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Education a long way to travel

Posted by : Vishwajeet Singh on | Feb 04,2013

I do remember a Glass of milk served at morning School to children for their Health. When I was in Municipal School in my tender age. Through this piece i substantiate the point of education along with health which could be mandatory for sustainance.


 As we know Government of India’s biggest  flagship program in Education in which it aims to address these failures is the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). Launched in 2001, the programme aims to universalize elementary education (6-14 yrs of age) across the country by the year 2010. The National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) is the flagship program in the Health sector launched in 2005, NRHM aims to address the failures in health service delivery by carrying out “necessary architectural correction in the basic health care delivery system”. Both of these schemes were taken up in the context of decentralization of the service delivery, with the core strategy being empowerment of local governments and community based organizations to manage, control and ensure accountability in public health and education services.


You will be surprised with a whopping figure between 2003-04 and 2006-07, the Central Government’s annual budgetary allocations for Education increased by nearly 50% from Rs. 89732 crore to Rs. 134274 crore. Alas, Despite this,the state of school education in India continues to remain poor. Although the enrollment rates have gone up, still the learning levels at schools continue to remain very low.  I could not dare to go beyond...Most Newspaper published the estimates that 44% children in Std 5 cannot read a Std 2 text, whereas close to 40% of children in Standard 1 cannot recognize alphabets. 35.4% children in standard 2 cannot recognize numbers beyond 10. The fact that schools continue to receive funding and teachers access regular salaries despite this extremely poor performance is a clear indication the inability of the state and citizens to monitor performance and ensure enforceability on service providers. 


 One of the most serious problem with schooling today is the rampant absenteeism (Universal problem be it in Melghat or hilly region) among teachers: a national survey involving unannounced visits to measure teacher attendance revealed that 24% of teachers in India simply did not show up at school during class hours. Health tells a similar story. Central planned allocation to on the Ministryof Health and Family Welfare since it was launched in 2005 has increased from 7677 crore to13180 crore in 2008-09. This represents an increase of 79.8% percent in the last four years. And yet there is a growing recognition that the system of public delivery of health services in India is in crisis. High absenteeism by doctors and health care staff, low quality in clinical care, low satisfaction levels, and rampant corruption are prevalent. 


A study by Dasand Hammer(Das, Jishnu & Hammer, Jeffrey, 2007. "Money for nothing: The dire straits of medical practice in Delhi,India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 1-36, May 2007) on the quality of medical care in Delhi found that the competence levels of a public sector MBBS doctor in a PHC (Primary Health Center) were so poor that there was as high as a 50:50 chance of the doctor recommending a seriously harmful therapy. Absenteeism rates among primary health care workers in India are the highest in the world at 40%, with Bihar topping the list at 60% (World Bank’s Global Monitoring Report 2008).... Similar thing are around....

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