Educating Joshi

But Joshi must respond to this crisis in elementary education that is staring him in the face if he wants the nation to take his much-publicised Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan seriously. After the rhetoric he has employed to describe it — ‘‘the most valuable investment that we can make in India’s future is to ensure that every child gets education’’ — the least we can expect from him is to signal his serious commitment to a project that ambitiously sets to impart education for at least eight years to every child in the country by the year 2010.

As it is, this year’s Economic Survey had indicated that his government is not prepared to put its money where Joshi’s mouth is — that far from the 6 per cent of GDP promised years ago, expenditure now stands at some 3.66 per cent, and falling.

Of course, it would be most unfair to place the entire onus for the situation on Joshi’s shoulders. The state government which had rashly vowed, among other things, to transform the life of the Dalit child, is also guilty of an apathy so manifest that even schools in Mayawati’s birthplace — which should stand high in terms of emotional resonance for a leader who takes her birthdays so seriously — and, in fact, even her old school, remain empty shells where little or no learning takes place.

It’s not as if her political adversary, Mulayam Singh Yadav, fares much better, despite having set up two schools in the village of Saifayi. There is a lesson here for politicians of every persuasion. It takes more than tokenism to ensure literacy. If they are serious about education it’s time for them to go back to the blackboard.