Why India Needs an Alternative Development Policy Frame?

Beyond GDP

Photo Credit: OSHO NEWS

As Indian economic policy experiments have passed through the phases of Nationalisation to liberalisation to inclusion across the timeline of more than sixty years since independence, the citizens of the country have shared the fruits and have bore the brunt in various ways. India has made enormous economic progress with conventional indicator like Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but has failed to improve the quality of life en mass. Such progress has created enclaves of opportunities but neglected the masses. Inequality and its complex proliferation is the foremost challenge in India now, which constantly provokes the idea of an alternative development instrument.

 GDP the most widely followed metric assesses the performance of an economy, simply by measuring the market value of all final goods and services produced within a country in a given period. It takes into account the growth of commercial and economic activities but cannot capture the pertinent issues of assessing overall well-being of a country. Attempts are therefore increasingly being made across the world to look beyond GDP for an alternative measure to assess the well-being of a nation through a multi-dimensional approach like creating access to resources; reducing hunger, poverty and inequality, and imbibing distributive justice. These can change the lives of millions by ensuring opportunities, economic freedom and social harmony.

 Alternative Approaches

Reducing inequalities and subsequent conflicts amongst people is one of the major challenges in the world today. Way back in 1972, the small Asian nation, Bhutan had introduced Gross National Happiness (GNH), an alternative to GDP with four pillars of good governance, sustainable socio-economic development, cultural preservation and environmental conservation. In 1990, another alternative to GDP that is Human Development Index (HDI) was pioneered by two Asian thinkers Mahbu bul Haq and Amartya Sen, which incorporates health and education along with income. In the year 2008, when French president Nicholas Sarzoky looked for next alternative to GDP, a revolutionary report was brought out with emphasis on social progress.The report emphasizes on quality of life and sustainability along with classical GDP. In the following year in 2009 another study made by a group of scholars from World Bank on ‘Measuring Inequality of Opportunity in Latin America and Caribbean’, emphasises Human Opportunity Index to measure inequality in opportunities in basic services. The idea was inspired by the social welfare function proposed by Sen in 1976 and holds that in development process, society needs an equitable supply of basic opportunities and people need access to these opportunities, with a target of universalism. Sen’s powerful idea of Capability Approach in 1980s also has widened the scope of development theory with emphasis on quality of life and removing the obstacles to achieve more freedom to choose.

 

To evolve development policies with such ideas of progressive economy with centrality on human wellbeing, a country needs fair political democracy, which was realized by the visionaries of newly born India and was reflected in the constitution of India in 1950 emphasising the three core values of justice, freedom and equality for citizens in India. Democracy, which is synonymous with individual sovereignty and equality, has a causal relationship with progressive economic development. It is being empirically tested that democratic institutes have net positive effect on progressive economic development, the later is perceived as a process of transition for a better living taking place along a continuum of ever-changing ideas and ethos in the life of a nation or society.But in many practicing democracy like India, economic elites mostly manage to retain disproportionate influence, and preserve the profit-seeking anti-poor biases and distort the idea of democracy. This denies social justice, tends to deprive many and excludes the voices of the marginalized. This is primarily because the practicing development policiesis mostly a conventional post war western idea and premised on rational individual, capital formation and inequality. Such economic development which necessarily influences political discourse tends to create chaos and denies egalitarian frame, and thus democracy tends to function non-optimally. To attend a causal relationship between economic development and democracy, the existing development model needs a revisit incorporating voice, representation and rights.

Way Forward

With the recent change in political regime in 16^thLokSabha election, India is expected to see some major policy shifts towards stronger market-oriented and liberal frame to push GDP growth rates. This may boost the economy, making the rich richer, but also has probability of increasing marginalization of small voiceless communities. The erstwhile govt. has made tremendous attempt to protect many such communities through path-breaking right based policies, as rights are the channels of resistance. To ensure long term sustainable development, such emphasis on policies with an institutional frame is crucial, which alone can bring social change in India. The policy instruments of new political representation needs to continue to evolve within such inclusive frame, which alone can ensure redistribution, enhance social justice and enable economic autonomy and well-being of every section of the society. Political democracy therefore needs to create space through debates and dialogues for alternative development policy initiatives, which can make ways for every individual to live with dignity and freedom, and can encounter divides and disparities in the society.

 

Rakhee Bhattacharya

 

 

Nation Builders' thoughts on Skilling Poor People

Photo Source : UNDP

Advancing civilization through the democratic form of governance system brings formidable social changes by the people, of the people and for the people to become more civilized in terms of achieving peace, progress and prosperity in the society. One of the key elements which play vital role to bring social changes in poor people’s life- quite drastically- is the skills acquired to do things which earn anything and everything that they want. In other words, skilling has become an important aspect of human capital building in the last decade. India has huge potential for becoming a world of human capital through skill building.

Towards the goal of achieving social changes mainly by skilling poor people has been a major thrust of many of our nation builders in India especially from Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi to Rajiv Gandhi, and others. Indeed, all of them had very strong perspective thoughts on skilling poor people that play greater differences in their life in society. An attempt has been made in this article to bring the thoughts of the two great sons of India whose visions are eternal in some ways at least in skilling people.

The conventional wisdom was that if anyone is able to understand, speak and write about something simple form in a language becomes literate in society. But the twenty-first century wisdom of literate or skilled human resource has become quite different as the world of science and technology has changed steadily. What is quite interesting is that the nation builders who had views on skilling poor people which are of the twenty-first century perspective.

The father of the nation, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi had expressed number of times through his perspective writings about the importance of skilling poor people for highly productive works in employment. Gandhi said that “Literacy is not the end of education nor even the beginning. It is only one of the means whereby man and woman can be educated. Literacy in itself is no education. I would therefore begin the child’s education by teaching it a useful handicraft and enabling it to pro- duce from the moment it begins its training (1948).”

With regard to the skilling of villagers, Gandhi said, “Without the basic training the villagers are being starved for education (Harijan, 28-4-1946)”. He further said that we need to “develop such a high degree of skill that articles prepared by them should command a ready market outside. When our villages are fully developed there will be no dearth in them of men with a high degree of skill and artistic talent. There will be village poets, village artists, village architects, linguists and research workers (Harijan, 10-11-1946)”.

In fact, Gandhi’s thoughts on skilling people were universal and much beyond the improving of villages. He said that “A mason can build a village house, but it requires an engineer to plan and build a big building or a big dam. Much more talent, knowledge, application and research are required to improve the village implements than to build a bridge on the Ganga. When we are able to attract people of this type by our renunciation and methodical research, we will be able to make rapid far-reaching progress, not till then (Khadi Jagat, 25-7-1941)”.

Similarly, Rajiv Gandhi was one of early Indian politicians to talk about the fruits of India’s demographic dividend from the perspective of the twenty-first century. Indeed, he foresaw the imperatives of skilling poor and young people and institutionalizing the training system. Speaking in 1988, he said, "we are one of the world's oldest civilizations and one of the youngest nations. Our country's demographic profile has undergone a major revolution. Now, there is a preponderance of youth. This is a decisive factor in determining our nation's destiny."  He also quite vividly envisaged that “Training and education do not end when you leave college. It is a continuing process. You keep learning as you keep working.”

Currently India is striving for building up of mass manufacturing hubs in the country with the focus of establishing large infrastructure development to support economic activities of production and services. It is very much pertinent to remember what Rajiv Gandhi said two decades ago about skilling people for the revolution of information and communication technology.

He had said that “To get electronics really moving in India, we have to go down to the other end of the chain. We are mostly talking about manufacturing and selling. We have to go to the other end and produce enough people who will be able to deal with the equipment that you are about to produce, which means a turn-around in our education system. We need many more institutes such as the ITIs, but oriented and run in a much more professional manner, oriented towards more modern fields of technology. We need to really develop a mentality in our people of using modem methods.”

In fact, during the last ten years (2004-2014) the UPA government’s initiatives on skill development were actually to implement the Rajiv’s visions of modernizing the Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) into a Centre’s of Excellences. There was 1,896 government ITIs in the country when the UPA took over in 2004-05. Two schemes (upgradation of 100 government ITIs through Domestic Funding and upgradation of 400 government ITIs with World Bank Funding) were implemented to upgrade the existing government ITIs into Centre’s of Excellences. Remaining 1,396 government ITIs were undertaken part of the scheme called Upgradation of 1,396 government ITIs into Public Private Partnership Mode for converting them into CoEs. All of them were achieved by 2014 with greater improvements in the skilling systems in the country.

References

1.      Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 80: Dec 28, 1940 - Aug 17, 1941

2.      Rajiv Gandhi’s Speech on “Electronics for Progress”,

http://www.inc.in/resources/speeches/336-Electronics-for-Progress

3.      Foundation Day Lecture by the President of India, Smt. Pratibha Devisingh Patil at the Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development, Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, 01-September-2007 http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx

4.      Rajiv Gandhi’s Speech on Revamping the Educational System

http://www.inc.in/resources/speeches/345-Revamping-the-Educational-System

B.Chandrasekaran

Conditional Cash Transfer for Empowerment of Girl Child in Haryana

Haryana has been witnessing a steady decline in the sex ratio over the past three decades. Matters worsened with Haryana showing the lowest child sex ratio (0-6 years) in India (Census 2011). However, the 2011 Census data shows that in spite of worst sex ratio, Haryana has improved its child sex ratio in the last decade by 15 points from 819 girls per 1000 boys in 2001 to 834 girls per 1000 boys in 2011. In the last two decades, Haryana has initiated and implemented several policies to increase the value of girl child among communities and to change community’s attitude towards girl child.  One of the strategies in this line adopted by the Haryana state has been to provide financial incentive to girl child to ensure birth and development of girl child.

 

Haryana was the first to initiate a conditional cash transfer scheme for the girl child. This scheme was called Apani Beti Apna Dhan (ABAD) in 1994, which operated between 1994-1998, aimed to enhance the value of girls. Under this scheme poor households and disadvantaged caste groups, were offered a saving bond of Rs.2500 in the name of the daughter which was redeemable at a maturity value of Rs.25,000 when the girl turned 18, provided the girl was not married. Impact evaluations study of the scheme by Sinha and Yoong (2010) using NFHS data of three rounds found that the scheme had positive implications on girls’ birth and survival. However, the scheme had inconclusive effects on mothers’ preferences for a girl child. The first batch of ABAD beneficiary will turn 18 in 2014 and will be able to cash in their bond. Another evaluation of the scheme by Nanda et. al (2014) in its preliminary finding reveals that the scheme helped beneficiary girl to stay in school for longer time. According to the study “A larger proportion of girls who were part of the program (beneficiaries) remained in school than those who were not (non-beneficiaries)”.

 

Both the studies mentioned above have shown positive impacts of the schemes on development of beneficiary girls. But what is not clear from both the studies is whether it has improved social mindset towards girl child and whether it has contributed to an increase in the number of births of girl child. In addition to the ABAD scheme the Haryana government introduced a similar new scheme called Ladli in 2005 aiming to combat the menace of gender biased sex selection. The conditions of the Ladli scheme are such that it encourages families to have two daughters and assures a bond of Rs.25,000 which at the time of maturity (after attaining 18 years of the age of second girl child in family) becomes approximately Rs. 96,000. Since its inception 183,069 families have been included in the Ladli Scheme and so far the state government has invested Rs. 254.82 crores under the scheme (GoH, 2013).  Impact of the scheme against its expectations is a matter of study but the recent Census data gives hope of improvement.

 

Other than these two specific schemes to reverse declining sex ratio, Haryana government has been implementing various incentive based schemes for the development of girl child. Monthly stipend is given to school going girls of socially and economically disadvantaged sections under various schemes. Normally stipend amount is higher for girls as compared to boys in such schemes. Education is one the important indicator of empowerment and it remained core condition of every kind of conditional cash transfer schemes for girl child in Haryana.

 

School Education Data indicates that though there is marginal increase in girls’ enrolment in secondary schools in Haryana but the dropout rate of girls has decreased substantially. For Class I-X, the girl’s dropout rate decreased from 39.15 in 2007-08 to 16 in 2010-11. The retention of scheduled caste girls in school has improved much faster in this period. The dropout rate of scheduled caste girl students of Class I-X has decreased from 63.93 in 2007-08 to 16.4 in 2010-11 (MoHRD, GoI). The educational indicators are evident that survived girl children’s conditions are improving faster in Haryana. With improved health service delivery in the state, the survival rate of girl children has also increased in last one decade. According to Sample Registration System, female Infant Mortality Rate of Haryana has decreased from 70 in 2001 to 44 in 2012.  

 

Thus, the recent history of public policy interventions in Haryana to empower women and girl child resulted in improved social conditions. The social indicators for girls such as education, health, immunization, survival and fertility have improved in last one decade and  various studies in Haryana have attributed this change to both, conditional cash transfer schemes and other policy interventions. The larger goal of the conditional cash transfer scheme such as ABAD and Ladli is to influence social and cultural values of individual and community and hence end gender discrimination. There are no evidences and studies to claim that such policies are influencing human values and helping girls to have higher status in the society. Declining sex ratio is the outcome of complex social, religious, cultural and structural arrangements in our society. Any policy intervention to address this issue needs to be carefully designed and implemented. Thus, possibly greater involvement of people is required in policy planning and implementation to alter prevalent gender biased practices. It is high time to review such conditional cash transfer schemes to understand their impact in changing gender biased mindset of society.

 

Jeet Singh

Education in India – the road ahead

Photo Source: Trak.in

The ‘directive principles of state policy’ of the Indian Constitution, formulated in 1950 stated that “All states shall endeavour to provide within 10 years of commencement of constitution free and compulsory education to children till they reach the age of 14 years.” All states therefore had the primary responsibility of improving literacy rate and elementary education, whereas the centre dealt mainly with higher education. In 1976, education became a concurrent subject i.e. a joint responsibility of state and centre.

The concept of a National System of Education implies that, up to a given level, all students, irrespective of caste, creed, location or sex, have access to education of a comparable quality. This has sought to be achieved by successive governments in India. In achieving this aim, the guiding forces are the National Policy on Education documents of 1968, and 1986 under the Prime Ministership of Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi, and most recently by the Right to Education Act which came into force in 2009.

 The 1968 policy was the first significant and major step in education in post-independence India. “It aimed to promote national progress, a sense of common citizenship and culture, and to strengthen national integration.” The emphasis was on the need to radically overhaul and reconstruct the education system, with a focus on quality improvement. Yet, it was noticed that there were problems with the policy at the level of implementation – with “problems of access, quality, quantity, utility and financial outlay.”

The 1986 policy sought to address the lacunae observed in the 1968 policy by focussing on education for women, for the marginalised sections, minorities, the differently abled and also adult education. The policy defined and recommended Universal Elementary Education (UEE) embodying the concepts of universal access, universal retention and universal attainment. In order to address the widening class distinctions, and social segregation, NPE also recommended Common School System, where "children from different social classes and groups come together under common public school and thus promote the emergence of an egalitarian and integrated society”.

In 1993, in a PIL ‘Unnikrishnan versus state of Andhra Pradesh’, the Supreme court of India ruled that, “Education is a fundamental right that follows from the Right to life in Article 21 of the Constitution”. However, there was no legislative follow up from this for many years, primarily due to a volatile political situation at home in the following few years. In 2002, the 86^th Constitutional Amendment of India added Article 21A stating that, “The state shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age 6 to 14 years in such as a way as the State may, by law, determine”. This led to the formulation of the Right to Education Act, which was passed by the UPA Government and became a law in 2009.

Today, the results of the Right to Education Act and allied education policies like Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the mid day meal scheme are there for all to see. More and more children are now going to school, literacy rates are rising. The provision of seats for the EWS category has ensured that students from the economically deprived sections are not deprived of the benefits of education. Yet, we notice that gaps do remain – not only at implementation level, but recent figures have also pointed out how dropout rates are increasing in the post ‘compulsory’ period, how the mid day meal scheme is being manipulated etc. The recent mid day meal tragedy in Bihar is just a case in point of problems with implementation.

Today, as we have a new generation of youngsters, the education system in this country needs a drastic overhaul. There have been a number of attempts to streamline and review the CBSE in keeping with the times, but it has also often been seen that students scoring impossibly high marks in the CBSE often have no real grounding in the concepts. Students with nearly 100 marks in English often cannot string together a paragraph of correct English. Education in India needs to focus less on rote learning, and ‘keywords’ and more on concepts and processes. Similarly, the higher education system too needs an overhaul. The recent shift by Delhi University to a Four Year Undergraduate Program has been controversial. This new system, along with the move to a semester based system, rather than an annual system does have its benefits, which however, have become eclipsed due to an apparent lack of proper planning. For instance, how useful would a basic Foundation course in English be for a student already pursuing an Honours degree in the subject? Or a course in Maths for someone who has had no contact with the subject since Class VIII? The focus in India needs to shift to the higher education system – radical changes are the need of the hour, but these need to be well thought out and then implemented. Education needs to be equitable. Students need to feel that they are gaining something from the system that will empower them in the future. More skill development and vocational courses, employment generation opportunities need to be provided by the education system. A number of these ideas have been articulated in the 12^th Plan for Education, but it is upto the people of this country, especially the youth, to ensure that implementation does not fail. These are the challenges and opportunities facing Indian education today. 

 

Madhumita Chakraborty

 

Bridging the Skill Gaps: Role of Education and On-the- Job Training

Photo credit: NSDC

Are “greater investment in education and training a prerequisite for employability, or can skills be built through jobs?” This question has become quite pertinent in the context of the job market where available skills are not fitting in well with the demands of the economy. The possible approaches to tackle this challenge are explored in the World Development Report, 2013. 
                                                                              

Skill mismatches are arguably growing rather than shrinking. Today, more than one-tenth of 15 to 24 year olds worldwide are functionally illiterate. Without numeracy and literacy skills, the prospects of improving employment opportunities and earnings, whether in agriculture or in urban settings, are thin.

Employment opportunities are seen to increase the demand for education, which systems then have to meet. Often privilege in access to jobs distorts the signals. It hurts and discourages, rather than encourages, the building of skills. Thus policy interventions should focus on ensuring that signals are adequately transmitted and incentives are provided to continue skill accumulation by the young and those of working age alike. In India, informing rural women about job opportunities led to increased schooling for girls and delayed marriage and childbearing for women. 

The report points out that though the straightforward response to skill mismatches would be for private firms or individuals to upgrade skills through further education or training—but several factors act as constraints like the market constraints. For example, lack of information about employment opportunities, transportation costs, or housing market failures may be the real reasons why workers do not take available jobs. Small firms and farms seldom have the necessary funds for training and education.

Institutional failures often end up replacing market failures. But many countries are trying to create oversight entities, to separate quality control and management of providers from financing. In India, the National Skills Development Strategy is based on the principle that the institutions in charge of training, certification, and accreditation should be strictly separated. On the negative side, scattered responsibilities across many Central Ministries, distance from the private sector and slow response to rapidly changing skill needs are some of the problems which continue to plague such systems.

The report emphasises that just as skills are important for jobs, the reverse is true as well. Many technical and social skills can be built through experience in the workplace. Apprenticeship programs, fostering the integration of education and learning through jobs, exist in various shapes around the world. The report suggests that informal apprenticeship can be strengthened through its gradual integration into national training systems. In France, Germany, and the Netherlands has a dual system credited with fast and structured employment integration. “But the dual system requires more than the right economic incentives—it is based on a social contract between employers, trade unions, and government.” Private sector commitment, including financing of training and continuation even in times of economic downturns, is fundamental. 

On-the-job training is consistently found to go hand-in-hand with higher labour earnings and productivity increases, even more so in developing than in industrial countries. But only a fraction of workers have access to it; those with less education and those working in smaller and informal enterprises seldom have the opportunity to benefit from training. Inequitable access and poor quality are key constraints in many countries and the reach of Technical and vocational education in rural areas is often very limited. 

In countries like Korea, industrial projections of manpower supply have taken a backseat to the country’s new initiatives emphasizing quality and relevance of education and skills development. The Korea University of Technology and Education (KUT) established the Bridge Model, a three-way partnership involving a single major enterprise and clusters of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that serve as its main subcontractors. The major enterprise contributes technical knowledge, the SMEs bring in the employees to be trained, and the University supplies the teaching facilities and content.

Today the focus is gradually shifting from merely ensuring an adequate supply of skills to delivering demand-responsive, quality- skills development programs.