Get one, Pay for two - Says our HRD Minister

By Aditya Mhatre at 4 April, 2008, 1:30 pm

Get one, pay for two, may sound amusing to those ears who are used to hearing; Buy one, get one free from the overzealous marketers falling over one another to attract consumers.� But our HRD Minister, Mr. Arjun Singh thinks differently. He believes that the taxpayers� money should be spent doubly for the education of one poor child. Otherwise why would he come out with this indigenous idea of making 25% reservation for the poor in private schools?

Don�t get me wrong. I have nothing against government taking steps to give proper education to the children of the poor and needy. But I always thought that is what public schools are meant for. We all know the pathetic conditions in which our public schools operate with children in standard four or five barely learning to read and write. Many surveys in past have proven our track record. So instead of tacking this menace and improving the efficiency of our public schools, which he obviously thinks as an almost impossible task, he has chosen the simpler path of making private schools responsible for a job that government should be delivering.

The result of this populist election time decision will be that the government will be spending twice on a child�s education. Once by running these public schools and then again by subsidizing the fees of private schools for poor. As a taxpayer I have strong objection to this. If you think that public schools are inefficient then close them and subsidize the fees of private schools. On one side you endorse the 6^th pay commission which increases the salary of inefficient teachers without doing anything to curb their absenteeism and making them accountable and on the other side you look for alternative means for delivering what these schools should be doing in the first place.

Also there are other repercussions. Think about the psychological impact of this on the poor children. When they go to same schools as frequented by the rich, they will always compare themselves to the rich children and may develop a low self esteem. Also, they may press their parents to match up to the standards of other children in the school. By just paying the tuition fees, the government�s job will be done but will the parents be able to cope up with the extracurricular activities that these schools organize. Most importantly, is the staff of the private school well equipped in handling such delicate scenarios? The age of schooling is a tender age which leaves a far reaching impact on an individual�s future. Some half baked solution without any research should not be allowed to hamper it.

Also, as seen in past, this may result in widespread black marketeering. As the decision to decide what is to be described as lower income, lies in the hands of government, it will be common to see government officials auctioning these reserved seats to parents who grease their hands. We have this so many times before in every scheme before. Take for example the National Rural Guarantee Scheme (NRGS) rolled out with great fanfare by the UPA as the largest employment scheme. Its common knowledge today, that the lesser poor bribe the officials and get jobs through this scheme and the more poor are left out whereas these are really the ones that ought to be benefiting.

Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel Peace Prize winner and founder of the microfinance institution Grameen Bank, talks about Gresham�s law in his autobiography, Banker to the poor. Gresham�s law states that if an economy operates with 2 currencies, one of greater value than the other with equal denomination, then bad money drives out the good money. He applied the same law to half baked agricultural schemes which benefit the rich farmers instead of the real poor ones. I would extend the same theory here. The less poor who actually don�t need the scheme benefit out of it and the very poor for whom the scheme is targeted never get the benefit.

As this is a sensitive topic, such schemes are bound to get large amount of public sympathy. But I do hope the government takes into account the various facets of such a decision before going ahead with the decision.

In our country today, it�s a crime if people want to get out of their wheels of misfortune and make their own good luck out of their sheer hard work. Biharis are ready to travel to long distances, work hard, not rest on their laurels so that they can remove their families back out of a vicious circle of poverty. And so for this crime of theirs they are met with brickbats everywhere they go in this country.

Compare this to the rush Indians make for the US / European visa. Aren�t they too culpable of the same crime? They want to leave their third world country for the lure of a capitalist economy that promises them a better standard of living. Just like Biharis are found in every state in India, Indians are found in every country of the world. Imagine if tomorrow all these countries start beating up Indians and sending them back to India because they think that why should their infrastructure take the burden of Indians just because India cannot provide for them. We have lost our right to raise an eyebrow then.

Some argue that a local�s right to his land is the most and he should be given priority in wake of outsiders. Politics is always fought on this premise. Whether it is Hillary, Obama or the Thackeray�s, they all want to be the messiah of locals or you can say the �voters.� The backlash against outsourcing industry and the working Indians in developed countries is no different than the backlash against a Bihari. The human right of a better livelihood be damned!! The rule that only the fittest can survive be damned!! You can be complacent in your job just because you are a local and you have earned the right for it and you�d better be accustomed to slogging if you are a foreigner.

What goes around comes around. Such is the law of nature. So today if a Bihari in search of a respectable life is thrown out of every state, it may not be far away in future that an Indian is thrown out of every country. Some great man once said, that a man is a human being first, then a national, then a member of s society and then a part of his family. Of course he wasn�t that great after all. Else he would have realised that in practical life its always the opposite. And what greater proof we need of that.

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Categories : Business