent on education.

Figures obtained through Right to Information Act for 15 local bodies also reveal a shocking state of affairs. In 2004-05 and 2005-06 respectively, Trichy collected Rs 2.92 crore and Rs 2.59 crore but spent only Rs 95.21 lakh and Rs 15.13 lakh on education. Erode’s collection in the two years was Rs 1.32 crore and Rs 1.62 crore, against which the expenditure was only Rs 6.25 lakh and Rs 9.66 lakh. The rest of the amounts were obviously misutilised. The story is the same for the other local bodies also.

(Mark you, the amount collected by itself may be no indication of the actual demand which may be far more but about which there is no ready information.)

Imagine the fate of the thousands of crores similarly collected in the country and the monumental injustice done to children denied their rights.

This matter deserves to be discussed at a national-level conference so as to plug the loopholes and channel the money along right directions.

B. S. RAGHAVAN