DESPITE all the strengths, in terms of policy, India had continued with the colonial education system of the British rulers till about 1968, when the Government had announced its first National Education Policy, which was in accordance with the requirements of the country, but there was a big gap between the policy and practice due to many natural and man-made bottlenecks. Another National Policy on education was announced in 1986, which, amongst other things, emphasised
Qualitative improvement, essentially in higher and technical education;
Vocationalisation of secondary education;
Development of regional languages;
Dynamic linkages between education, health, social welfare, and employment;
Priority to backward areas, including hilly and tribal regions.
This policy was revised in 1992, and was in line with the earlier policy, but it further added to the inconsistencies and contradictions between the stated goals and actual policy, on the one hand, and between stated goals and resource allocation, on the other. In the context of Human Resource Development, the prevailing education system in India suffers from the many shortcomings, some of which are highlighted below:
There is no link, whatsoever, between the producers and users of manpower with the result that institutions of learning, essentially at the secondary, technical, and higher levels, are not exactly aware of the end result and use of their manpower output. There has to be a complete synchronization and rapport between the two sets: the producers and the users, as happens in most of the countries, including the developing ones.
There is no focus on the quality of education in terms of the depth and dimensions of teaching and in terms of syllabi, though technical education does have some quality control. There are rarely any revisions and up gradation of courses either in the light of the changes occurring in the given discipline, or in terms of the country’s manpower requirements;
Higher education is basically financed by the Government and that too without any reference to quality and output. It lacks philanthropic support either from the Non Government Organizations or from the corporate world. In this era of reforms, the time is not far when higher education, funded entirely by the Government, will be tossed into suddenly free and competitive market with sharply reduced government funding. It will then be termed as India’s higher education open market, the initial impact of which will be largely negative. It is anticipated that many institutions at that time will get disintegrated, strangled by the loss of resources, an overwhelming demand for resources that they would fail to provide, and the receivables they would not be able to recover.
The impact of planning on education has been assessed in terms of literacy rate, the data for which are available in percentage only for a total number of five years, namely 1951, 1961, 1971, 1981, and 1991, the corresponding figures for which are respectively 18.3, 28.3, 34.5, 43.6, and 52.2 per cent (Economic Survey, 1997-98). One must note that the figures for the first three years relate to population aged five years and above, and those for 1981 and 1991 relate to population aged 7 years and above. It is seen that the literacy rate has steadily gone up over the years.
Eradication of illiteracy has always been a priority on the national agenda to meet the objective of the National Literacy Mission (NLM), the most important strategy for which is the Total Literacy Campaign (TLC), which aims at achieving total literacy by the year 2005. Apart from literacy rate, the other important agenda is the universalisation of elementary education, which has also met with success in terms of the increase in the number of primary and upper schools, and a larger enrollment of children. Emphasis is also laid on girl child schooling and recruitment of rural women as teachers through special provisions like the Revamped Blackboard Scheme, Mahila Samakhya Programme (Education for Women’s Equality). Another important programme is The District Primary Education Programme (DEEP).
