Primary challenges

The report is welcome, therefore, not only for the gravity of the problem it addresses, but also for the earnestness of its response. What is proposed for the poor is not a track-2 system, with para-teachers and alternative schools, where the main motivator of policy is reducing educational costs in the name of reaching out, but a regular school system with adequate infrastructure, teachers, and incentives.

There can hardly be any disagreement with the urgency of taking

these giant leaps. But how are these to be achieved?

The report puts forth a long-term plan to be achieved in 9 years, but given the political contingencies on which the realisation of such plans depend, it might be more realistic to rely on a picture of what the short-term deliverables are. Given that the Nitish Kumar government has about 4 years left to go, what is that it can certainly achieve?

The report puts forward a 8216;daunting8217; resource requirement of Rs 1,54,993.9 crore over the 9-year period, without giving a clue about where the resources are going to come from. It would have been realistic if the commission had appraised us as to what proportion of this massive resource need the state would mobilise out of its own resources, and how much of it would it ask from central departments, financial institutions and the urban and rural community. On the basis of Bihar8217;s actual expenditure on elementary education in 1999-00 in nominal terms, and the commission8217;s proposed average annual expenditure of 17,221.5 crore, the state needs to enhance its elementary education expenditure at about 20 per cent per annum. How is such a growth rate possible, given that in the previous decade elementary education expenditure grew at only about 14 per cent in nominal terms?

A review of education finances tells us that the state has been spending a high proportion of its Gross State Domestic Product on education 8212; between 4-5 per cent in the nineties. The problem has been the small size of the state8217;s GSDP, and the even poorer per capita availability of resources in view of the large population. Bihar had the lowest per capita allocation of educational resources barring UP in 1999/00. In real terms, the per capita allocation declined over the decade of the nineties.

Plan expenditure on education also declined in real terms over the decade and the share of plan educational expenditure in total education expenditure fluctuated in the low range of anywhere between 7 to 1 per cent. This was the lowest among the major Indian states.

Enhanced central aid, on which the report seems to mainly rely, is only part of the success story of states8217; efforts. Many educationally backward states 8212; like Assam and Orissa 8212; have made consistent and quiet efforts to change their pattern of educational spending, bringing down the share of non-plan expenses, close to 65 per cent at the end of the nineties. Bihar8217;s non-plan education expenditure ranges between 90-99 per cent in many years of the decade.

What lessons can Bihar learn from these states? Why is it that flexible central funds provided through BEP and DPEP were unable to make a change in Bihar8217;s system of education? On what grounds do we assume that enhanced central funding now in the name of a common school system will deliver the goods?

The report8217;s ideas on teacher recruitments need special mention, as the state takes on the daunting task of filling up over 2 lakh vacancies. The proposal is not for contract appointment of para-teachers, but teachers with assured tenures, with salaries that are 8216;adequate8217;, in effect lesser than the current pay-scales of teachers. Seen together with the current recruitment policies of the state of placing the onus of recruitments on panchayat bodies, it is certain that a strategic headway has been made. There are, however, complaints against mukhiyas 8212; deliberately misplacing applications of candidates, leaving the latter with no avenue of grievance redressal, asking for a cut from salaries. Shifting the onus onto panchayats, without developing adequate standards for teacher recruitment, and a check on their malpractices, will end up as just another way of distributing political largesse.

Recent field visits to Gaya and Punea continue to frame a dismal picture. In Purnea, in Kasba Block, no mid-day meal has been served in many schools for months. In some schools the grain is cooked into a gruel with small pieces of stone still left in the grain. In Gaya, in Belaganj Block, children of upper castes, especially girls, do not eat their meals along with the rest of the children. Given the feudal social ethos, and lack of community involvement, implementing a larger scale mid-day meal programme may be an uphill task.

But then, the report is only one instrument for changing the school system. The wider task of social reconstruction belongs to another domain.

The writer is a research scholar at the London School of Economics and Political Science, working on educational reforms in Andhra Pradesh and Bihar. She teaches at Gargi College, Delhi University