Amiya Kumar Bagchi

Towards democratization of education in India

Amiya Kumar Bagchi
Insitute of Development Studies, Kolkata


Democratization of education in India, or for that matter, any other country, is part of, and intimately connected with the democratization of society and polity. As far as we know, human beings are the only animals who can communicate by various means, the learning of one individual or one group to other individuals and other groups at a distance and over generations. From the beginning of class societies, which is almost always the beginning of development of means of learning, such as memorizing by rote, pictographs and alphabets, a band of persons, in most cases belonging to a priestly order monopolized the dominant means of learning, denying entry of the majority to the charmed circle of learners and savants. In Brahmanical Hinduism, the monopolization was sanctioned by scriptural interdicts. .
The struggle to make education universally accessible in India began in real earnest, although many great educators in colonial India had argued for the universalization of literacy and more broadly education at all levels. Even the universalization of literacy, which was attained in most countries of the North Atlantic seaboard and Japan before World War I, remains an unrealized dream in most major states of India. Only three states of South India and several states of North-east India are within a striking distance from that goal.
Socialist states and states in East Asia, which have undergone a social transformation, have shown that the alibi of low income of a country will not hold when it comes to democratizing the access to education. Countries such as China, Viet Nam and South Korea have not only attained higher rates of literacy than India, but starting from a much lower base, they have also been able to provide access to tertiary education of the relevant cohorts at more than double the rate of the corresponding degree of access in India.
In some official and right-wing circles in India, a shibboleth has taken hold that there is a necessary trade-off between public expenditures on primary education and higher education and that higher education being a ‘merit good’, it should be paid for by the intending students themselves. The central government , with all its protestations of promoting inclusive growth has refused to spend the 6 per cent of GDP on education that is accepted as the minimum public expenditure needed to attain the goal of universal literacy. Higher education needs to spread among the Dalits, so-called lower castes, most Adivasi groups and minority communities in most parts in order for them to have access to employment with dignity and to the public resources meant for them. Ongoing privatization of education in India is severely increasing inequality of access to and achievement in education in India and seriously denting the quality of education and thereby also denting the prospect of fast advances in science, technology and real income. Education is too important a matter to be left to the vagaries of mercenaries masquerading as educators.