GREAT DIVIDE-III

BUCK STOPS HERE

Education is still the preserve of those who can pay for it

Subodh Varma | TIMES INSIGHT GROUP

If the economic structure of our society seems like a pyramid with a large base of low-income people, educational levels are a mirror image — the lower the income, the less educated people are. Conversely, high incomes invariably mean a much higher level of education. Even after 60 years of Independence, the equation between poverty and lack of education is chillingly stark.

Consider the poorest third of the rural adult population, made up of over 105 million people, earning about Rs 11 per day — 61% of them have had no education and a minuscule 0.7% were graduates or technical qualifiers. Compare this to the richest one-third — 33% were illiterate and 7% were graduates or technically qualified.

The remaining one third of the population, called ‘middle’ for convenience and not to be confused with what is generally called the ‘middle class’, has monthly expenditure between Rs 365-580 in rural areas and Rs 580-1100 in urban areas. Its educational level is somewhere midway between the two extremes.

A similar divide exists in urban areas. Here, the poorest one third, numbering some 45 million, are those with monthly spending of less than Rs 20 per day. Among them, 38% were illiterate, and just 3% were graduates or other diploma holders. On the other hand, among the richest onethird, with monthly spending of more than Rs 1,100, just 6% were illiterate, and 35% were graduates. These are results from a National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) survey in 2004-05.

In case you are thinking that this is a legacy of an ill-managed past, think again. Tracking current attendance in educational institutions, the survey found that nearly 29% children between 5 and 14 years of age of the poorest families were out of school in rural areas. In the next age group of 15 to 19, 75% were not attending. For the richest families, the situation was different — only about 8% in the first age group and 45% in the next age group were not attending school. In urban areas, 20% of the 5-14 age group from poorest families were out of school, increasing to over 64% for the next age group. In the richest section, these shares of children not studying were only 2% and 16%.

What is the reason for this mass abandonment of education by the poor? It cannot be that education is seen as irrelevant to future income. A graduate can earn anything from three to ten times more than an illiterate person, as another NSSO survey found. This is also true of agricultural work. So it is not as if the poor want to remain uneducated, for they well know that education may provide a way out of their present misery.

The main reason is that they are poor. A family of five, earning Rs 1,175 per month, can ill afford to send its kids to school for 12 years, not to mention college. As soon as the children grow up, they start contributing to family income. The survey found that over 35% persons said that they were not attending an educational institution to supplement the family income, while another 16% said they were helping in domestic work, which includes economic activities like looking after cattle.

Rising costs are also a barrier to spread of education at all levels. Between 1999-2000 and 2004-2005, family spending on tuition and other fees went up by an astounding 188% in rural areas and 153% in urban areas. The general price rise in this period was about 30%, showing that education demanded a very high premium.

Quality of education also varies among institutions, with higher quality schools and colleges usually demanding much higher costs. So the less privileged sections have to make do with poorer quality.

OBSTACLE COURSE: Students in a Bengal village have to carry the blackboard home as their school is just a tent

Search for school takes a model turn

A couple’s quest for a good school for their kids gives Rajasthan a unique teaching centre

Amit Bhattacharya | TNN

Back in the 1970s, Doon School alumnus, J P Singh, had a peculiar problem. He just couldn't find a school where his three children could get an “appropriate” education. “My wife, Faith, and I didn't want them to go to an elite public school like I did, because children in such schools don't get to know the real world,” says the scion of a well-known Rajput family.

The Jaipur-based Singh and his English wife, who had by then set up apparel brand Anokhi, sought an environment where their kids could learn at their own pace. “We didn't want lessons stuffed down their throat,” says Singh.

The couple found what they were looking for at Neel Bagh, a unique school in rural Andhra Pradesh being run by a pioneering British educationist, David Horsburgh. But Neel Bagh, located in Srinivasapur taluk of AP, took in just local children. So Horsburgh made the Singhs an offer — if they start a small school of their own, he could train the teachers for it.

Thus in a section of an apparel factory in Jaipur, with three children of well-off parents and the rest working class kids, started a small experiment in alternative education that was named Digantar. The name, meaning a change in direction, was chosen by the school's founders and its only teachers, Rohit Dhankar and Reena Das. “We started in 1978 and eventually had 25 children of various ages. The two of us taught all subjects from Class I to X,” says Dhankar.

Dhankar and Das, who got married around that time, adapted and developed Horsburgh's pedagogy of free learning — the school had no system of examinations (except after classes V, VIII and X, as required by the state government) and the teacher's role was that of a facilitator who helped children become independent learners. “It turned out to be a crucible where our teaching techniques were tested and refined,” says Dhankar.

The school ran till 1986, by which time all three Singh children had passed Class X and had gone to England for further studies. By this time, the teacher couple had realized that their methods had great potential to help rural children. Singh then donated a piece of his land at Todi Ramzanipura, around 20km from Jaipur, and chipped in with an initial grant for the building. So in 1988, with a grant from the Union HRD ministry, Digantar's experiment to bring quality education to rural children got under way.

It wasn’t easy convincing the villagers. Says Dhankar, “The standard reply we got was: ‘We don’t send girls to school in our community; schools don’t teach anything anyway’.” But the couple’s commitment and the school’s unique pedagogy slowly brought results. Today, there are long admission queues at the four Digantar schools that operate in the rural hamlet of Kho Nagoriyan (population around 10,000), where roughly 80% of inhabitants are Muslim and the rest mostly Dalits. “When we started in 1988, female literacy here was 2%. In 1992, we conducted a survey that found 91% of girls in the age group 5-14 didn’t go to school. In 2008, this figure is down to 12%,” says Das.

The schools’ children, most of them firstgeneration learners, do surprisingly well at examinations conducted by the state board. “Hardly anyone ever fails. Most of our students get above average marks in these tests though there’s hardly anyone who has an exceptional score,” says Dhankar. That’s remarkable for a system that lays no stress on examinations. In fact, competition of any kind is discouraged.

But Digantar’s story isn’t just about numbers. Its alternative teaching methods produce confident individuals who are slowly bringing about attitudinal changes in their communities. For instance, Rehana, Nasreen and Arjina, students of Class XI at Digantar’s school in Bandhyali village, are the first girls in their village to reach the Plus 2 level. All three have warded off family pressure to marry and convinced their parents to allow them to continue studies. “We constantly interact with the community in order to build trust,” says Das.

Digantar's activities have spread much beyond the four schools. It’s now a major resource centre for training of teachers coming from across the country, has a project for improving teaching techniques in 75 government schools, conducts research in early reading processes, helps the government with its flagship SSA programme, develops curriculum for government schools, brings out Shiksha Vimarsh, an acclaimed journal on education, and also collaborates in running a Master’s programme in elementary education at TISS in Mumbai.

The “directional change” that two teachers decided to take in 1978, is now showing the direction to a model of quality education for the deprived.

A principal at 18!

Divya A | TNN

Every evening, Anjali Singh, all of 18, becomes a headmistress. Her students — 20 youngsters from poor homes in Kolkata’s Park Circus area — don’t mind her age. For them, she’s mentor, teacher and friend, all rolled into one. By day though, Anjali is a regular first year student of Lady Brabourne College who is carrying on a tradition that her college established decades ago. Batch after batch of college freshers have tutored underprivileged kids from nearby areas.

Every year, two freshers are elected headmistress and assistant headmistress and they run the evening school independently. “We use innovative methods like personalizing question papers for students so that it matches their day school syllabus,” says Anjali, whose students range from Class I to X. Besides tuition, the college-goers also help out with funds for books and snacks, says Irina Chakrabarty who is assistant headmistress.

“We do help students run this ‘school’ but it’s largely their baby,” says hostel superintendent Writuparna Chakraborty.

This teaching initiative is almost as old as the institute itself, now in its 56th year. “The idea was to give students some organisational experience while they pursued academics. But more than that, it has given them a sense of social responsibility,” says principal Sanghamitra Mukherjee.

Parents, too are full of praise. Says Shabnam, a domestic help and mother of Raja, “Much of my son’s success is due to their efforts. We are illiterate and could never have provided such education.” While the evening effort is quite taxing, the students turned teachers don’t mind it. “These kids are part of the extended Brabourne family,” says Anjali.

Municipal school or private? The choice is clear

‘Municipal schools give free books, uniforms and mid-day meals. The only thing missing is teaching’

Julio Ribeiro

Is it better to send your child to a parish school, run by the Catholic Archdiocese of Bombay, or to a municipal school? This is a question that confronts policemen who stay in various police colonies in Mumbai. If the demand for admissions to just one such parish school in Worli is a pointer, then the answer is clear—low-wage earners prefer parish schools.

Municipal schools provide uniforms, books and mid-day meals. They do not charge fees unlike parish schools which levy fees up to class IV. Despite this, policemen, drivers, housemaids and peons still seek to send their wards to parish schools. The reason is plain: teachers in municipal schools do not teach. Their salaries are higher but motivation is low.

Next to my Worli residence is an English medium municipal school inaugurated a few years ago by one of the Thackerays. It should have been a boon for the poorer sections, including the police families who live in Worli Police Colony just behind my house. But within one or two years of its establishment, the parents started pestering me to get their wards into the school attached to the parish church. Every June, at admission time this is a major headache I have to endure.

At the last meeting of the Mohalla Committee Movement, discussions were diverted from the problem of communal discord to the deteriorating standards in municipal schools. Concern was expressed about the practice of private schools insisting on purchase of books and uniforms from school-appointed suppliers and many felt that this was hard on the not-so-affluent. But most thought this was a small price to pay for the better quality of education that most private schools, particularly convent schools, provide.

There are municipal teachers who talk on their mobiles in class.They also argue that much of their time is spent on distributing books, meals and other goodies under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan. On the last day of every month, municipal schools are closed to enable teachers to draw salaries.

Even the poor now want quality education for their children in English medium. They want them to have a better quality of life than they ever did even if it comes at a high cost. Parish schools are in particular demand because of the commitment of the priests and nuns who run them. The obvious solution is to improve the quality of education in municipal schools. Many of these schools have closed as there are no takers and in others, some classes have been discontinued. This is a great waste of public money and space.

The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan should not be confined to distributing food and uniforms, but should include teaching. There is no earthly reason why poorer paid staff in convent schools should attract greater respect than the better paid teachers of municipal schools.

IITs to push for dereserving vacant seats

Times View Impact?

Hemali Chhapia | TNN

This year, six new Indian Institutes of Technology were brought into being, each with 120 seats —that’s a total of 720 seats. And yet, because the OBC, SC and ST quotas could not be filled up (as enough applicants could not get the generously relaxed pass marks set for these categories), as many as 432 seats will go abegging.

Consider the absurdity of the situation. On the one hand, new IITs are being created at enormous cost; on the other, as many as 432 seats—that’s the equivalent of threeand-a-half IITs—are being allowed to go waste. In Saturday’s edition, we wrote a Times View saying: “To let over 430 seats in IITs go vacant is a criminal waste of infrastructure (such as faculty and physical facilities). Reservations are meant to give disadvantaged sections of society a boost. But where quotas cannot be filled because there aren’t enough suitable candidates, the cut-off for the general category should be relaxed so that all seats are used up—the cut-off will still be higher than for SC/STs, so no one can argue that it will dilute academic standards. As with airline seats and hotel rooms, these seats are ‘perishable’, they must be filled the same year. This should not affect next year’s quota.’’

This sorry situation is the result of two major education policies framed by the Centre. The government not only commissioned six new IITs, but simultaneously increased the number of quota seats (for which there are simply not enough eligible applicants). Despite the cut-off percentage being lowered in the name of affirmative action, the students have not made the grade. The old IITs can fill some of the seats with students from the preparatory course, but the new IITs have nothing to fall back on.

IIT-Guwahati director Gautam Barua said that the institute heads who are meeting later this month may ask the HRD ministry to dereserve the unfilled quota seats. “There is no time this year but we may try to seek permission to transfer the vacant seats to the general category for next year,’’ said Barua.

The prospect of empty chairs in the classroom has disheartened faculty members, many of whom echoed Saturday’s Times View.

WASTING RESOURCES
IITs across the country offer a total of 119 streams. Each IIT sets aside 15% of the seats for SC students, 7.5% for students from the STs and, from this year, will reserve 9% of seats for OBCs (though the six new IITs have implemented 27% reservation for OBCs)

IIT-Bombay, for instance, has 64 seats in computer science and engineering; 44 seats go to students from the general category, six to OBCs (9% of 64), 10 to SCs (15% of 64) and 4 to STs (7.5% of 64). IITs release four merit lists, one for the general category and three others for each reserved category. This year, the cut-off mark for the general category was 180, for OBCs 173, and for both SCs and STs, 104.

The OBC topper was ranked 27th overall, while the two who were first among SCs and STs were ranked 166th and 429th overall, respectively.

Politics before merit, says IIT top brass
“Every IIT seat has the potential to produce a Nandan Nilekani or a Vinod Khosla,’’ said a senior faculty from Kharagpur. “To allow even one seat to go vacant is like crushing a million dreams and aspirations.’’

Another professor from IITBombay said that the empty-seat syndrome while not new had been aggravated this year because of the “unthinking way in which the HRD ministry merrily commissioned half-a-dozen new institutes and expanded quota seats without so much as a thought as to whether or not reserved candidates would qualify’’.

Down the years, IIT deans have faced the brunt of political interventions. When the first batch of IIT-Delhi students graduated, 47 of the 53 reserved category students failed. The dean was summoned. Recalling the meeting with the “big fat man’’, education minister Nurul Hasan, P V Indiresan said, “He kept his bulky hand on my shoulder and asked me, ‘Professor, yeh kya kar diya?’ (Professor what have you done?)’’ Little has changed. Only two months ago, IIT-Delhi was pulled up by the Minorities Commission for asking 20 reserved students to pack their bags because of “very poor performance’’.

These instances of political pressure though fairly common rarely come out in the open. IIT heads who are accused of casteism or deliberately failing reserved category students prefer to stay silent. Most are reluctant to even broach the topic of transferring vacant seats to the general pool, said a former IIT director. “Any issue regarding reserved students has a lot of political repercussions,’’ said Indiresan. “After all, these students have constitutional protection.’’

According to a government report nearly 50% of the reserved seats remain vacant. And of those who make it, 25% drop out. The situation in the next academic year is likely to be even worse. This is because the six newbies do not have the back-up preparatory course. This course, which is like a feeder class, trains quota students for a year to equip them to qualify for the IITs. IITMadras head M S Ananth said that while filling SC and OBC seats is still manageable, it is much more difficult when it comes to the tribal quota. “Despite this, these seats cannot be de-reserved as they were created as super-numeric seats over and above the existing number so as to ensure that quotas did not eat into the open category.’’

Ananth added that transferring seats was not encouraged—except in the case of OBC quota—“because of the fear that the IITs would try to fill them up with forward candidates. It’s just that the government wants us to make enough efforts to look for backward students. Hence, if unfilled, the seats have to go vacant.’’

Old hands like Indiresan rue the fact that the government is killing its golden goose for shortterm political profit. “The reason the IITs are such a success is because they enjoy three basic freedoms: freedom to choose whom to teach, who will teach, and what to teach. These are now endangered.’’ TNN

Project to rebuild net from scratch gets $12M

New York: A massive project to redesign and rebuild the internet from scratch is inching along with $12 million in government funding and donations of network capacity by two major research organizations.

Many researchers want to rethink the internet’s underlying architecture, saying a “clean-slate” approach is the only way to truly address security and other challenges that have cropped up since the internet’s birth in 1969.

On behalf of the US government, BBN Technologies Inc is overseeing the planning and design of the Global Environment for Network Innovations, or GENI, a network on which researchers will be able to test new ideas without damaging the current internet.

The $12 million in initial grants from the National Science Foundation will go to developing prototypes for the GENI network. To test these prototypes, the Internet2 organization is contributing 10 gigabits per second of dedicated bandwidth, so researchers won’t have to worry about normal internet traffic interfering with their experiments. National LambdaRail is offering another 30 gigabits per second of capacity, though it won’t be dedicated to GENI at all times. AP

Confirmed: Saturn moon has liquid on its surface

Besides Earth, Titan Only Body In Solar System With Fluid

Pasadena (California): At least one of many large, lake-like features on Saturn’s moon Titan studied by the international Cassini spacecraft contains liquid hydrocarbons, making it the only body in the solar system besides Earth known to have liquid on its surface, Nasa said.

Scientists positively identified the presence of ethane, according to a statement from Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, which manages the Cassini mission exploring Saturn, its rings and moons.

Liquid ethane is a component of crude oil. Cassini has made more than 40 close flybys of Titan, a giant planet-sized satellite of the ringed world. Scientists had theorized that Titan might have oceans of methane, ethane and other hydrocarbons, but Cassini found hundreds of dark, lake-like features instead, and it wasn’t known at first whether they were liquid or dark, solid material, JPL’s statement said.

“This is the first observation that really pins down that Titan has a surface lake filled with liquid,” Bob Brown, team leader of Cassini’s visual and mapping instrument, said.

The instrument was used during a December flyby to observe a feature dubbed Ontario Lacus, in the south polar region, that is about 7,800 square miles, slightly larger than North America’s Lake Ontario.

Cassini reached Saturn in mid-2004 and at the end of that year launched a probe named Huygens that parachuted to the surface of Titan the following January.

The mission is a project of Nasa, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. Titan shows overwhelming evidence of evaporation, rain, and fluid-carved channels draining into a liquid hydrocarbon lake. AP

FUEL FOR FUTURE? An image released by Nasa shows what experts believe to be sea-size bodies of liquid hydrocarbon (shown in blue) on Titan’s surface