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Kudos to your cover story ‘Union Budget 2006-07: Lip service to education’ (EW April). The cover story was a revelation, because while the rest of the media was inclined to take finance minister P. Chidambaram’s claim that Budget 2006-07 gives "primacy" to education and health at face value, you have examined the issue in great detail and have come to the conclusion that it doesn’t bear scrutiny. It is truly shocking that while in the US, annual per capita spending on education is $2,254, in India it is a mere $26. If you had calculated it on per pupil rather than per capita basis, you would have found that the gap is even wider. Yet there is seldom a day when our foolish politicians don’t advise our youth to get ready to compete with American youth in the emerging new global market. What a joke!

I entirely agree with you that even record annual incremental budgeting will not make a dent on the massive education and health disaster which is looming on the horizon. As you rightly suggest, there’s no alternative to biting the bullet and slashing defence expenditure and non-merit subsidies and canalising the savings into improving the nation’s schools and schooling. Hard decisions are required now if India is to reap the ‘demographic dividend’ in the 21st century.

I am a 68-year-old retired principal working for a small school and am really enlightened by your cover story on Pratham’s Annual Status of Education Report 2005 (EW March). It was interesting and educative. I also read your special report titled ‘Foreign influx into international schools’ in the very same issue.

Read together these two feature stories arouse many concerns. The ASER report indicates that most children in our country are not learning survival competencies in the new, highly competitive society created by the knowledge explosion. These children are huge in number and cannot afford international schools. How can these children compete with those in international schools providing world class education? We need to think of teaching new ways to government school children to acquire wisdom and happiness by tapping our spiritual heritage, and imparting life skills to them.

Learning in five-star schools is a distant dream for most Indian children. But learning to live happily is possible for all. There are experts in our society to teach the ‘art of living’ to the rich. Why don’t we explore people and organisations to teach ‘art of being happy’ even to those who can’t access international schools?

C.G. Nagaraja
Mahabodhi School, Mysore

I read your editorial ‘Indefensible subsidisation of IIM students’ (EW April) with interest. Everyone in the country agrees that primary education is a public good and a nation-building activity and therefore, should be subsidised. But higher, especially professional education, is a private good and should be paid for by the recipients and not the tax payer.

The Central government should immediately withdraw subsidies to IIMs and deploy the money thus saved in primary education projects. The savings of approximately Rs.105 crore (Rs.2.5 lakh per student x 600 students) per annum can be used to improve the infrastructure of government primary schools. Alternatively the savings can be used to promote additional IITs and IIMs elsewhere in the country.

Jithesh Kumar
Kolar (Karnataka)

I read your education news report ‘Damning research study’ about the non-utilisation of budgeted funds by Delhi’s directorate of education (EW April), with great interest. Here is another example of non-utilisation of allocated funds for education.

In 2004-2005, only 5.6 percent of Delhi’s SC/ ST students were enrolled in private schools. The Delhi govern-ment’s SC/ ST Tuition Fee Reimburse-ment Scheme aims to increase the enrollment of SC/ ST students in private schools. But like most other government run schemes there’s a design flaw which has made it a very limited success, despite availability of public funds.

The scheme was introduced in 2003-2004. It applies to SC and ST students in Delhi who are enrolled in recognised private schools and who have an annual family income of less than Rs.1 lakh. It provides for a 100 percent reimburse-ment of tuition, sports, science lab, admission and co-curricular activities fees if the student’s annual family income is less than Rs.48,000 and a reimbursement of 75 percent if annual family income exceeds Rs.48,000 but is less than Rs.1 lakh. In 2003-2004 the scheme had an approved outlay of Rs.50 lakh. However, only Rs.5.93 lakh was utilised to benefit 98 students. In 2004-2005 the total outlay was scaled down to Rs.25 lakh. However, only Rs.14.37 lakh was utilised for 254 students leaving a surplus of Rs.10.63 lakh.

The tuition fee reimbursement scheme for SCs and STs has the potential of improving poor children’s access to schools traditionally meant for the rich and middle classes. It promises to do this without limiting the autonomy of private schools. However, unless it is remodelled, it will benefit only a small creamy layer of SC/ ST students already enrolled in private schools.

Parul Sharma
Centre for Civil Society, Delhi

I am very impressed with EducationWorld. It offers unique information on education in India as well as abroad. The April issue was especially memorable and informative. Keep up the good work!

Laxmi Narain
Unnao, Uttar Pradesh