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Education In Punjab: Here's how
the dream lies shattered
WSN Network
PATIALA: In an
era when the world is talking about a Knowledge Society and India is
banking on its National Knowledge Commission, what is
Punjab
doing to enhance the level of education in the state. Here is a
mirror.
Annual budgetary
provisions for education are plunging fast. As a percentage of the
overall expenses over the past four decades, education fell from
22.17 per cent of the total budget in 1970-71 to 12.33 per cent in
the financial year 2007-08.
No wonder, there
is a shortage of about 40,000 teachers in the state. Dropout rate
from Class I to X is 48 per cent. Around 12,000 government schools
are virtually dysfunctional. Research undertaken by Dr R.S. Ghuman
of the Economics Department of Punjabi University has revealed that
69 per cent of the rural households do not have a single member
educated up to matric.
"People in
villages depend on government schools, but the government over the
past few decades has been shying away from its responsibility,"
Ghuman said, adding that as a result four government universities
had only 4.07 per cent students from rural areas, as reported in a
study conducted in 2006.
Citing
recommendations of the Kothari Commission of the mid-Sixties and the
New Economic Policy of 1986, the current UPA government at the
Centre has directed state governments to spend 6 pc of their GDP on
education.
However, Punjab
during the past five years has been spending only about 2.18 per
cent in the critical sphere, much below the national average of 3.5
per cent.
In terms of
budgetary percentage, from 17.12 per cent in 1980-81, the
expenditure on education came down to 12.57 per cent in 2005-06 (Rs
2,289 crore out of Rs 18,207 crore), 12.5 per cent in 2006-07 (Rs
2,318 crore out of Rs 18,544 crore), and further declined to 12.33
per cent in 2007-08.
According to Dr
Ghuman, "The cut on budgetary allocation started two decades ago
when the bureaucracy started spreading misinformation that education
in developed nations was funded entirely by fee. They also convinced
political leaders regarding this, leading to the birth of the
concept of privatisation and contractual system in education."
His study,
however, has found that 40 per cent rural households and 31 per cent
urban fail to arrange funds for even nonprofessional higher
education even for a single child. Medical and engineering fields
thus remain a distant dream.
30
September 2009
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