In the perverse social order fashioned by the architects of post-independence India’s neta-babu socialism, the people’s elected representatives and their bureaucratic minions are massively rewarded for the sloppy services they provide to the public. Although there’s precious little to show for their efforts by way of rising living standards, law, order and civic maintenance, access to justice or globally comparable industry and agriculture, the pay and perquisites — and mysteriously accumulating wealth — of the country’s politicians and bureaucrats rivals that of the rapacious managers of the East India Company. On the other hand in the socialist imagination, teachers and academics who discharge the vital function of moulding and shaping the country’s youth, are expected to be self-sacrificing, saintly individuals with disdain for money.
Unfortunately for high-potential post-independence India, this iniquitous centrally-planned social order has proved to be an egregious failure. The crucial teachers and educators vocation became the last resort of graduates from the country’s higher education system. With some notable exceptions, only those who couldn’t land jobs in business, engineering, law, medicine etc entered the teaching profession.
The price Indian society has had to pay for this cock-eyed social engineering has been very heavy. Learning outcomes in the country’s institutions of primary, secondary and higher education are abysmal, as documented by Pratham’s ASER surveys, the pathetic performance of India’s high school students in the PISA test of developed nations in 2010 (after which Indian participation ceased), the inability of any of India’s 800 universities to feature in the Top 200 World University Rankings of QS and THE, and finally the rock-bottom productivity of Indian industry and agriculture.
Fortunately, the liberalisation and deregulation of the economy in 1991 facilitated the entry of new genre international schools affiliated with offshore examination boards which demanded high teaching-learning standards and well-qualified and provenly competent teachers. Their entry into the K-12 education space has had the beneficial effect of raising teachers’ pay and perks in all private schools. Moreover, in a belated recognition of the vital importance of teachers to the national development effort, in 2008 the Sixth Pay Commission raised the pay of government school and higher education teachers by almost 100 percent. And the award of the Seventh Pay Commission, which becomes effective on January 1, 2016, is likely to give another boost to the remuneration of government school teachers which will impact private education institutions as well.
This issue’s cover story forecasts better paydays for India’s teachers and narrowing of the wide gap in emoluments between industry and academia, which is in the national interest. And in our pictorial special report, we celebrate the country’s best primary-secondaries, which topped the EW India School Rankings 2015.
