Finally, secondary education is in limelight

Expenditure on health and education remain on marginal upward trend, both as a percentage of GDP and in absolute terms. While spend on education is at 3.23% of GDP, that on health is 1.45%. Clearly, the UPA’s promise of increasing public spend on education to 6% of GDP in five years is nowhere close to being realised. The reason for this could be that the share of these two key social indicators in the government’s total expenditure remains virtually constant over the last six years. Spending in the two human development indicators appear to be neutral to both boom and bust.

Nonetheless, there have been some interesting developments in these sectors. Long pending reforms in the education sector are being put in place. These include examination reform and a reforms in the higher education segment. However, it is too early to predict the outcome. While the main budgetary focus has been the elementary education programme and higher education. In a welcome break from practice, secondary education has finally come into focus.

The forgotten middle is now being addressed through the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan. This programme, based on the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan model, to universalise secondary education was finally put in place after many false starts. However, due to lack of Centre’s interest in this segment over the last 60 odd years, progress is expected to be slow.

In what appears to the paving the way for market determined tuition fees in technical education, while adhering to the agenda of inclusiveness. The government has put in place a scheme providing interest subsidy education loans for students from families earning less than Rs 4.5 lakh per year and pursuing professional courses. This likely to benefit 5 lakh students every year.

There is a ray of hope in the health sector. India’s infant mortality rate is expected to witness a significant drop in three year’s time with National Rural Health Mission taking roots. However, “poor upkeep and maintenance and high absenteeism of manpower in rural areas are the main problems in the health delivery system in the public sector.” The Survey states that the infant mortality rate will fall below 30 in every 1,000 by 2012, from 53 per 1,000 currently.

There has been a gradual fall in crude birth and death rates since the launch of the National Rural Health Mission in 2005. India has successfully brought down its crude birth rate (CBR) to 22.8 per 1,000 from 29.5 in 1991, thereby decreasing crude death rate (CDR) to 7.4 from 9.8 in 1,000 population in the same period.