India Banao!

My interest in James Tooley’s book, ‘Beautiful Tree’ was triggered by a conversation that good friend Narayan Ramachandran had with me on January 4th. Sitting on the stairs of my apartment complex in Raja Annamalaipuram in Chennai and enjoying the stiff sea-breeze, I listened to him recommend this book strongly. Honestly, that was the first time I heard about the book.

I made one attempt to buy the book in Chennai on that day but could not succeed. Then, I saw a review of the book by Gurcharan Das on his blog on Dec. 21, 2009. You have to scroll down on the blog to locate this post. It does not have an independent URL by itself. He had written that the ‘Right to Education’ Act gives the government three years to close all unrecognized private schools.

I quoted him in my MINT column and some one took exception with me for doing so. He chastised me for having dared to write something without either having read the book or the ‘Right to Education’ legislation. He was right but, to be fair to myself, I did not claim that I had done so. I had explicitly stated that my source was Mr. Gurcharan Das’ blog.

In subsequent interactions with the offended reader, I found out that he was disappointed with my criticism of the government when the ‘Right to Education’ Act does provide for vouchers for poor people to educate their children. He said that the government could not provide vouchers to be used in all private schools since some schools could come up just to profit from vouchers!

Now, I do not know if the vouchers would fully pay for the cost of tuition. If not, then unscrupulous private schools would face scrutiny of fee-paying parents. Hence, their unscrupulous behaviour cannot sustain for long. Let us assume that the vouchers compensate fully the cost of education. The incentive for parents to do thorough ‘due diligence’ goes down. That would be the narrative. But, I doubt if it is such a big problem. If children are not happy with what they learn and if teachers harass them or if they do not show up, they would tell their parents. When it comes to their children’s education, parents would take action, even if they were not paying for it, fully.

So, I agree with Gurcharan Das that there was no need for the government to engage in an exercise of ‘recognition’ vs. ‘non-recognition’ of private schools. It has left open the door for coercion, extortion and bribe. Perhaps, that was intended?

This is the problem with many do-gooders. They want to devise a system that would ensure that focuses on the criminals. In the process, they fail to reckon with the costs imposed on those who comply. When governments create legislation and frame rules that seek to ensure no loopholes that criminals could take advantage of, they make economic activity needlessly strenuous and even impossible for all others.

The Annual State of Education Report (ASER) prepared by the NGO, ‘Pratham’ has now become essential reading for those interested in educating Indians. Wilima Wadhwa who is the director of the ASER Centre for Pratham wrote an Op.-Ed. in MINT belittling their own findings that favoured private sector schools in imparting education. The article ends with an implicit suggestion that the government is wrong to endorse private schools. That is unfortunate.

Roughly, a week later, MINT wrote an editorial distancing itself, in a way, from the thrust of Ms. Wadhwa’s article:

Why are poor people sacrificing a free lunch to spend a large chunk of their income? Are they too gullible to know that private schools aren’t better? Their primary complaint is that government teachers can’t be held accountable—so they’re voting with their feet. And in the hope of offering their children this oasis in an otherwise bleak future, they’re offering India a solid referendum on who is better at educating the youth.

The MINT editorial refers to this piece by James Tooley in Times of India. He elegantly refutes the implicit message in Ms. Wadhwa’s Op-Ed. in MINT:

In other words, the revolution revealed by Pratham taking place in rural India today features private schools serving a significant minority of children, outperforming government schools, at a fraction of the cost. Now, surely that’s something we should be celebrating?

Thus, without causing offence, he points out the unfortunate re-interpretation by Pratham of its own ASER.

It is clear that empirical questions are being addressed or being sought to be addressed on an ideological plane, as has been the case always in India. One hopes that the reformist Minister Mr. Sibal is not swayed by hackneyed arguments and that he supports the consumers in making their own choice of schools.

Separately, I managed to catch up with James Tooley’s three-part article in ‘The Globalist’ on his serendipitous discovery of Indian private schools and how that transformed his lives. You can read them here, here and here.

It is a MUST READ for all of us who see ourselves as social entrepreneurs, social change-agents or simply human beings who are trying to find their calling. He did so because he was restless with what he was doing and he persevered. That is the message:

But in the evenings, sifting and chaffing with street children outside these very same hotels, I wondered what effect any of my work could have on the poor, whose desperate needs I saw all around me. I didn’t just want my work to be a defence of privilege. The middle-class Indians, I felt, were wealthy already.

…. but as I returned to my room and lay on the 500-thread-count Egyptian-cotton sheets, my discomfort with the program was forced to compete with a mounting sense of self-criticism.

Left with some free time, I decided to take an autorickshaw — the three-wheeled taxis ubiquitous in India — from my posh hotel in Banjara Hills to the Charminar, the triumphal arch built at the centre of Muhammad Quli Shah’s city in 1591.

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