Abstract
India’s human development scenario presents a paradox. While per capita income has grown rapidly over the last twenty years, pushing up the human development indicator (HDI), lack of progress, or rather slow progress, health and education have held back the rise in HDI. Of the three components of HDI, health has been the worst-performing component, while education has been performing moderately. But above all, income has been the key driver of HDI improvements. In this article, I discuss some of the primary and secondary education problems, where there are many promises, but there are also some serious challenges. The academic research reported here, especially the recent ones that have used randomised controlled trial techniques, provides great insights into what policies can be helpful and what bigger challenges lie ahead in implementing the New Education Policy.
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Notes
- 1.
Yasir, Sameer, (2020) India’s Covid-19 death toll passes 100,000, New York Times, 3 October, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/03/world/asia/india-coronavirus-deaths.html, accessed on 14 March 2021.
- 2.
Strictly speaking, due to several changes in methodologies the HDIs are not always easily comparable. Nevertheless, the improvement is to be noted.
- 3.
Human Development Report (2020) United Nations Development Programme, New York, http://hdr.undp.org/en/countries/profiles/IND.
- 4.
India’s commitment to health is also questionable. India is spending far less than not just the East Asian countries, but also some of its South Asian neighbours. In 2014 Sri Lanka spent 2% of its GDP on health, while India spent only 1.4%. In the same year, China spent 3.095% of its GDP, Malaysia 2.3% and Thailand 3.2%. The world average was 5.959%.
- 5.
Sethi, V., Dhachandra, K., Murira, Z., Gausman, J., Bhapot, A., Wagt, de A., Unisa, S., Bhatia, S., Baswal, D., Subramanian, S.V., (2019) Nutrition status of nulliparous married Indian women 15–24 years: Decadal trends, predictors and program implications, PLOS, August 27, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221125.
- 6.
This is estimated by the authors based on Table 10 (on page 8) and Table 25 (on page 36) of Education Statistics at a Glance 2016 (Government of India, 2016).
- 7.
The coverage of ASER has been steadily growing. In 2012 it reached 331,490 households in 568 districts, surveyed 595,139 children in the age group 3–16 and assessed 448,467 children age 5–16.
- 8.
The highest level of text students was given to read was grade II.
- 9.
The participating private schools did not have any discretion to deny admission to voucher recipients, if places were available.
- 10.
Young Lives is a longitudinal study of child poverty in four countries: Ethiopia, India (only the state of Andhra Pradesh participates), Peru and Vietnam. The survey tracked two cohorts of children. One cohort consisted of 1008 children born between January 1994 and June 1995; the second cohort had 2011 children born between January 2001 and June 2002.
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Saha, B. (2023). Human Development of India: Why Does It Always Look Challenged?. In: Tiwari, P., Parikh, K. (eds) Axes of Sustainable Development and Growth in India. Sustainable Development Goals Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-9756-3_14
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