India's educational efforts: rhetoric and reality
Radhakrishnan, P.; Akila, R.
Economic and Political Weekly 28(48): 2613-2619
1993
ISSN/ISBN: 0012-9976 Document Number: 582031
Despite forty years of planning and rhetoric in successive plans regarding the importance of education for all sections of society, the Indian government has failed to draw the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and women into the mainstream of educational development. This is due, in part, to the continuing dominance of the traditionally well-entrenched upper castes. Data are presented from the 1991 census that India's overall literacy rates for the population aged seven years and over were only 19.7% in 1951, 30.1% in 1961, 36.5% in 1971, 43.6% in 1981 and 52.1% in 1991. The figure for women in each instance is much lower than for men. India now has about 335.83 million people who are illiterate; of this group, women account for nearly two thirds. Detailed analysis is made, through the use of tables, of literacy rates for various age groups, different years and split by each state. The paper also looks at the level of education, primary, secondary, and higher education, and the level of non-formal education, although it points out that its main focus is on access to education rather than quality of education. It notes that there is a general perception of slow growth of literacy and education, and offers three reasons why this might be, the first being the continuing dominance of the traditionally well entrenched upper castes (as noted earlier); the structural problems of the education system, such as the duality of a mixed private-cum-state education which reinforce the existing caste and social inequalities; and, finally, too much emphasis in the five year plans so far on raising production and productivity without giving enough attention or resources to education and other social services.