Wages of maladministration

By Amrik Singh

THE INDIAN school system is steeped in stagnation. Both its history and its statutory status make this abundantly clear. Under the Constitution, all education, including higher education, is with the States. The Centre is given the power to intervene only in the interests of coordination and determination of standards. The division of power between the Centre and the States was formalised in 1949. In 1976, the 42nd Amendment was passed making education a concurrent subject. The Centre, however, has not passed any enabling legislation as a followup of this Amendment. For all practical purposes, therefore, real power lies with the States.

One has only to look at their performance to know that the States are not doing what they could have. To take one example; in almost every State about 25 per cent of the total budget is spent on education. In certain cases, it is even as high as 40 per cent. And something like one- third of the total number of State Government employees are teachers. Yet, there is hardly a State where the administration of education does not continue to be what it was in the middle of the 19th century. In other words, the structure of education administration during the last century and a half has remained exactly the same. Only the scale of operations as expanded.

Like every other department, the Department of Education too has a Secretary. In 1947 there used to be one Director of Public Instruction (DPI) in a State. Nowadays, in most States, there are three of them - one each for colleges, secondary education and primary education. Unless the Education Secretary is wizard, he cannot but spend 2-3 hours, indeed more than that, on any working day in meeting teachers individually or talking about them to those who are politically or bureaucratically influential and so on. The States have not either restructured the system or decentralised its operations.

In about 10-12 states, Councils of Higher Education have been established. None of them is working satisfactorily as was visualised by the UGC Committee appointed to work out their objectives and mode of functioning. In almost each case, the State Minister for Higher Education is the chairman. The officials are so possessive about their power that they are not prepared to shed even a small portion of it in favour of the vice-chairman of the State Council who is generally an academic. Most vice- chairmen do exercise some power but, more often than not, it is derived power. Autonomous functioning of the State Councils is a myth rather than a reality.

At the secondary level, School Boards of Education have come up in almost every State. About two-thirds of them are statutory in character with chairmen of their own. In the rest, it is generally the DPI who is the chairman of the board and the chief executive is the Secretary. In certain other States, the DPI is designated vice-chairman. If the two are level-headed people, things work out well. In other States, such an experiment has not even been tried.

The School Boards could have played a much more decisive and innovative role. This fact was recognised in the 1986 policy and was reiterated in its 1992 Review. Indeed it was suggested to the Human Resource Development Ministry in that Review that the working of the School Boards be reappraised. It took several years for the Ministry to move in the matter. Eventually a task force was appointed. It reported in 1997 but the Ministry has done precious little by way of followup.

The State Governments could have been prodded to implement the new report provided the HRD Ministry was so inclined. Nothing of the kind happened and the 1997 Report (Remodelling of School Education Boards) remains unimplemented. The School Boards in different States are capable of taking over a good part of the development work of the Department of Education; the retraining of teachers, for example. With the number of teachers being large, the Department is unable to cope with anything other than appointments, promotions, transfers, pensions and things like that. I remember once asking a capable IAS officer, who is now Secretary to the Government of India, why he had opted out of the Secretaryship of the Department of Education in his home State. His answer was, ``There was too much of litigation.''

This becomes unavoidable when, in addition to booming numbers and accelerating corruption, there is political interference as well as gross incompetence. The truth of the matter is that without empowering the School Boards to a substantial degree, no State will be able to look after the hundreds and thousands of teachers.

However, it must be acknowledged that the situation varies from State to State. In certain States, Uttar Pradesh for example, the percentage of private or aided schools is high. Here the Department is not responsible for matters relating to teachers directly. Then there are other States, Madhya Pradesh for example, where the number of Government- appointed teachers is substantial and there is no choice except to deal with those matters. Whatever be the details, the nub of the matter is that while numbers have been expanding, the machinery for handling the expanded numbers has not been expanding.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that there is a growing demand that elementary education must be decisively decentralised and the local community must be empowered to look after it. In the countryside, this means power to the panchayats. In the urban areas, it would mean municipalities and corporations. The ideal is far from being achieved. Perhaps no more than 10 per cent of the decentralisation aimed at has taken place. But sooner or later, it has to take place. Currently, we are passing through a phase of expansion at the school level. in the next phase, which is not more than a decade away, quality in elementary education will become the central issue. In this somewhat unstable situation, to create a new superstructure for administration of education will create problems. Even if it is created, it would become necessary to dismantle it, at least to some extent. What the situation demands is a rapid rate of decentralisation and delegation of powers.

In a responsive mode of functioning, professional guidance to this effect would have come from the Centre. That, however, is not happening. Some of the State Education Ministers are capable persons and know what requires to be done. However, they are so overwhelmed by the day- to-day problems that they have little time to attend to basic issues.

The point of referring to these matters is that no one is paying attention as to how education is to be administered at the State level. Everyone is busy fire-fighting and no one has time to attend to the basic issues. This is tragic in the extreme. Apart from everything else, this leads to inappropriate or wrong appointments, large-scale absenteeism, a high proportion of poorly motivated teachers, endless problems of leave, promotions, increments, pensions and what not. Perhaps the most important reason for what is happening is that no one has given any thought to the question of how education is to be administered and how it is qualitatively different from other Government jobs and related issues like that. In brief, what we need is a road map of the proposed changes.

It would be misleading to assume that our educational system will begin to perform even reasonably well without some of these basic issues being taken care of. Above all, teachers have to be given their due dignity and not made to run after petty clerks and corrupt bosses and political masters who are neither interested in matters educational nor do they understand what requires to be done. When teachers do not receive the respect due to them, ultimately they take it out on the students.

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Opinion
Previous : Burying the Indira doctrine
Next     : Palm oil & Malaysia