Gurcharan Das's Blog, page 2

India���s language conundrum: The National Education Policy has skirted elegantly a political minefield. But the obstacle is the teacher

The Times of India | September 2020

 In 1947, a weary Britain packed up and left India, leaving behind absent-mindedly the English language and a headache for Indians. Ever since, we���ve been quarrelling over the place of English in our lives, particularly in what language to teach our children. The latest to join the debate is the National Education Policy (NEP), which to its credit, has skirted elegantly a political minefield, coming up with an answer that has satisfied almost everyone, offending only those who insisted on being offended. But the obstacle is the teacher.

At the root is a conundrum based on two facts: One, children learn best in the early years in their mother tongue; two, if a child isn���t fluent in English by age 10, she���s disadvantaged for the rest of her life, especially in getting a job. There���s plenty of research to support both facts. Nativists and educationists focus on the first, practical parents on the second.

The answer is simple: Teach the child in grades 1-5 in the mother tongue but also give a strong dose of English to ensure the child is fluent by 10. Since a child is naturally bilingual, this is possible. Have a dual medium of instruction ��� teach the arts in the mother tongue; the sciences in English. The practical problem is the average Indian teacher cannot teach, not just in English but in any language. 91% of 7,30,000 teachers tested in 2012 failed the basic teacher eligibility test. This is not a failure of policy but of governance.

NEP, through brilliant drafting, has given freedom to states, schools and parents. While strongly recommending learning in the mother tongue, it has refused to ban English medium schools. Its framers were mindful of damage done in Bengal, Gujarat, UP and other states that had banned English earlier in primary schools and decimated the futures of a whole generation. Having missed the IT revolution, all these states have made a U-turn. Mamata Banerjee destroyed communists in Bengal on this issue. Yogi Adityanath proudly reintroduced teaching English in primary schools in UP.

BJP-RSS, by accepting NEP, has in effect conceded defeat. One of its oldest, dearest projects was to rid India of English and make Hindi the national language. Just last year, Amit Shah pushed the case for Hindi. But the Sangh Parivar has lost its convictions ��� its own sons and daughters want to learn English and get a good job. Imposing Hindi today is a vote loser.

Sometime in the 1990s, India���s mindset changed. The constant whining against the colonial language died and English became an Indian language. A middle class of aspirers came up after the economic reforms. Confident in its own skin it regarded English not as an alien imposition, but as a skill to navigate the global economy. With the IT revolution, parents began to move their children from government to private schools that taught English. Today, 47.5% of India���s children are in private schools, making it the third largest school system in the world. In it, 70% of parents pay a monthly fee less than Rs 1,000 and 45% less than Rs 500. English has been democratised.

Meanwhile, English is even more dominant globally after the IT revolution. Linguists believe that whoever speaks a language owns it. They predict that India will soon have the world���s largest number of English speakers. Given the proliferation of Indian writing in English, they foresee Indian English becoming a widely spoken variant like American English.

NEP rightly reminds us, however, of the virtue of bilingualism and let���s hope we���ll do a better job this time. The last time, it led to a tragic social divide. The well-off kids, led by the Khan Market gang, went to English medium schools and aam admi���s kids in Sadar Bazaar went to Hindi (or regional language) medium schools. The former became brown sahibs and the latter were condemned to be ���deaf��� in any serious discussion in business, government, or the university. HMT, ���Hindi medium type���, became a slur. English became the new Sanskrit, the language of exclusion. In the charming film Hindi Medium, Irrfan Khan makes heartbreaking attempts to get his daughter into an English medium school. Frustrated, he says, ���India is English, English is India.���

Back to the conundrum: The rise of English shouldn���t be at the expense of the mother tongue. Language is not just for communication; it���s a source of new ideas, new emotions. I cannot think and feel without language. There are certain emotions I feel in Punjabi that I don���t in English. Since a child is naturally bilingual, India should aim for bilingual instruction. Today, technology can help. There are a number of interactive apps on our phones, such as Hello English, that can make one fluent in English and become teacher aids. It���s also possible now to have bilingual teachers since teacher salaries have risen to respectable levels.

The NEP envisions teaching becoming a true ���calling��� and has even proposed a four-year BEd professional degree. But India���s problem remains governance. Unqualified teachers have proliferated, hired not on qualifications but by paying a bribe. A chief minister is serving a 10-year jail sentence for selling teaching jobs to 3,206 teachers. Once hired and protected in this way, teachers don���t feel they need to teach and are routinely absent. Unless state governments fix this problem, no amount of good policy making will help the Indian child to realise her future.

India’s language conundrum: The National Education Policy has skirted elegantly a political minefield. But the obstacle is the teacher

The Times of India | September 2020

 In 1947, a weary Britain packed up and left India, leaving behind absent-mindedly the English language and a headache for Indians. Ever since, we’ve been quarrelling over the place of English in our lives, particularly in what language to teach our children. The latest to join the debate is the National Education Policy (NEP), which to its credit, has skirted elegantly a political minefield, coming up with an answer that has satisfied almost everyone, offending only those who insisted on being offended. But the obstacle is the teacher.

At the root is a conundrum based on two facts: One, children learn best in the early years in their mother tongue; two, if a child isn’t fluent in English by age 10, she’s disadvantaged for the rest of her life, especially in getting a job. There’s plenty of research to support both facts. Nativists and educationists focus on the first, practical parents on the second.

The answer is simple: Teach the child in grades 1-5 in the mother tongue but also give a strong dose of English to ensure the child is fluent by 10. Since a child is naturally bilingual, this is possible. Have a dual medium of instruction – teach the arts in the mother tongue; the sciences in English. The practical problem is the average Indian teacher cannot teach, not just in English but in any language. 91% of 7,30,000 teachers tested in 2012 failed the basic teacher eligibility test. This is not a failure of policy but of governance.

NEP, through brilliant drafting, has given freedom to states, schools and parents. While strongly recommending learning in the mother tongue, it has refused to ban English medium schools. Its framers were mindful of damage done in Bengal, Gujarat, UP and other states that had banned English earlier in primary schools and decimated the futures of a whole generation. Having missed the IT revolution, all these states have made a U-turn. Mamata Banerjee destroyed communists in Bengal on this issue. Yogi Adityanath proudly reintroduced teaching English in primary schools in UP.

BJP-RSS, by accepting NEP, has in effect conceded defeat. One of its oldest, dearest projects was to rid India of English and make Hindi the national language. Just last year, Amit Shah pushed the case for Hindi. But the Sangh Parivar has lost its convictions – its own sons and daughters want to learn English and get a good job. Imposing Hindi today is a vote loser.

Sometime in the 1990s, India’s mindset changed. The constant whining against the colonial language died and English became an Indian language. A middle class of aspirers came up after the economic reforms. Confident in its own skin it regarded English not as an alien imposition, but as a skill to navigate the global economy. With the IT revolution, parents began to move their children from government to private schools that taught English. Today, 47.5% of India’s children are in private schools, making it the third largest school system in the world. In it, 70% of parents pay a monthly fee less than Rs 1,000 and 45% less than Rs 500. English has been democratised.

Meanwhile, English is even more dominant globally after the IT revolution. Linguists believe that whoever speaks a language owns it. They predict that India will soon have the world’s largest number of English speakers. Given the proliferation of Indian writing in English, they foresee Indian English becoming a widely spoken variant like American English.

NEP rightly reminds us, however, of the virtue of bilingualism and let’s hope we’ll do a better job this time. The last time, it led to a tragic social divide. The well-off kids, led by the Khan Market gang, went to English medium schools and aam admi’s kids in Sadar Bazaar went to Hindi (or regional language) medium schools. The former became brown sahibs and the latter were condemned to be ‘deaf’ in any serious discussion in business, government, or the university. HMT, ‘Hindi medium type’, became a slur. English became the new Sanskrit, the language of exclusion. In the charming film Hindi Medium, Irrfan Khan makes heartbreaking attempts to get his daughter into an English medium school. Frustrated, he says, “India is English, English is India.”

Back to the conundrum: The rise of English shouldn’t be at the expense of the mother tongue. Language is not just for communication; it’s a source of new ideas, new emotions. I cannot think and feel without language. There are certain emotions I feel in Punjabi that I don’t in English. Since a child is naturally bilingual, India should aim for bilingual instruction. Today, technology can help. There are a number of interactive apps on our phones, such as Hello English, that can make one fluent in English and become teacher aids. It’s also possible now to have bilingual teachers since teacher salaries have risen to respectable levels.

The NEP envisions teaching becoming a true ‘calling’ and has even proposed a four-year BEd professional degree. But India’s problem remains governance. Unqualified teachers have proliferated, hired not on qualifications but by paying a bribe. A chief minister is serving a 10-year jail sentence for selling teaching jobs to 3,206 teachers. Once hired and protected in this way, teachers don’t feel they need to teach and are routinely absent. Unless state governments fix this problem, no amount of good policy making will help the Indian child to realise her future.

One and a half cheers: National Education Policy promises much, but fails to come to grips with India���s education crisis

 The Times of India | August 2020

There is so much good in the recently announced National Education Policy (NEP) that it seems churlish to point out its failings. It will receive well deserved applause. However, the truth is that it has failed to come to grips with the crisis in Indian education. I will focus only on schooling, the crucial foundation of the edifice. Instead of three cheers, I am afraid I can only offer it one and a half.

NEP has many excellent recommendations. It clearly shifts the focus away from inputs to outcomes. It junks rote learning in favour of critical thinking, conceptual and creative skills. Its best feature is to launch a mission to achieve basic language and math skills by Class 3 for all children by 2025. Tracking a student in Classes 3, 5 and 8 through a reliable, standardised assessment will help improve her performance, allowing her parents to make an informed choice among schools.

Finally, it separates government���s role into two bodies, one that regulates education and a second that runs state schools. Thus, it overcomes a conflict of interest which has forced regulators to gloss over the disastrous performance of state schools while shackling private schools in a penalising licence raj.

With all this, why doesn���t NEP get three cheers? Because it hasn���t honestly faced the ground reality of these eight facts. Fact 1: One out of four teachers is absent in state schools across India and one in two, who is present, is not teaching. This is not because of low teacher salaries ��� starting salary of a junior teacher in UP last year was Rs 48,918 pm, or 11 times UP���s per capita income.

Fact 2: In many states, less than 10% teachers pass the Teacher Eligibility Tests. Fact 3: Less than half the students in Class 5 can read a para or do a math sum from a Class 2 text. Fact 4: India���s children ranked 73rd out of 74 countries in the international PISA test of reading, science and arithmetic (just ahead of Kyrgyzstan). The UPA government was so embarrassed ��� it banned the test.

Fact 5: As a result of this rot, even the poor are abandoning government schools. Between 2011 and 2018, 2.4 crore children left state schools and joined private schools, according to the government���s own DISE data. Today, almost half of India���s children (47.5%) are in the private school system, with 12 crore children, making it the third largest in the world. In it, 70% parents pay a monthly fee of less than Rs 1,000 and 45% parents pay less than Rs 500. Hence, India���s private schools are not elitist.

Fact 6: But good private schools are very few and it���s heartbreaking to see long lines of parents waiting to get their child into a decent school. The reason is that it���s difficult for an honest person to start a school. From 35 to 125 permissions are required depending on the state, and can take up to five years and lakhs in bribes. Hence, idealistic educators stay away and private schools end up mediocre.

Fact 7: If the rate of emptying of government schools continues, ���they will be history��� as Amartya Sen put it. Many are already ghost schools with teachers but no students. Fact 8: Overall, it costs a third to educate a child in the private system versus government system as a result of efficiency. Society as a whole, thus, gains through better learning outcomes at a lower cost.

Framers of the NEP did not face up to these inconvenient eight truths. Why should a parent spend hard earned money to send her child to a private school when she can be educated free plus get a mid-day meal, uniforms and books in a state school? Parents are not stupid and exit state schools because of governance failure, not pedagogy. If the teacher is absent or doesn���t teach, what would you do? State teachers get away because they monitor the polls and politicians are afraid to touch them.

So, what is the answer? The only solution is to fund children, not schools. This idea was first mooted in 2000 when Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee realised that government schools kept failing despite 50 years of reforming them. The idea is simple: When a child reaches age 5, she qualifies for a monthly scholarship for any school of the parent���s choice. Teachers are paid salaries from the income a school earns from scholarships; so, they show up and teach with inspiration. With competition good schools will flourish, bad schools will close.

The poorest child will have dignity because she will have the power to exit a bad school. Government will have plenty of money for scholarships from not having to run schools plus the money from the sale/ lease of its schools.

Education is a public good like roads or public buses. The government doesn���t have to build roads or run buses. Similarly, it should fund schools, not run them. Instead of cheap talk against profit and eulogising philanthropy, NEP should have shed hypocrisy and been more honest. 85% of India���s private schools survive only if they make a profit. If 9 out of the world���s top 10 economies allow for-profit schools, why can���t India? This single change will bring huge investments into education, improve quality and choice. Principals wouldn���t have to lie or be called thieves. Black money would be curbed.

Let me close on a positive note. I would love to be proved wrong and see the NEP accomplish its wonderful mission to achieve universal foundational language and math skills by 2025. If it succeeds, I���ll be the first to give three cheers!

One and a half cheers: National Education Policy promises much, but fails to come to grips with India’s education crisis

 The Times of India | August 2020

There is so much good in the recently announced National Education Policy (NEP) that it seems churlish to point out its failings. It will receive well deserved applause. However, the truth is that it has failed to come to grips with the crisis in Indian education. I will focus only on schooling, the crucial foundation of the edifice. Instead of three cheers, I am afraid I can only offer it one and a half.

NEP has many excellent recommendations. It clearly shifts the focus away from inputs to outcomes. It junks rote learning in favour of critical thinking, conceptual and creative skills. Its best feature is to launch a mission to achieve basic language and math skills by Class 3 for all children by 2025. Tracking a student in Classes 3, 5 and 8 through a reliable, standardised assessment will help improve her performance, allowing her parents to make an informed choice among schools.

Finally, it separates government’s role into two bodies, one that regulates education and a second that runs state schools. Thus, it overcomes a conflict of interest which has forced regulators to gloss over the disastrous performance of state schools while shackling private schools in a penalising licence raj.

With all this, why doesn’t NEP get three cheers? Because it hasn’t honestly faced the ground reality of these eight facts. Fact 1: One out of four teachers is absent in state schools across India and one in two, who is present, is not teaching. This is not because of low teacher salaries – starting salary of a junior teacher in UP last year was Rs 48,918 pm, or 11 times UP’s per capita income.

Fact 2: In many states, less than 10% teachers pass the Teacher Eligibility Tests. Fact 3: Less than half the students in Class 5 can read a para or do a math sum from a Class 2 text. Fact 4: India’s children ranked 73rd out of 74 countries in the international PISA test of reading, science and arithmetic (just ahead of Kyrgyzstan). The UPA government was so embarrassed – it banned the test.

Fact 5: As a result of this rot, even the poor are abandoning government schools. Between 2011 and 2018, 2.4 crore children left state schools and joined private schools, according to the government’s own DISE data. Today, almost half of India’s children (47.5%) are in the private school system, with 12 crore children, making it the third largest in the world. In it, 70% parents pay a monthly fee of less than Rs 1,000 and 45% parents pay less than Rs 500. Hence, India’s private schools are not elitist.

Fact 6: But good private schools are very few and it’s heartbreaking to see long lines of parents waiting to get their child into a decent school. The reason is that it’s difficult for an honest person to start a school. From 35 to 125 permissions are required depending on the state, and can take up to five years and lakhs in bribes. Hence, idealistic educators stay away and private schools end up mediocre.

Fact 7: If the rate of emptying of government schools continues, “they will be history” as Amartya Sen put it. Many are already ghost schools with teachers but no students. Fact 8: Overall, it costs a third to educate a child in the private system versus government system as a result of efficiency. Society as a whole, thus, gains through better learning outcomes at a lower cost.

Framers of the NEP did not face up to these inconvenient eight truths. Why should a parent spend hard earned money to send her child to a private school when she can be educated free plus get a mid-day meal, uniforms and books in a state school? Parents are not stupid and exit state schools because of governance failure, not pedagogy. If the teacher is absent or doesn’t teach, what would you do? State teachers get away because they monitor the polls and politicians are afraid to touch them.

So, what is the answer? The only solution is to fund children, not schools. This idea was first mooted in 2000 when Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee realised that government schools kept failing despite 50 years of reforming them. The idea is simple: When a child reaches age 5, she qualifies for a monthly scholarship for any school of the parent’s choice. Teachers are paid salaries from the income a school earns from scholarships; so, they show up and teach with inspiration. With competition good schools will flourish, bad schools will close.

The poorest child will have dignity because she will have the power to exit a bad school. Government will have plenty of money for scholarships from not having to run schools plus the money from the sale/ lease of its schools.

Education is a public good like roads or public buses. The government doesn’t have to build roads or run buses. Similarly, it should fund schools, not run them. Instead of cheap talk against profit and eulogising philanthropy, NEP should have shed hypocrisy and been more honest. 85% of India’s private schools survive only if they make a profit. If 9 out of the world’s top 10 economies allow for-profit schools, why can’t India? This single change will bring huge investments into education, improve quality and choice. Principals wouldn’t have to lie or be called thieves. Black money would be curbed.

Let me close on a positive note. I would love to be proved wrong and see the NEP accomplish its wonderful mission to achieve universal foundational language and math skills by 2025. If it succeeds, I’ll be the first to give three cheers!

India faces sophie���s choice: The government���s tragic lockdown dilemma is that it has to pick between lives

 The Times of India | April 2020

The old idea that civilisation is destroyed from within, not from without, has been turned upside down. In just a few weeks a virus ten-thousandth of a millimetre in diameter has spread around the world like wildfire from a market in Wuhan, to threaten our civilised order. How we respond to the moral dilemmas raised by Covid-19 will reflect on our values and the number of lives we save.

The first dilemma: Given its horrific cost, was the lockdown necessary? President Donald Trump in America and Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the UK dawdled and both nations paid a heavy price. Johnson considered an alternative: Allow the virus to spread until most people get infected and become immune; with herd immunity, the outbreak would fizzle out. When told that 2,60,000 people would die so that the rest of the UK could live, he backed off.

India���s choices also became clear when faced with the consequences. Epidemiologists��� models predicted around 400 million Indians would be infected by end July ��� with 40 million severe cases ��� and at the peak, 10 million patients would have to be hospitalised. But India has only 1,00,000 intensive-care beds and 20,000 ventilators. Creating herd immunity would mean about half of India would need to be infected, and with a 1% mortality rate 6.5 million would die. This is not an imaginary exercise: 17 million Indians actually died in the 1918 Spanish Flu. Lockdown is, thus, the only answer.

The lockdown has worked in China and the world is implementing some variant of it. But social activists like Harsh Mander have argued against it because: 1) it would hurt the poor unconscionably; 2) social distancing is not possible in crowded India; and 3) Covid-19 cases in India are tiny. This reasoning is flawed. The lockdown will slow down the virus���s spread, which will help the poor far more by improving their chances for a hospital bed. India���s Covid numbers are small so far because we are not testing enough people. Our death numbers are also low because India typically records only about 25% of deaths, many of which might show up in records as respiratory distress, not Covid.

During this lockdown, a poor migrant from Bihar was heard to say, ���If corona does not kill me, losing my job and hunger will.��� He expressed the tragic choice facing the desperate government: ���Who should live and who should die?��� Even if India manages to contain deaths through lockdowns, the coronavirus is likely to spread until a vaccine or cure is widely available. Extended or multiple lockdowns will bring mass unemployment and a brutal recession.

The worst affected will be half a billion daily wage earners, many of whom may die of hunger. The cost of welfare packages will destroy government���s finances, already weak after a terrible slowdown. The pandemic could turn India back by decades, killing the hopes of a generation. From a fast growing middle income economy, India could become a desperately poor nation.

The dilemma is in the old adage: Is the cure worse than the disease? Some states in the US have appealed to this maxim by justifying not locking down. Texas Lt Governor Dan Patrick added another dimension by suggesting that the elderly should be willing to die in order to save the young. Can our moral intuitions justify such conclusions?

Framing the question as a trade-off between saving people from the virus but condemning those who survive to a life of hunger and poverty, you reach what Derek Parfit, the moral philosopher, called a ���repugnant conclusion���. Both options are as offensive as Sophie���s Choice, when Meryl Streep has to choose between saving one of her children and killing the other. I too wondered if it was worth saving lives if the result was a world teeming with lives not worth living. But then I asked myself, would I choose to let my son die of Covid-19? My moral intuition was clear: I would choose to save a present life rather than worry about future lives. Vidura in the Mahabharata made the opposite decision and chose to sacrifice a person to save a village.

In the coming weeks, Indian doctors will face other dilemmas: With only one ICU bed, do I give it to a 20-year-old patient or a 50-year-old, both with equal chances of recovery? Current rules of triage prefer the young as their life is still unlived. Some would prefer the 50-year-old who has experience and skills and might contribute more to society. But we all agree that you don���t choose on the basis of wealth, caste, or religion. I would choose based on ���first come first served���. Whatever the doctor decides, something of moral value is lost, leaving him scarred for life. After the crisis, we shall face other dilemmas. Currently surveillance apps/ data networks are helping governments to trace infected persons. How do we wrest this new power from the state after the crisis?

It takes centuries to create civilisation but only weeks to lose it. How our leaders cope with moral dilemmas reflects our values. Americans are paying a heavy price for Trump���s Covid scepticism. Winston Churchill diverted American food ships meant for Bengal���s famine to feed troops in Europe ��� think of his political standing after the war. It is difficult to be good in any age. But in the age of coronavirus it is especially important to respond rightfully to preserve our values.

India faces sophie’s choice: The government’s tragic lockdown dilemma is that it has to pick between lives

 The Times of India | April 2020

The old idea that civilisation is destroyed from within, not from without, has been turned upside down. In just a few weeks a virus ten-thousandth of a millimetre in diameter has spread around the world like wildfire from a market in Wuhan, to threaten our civilised order. How we respond to the moral dilemmas raised by Covid-19 will reflect on our values and the number of lives we save.

The first dilemma: Given its horrific cost, was the lockdown necessary? President Donald Trump in America and Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the UK dawdled and both nations paid a heavy price. Johnson considered an alternative: Allow the virus to spread until most people get infected and become immune; with herd immunity, the outbreak would fizzle out. When told that 2,60,000 people would die so that the rest of the UK could live, he backed off.

India’s choices also became clear when faced with the consequences. Epidemiologists’ models predicted around 400 million Indians would be infected by end July – with 40 million severe cases – and at the peak, 10 million patients would have to be hospitalised. But India has only 1,00,000 intensive-care beds and 20,000 ventilators. Creating herd immunity would mean about half of India would need to be infected, and with a 1% mortality rate 6.5 million would die. This is not an imaginary exercise: 17 million Indians actually died in the 1918 Spanish Flu. Lockdown is, thus, the only answer.

The lockdown has worked in China and the world is implementing some variant of it. But social activists like Harsh Mander have argued against it because: 1) it would hurt the poor unconscionably; 2) social distancing is not possible in crowded India; and 3) Covid-19 cases in India are tiny. This reasoning is flawed. The lockdown will slow down the virus’s spread, which will help the poor far more by improving their chances for a hospital bed. India’s Covid numbers are small so far because we are not testing enough people. Our death numbers are also low because India typically records only about 25% of deaths, many of which might show up in records as respiratory distress, not Covid.

During this lockdown, a poor migrant from Bihar was heard to say, ‘If corona does not kill me, losing my job and hunger will.’ He expressed the tragic choice facing the desperate government: ‘Who should live and who should die?’ Even if India manages to contain deaths through lockdowns, the coronavirus is likely to spread until a vaccine or cure is widely available. Extended or multiple lockdowns will bring mass unemployment and a brutal recession.

The worst affected will be half a billion daily wage earners, many of whom may die of hunger. The cost of welfare packages will destroy government’s finances, already weak after a terrible slowdown. The pandemic could turn India back by decades, killing the hopes of a generation. From a fast growing middle income economy, India could become a desperately poor nation.

The dilemma is in the old adage: Is the cure worse than the disease? Some states in the US have appealed to this maxim by justifying not locking down. Texas Lt Governor Dan Patrick added another dimension by suggesting that the elderly should be willing to die in order to save the young. Can our moral intuitions justify such conclusions?

Framing the question as a trade-off between saving people from the virus but condemning those who survive to a life of hunger and poverty, you reach what Derek Parfit, the moral philosopher, called a ‘repugnant conclusion’. Both options are as offensive as Sophie’s Choice, when Meryl Streep has to choose between saving one of her children and killing the other. I too wondered if it was worth saving lives if the result was a world teeming with lives not worth living. But then I asked myself, would I choose to let my son die of Covid-19? My moral intuition was clear: I would choose to save a present life rather than worry about future lives. Vidura in the Mahabharata made the opposite decision and chose to sacrifice a person to save a village.

In the coming weeks, Indian doctors will face other dilemmas: With only one ICU bed, do I give it to a 20-year-old patient or a 50-year-old, both with equal chances of recovery? Current rules of triage prefer the young as their life is still unlived. Some would prefer the 50-year-old who has experience and skills and might contribute more to society. But we all agree that you don’t choose on the basis of wealth, caste, or religion. I would choose based on ‘first come first served’. Whatever the doctor decides, something of moral value is lost, leaving him scarred for life. After the crisis, we shall face other dilemmas. Currently surveillance apps/ data networks are helping governments to trace infected persons. How do we wrest this new power from the state after the crisis?

It takes centuries to create civilisation but only weeks to lose it. How our leaders cope with moral dilemmas reflects our values. Americans are paying a heavy price for Trump’s Covid scepticism. Winston Churchill diverted American food ships meant for Bengal’s famine to feed troops in Europe – think of his political standing after the war. It is difficult to be good in any age. But in the age of coronavirus it is especially important to respond rightfully to preserve our values.

India is free, its schools are not ��� Reform must have two legs: Autonomy for private schools and quality for government schools

 The Times of India | February 2020

Another Republic Day has come and gone, with an unhappy reminder of the tragic gap between our aspirations and the harsh reality. For 70 years we have wanted our children to grow up into free thinking, confident and innovative Indians. But our education system has done everything possible to disempower them. It is a heart breaking sight to see long lines of parents waiting year after year to get their child into a decent school. Most of them are doomed to failure as there aren���t enough places in good schools.

Every year the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) brings the sad news that less than half the students in Class V can read a paragraph or do an arithmetic sum from a Class II text. In some states, less than 10% teachers pass the Teacher Eligibility Tests. In UP and Bihar, three in four teachers cannot do percentage sums from a Class V text. No wonder India���s children ranked 73rd from 74 countries in the international PISA test of reading, science and arithmetic.

Because good government schools are scarce, parents are compelled to send children to a private school. Between 2011 and 2015 enrolment in government schools fell by 1.1 crore and rose in private schools by 1.6 crore, according to government���s DISE data. Based on this trend, there is a need for 1,30,000 additional private schools in 2020. But they are not opening. One reason is the great difficulty to start a school for an honest person. 30-45 permissions are required, depending on the state, and most require running around and bribery. The most expensive bribes are for an Essentiality Certificate (to prove that a school is needed!) and for Recognition.

Another reason for the scarcity is fees control. The problem began with the Right to Education Act. The government realised that state schools were failing and it commanded private schools to reserve 25% seats for the poor. It was a good idea but poorly executed. Since state governments did not compensate private schools adequately for the reserved students, the fees for the 75% fee-paying students went up. This led to a clamour from parents. Many states imposed a control on fees, which has gradually weakened the financial health of schools. To survive, schools have had to economise, leading to a decline in quality. Some schools have actually had to shut down.

The latest assault on school autonomy is the threat of a ban on private textbooks. In 2015, the HRD ministry advised schools to use only NCERT books published by the government. Parents worry about the decline in quality and late delivery of books. Oxfam reported that in half the schools they surveyed in 2015 in ten states, textbooks had not arrived. Although NCERT books have improved, the old rote method of learning persists. Teachers are oblivious of wonderful apps like Hello English and Google Bolo that could rapidly make an Indian student fluent in spoken English. Educationists fear that a ban will cut off Indian children from the learning revolution happening in the world, especially digital learning, and disconnect them from job opportunities in the knowledge economy.

Ironically, most high-performing education systems in Asia have gone in the opposite direction ��� to a liberalised multiple-textbook policy. This has improved student performance by breaking the link between one textbook and one examination. Since Asian teachers now have access to diverse materials, they use interactive teaching methods to develop critical thinking and problem solving in students. China moved away from a national textbook policy in the late 1980s and encourages the use of multiple local textbooks to ���connect with real-life interests and experiences of students in a modern society���. In a liberalised system, a student doesn���t have to buy multiple texts ��� many countries rent books to students and reuse them for many years. Successful Asian countries routinely work with book publishers to continuously improve textbook content, curriculum and teacher training.

70 years into the Republic, it is time to give autonomy to private schools. The 1991 reforms gave freedom to industry but not to our schools, who are still groaning under the burden of licence raj. Despite all this, however, the contribution of private schools to the rise of India is incalculable. Their alumni fill the top ranks of professions, civil services and business. Their leaders have made India a world class power in software.

It���s time that India dropped its socialist hypocrisy that forbids a private school from making a profit. In order to survive, it must make a profit (and it does!). Profit allows it to improve its quality and to expand to meet the huge demand for better schools. This single change in designation from ���non-profit��� to ���profit��� sector could bring a revolution. Investments would flow rapidly into education, improving choice and quality. Principals would not have to lie or be called thieves. The Indian citizen today understands the value of choice and competition. Just as she pays for water and electricity, she is willing to pay for a superior education. In a free country, why should she be prevented from paying more for a school or buying a superior textbook?

Instead of over-regulating private schools, the state should focus on improving the quality of government schools. To begin with, it should separate its two functions: (1) to regulate education impartially, applying equal standards to both the public and private sector; (2) to run government schools. Today, there is a conflict of interest, which confuses the administrator and results in bad policies. It���s time to give freedom to private schools and look forward to a Republic Day when those long lines will be shorter and reality comes closer to our aspirations.

India is free, its schools are not – Reform must have two legs: Autonomy for private schools and quality for government schools

 The Times of India | February 2020

Another Republic Day has come and gone, with an unhappy reminder of the tragic gap between our aspirations and the harsh reality. For 70 years we have wanted our children to grow up into free thinking, confident and innovative Indians. But our education system has done everything possible to disempower them. It is a heart breaking sight to see long lines of parents waiting year after year to get their child into a decent school. Most of them are doomed to failure as there aren’t enough places in good schools.

Every year the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) brings the sad news that less than half the students in Class V can read a paragraph or do an arithmetic sum from a Class II text. In some states, less than 10% teachers pass the Teacher Eligibility Tests. In UP and Bihar, three in four teachers cannot do percentage sums from a Class V text. No wonder India’s children ranked 73rd from 74 countries in the international PISA test of reading, science and arithmetic.

Because good government schools are scarce, parents are compelled to send children to a private school. Between 2011 and 2015 enrolment in government schools fell by 1.1 crore and rose in private schools by 1.6 crore, according to government’s DISE data. Based on this trend, there is a need for 1,30,000 additional private schools in 2020. But they are not opening. One reason is the great difficulty to start a school for an honest person. 30-45 permissions are required, depending on the state, and most require running around and bribery. The most expensive bribes are for an Essentiality Certificate (to prove that a school is needed!) and for Recognition.

Another reason for the scarcity is fees control. The problem began with the Right to Education Act. The government realised that state schools were failing and it commanded private schools to reserve 25% seats for the poor. It was a good idea but poorly executed. Since state governments did not compensate private schools adequately for the reserved students, the fees for the 75% fee-paying students went up. This led to a clamour from parents. Many states imposed a control on fees, which has gradually weakened the financial health of schools. To survive, schools have had to economise, leading to a decline in quality. Some schools have actually had to shut down.

The latest assault on school autonomy is the threat of a ban on private textbooks. In 2015, the HRD ministry advised schools to use only NCERT books published by the government. Parents worry about the decline in quality and late delivery of books. Oxfam reported that in half the schools they surveyed in 2015 in ten states, textbooks had not arrived. Although NCERT books have improved, the old rote method of learning persists. Teachers are oblivious of wonderful apps like Hello English and Google Bolo that could rapidly make an Indian student fluent in spoken English. Educationists fear that a ban will cut off Indian children from the learning revolution happening in the world, especially digital learning, and disconnect them from job opportunities in the knowledge economy.

Ironically, most high-performing education systems in Asia have gone in the opposite direction – to a liberalised multiple-textbook policy. This has improved student performance by breaking the link between one textbook and one examination. Since Asian teachers now have access to diverse materials, they use interactive teaching methods to develop critical thinking and problem solving in students. China moved away from a national textbook policy in the late 1980s and encourages the use of multiple local textbooks to “connect with real-life interests and experiences of students in a modern society”. In a liberalised system, a student doesn’t have to buy multiple texts – many countries rent books to students and reuse them for many years. Successful Asian countries routinely work with book publishers to continuously improve textbook content, curriculum and teacher training.

70 years into the Republic, it is time to give autonomy to private schools. The 1991 reforms gave freedom to industry but not to our schools, who are still groaning under the burden of licence raj. Despite all this, however, the contribution of private schools to the rise of India is incalculable. Their alumni fill the top ranks of professions, civil services and business. Their leaders have made India a world class power in software.

It’s time that India dropped its socialist hypocrisy that forbids a private school from making a profit. In order to survive, it must make a profit (and it does!). Profit allows it to improve its quality and to expand to meet the huge demand for better schools. This single change in designation from ‘non-profit’ to ‘profit’ sector could bring a revolution. Investments would flow rapidly into education, improving choice and quality. Principals would not have to lie or be called thieves. The Indian citizen today understands the value of choice and competition. Just as she pays for water and electricity, she is willing to pay for a superior education. In a free country, why should she be prevented from paying more for a school or buying a superior textbook?

Instead of over-regulating private schools, the state should focus on improving the quality of government schools. To begin with, it should separate its two functions: (1) to regulate education impartially, applying equal standards to both the public and private sector; (2) to run government schools. Today, there is a conflict of interest, which confuses the administrator and results in bad policies. It’s time to give freedom to private schools and look forward to a Republic Day when those long lines will be shorter and reality comes closer to our aspirations.

And now, the good news: Pessimism isn’t warranted. If you can take the long view, the world is getting better

 The Times of India | January 2020

At the beginning of a new decade when so many are feeling so glum, Matt Ridley comes up with the astonishing claim that the past decade was one of the best. “We are living through the greatest improvement in human living standards in history,” he writes in UK’s Spectator. “Extreme poverty has fallen below 10% of the world’s population for the first time… child mortality has fallen to record low levels; famine virtually went extinct; malaria, polio and heart disease are all in decline….”

We don’t notice these changes because we don’t take the long view of history. We are obsessed with headlines of the day and good news doesn’t make headlines; hence, we don’t notice the quiet but dramatic changes taking place in peoples’ lives.

The long view is fine, but what about the rise of authoritarian leaders during the past decade – Trump, Putin, Xi, Erdogan, Modi, Boris Johnson, etc – and the rapid decay in the ideals that we were brought up to believe? Closer to home, what about the unfair citizenship law against which students are protesting across India? How can one feel good?

Ridley argues that many of the good things that make the world a better place happen despite the state. They originate in scientific breakthroughs and are then spread quickly by market forces. Take for example, the cellphone, which has empowered the world’s poor in unbelievable ways and has helped achieve universal banking in India.

And what about the environmental crisis? Ridley argues unfashionably that forests are expanding, especially in rich countries, because productivity of agriculture is rising so fast that human needs can be supplied by a shrinking amount of land. We use 65% less land to produce a given quantity of food compared with 50 years ago. By 2050, he claims that an area the size of India will have been released from the plough and the cow.

As a result, the population of wild animals is growing again – wolves, deer, beavers, lynx, seals, sea eagles and bald eagles. This is a very different story from what the scaremongers have been telling us in newspaper headlines.

When it comes to India, aren’t there legitimate reasons to feel depressed at the beginning of this new decade? Our economy is in serious trouble and Prime Minister Modi has lost valuable time in fixing it, distracted as he is by a contentious social agenda that endangers the nation’s secular and democratic foundations.

Students across the country are protesting against an unfair citizenship law and there is fear of a national register of citizens. The lockdown in Kashmir continues after five months with even pro-India leaders still in detention.

Against this, there is the long view which shows that more Indians are free from poisonous indoor pollution because they now cook with clean gas. More Indians have access to toilets at home and no longer defecate in the open, and this will liberate them gradually from environmental pollution and many health hazards, including child malnutrition.

More Indians are connected with pukka roads from their villages, have access to electricity, and have a bank account in which they have begun to receive direct benefit transfers. Because India has achieved annual economic growth exceeding 7% over the last 15 years, extreme poverty has declined to 5.5%, according to a report by the respected Brookings Institution.

I began to take Ridley seriously after reading his The Rational Optimist, a fascinating history of trade and innovation. Once a talented science writer, he has shifted his focus to the economy. Even though his faith in the market seems one sided – even more one-sided than mine – his two key concepts, gains from exchange and specialisation, rank up there with important economic ideas of all time.

He believes that gains from trade in the market make possible gains from specialisation, which in turn makes technological innovation possible. Steven Pinker, another science writer, has reinforced his optimism. Pinker argues that life has been getting better for most people based on 15 different measures of human wellbeing. People live longer and healthier than ever before and our fear of terrorism is exaggerated – an American, for example, is 3,000 times more likely to die in an accident than in a terrorist attack.

Both gifted science writers offer a tonic against prevailing pessimism. In a similar vein, Nature, the science journal, reports that an artificial intelligence system can now match or outperform radiologists in detecting breast cancer. It can catch cancers that were originally missed and reduce false-positive cancer flags for patients who don’t have it. Of course, doctors still beat the machine sometimes.

So, is the world getting better? And who should one believe – optimists or pessimists? Obviously, both the long and the short views of history are valid. Unhappily, the world is polarised between two ideologies and both sides have the deepest contempt for the other.

Clearly, there are good and bad things going on and one has to find a balanced perspective. In the end, how one feels on a particular day may come down to whether one is happier or angrier with the world.

I happen to be an unashamed member of the former troop and prefer to focus on the soft drama unfolding quietly in the heart of society, barely visible to the naked eye, and which is more difficult to grasp than the changing fortunes of political leaders and parties that is so absorbing. That doesn’t mean i am right. You may have good reasons to feel miserable and depressed. But try and not inflict these feelings on your neighbour who prefers to whistle cheerfully in the wind.

Ten steps to $5 trillion: Lesson from RCEP fiasco is that India must execute bold reforms to become competitive

 The Times of India | December 2019

November 4, 2019 was a sad day. Prime Minister Narendra Modi decided to walk out of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) negotiations at the eleventh-hour, admitting that India couldn’t compete with Asia, especially China. It was a big and painful decision as this is no ordinary trade agreement. Had India joined, RCEP would have become the world’s largest free trade area comprising 16 countries, half the world’s population, 40% of global trade and 35% of world’s wealth in the fastest growing area of the world.

India should have joined RCEP. The deal on offer was a reasonably good one and many of our fears had been allayed. Our farmers had been given protection from imports of agricultural products and milk (say from New Zealand). A quarter of Chinese products had been excluded, and for the rest a long period of tariffs was allowed from 5 to 25 years. The deal offered a unique safeguard from a sudden surge of imports from China to India for 60 of the most sensitive products.

If much smaller countries in Asia – Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines, Laos, Myanmar – can compete and have joined RCEP, why can’t India? Why does it need tariff protection, normally meant for infant industries? Why are India’s companies still infants after 72 years of Independence? No nation has become prosperous without exports; open economies have consistently outperformed closed ones. The $5 trillion target cannot be achieved without exports. The lesson from this fiasco is that India must act single-mindedly and execute bold reforms to become competitive. We can still join RCEP by March 2020. Consider this period a pause to get our house in order. It’s never too late to do the right thing. Here are ten ways to make the nation competitive.

First, get over an inferiority complex and change our old mindset of export pessimism that has limited our share of world exports to 1.7%. Pessimists fear a growing trade deficit. They forget that low cost, high quality imports are necessary to join global supply chains. Competition from imports is a school in which entrepreneurs learn to hone their skills. Ditch the bad idea of import substitution that has made a recent comeback. ‘Make in India’ should be ‘Make in India for the World’. To the voices moaning about bleak global trade prospects: Vietnam’s exports have grown 300% from 2013 to 2018 while India’s have remained stagnant. India’s share of world trade is so small – growing it will bring acche din.

Second, lower our tariffs, which are amongst the highest in the world, and have worsened in recent years through nine rounds of tariff increases in the past three years. Smart countries have a sunset clause to every tariff. Cheaper inputs from abroad will not only make our entrepreneurs more competitive but will also improve domestic productivity.

Third, national competitiveness requires collaboration across a dozen ministries and the states. It cannot be left to the ill-equipped commerce ministry. It needs a high-powered initiative under a senior Cabinet minister. Like the US trade representative, the minister should be empowered to monitor and implement reforms across ministries to enhance competitiveness. No one listens to the commerce ministry.

Fourth, a key roadblock is red tape. Keep a relentless focus on improving the ease of doing business where the country has been rewarded with significant gains in recent years. Minimise the interface of officials and citizens by transferring all paperwork online. Reduce the time it takes to enforce contracts in particular, where India’s performance is amongst the worst in the world.

Fifth, let the overvalued rupee slide, say to 80 to a dollar, which will mitigate the many cost penalties that our exporters pay. Exchange rate should not be a badge of national honour but reflect sound economic sense and competitiveness. Meanwhile, keep lowering interest rates, bringing them closer to our competitors’ levels.

Sixth, reform our rigid labour laws that protect jobs not workers. Companies have to survive in a downturn. When orders decline, you either cut workers or go bankrupt. Successful nations allow employers to ‘hire and fire’ but protect the laid off with a safety net. India should have a labour welfare fund (with contribution from employers and government) to finance transitory unemployment and re-training. We should not insist on lifetime jobs.

Seventh, acquiring an acre of land for industry is not only lengthy but also expensive. The present law, enacted during UPA-2, requires hundreds of signatures. This bureaucratic nightmare needs to be replaced by a sensible law that was, in fact, introduced during Modi 1.0 but failed to pass the Rajya Sabha. Since Modi 2.0 has better numbers, it needs to be moved urgently.

Eighth, treat farmers as business persons, not peasants. Have a predictable export-import regime for farm products – stop the present ‘switch on, switch off’ policy which harms both farmers and foreign customers. Ninth, Indian entrepreneurs bear a huge penalty versus our competitors in the cost of electricity, freight and logistics. Stop subsidising railway passengers through freight; stop subsidising electricity to farmers through industry; and bring down taxes on aviation fuel that make air cargo rates highest in the world. Tenth, keep reforming our dreadful educational system, focussing on outcomes not inputs to produce employable graduates.

There is nothing new about these ten ways to make India competitive. Fortunately, India is in the midst of an economic crisis. A crisis brings urgency to reform as the government has shown by dramatically lowering corporate tax to competitive levels. Now is the time to act. And always remember that rule-based trade and open markets are the best way to lift India’s living standards and build shared prosperity.