Progress of education in India

Vijay Garg
The economic growth of the country not only depends on natural resources, technology and capital but mainly on quantity and quality of manpower.
By quality of manpower, we mean the efficiency and productivity of work-force.
The efficiency of the manpower depends on many important factors like health and nutrition, education and training, housing facilities, safe drinking water and sanitation. These are considered as important determinants of quality of life. Adequate investment in these fields will increase the productivity and efficiency of the manpower. Economists call it ‘human capital formation’. By human capital, we mean ‘the body of knowledge attained by the population and capacity of population to use the knowledge effectively’.
Education is the most important component out of various components of social infrastructure. The well-educated and properly trained manpower can accelerate the pace of economic development.
Despite our best efforts, our educational development still remains at a low level. The following are the main problems faced in the progress of education:

1. Lack of funds:
   The lack of sufficient funds is the main problem in the development of education. Outlay for education in Five Years Plans has been decreasing. Due to insufficient funds, most educational institutions lack infrastructure, science equipment and libraries etc. Due to this reason, desired results cannot be achieved.
2. Expensive higher education:
   University, professional and technical education have become costly in India. Fee structure of technical and professional institutes like IIM’s is quite high IIM’s charge Rs. 4 lakh per semester for MBA classes. It is beyond the reach of common man. Privatisation of higher education has led to the growth of profit hungry entrepreneurs. Now a days, higher education is much costly affair.
3. Neglect of Indian languages:
   The medium of instruction particularly in science subjects is English. So rural students who are not well versed in English, cannot study science properly in English. They suffer a lot; Indian languages are still under-developed. Standard publications are not available in Indian language.
4. Problem of Brain-drain:
   When intelligent, talented and deserving candidates do not get suitable jobs in the country, they prefer to go abroad for seeking jobs. So, our country is deprived of good talent. This phenomenon is called ‘Brain drain’.
5. Mass illiteracy:
   Despite constitutional directives and economic planning, we are not able to achieve cent percent literacy. Even now 35 per cent people remain illiterate. In India, the number of illiterates is almost one-third of the total illiterates in the world. Advanced countries are 100 per cent literate; the position in India is quite dismal.
6. Wastage of resources:
   Our education system is based on general education. The dropout rate is very high in primary and secondary level. Most of the students in 6-14 year age groups leave the school before completing their education. It leads to wastage of financial and human resources.
7. General education oriented:
   Our educational system is based on General Education in nature. Development of technical and vocational education is quite unsatisfactory. So, our education is unproductive. Hence, number of educated unemployed persons is increasing day by day. This has become a great concern for Govt.
8. Problems of primary education:
   Our primary education is ridden with too many problems. Large number of primary schools have no buildings what to talk of basic facilities like drinking water, urinals and electricity, furniture and study materials etc. Large numbers of primary schools are single-teacher schools and many schools are even without teachers. So, the drop rate is very high and a cause of concern. Concluding, we can say that there is quantitative expansion of education but in qualitative development we are still lagging behind.