FE@CAMPUS MASTERMIND: Response by Anshul Meena to question for March 04-10

P Chidambaram lived up to his word on Thursday when he announced the union budget 2013. The education sector received a 17 per cent jump with an allocation Rs 65,867 crores (which is around 5-6% of GDP) for 2013-14 fiscal. It was very heartening to see that government has realized the importance of improving the education sector. If we look at the present scenario,only knowledge based countries are leading. We need innovation centre and development of science and technology. A small country like Israel invests 10 percent of GDP on education. The importance of education is not only for economic and industrial advancement but also for well-being of the society as a whole. As Sarva Siksha Abhiyan (SSA) and the RTE are firmly in place,and we need sufficient funds to achieve the objectives. It is good to see that they have given importance to primary education but at the same time we need money to invest in Research institutes. No University in India has an innovation centre and without proper funding we cannot achieve anything.

Every year government shows some very promising statistics but India’s children show little progress. The 2011 ASER stated that only 48.2% of students in the fifth grade can read at the second grade level. The number of students completing their primary education with inadequate numeracy and literacy skills is startling. So proper implementation is very much required. There is a need for a PPP model in the sector not just to execute the delivery but also deploy modern technology infrastructure across schools enabling rapid proliferation of world-class education. As by 2020 India will have the largest population of youth in the world which needs to be educated for the growth of the country.

Anshul Meena

anshul.m14@fms.edu

FMS Delhi (2012-14)