Indian Education System -Is there anything to cheer about?

India, a nation that has always been known for its unity in diversity and plurality never ceases to fascinate. Education is its one among various other attributes of India that have always gained the whole world attention. Though the United Nations is more likely to be worried about the existence of a large number of illiterates, on other side various other countries are actually surprised by the excellence of Indian human resources that the Indian education system has delivered since its independence.

In last few years, the growth of an Indian economy and urge to maintain it is forcing the Indian government to speed up the course of developing the new branches of the Indian education system. As a result of this, it is very vital to understand and analyze the various structures of education in India, its present condition and future developments.

As per our great Mahatma Gandhi’s values and vision education can constitute a truly civilized and free India. He always emphasized on education and said “Education can not only mould the new generation, but it has the ability to reflect a society’s fundamental assumptions and the individuals which compose it.” His incident in South Africa was enough to change his outlook on politics. It even helped him to see the role education could play in freedom struggle.

After India gained its independence in 1947, providing education for all becomes a priority for the government. As inequity on the basis of caste and gender has been a key obstacle in the healthy development of the Indian society, they have been made unlawful by the Indian constitution.



Today, we can proudly address to entire world that we have the world’s largest education system with 290 university-level institutions, 13,150 colleges, 88 lakh students, and 427,000 teachers. Yet, its enormity fades if we look that only 8% of the related age group avail themselves of higher education. This certainly shows that if there is a slight increase in the demand for higher education then it would put massive pressure on the existing system. Besides this, while Indian institutes of management and technology are world-class, the picture of primary and secondary schools, particularly in rural areas has not changed since 1947. Moreover, new governments always guaranteed to boost spending on education and bring in structural reforms but this has rarely been delivered in practice.

There have been numerous efforts to add in all the sections of the population into the Indian education system, through process like positive unfairness and non formal education, still large numbers of young people are without schooling. Adding to this, though enrolment in primary education has increased, it is estimated that possibly as many as 60 million, children aged 6–14 years are not in school. In addition to this, high drop-out rate, especially after Class 10, low levels of learning, insufficient school infrastructure, high teacher absenteeism, the large number of teacher vacancies are other key prime issues.

Looking at the other side today, every child has a dream of a bright future. In this flattening world, the aspirations of people have also increased manifolds. Their horizons have broadened; there is a hunger to learn more, a hunger to excel. So, the time has come for the government who strives to a superpower to satiate this hunger of the populace of its country. As India is on the edge to make an important change to a knowledge economy, it means that it will not only have to develop and disseminate knowledge, but even use that knowledge-base to increase its growth and wealth.

It is important for every single citizen to understand that education is not just another tradable service with profit as its primary motive. It has the capability to shape the very process of economic and social development. The structure and growth of a country’s education sector actually depends upon how the country’s policy makers view higher education. So the question is does education is viewed as a vital service for developing human resources? Or is it just like any other trade generating service responding to market demands?

Finally, the answer of these fundamental questions would decide how the educational sector needs to shapes up as a consequence of liberalisation.

Have a thought.............